1) Democracy with a population that is at least minimally engaged and angrily stays that
way (including removing powerful special interests from premises with pitchforks)
2) Being "managed" on behalf of various power centers. This can be liveable or can turn into
strip mining of your "resources".
Sadly, there is no algorithm that allows you to detect whether your are engaged or are
being engaged on behalf of others. That would be easy. But one should start with a minimal
state, hard money and the sons of the upper crust on the front lines and forbidden from
taking office in government.
That being said, this article is a bit meandering. Came for Bellingcat but was
confused.
Who presented the Emmy Award to the film makers, but none other than the rebel
journalist Chris Hedges.
@El Dato "1) Democracy with a population that is at least minimally engaged and angrily
stays that way (including removing powerful special interests from premises with pitchforks)"
There are no revolutions by means of pitchforks in a democracy, everything is weakened by
compromise, false promises, infiltration, manipulation, etc. You cannot stay angry all the
time too, it is very bad for your health, it needs to be short and intense to be effective,
which is exactly what democracy prevents.
Democracy turns you into a petted animal.
CARLSON: But more broadly, what you are saying, I think is, that the Democratic Party
understands what it is and who it represents and affirmatively represents them. They do
things for their voters, but the Republican Party doesn't actually represent its own voters
very well.
VANCE: Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, look at who the Democratic Party is and look, I
don't like the Democratic Party's policies.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: Most of the times, I disagree with them. But I at least admire that they recognize
who their voters are and they actually just as raw cynical politics do a lot of things to
serve those voters.
Now, look at who Republican voters increasingly are. They are people who
disproportionately serve in the military, but Republican foreign policy has been a disaster
for a lot of veterans. They are disproportionately folks who want to have more children.
They are people who want to have more single earner families. They are people who don't
necessarily want to go to college but they want to work in an economy where if you play by
the rules, you can you actually support a family on one income.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: Have Republicans done anything for those people really in the last 15 or 20 years?
I think can you point to some policies of the Trump administration. Certainly, instinctively,
I think the President gets who his voters are and what he has to do to service those folks.
But at the end of the day, the broad elite of the party, the folks who really call the shots,
the think tank intellectuals, the people who write the policy, I just don't think they
realize who their own voters are.
Now, the slightly more worrying implication is that maybe some of them do realize who
their voters are, they just don't actually like those voters much.
CARLSON: Well, that's it. So I watch the Democratic Party and I notice that if there is a
substantial block within it, it's this unstable coalition, all of these groups have nothing
in common, but the one thing they have in common is the Democratic Party will protect
them.
VANCE: Yes.
CARLSON: You criticize a block of Democratic Voters and they are on you like a wounded
wombat. They will bite you. The Republicans, watch their voters come under attack and sort of
nod in agreement, "Yes, these people should be attacked."
VANCE: Yes, that's absolutely right. I mean, if you talk to people who spent their lives
in D.C. I know you live in D.C.
CARLSON: Yes.
VANCE: I've spent a lot of my life here. The people who spend their time in D.C. who work
on Republican campaigns, who work at conservative think tanks, now this isn't true of
everybody, but a lot of them actually don't like the people who are voting for Republican
candidates these days.
"... Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has not seen these levels of concentration of ownership. The Soviet Union did not die because of apparent ideological reasons but due to economic bankruptcy caused by its uncompetitive monopolistic economy. Our verdict is that the US is heading in the same direction. ..."
"... In a future instalment of this report, we will show that the oligarchization of America – the placing it under the rule of the One Percent (or perhaps more accurately the 0.1%, if not 0.01%) - has been a deliberate ideologically driven long-term project to establish absolute economic power over the US and its political system and further extend that to involve an absolute global hegemony (the latter project thankfully thwarted by China and Russia). ..."
"... In present-day United States a few major investors – equity funds or private capital - are as a rule cross-owned by each other, forming investor oligopolies, which in turn own the business oligopolies. ..."
"... A study has shown that among a sample of the 1,500 largest US firms (S&P 1500), the probability of one major shareholder holding significant shares in two competing firms had jumped to 90% in 2014, while having been just 16% in 1999. (*2). ..."
"... Institutional investors like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, and JP Morgan, now own 80% of all stock in S&P 500 listed companies. The Big Three investors - BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – alone constitute the largest shareholder in 88% of S&P 500 firms, which roughly correspond to America's 500 largest corporations. (*3). Both BlackRock and Vanguard are among the top five shareholders of almost 70% of America's largest 2,000 publicly traded corporations. (*4). ..."
A close-knit oligarchy controls all major corporations. Monopolization of ownership in US
economy fast approaching Soviet levels
Starting with Ronald Reagan's presidency, the US government willingly decided to ignore the
anti-trust laws so that corporations would have free rein to set up monopolies. With each
successive president the monopolistic concentration of business and shareholding in America has
grown precipitously eventually to reach the monstrous levels of the present day.
Today's level of monopolistic concentration is of such unprecedented levels that we may
without hesitation designate the US economy as a giant oligopoly. From economic power follows
political power, therefore the economic oligopoly translates into a political oligarchy. (It
seems, though, that the transformation has rather gone the other way around, a ferocious set of
oligarchs have consolidated their economic and political power beginning from the turn of the
twentieth century). The conclusion that
the US is an oligarchy finds support in a 2014 by a Princeton University study.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has not seen these levels of concentration
of ownership. The Soviet Union did not die because of apparent ideological reasons but due to
economic bankruptcy caused by its uncompetitive monopolistic economy. Our verdict is that the
US is heading in the same direction.
In a later report, we will demonstrate how all sectors of the US economy have fallen prey to
monopolization and how the corporate oligopoly has been set up across the country. This post
essentially serves as an appendix to that future report by providing the shocking details of
the concentration of corporate ownership.
Apart from illustrating the monopolization at the level of shareholding of the major
investors and corporations, we will in a follow-up post take a somewhat closer look at one
particularly fatal aspect of this phenomenon, namely the
consolidation of media (posted simultaneously with the present one) in the hands of
absurdly few oligarch corporations. In there, we will discuss the monopolies of the tech giants
and their ownership concentration together with the traditional media because they rightfully
belong to the same category directly restricting speech and the distribution of opinions in
society.
In a future instalment of this report, we will show that the oligarchization of America
– the placing it under the rule of the One Percent (or perhaps more accurately the 0.1%,
if not 0.01%) - has been a deliberate ideologically driven long-term project to establish
absolute economic power over the US and its political system and further extend that to involve
an absolute global hegemony (the latter project thankfully thwarted by China and Russia). To
achieve these goals, it has been crucial for the oligarchs to control and direct the narrative
on economy and war, on all public discourse on social affairs. By seizing the media, the
oligarchs have created a monstrous propaganda machine, which controls the opinions of the
majority of the US population.
We use the words 'monopoly,' 'monopolies,' and 'monopolization' in a broad sense and subsume
under these concepts all kinds of market dominance be it by one company or two or a small
number of companies, that is, oligopolies. At the end of the analysis, it is not of great
importance how many corporations share in the market dominance, rather what counts is the death
of competition and the position enabling market abuse, either through absolute dominance,
collusion, or by a de facto extinction of normal market competition. Therefore we use the term
'monopolization' to describe the process of reaching a critical level of non-competition on a
market. Correspondingly, we may denote 'monopoly companies' two corporations of a duopoly or
several of an oligopoly.
Horizontal shareholding – the cementation of the
oligarchy
One especially perfidious aspect of this concentration of ownership is that the same few
institutional investors have acquired undisputable control of the leading corporations in
practically all the most important sectors of industry. The situation when one or several
investors own controlling or significant shares of the top corporations in a given industry
(business sector) is referred to as horizontal shareholding . (*1). In present-day United
States a few major investors – equity funds or private capital - are as a rule
cross-owned by each other, forming investor oligopolies, which in turn own the business
oligopolies.
A study has shown that among a sample of the 1,500 largest US firms (S&P 1500), the
probability of one major shareholder holding significant shares in two competing firms had
jumped to 90% in 2014, while having been just 16% in 1999. (*2).
Institutional investors like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, and JP Morgan, now
own 80% of all stock in S&P 500 listed companies. The Big Three investors - BlackRock,
Vanguard and State Street – alone constitute the largest shareholder in 88% of S&P
500 firms, which roughly correspond to America's 500 largest corporations. (*3). Both BlackRock
and Vanguard are among the top five shareholders of almost 70% of America's largest 2,000
publicly traded corporations. (*4).
Blackrock had as of 2016 $6.2 trillion worth of assets under management, Vanguard $5.1
trillion, whereas State Street has dropped to a distant third with only $1 trillion in assets.
This compares with a total market capitalization of US stocks according to Russell
3000 of $30 trillion at end of 2017 (From 2016 to 2017, the Big Three has of course also
put on assets).Blackrock and Vanguard would then alone own more than one-third of all US
publicly listed shares.
From an expanded sample that includes the 3,000 largest publicly listed corporations
(Russell 3000 index), institutions owned (2016) about
78% of the equity .
The speed of concentration the US economy in the hands of institutions has been incredible.
Still back in 1950s, their share of the equity was 10%, by 1980 it was 30% after which the
concentration has rapidly grown to the present day approximately 80%. (*5). Another study puts
the present (2016) stock market capitalization held by institutional investors at 70%. (*6).
(The slight difference can possibly be explained by variations in the samples of companies
included).
As a result of taking into account the common ownership at investor level, it emerges that
the US economy is yet much more monopolized than it was previously thought when the focus had
been on the operational business corporation alone detached from their owners. (*7).
The
Oligarch owners assert their control
Apologists for monopolies have argued that the institutional investors who manage passive
capital are passive in their own conduct as shareholders as well. (*8). Even if that would be
true it would come with vastly detrimental consequences for the economy as that would mean that
in effect there would be no shareholder control at all and the corporate executives would
manage the companies exclusively with their own short-term benefits in mind, inevitably leading
to corruption and the loss of the common benefits businesses on a normally functioning
competitive market would bring.
In fact, there seems to have been a period in the US economy – before the rapid
monopolization of the last decade -when such passive investors had relinquished control to the
executives. (*9). But with the emergence of the Big Three investors and the astonishing
concentration of ownership that does not seem to hold water any longer. (*10). In fact, there
need not be any speculation about the matter as the monopolist owners are quite candid about
their ways. For example, BlackRock's CEO Larry Fink sends out
an annual guiding letter to his subject, practically to all the largest firms of the US and
increasingly also Europe and the rest of the West. In his pastoral, the CEO shares his view of
the global conditions affecting business prospects and calls for companies to adjust their
strategies accordingly.
The investor will eventually review the management's strategic plans for compliance with the
guidelines. Effectively, the BlackRock CEO has in this way assumed the role of a giant central
planner, rather like the Gosplan, the central planning agency of the Soviet command
economy.
The 2019 letter (referenced above) contains this striking passage, which should quell all
doubts about the extent to which BlackRock exercises its powers:
"As we seek to build long-term value for our clients through engagement, our aim is not to
micromanage a company's operations. Instead, our primary focus is to ensure board
accountability for creating long-term value. However, a long-term approach should not be
confused with an infinitely patient one. When BlackRock does not see progress despite ongoing
engagement, or companies are insufficiently responsive to our efforts to protect our clients'
long-term economic interests, we do not hesitate to exercise our right to vote against
incumbent directors or misaligned executive compensation."
Considering the striking facts rendered above, we should bear in mind that the establishment
of this virtually absolute oligarch ownership over all the largest corporations of the United
States is a relatively new phenomenon. We should therefore expect that the centralized control
and centralized planning will rapidly grow in extent as the power is asserted and methods are
refined.
Most of the capital of those institutional investors consists of so-called passive capital,
that is, such cases of investments where the investor has no intention of trying to achieve any
kind of control of the companies it invests in, the only motivation being to achieve as high as
possible a yield. In the overwhelming majority of the cases the funds flow into the major
institutional investors, which invest the money at their will in any corporations. The original
investors do not retain any control of the institutional investors, and do not expect it
either. Technically the institutional investors like BlackRock and Vanguard act as fiduciary
asset managers. But here's the rub, while the people who commit their assets to the funds may
be considered as passive investors, the institutional investors who employ those funds are most
certainly not.
Cross-ownership of oligarch corporations
To make matters yet worse, it must be kept in mind that the oligopolistic investors in turn
are frequently cross-owned by each other. (*11). In fact, there is no transparent way of
discovering who in fact controls the major institutional investors.
One of the major institutional investors, Vanguard is ghost owned insofar as it does not
have any owners at all in the traditional sense of the concept. The company claims that it is
owned by the multiple funds that it has itself set up and which it manages. This is how the
company puts it on
their home page : "At Vanguard, there are no outside owners, and therefore, no conflicting
loyalties. The company is owned by its funds, which in turn are owned by their shareholders --
including you, if you're a Vanguard fund investor." At the end of the analysis, it would then
seem that Vanguard is owned by Vanguard itself, certainly nobody should swallow the charade
that those funds stuffed with passive investor money would exercise any ownership control over
the superstructure Vanguard. We therefore assume that there is some group of people (other than
the company directors) that have retained the actual control of Vanguard behind the scenes
(perhaps through one or a few of the funds). In fact, we believe that all three (BlackRock,
State Street and Vanguard) are tightly controlled by a group of US oligarchs (or more widely
transatlantic oligarchs), who prefer not to brandish their power. It is beyond the scope of
this study and our means to investigate this hypothesis, but whatever, it is bad enough that as
a proven fact these three investor corporations wield this control over most of the American
economy. We also know that the three act in concert wherever they hold shares.
(*12).
Now, let's see who are the formal owners of these institutional investors
In considering these ownership charts, please, bear in mind that we have not consistently
examined to what degree the real control of one or another company has been arranged through a
scheme of issuing different classes of shares, where a special class of shares give vastly more
voting rights than the ordinary shares. One source asserts
that 355 of the companies in the Russell index consisting of the 3000 largest corporations
employ such a dual voting-class structure, or 11.8% of all major corporations.
We have mostly relied on www.stockzoa.com for the shareholder data. However, this and
other sources tend to list only the so-called institutional investors while omitting corporate
insiders and other individuals. (We have no idea why such strange practice is employed
De Blasio policies are directed against middle class. Upper class uses private schools anyway and as such is exempt from his
experiments.
Notable quotes:
"... there's an essay on socialism by Igor Shafarevich. In it, he quotes Marx saying that communism aims to "eliminate talent by force." Equality must be achieved above all things. ..."
"... Mayor Bill de Blasio's School Diversity Advisory Group has recommended that the city eliminated gifted and talented programs for elementary schools, and stop using academic criteria for admission to middle schools. Why? Diversity, of course. ..."
"... You can have excellence, or you can have equality, but you can't have both. ..."
"... This criterion for racism is non-sensical...admission based on merit cannot be racist, because it is based on merit and not race! Need I say that if based on the latter, then it would be some form of racism.... ..."
"... The opposite of "equality" isn't inequality, but difference. And everyone really knows there is no blank slate. Children have a genetic heritage which combines with environment factors in creating intelligence and success. ..."
"... Acknowledging "difference" is true celebration of life and its varieties. And some people are smarter than others. ..."
The Equalizer: NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio ( Morning Joe screenshot
) In that same book I quoted in
an earlier post ,
From Under The Rubble
(which you can read online for free by following the link), there's an essay on socialism by Igor Shafarevich. In it,
he quotes Marx saying that communism aims to "eliminate talent by force." Equality must be achieved above all things.
Reading the Shafarevich, I thought of the removal and/or relocation of photographs of white males from medical schools, on ideological
grounds (
I wrote about it here on Monday. ) It won't stop there. That's just the first step. They begin by removing the images of certain
figures, and will eventually get around to removing people like them from the schools, all in the name of equality.
Something like this might be about to happen in New York City. Mayor Bill de Blasio's School Diversity Advisory Group has
recommended that the city eliminated gifted and talented programs for elementary schools, and stop using academic criteria for admission
to middle schools. Why? Diversity, of course. Too many of the kids who get into the better schools and programs are white and
Asian, not enough are black and Hispanic, according to progressive dogma.
Christine Rosen writes:
All the city's selective schools are already open to anyone regardless of race. But because the majority of students who gain
admission to schools that screen applicants are white and Asian, the panel reasoned, merit-based admissions procedures must be
racist. Indeed, the advisory panel
describes merit-based
testing and other screening procedures used in New York City's public schools as "exclusionary admissions practices," not because
they found any evidence of racial bias in the screening procedures but simply because the outcome of screening does not perfectly
reflect the demographic make-up of the city. According to the New York Times , the panel argued that a screening system
based on academic ability "is not equitable, even if it is effective for some."
The Progressive Caucus of the city council agrees. In a letter to the diversity panel, it
urged "caps on the allowable concentrations of high-achieving and low-achieving students in the same schools." New York City
schools chancellor Richard Carranza, who would implement the panel's recommendations if the mayor approves them, already
thinks too
many students are labeled "gifted."
In other words, the progressives' answer to the problem of racial gaps in educational achievement is a
Harrison Bergeron-like downward social leveling
that would ensure that excellence and competition are eliminated in favor of mediocrity and "diversity." Since more than half
of the city's public school students
can't pass the
state math and English exams, and only 28 percent of the city's black students passed the math exam (compared to 67 percent of
white students and 74 percent of Asian-American students), the leveling effect will likely be significant.
Punishing excellence by demanding that everyone conform to the lowest common denominator is a recipe for educational failure
and societal stagnation. By this logic, schools will eventually have to eliminate grades and other forms of ranking, since outcomes
will never match progressives' diversity requirements.
This is identity politics in action. It will punish, or eliminate, talent by force. It's the old socialist claim -- that hierarchy
is always and everywhere the result of injustice -- applied to racial politics.
For years, New York City has essentially maintained two parallel public school systems.
A group of selective schools and programs geared to students labeled gifted and talented is filled mostly with white and Asian
children. The rest of the system is open to all students and is predominantly black and Hispanic.
Now, a high-level panel appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio is recommending that the city do away with most of these selective
programs in an effort to desegregate the system, which has 1.1 million students and is by far the largest in the country.
More:
The panel's report, obtained by The New York Times, amounts to a repudiation of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's education
agenda, which reoriented the system toward school choice for families, including more gifted and screened schools, to combat decades
of low performance.
Some of those policies
deepened inequality even as student achievement rose . Mr. de Blasio has been sharply critical of his predecessor's philosophy
on education, but must now decide whether to dismantle some of the structures that Mr. Bloomberg helped to build.
You can have excellence, or you can have equality, but you can't have both. De Blasio seems to be aiming for equality
by denying the concept of "good schools":
Though Mr. de Blasio has vowed to create a school system where the idea of "good schools" and "bad schools" becomes obsolete,
dozens of schools are extremely low-performing, and many more are struggling.
As the city has tried for decades to improve its underperforming schools, it has long relied on accelerated academic offerings
and screened schools, including the specialized high schools, to entice white families to stay in public schools.
Progressives don't allow one to ask why white, Asian, and middle-class families are avoiding those schools, or that gifted classes
lead to segregated classrooms within diverse schools. The progressive mind can only imagine that these outcomes are racist, and therefore
must be eliminated so New York City can build a pedagogical heaven on earth.
One more note:
Still, the so-called School Diversity Advisory Group acknowledged
that the city would have to take pains to prevent middle-class families from fleeing the system.
If those students decamp to private schools or to the suburbs, "it will become even more difficult to create high-quality integrated
schools," in New York, the report said. The panel wrote that "high-achievement students deserve to be challenged," but in different
ways.
The panel blamed the failure of G&T programs in schools serving poor neighborhoods on economic privilege:
The reforms of the early 2000s brought over 20 new G&T programs meant to cater to underserved communities, in further hopes
of expanded enrichment opportunities for a more diverse group of children. Three years later, most of these new programs were
unable to fill a single spot in their incoming classes, because the majority of students in these neighborhoods and districts
were low-income and not able to invest in equitable test-prep resources. Since the mid-2000s the number of G&T programs has nearly
halved, with most surviving offerings operating in affluent white neighborhoods.
There's no doubt that well-off parents have the resources to help their children prepare for tests. But the panel does not consider
the role of culture -- within the family, and the students' communities -- in affecting the outcomes. It's widely known that Asian
families put a premium on education, and that that means Asian kids generally study more and work harder to achieve. Why should they
be punished for that?
NYC is a left-wing town, as we all know, but it's also the case that middle-class progressives get real protective of their own
children, and may find some rationale to fight this proposal, at the expense of their own stated principles. But perhaps not. Because
left-wing identity politics demonizes achievement by people of the "wrong" ethnicity, it might not be possible to fight this -- not
if the price of resisting it is bearing the cost of being publicly condemned as racist.
It's down to the Asians to lead the resistance, if there is any resistance at all.
UPDATE: Reader Another Dave comments:
I live in NYC and have kids in the public school system. Asians are already pushing back hard, and have attended several public
forums en masse to jeer at and heckle Carranza, and openly call him a bigot, which he clearly is.
Both DiBlasio and Carranza are loathsome midwits, and deserve whatever vitriol is directed at them.
The NYPost has covered most of this in detail, but a number of Asian community groups have formed activist committees, and
are making as much noise as humanly possible, and then some.
I could go into much greater detail about my own experiences with the public school system here on the UES, but it would take
up too much space and potentially bore everyone.
I socialize with several people, all of the black and Latin, who have worked in education in NYC for decades, and have had
whatever remained of their progressive rose colored glasses shattered by dealing directly with poor black and Hispanic communities.
Suffice it to say, poor black and Hispanic communities, outside of some individual exceptions, simply don't place a premium on
scholastic excellence and academic rigor.
Again, there are exceptions, and there are certainly students with parents from Africa or the Caribbean who do not fit into
this category, but generally speaking, no matter what the racial ideologues and the woke activists say, poor and working class
blacks and Hispanics just don't have the same regard for academic achievement. The parents will tell you to your face that they
do, and then you see how they raise their kids and how they approach homework and test prep, and it just doesn't compare to what
Asian and white parents do with and for their kids. It's two different worlds.
Black and Hispanic parents obviously love their kids, and do what they think is right, but they simply lack the same degree
of focus and stick-to-it-iveness, and yes, even intellectual horsepower, that Asian and white parents have.
This is an important story, because it reveals just how far racial activists intend on going to achieve parity. They will detonate
the entire system to do so, and this doesn't really bother them in the least. To them, the disparities prove the system is not
just broken, but evil, and must be overturned. Asian and white excellence is a continual slap in the face, and it cannot be allowed
to stand, no matter the consequences.
The mayor, his attack dog Carranza, and all of the racist black and Hispanic activists have a deep, emotional commitment to
their utopian vision, and reason will not be allowed to prevail, up to and including chasing the highest performing whites and
Asians right out of the entire system and into private education.
This is a microcosm of a larger societal drama, and all of Rod's self deceptive liberal commenters would do well to acquaint
themselves with the details, because this is where our entire society is headed if we don't put the brakes on.
I suspect that more and more wealthy parents of high-achieving students will simply move out of New York, unless their brains
have been rotted by Wokeness.
I'm talking about only in NYC will the Asians be able to effectively lead the resistance, because they can't be accused of racism.
If you read the links I posted, you'll find that 70 percent of the population of NYC schools are black and Hispanic. White people
can (and should) fight to preserve the schools where their kids attend, but political reality on the ground in NYC indicates that
the resistance will have a better chance of resisting if it is led by Asians, given their immunity to the usual progressive racial
demagoguery. Mind you, I know some Asians buy into this demagoguery, but I'm betting most ordinary ones in NYC don't. I could
be wrong.
Essentially the Asian community will be fighting the same battle as those now fighting to see just how explicitly Harvard discriminates
against Asians when it comes to their admissions policy. And in that case it certainly is not a unified front. Many of those Asian
students have no desire to be put front and center in this ideological battle. There have been a few different essays about the
Harvard admissions challenge that specifically quoted Asian students as not wanting to wade into the political mess, or they simply
agreed with and supported Harvards P.C. admissions policy. It is a lot easier to just accept your admission into top tier school
2 or 3 on your list and move on.
Well-to-do white families will opt for private school. The ones who will suffer under the new arrangement will be those who can't
afford private school or a move to the suburbs: middle- and lower-class white families with bright kids who will now get a lowest-common-denominator
education.
No one would argue with efforts to address the inequality in resources devoted to poorer kids and neighborhoods, and to provide
struggling families with additional support. But attempting to overcome inequality by eliminating gifted and talented programs
is a deeply stupid, immoral, counterproductive, and ultimately fanatical form of social engineering. As an aside, good luck trying
to win re-election, Mr. de Blasio.
If I read correctly on this elsewhere, the mayor doesn't control the high schools so can't implement this there. But the logic
would apply. Consider these as predictions of where this is going:
1. Honors and AP classes have been found to be excessively populated by white and Asian kids, so we are going to discontinue them
and place kids in classes randomly from now on to assure diversity and prevent racism.
2. An extensive evaluation of the graduates of Columbia University has shown that the upper 10% of every graduating class remains
consistently over-represented in white and Asian populations. In spite of repeated warnings, the university has failed to end
it's clearly racist policies, so will be shut down immediately. We have a variety of very good community colleges whose diversity
scores are better, so they are obviously better schools anyways.
You get the idea. If we can contain this madness to enclaves like New York, they will destroy themselves in a generation or two
and sane people can move in and take over. Anybody who has ever spent time in a classroom knows that the worst kid sets the tone
and culture for the rest. The only way to let the best kids flourish is to protect them from the kids who want only to tear down
and destroy. Race has nothing to do with that, but culture sure does.
As a kid who loved his gifted/talented classes,I believe in their worthiness. For me there was nothing worse than being in a class
bored silly and one should be challenged in school, otherwise what's the point? Rather than drastically change the standards,
why not invest in resources for the test prep? Would that not increase the number of minority students qualifying?
"majority of students who gain admission to schools that screen applicants are white and Asian, the panel reasoned, merit-based
admissions procedures must be racist"
This criterion for racism is non-sensical...admission based on merit cannot be racist, because it is based on merit and
not race! Need I say that if based on the latter, then it would be some form of racism....
next, from rod, "In it, he quotes Marx saying that communism aims to "eliminate talent by force." Equality must be achieved
above all things."
but what about the oft-quoted and here-paraphrased marxian quote, "each to his ability, each to his interest". seems to contradict
'eliminating talent by force'?
The opposite of "equality" isn't inequality, but difference. And everyone really knows there is no blank slate. Children have
a genetic heritage which combines with environment factors in creating intelligence and success.
Not everyone can be a great artist. Even with all the resources in the world, an untalented would be artist (myself, for example)
will never be good.
Likewise most all the best long distance runners are from a single tribe in Kenya.
Acknowledging "difference" is true celebration of life and its varieties. And some people are smarter than others.
The smartest boy in my elementary school class stopped taking difficult classes in middle school. He didn't take a single honors
or AP class. He still got a high SAT score and went to a University of California school (I can't remember if it was Berkeley
or another one) and failed out after one year. He moved home and has been a pothead bum for 30 years.
Talent gurantees nothing, but gives opportunities. Social status and such also give opportunities.
It almost seems like the attempt to close the NYC elite public schools is really an effort to shut down a way up for lower
and middle class families. The rich largely skip the elite schools because there is too much competition and their kids will not
succeed. They want to limit real meritocracy and really just want their credentialism to continue.
This is just more class warfare by the rich against those beneath them.
I live in NYC and have kids in the public school system. Asians are already pushing back hard, and have attended several public
forums en masse to jeer at and heckle Carranza, and openly call him a bigot, which he clearly is.
Both DiBlasio and Carranza are loathsome midwits, and deserve whatever vitriol is directed at them. The NYPost has covered
most of this in detail, but a number of Asian community groups have formed activist committees, and are making as much noise as
humanly possible, and then some.
I could go into much greater detail about my own experiences with the public school system here on the UES, but it would take
up too much space and potentially bore everyone.
I socialize with several people, all of the black and Latin, who have worked in education in NYC for decades, and have had
whatever remained of their progressive rose colored glasses shattered by dealing directly with poor black and Hispanic communities.
Suffice it to say, poor black and Hispanic communities, outside of some individual exceptions, simply don't place a premium on
scholastic excellence and academic rigor.
Again, there are exceptions, and there are certainly students with parents from Africa or the Caribbean who do not fit into
this category, but generally speaking, no matter what the racial ideologues and the woke activists say, poor and working class
blacks and Hispanics just don't have the same regard for academic achievement. The parents will tell you to your face that they
do, and then you see how they raise their kids and how they approach homework and test prep, and it just doesn't compare to what
Asian and white parents do with and for their kids. It's two different worlds.
Black and Hispanic parents obviously love their kids, and do what they think is right, but they simply lack the same degree
of focus and stick-to-it-iveness, and yes, even intellectual horsepower, that Asian and white parents have.
This is an important story, because it reveals just how far racial activists intend on going to achieve parity. They will detonate
the entire system to do so, and this doesn't really bother them in the least. To them, the disparities prove the system is not
just broken, but evil, and must be overturned. Asian and white excellence is a continual slap in the face, and it cannot be allowed
to stand, no matter the consequences.
The mayor, his attack dog Carranza, and all of the racist black and Hispanic activists have a deep, emotional commitment to
their utopian vision, and reason will not be allowed to prevail, up to and including chasing the highest performing whites and
Asians right out of the entire system and into private education.
This is a microcosm of a larger societal drama, and all of Rod's self deceptive liberal commenters would do well to acquaint
themselves with the details, because this is where our entire society is headed if we don't put the brakes on.
Well, progressives have used antiquated ideologies for over a century to try to solve the social problems they see. Can't figure
out how to improve failing schools/ Scream racism and eliminate schools that aren't failing. Then the problem disappears from
view. This is the same thing we see with gun control; can't figure out why more and more people are choosing to commit mass murder?
Blame the tool, not the tool user. This way the tools passing laws can get votes and look like they are doing something, but we
haven't solved the underlying problem, why do more and more people want to commit mass murder. I suppose the problem is that progressiveness
has become a religion with an inferior anthropology that has little to offer in the way of guidance for self examination or examination
of society.
Identitarianism is a dualistic system of understanding the world that has no capacity to analyze the actual complexities of
human individuals or society. Progressive identitarians have no choice but to seek simplistic solutions that will exacerbate the
actual problems because their system is unable to express the actual problems.
...If you bomb Syria, do not admit you did it to install your puppet regime or to lay a
pipeline. Say you did it to save the Aleppo kids gassed by Assad the Butcher. If you occupy
Afghanistan, do not admit you make a handsome profit smuggling heroin; say you came to protect
the women. If you want to put your people under total surveillance, say you did it to prevent
hate groups target the powerless and diverse.
Remember: you do not need to ask children, women or immigrants whether they want your
protection. If pushed, you can always find a few suitable profiles to look at the cameras and
repeat a short text. With all my dislike for R2P (Responsibility to Protect) hypocrisy, I can't
possibly blame the allegedly protected for the disaster caused by the unwanted protectors.
A way to capture this change was thinking in terms of the traditional task of journalists to
interview or consult a variety of sources to determine was is truth or true. The shift
gradually became one of now interviewing or consulting various sources and reporting those
opinions.
Old-school journalism was like being assigned the task of finding out what "1+1 =?" and the
task was to report the answer was "1."
Now the task would be to report that "Some say it is 1, some say it is 2, some say it is
3."
Contemporary US politics in a nutshell is rule by the rich for the rich, and it's amazing
that 40 years in we are still debating whether or not neoliberal policies are benefiting the
majority (they clearly are not). The income gap continues to grow, economic growth continues
to be siphoned to the top, education and healthcare remain unaffordable for most people, and
the response of the current administration is...to cut taxes further for the wealthy??
In The Great Democracy, Ganesh Sitaraman shows us how both the left and the right have
embraced neoliberalism over the past four decades along with its emphasis on tax cuts,
deregulation, trade liberalization, and limited government. Neoliberalism's faith in the
market has narrowed our conception of democracy, replacing discussions about the common good
and general welfare with discussions about economic efficiency and profit maximization. The
ideology is so deep most people don't even realize that there could be another way.
Sitaraman does a better job than most diagnosing the problems and continually emphasizing
the point that economics cannot be separated from politics. Even if you don't believe that
income and wealth inequality necessarily contributes to a lower standard of living for the
majority -- and that people should earn whatever the market pays them -- the existence of
inequality is detrimental to democracy and skews legislation to favor the rich. The
wealthiest Americans and corporations spend massive amounts of money on elections and
legislation to get the politicians and regulations (or lack thereof) that benefit them the
most. If this wasn't the case, they would not consistently spend tens and hundreds of
millions of dollars on campaign financing and lobbying.
Forty years of neoliberalism is going to be tough to dig ourselves out from, and this
demands some bold and broad legislation. But it cannot be disjointed; it has to be part of a
larger philosophy with clear goals. In this respect, The Great Democracy provides a complete
political philosophy to replace neoliberalism and compete with oligarchic nationalism. It is
based on restoring the ideals of democracy, recognizing that the common good and general
welfare of the people means more than economic growth at all costs. It also recognizes that
political and economic fixes must be implemented together, and that massive discrepancies in
wealth threatens democracy.
Sitaraman goes much further than simply outlining the problems and proposing an overall
political philosophy. He provides several detailed economic and political reforms that seek
to reduce inequality, expand democracy, and improve the standard of living for the bottom 90
percent of the population. His suggestions range from mandatory voting requirements to
reinstating a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent to fundamentally reworking the structure of
the Supreme Court to make it less political. His reform agenda also includes getting money
out of politics, overturning Citizens United, mandating employee representation on corporate
boards, and restructuring executive compensation.
The bottom line is that more of the same will not work. Our political problems will not
solve themselves, and the market certainly won't solve them for us, mainly because it is the
market that has caused them. But we don't want to turn to nationalism either. Sitaraman
simultaneously provides us with a political philosophy that appeals to the ideals of
democracy -- to use as a guide for policy implementation -- while suggesting reforms that
will make our our society more equitable, engaged, and fair. Let's hope the next era of
politics follows this path.
Stop wondering why, "We can't just get along?" Ganesh Sitamaran explains the deep wounds
to our country that aren't going away with the application of civility. Neverthless this
isn't a pessamistic book; in fact it describes how to face the problems that are undermining
our country and start living up to the ideals that are our political birth right, a route
that will bring us better lives and better, more enduring communities. So get this
excellently reasoned and quite readable book. It will save you a shouting match or two at
extended family gatherings as you will then be able to spread some much needed light on the
divisions of the day with irrefutable arguments and a optimism about the future that has
escaped many another current thinker. One person found this helpful
Helpful
A nonpartisan review of the recent history that has hurt our democracy. An important part
of this history is that economics and politics can t be separated. Our government now serves
the rich, not the majority. This book is about how to restore representation of the majority.
Helpful 0 Comment Report abuse
Scott P@26 : ...a true believer who's spent too long in echo chambers which recognize the US's foreign
policy as selfish and destructive, but then make the entirely unwarranted leap that because
it's so bad, any actor that opposes them is morally neutral, or at least not subject to the
same degree of scrutiny and criticism.
It's a bizarre worldview that seems to want to ignore
the possibility that every actor in an interaction is a bad actor, or at the bare minimum
confuses the idea of it can be useful for a third party to weaken and distract a common enemy
with the idea that this makes the third party succeeding in their broader aims desirable
without considering what those aims are. It's schadenfreude combined with tunnel vision, and
its appeal seems to lie in its creation of a personally satisfying narrative which demonizes
the near enemy – their centrist political rivals – as hopeless authoritarians.
Europe is willing to defy the U.S. on Nordstream to the point of forcing the U.S. to openly and nakedly destroy its reputation
with European contractors and governments to stop one pipeline in a place where multiple gas pipelines will be needed for future
growth.
This is the diplomatic equivalent of the nuclear option. And the neocons in the Senate just pushed the button. Europe understands
what this is really about, the U.S. retaining its imperial position as the policy setter for all the world. If it can set energy
policy for Europe then it can set everything else.
And it's clear that the leadership in Europe is done with that status quo. The Trump administration from the beginning has used
NATO as an excuse to mask its real intentions towards Europe, which is continued domination of its policies. Trump complains that
the U.S. pays into NATO to protect Europe from Russia but then Europe buys its energy from Russia. That's unfair, Donald complains,
like a little bitch, frankly, even though he right on the surface. But if the recent NATO summit is any indication, Europe is no
longer interested in NATO performing that function. French President Emmanuel Macron wants NATO re-purposed to fight global terror,
a terrible idea. NATO should just be ended.
But you'll notice how Trump doesn't talk about that anymore. He wants more billions pumped into NATO while the U.S. still sets
its policies. This is not a boondoggle for the MIC as much as it's a Sword of Damocles to hold over Europe's head. The U.S.'s involvement
in should be ended immediately, the troops brought home and the billions of dollars spent here as opposed to occupying most of Europe
to point missiles at a Russia wholly uninterested in imperial ambitions no less harboring any of them.
And Trump also knows this but thinks stopping Nordstream 2 is the price Europe has to pay him for this privilege. It's insane.
The time has come for Europe to act independently from the U.S. As much as I despise the EU, to untangle it from the U.S. on energy
policy is the means by which for it to then deal with its problems internally. It can't do that while the U.S. is threatening it.
Circling the wagons against the immediate threat, as it were.
And that means protecting its companies and citizens from the economic depredations of power-mad neoconservatives in the U.S.
Senate like Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham.
Allseas, the Swiss company laying the pipe for Nordstream 2,
has halted construction for now
, awaiting instructions from the U.S. Gazprom will likely step in to finish the job and Germany will green light any of the necessary
permits to get the pipeline done. Those people will be put out of work just in time for Christmas, turning thousands of people against
the U.S. Commerce drives people together, politics drives them apart.
But, at the same time, the urgency to finish Nordstream 2 on time is wholly irrelevant now because Ukraine and Russia came to
terms on a new five-year gas transit contract. This ensures Gazprom can meet its contractual deliveries to Europe that no one thought
could be done on time. But when the Nazi threat to Zelensky meeting with Merkel, Macron and Putin in Paris failed to materialize,
a gas deal was on the horizon.
And, guess what? U.S. LNG will still not have the marginal lever over Europe's energy policy because of that. Putin and Zelensky
outmaneuvered Cruz, Graham and Trump on this. Because that's what this boils down to. By keeping Russian gas out of Europe, it was
supposed to constrain not only Russia's growth but also Europe's. Because then the U.S. government can control who and how much energy
can make it into European markets at critical junctures politically.
That was the Bolton Doctrine to National Security. And that doctrine brought nothing but misery to millions.
And if you look back over the past five years of U.S./EU relations you will see this gambit clearly for what it was, a way to
continue European vassalage at the hands of the U.S. by forcing market share of U.S. providers into European markets.
Again, it gets back to Trump's ideas about Emergy Dominance
and becoming the supplier of the marginal erg of energy to important economies around the world.
The smart play for the EU now that the gas transit deal is in place is to threaten counter-sanctions against the U.S. and bar
all LNG shipments into Europe. Gas prices are at historic lows, gas supplies are overflowing thanks to fears of a deal not being
in place.
So, a three to six month embargo of U.S. LNG into Europe to bleed off excess supply while Nordstream 2 is completed would be the
right play politically.
But, in reality, they won't need to, because the U.S. won't be able to import much into Europe under current prices and market
conditions. And once Nordstream 2 is complete, LNG sales to Europe should crater.
In the end, I guess it's too bad for Ted Cruz that economics and basic human ingenuity are more powerful than legislatures. Because
Nordstream 2 will be completed. Turkstream's other trains into Europe will be built. Venezuela will continue rebuilding its energy
sector with Russian and Chinese help.
There is no place for U.S. LNG in Europe outside of the Poles literally burning money virtue signaling their Russophobia. Nordstream 2 was a response to the revolt in Ukraine, to replace any potential losses in market share to Europe. Now Russia will
have what it had before passing through Ukraine along with Nordstream 2. By 2024 there will be at least two trains from Turkstream
coming into Europe.
Iran will keep expanding exports, settling its oil and gas trade through Russian banks. And the U.S. will continue to fulminate
and make itself even more irrelevant over time. What men like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump refuse to understand is that when you go nuclear you can't ever go back. If you threaten
the nuclear option, there's no fall back position.
And when those that you threaten with annihilation survive they are made all the stronger for passing through the eye of the needle. Looking at Gazprom's balance sheet right now, that's my take.
None of the kids wanted toys for Christmas this year, they just wanted cash.
Understandable, but cash as a gift, while practical, always feels impersonal, so I made
special packaging. Went over well pic.twitter.com/urXVCHtDyW
— Donnachaidha O'Chionnaigh (@TwoClawsMedia) December
26, 2019
Tech companies take your privacy seriously, and also use data from inside your home for
cutesy press releases about visits from carolers and people seeking cookie recipes.
https://t.co/o5Lk0G47QL
pic.twitter.com/QX6fvcCFAB
#2 This is known as "the season of giving", but one 65-year-old guy in Colorado decided it
would be more fun to do it
with other people's money : Just after noon on Monday, a 65-year-old man walked into a
downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado bank and stole thousands of dollars before running outside
and tossing the cash up into the air while yelling "Merry Christmas!"
#8 One rapper in Los Angeles decided that the best way to address the problem of
homelessness was to climb on top of a tall building and throw cash down on to the
homeless people living on Skid Row so they could fight over it: The 22-year-old rapper
known as Blueface climbed onboard a black Mercedes SUV in Skid Row before throwing money out of
a bag while dozens of people below scramble to catch the flying cash and pick it up from the
ground. The artist, whose real name is Jonathan Michael Porteris, is known for the Benjamin
Franklin tattoo on his cheek and a handful of hit tracks that reached viral status in recent
years.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the collective net worth of the 500
wealthiest people on the planet soared by $1.2 trillion in 12 months, totaling $5.9
trillion.
Billionaires in the US alone added $500bn to their wealth, with Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg increasing his wealth by $27.3bn while Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates adding
$22.7bn.
As Trump once said, his government is the best time ever to fullfill the American
Dream...
--//--
@ Posted by: migueljose | Dec 29 2019 14:44 utc | 85
Most people here in this blog seem to be from First World countries, so it's important to
make this observation about the Latin American middle classes.
Latin American middle classes have a different societal and historical origin from the
First World middle classes. Instead of being highly specialized, highly skilled workers, the
middle classes from Latin America (or any other Third World country, for that matter) come
not from high education, but from the oligarchic State apparatus.
That's because the nation-State formation in Latin America was very different from the
nation-State formation of the USA, Canada or Western Europe. They became independent through
their oligarchies, mainly through negotiations from the top. As a result, what happened in
Latin America was simply a legal transformation of the colonial machine into an independent
nation-State machine.
As a result, the middle classes in Latin America are not doctors, engineers,
scientists, CEOs etc. etc., but judges, politicians, high officers of the government,
descendents of the old local oligarchies etc. etc. They are intrinsically connected and
dependent on the State to survive as middle classes.
This results in an extremely reactionary and parasitic middle class. They act as
legitimate shock troops of the bourgeoisie.
This
site regularly discusses the rise of neoliberalism and its consequences, such as rising
inequality and lower labor bargaining rights. But it's also important to understand that these
changes were not organic but were the result of a well-financed campaign to change the values
of judges and society at large to be more business-friendly. But the sacrifice of fair dealing
as a bedrock business and social principle has had large costs.
We've pointed out how lower trust has increased contracting costs: things that use to be
done on a handshake or a simple letter agreement are now elaborately papered up. The fact that
job candidates will now engage in ghosting, simply stopping to communicate with a recruiter
rather than giving a ritually minimalistic sign off, is a testament to how impersonal hiring is
now perceived to be, as well as often-abused workers engaging in some power tit for tat when
they can.
But on a higher level, the idea of fair play was about self-regulation of conduct. Most
people want to see themselves as morally upright, even if some have to go through awfully
complicated rationalizations to believe that. But when most individuals lived in fairly stable
social and business communities, they had reason to be concerned that bad conduct might catch
up with them. It even happens to a small degree now.
Greg Lippmann, patient zero of toxic CDOs at Deutsche Bank, was unable to get his kids into
fancy Manhattan private schools because his reputation preceded him. But the case examples for
decades have gone overwhelmingly the other way. My belief is that a watershed event was the
ability of Wall Street renegade, and later convicted felon Mike Milken, to rehabilitate himself
spoke volumes as to the new normal of money trumping propriety.
Another aspect of the decline in the importance of fair dealing is the notion of the
obligations of power, that individuals in a position of authority have a duty to
The abandonment of lofty-sounding principles like being fair has other costs. We've
written about the concept of obliquity, how in complex systems, it's not possible to chart a
simple path though them because it's impossible to understand it well enough to begin to do so.
John Kay, who
has made a study of the issue and eventually wrote a book about it , pointed out as an
illustration that studies of similarly-sized companies in the same industry showed that ones
that adopted nobler objectives did better in financial terms than ones that focused on
maximizing shareholder value.
Our Brexit regulars wound up talking about these issues as part of a UK election post
mortem. Hoisted from e-mail. First from David:
Around the time of the cold dawn of Friday 13 December, I began to ask myself why the
whole grisly Brexit business had turned out so differently to what I, and many others, had
expected. Now it's true that politics is unpredictable, but in 2015, any satirist worthy of
their name would surely not have dared to imagine a sequence of events so bizarre as that
which actually happened. And of course we can all be wrong, but I was basing my judgements
not only on a lifetime of watching politicians at play, but also on the well-understood
general principles of how politics, and especially international politics, operates.
The conclusion I came to involves conceding that, yes, politics is unpredictable, yes we
all make wrong calls from time to time, but there's something more profound than that. Simply
put, the traditional rules and procedures of British politics have stopped applying. It's not
now possible to count on the British system for planning, forethought, rationality, strategy,
tactical sense, political sense, common sense or any other kind of sense.
Consider. Cameron's referendum promise was an error of judgement, but it could have been
handled very differently even so. I'd assumed that there would be some kind of threshold (55%
perhaps), and some provision for a later stage of reflection and time-wasting.
I assumed that the government would be wary of the possible result, and try to
de-dramatise the referendum campaign.
I assumed that Remain would do a reasonably competent job, underlining the positive
benefits of EU membership.
I assumed that the result, if it was "leave" would be the beginning of a long process of
reflection and discussion. A Royal Commission, or something, would be set up, with several
years to work out what kind of future relationship there should be with the EU. Bits of the
UK most affected (agriculture for example) would be consulted in depth. Discreet soundings
would be made throughout Europe to see what our partners might accept. Only after all this
was done would it be time to press the Art 50 button.
At that point, I assumed, the UK would be well prepared and, in the traditional manner,
have working papers and draft treaty language to propose as soon as the negotiations started.
All aspects (including NI) would have been at least thought of.
I assumed that the Cabinet would have agreed a fairly detailed set of objectives and
negotiating guidelines to give to the UK delegation, fine-tuned in the light of first
reactions from partners.
I assumed that the Cabinet would have agreed fallback positions and some idea of what the
Tories, and Parliament, would accept.
Literally none of this was true.
Now we're not talking rocket-science here. Yes, the UK system was once pretty Rolls-Royce,
but the kind of list I've given above would have seemed obvious to any middle-level
functionary of any medium-sized country. Actually achieving all of it is not necessarily
easy, but at least you can make a serious attempt: there are important stakes involved.
So what does this imply for the future?
Well, things are getting worse, not better. The Cabinet hasn't even begun to think yet
about the future relationship. Some of them probably think Brexit is all over. I don't think
there's any agreement even about the vaguest outlines of this future relationship, which
means that it could be months before any political objectives emerge, if they ever do.
Which is to say that we are in for another year of Keystone Cops diplomacy, with the
stakes if anything even greater.
From Clive:
Your thought-process sounds like my trains of thought. And when I think those sorts of
thoughts, I think that I'm a remnant or a bygone era. Which I am.
What disappeared from that world was playing fair. Everyone played fair, or, at least,
playing fair was a bedrock than you could drift away from, but, sooner or later, you fell
back on it.
There will be a lot of casualties until our societies get to the stage where they can
rediscover fairness. I bought a book from a second hand bookstore about the founding of the
EEC, from 1978 I think the copyright said it was. When I read it, it's like it was written by
some long-since vanished ancient civilisation. There were honourable intentions, strategies
to deliver them, honest evaluations of emerging problems and, above all, a shared shouldering
of responsibility to resolve them equitably. There was a sense of pride which leaps off the
pages not at what had been achieved, but at what the prevailing culture intended to achieve.
The book went on about the European ideal -- and didn't think it was in any danger of
naivety.
That world has vanished -- and it's not coming back any time soon.
Brexit was a reaction to that. We can't fix it, think a majority of the U.K. population,
and we're not even going to try. This is why Leave has progressed the way it has. The last
thing the Leave majority (or maybe the smidge over 50% who think Leave is the best option)
want to do is try to return to the failed common-cause based solutions. Johnson has no
intention whatsoever of anything other than the lightest of lightweight FTAs -- or even no
FTA. Anything more would be an anathema to the Thatcher-esque approach the Conservatives have
on remaking UK society by severing all EU ties. This isn't really Thatcherism -- a common
misconception. It's the sort of response which Thatcher would have devised, had she been
placed in the same position, so is easily confused.
So this isn't some unplanned, accidental stumbling along to an unexpected surprise
conclusion. It is, rather, a laser like focus on an intended destination.
Anyone expecting some great effort or thought-process to be applied by the U.K. to
salvaging a relationship with the EU will be disappointed. In effect, they'd be asking for
the U.K. to spend time and resources saving something that isn't, in the U.K.'s prevailing
worldview, worth saving. The EU has been nothing but a bother, so the thinking goes, what's
the point in trying to flog the dead horse that is the European ideal? What did it ever do
for us, anyway..?
Brexit is just a here's-one-we-made-earlier example of a long-term global trend. If
humanism -- or fairness as I reduced it to earlier -- makes a comeback, it might all be
fixable. In the meantime, prepare for an increasingly atomised, separatist world.
Vlade's response:
I'd like to agree with you. Except I believe you're idealising it. The world was never
playing fair – but it did cooperate more, because the US needed the Europe more in the
cold war than it does now (when it's more of a rival, definitely in Trumps' eyes). Hell, the
Soviet Block cooperated – except it didn't really, it did what the SU told it to. But
it definitely didn't play fair. It did follow the rules, because the cost of breaking them
was seen as too high (US was terrified I believe of France and Italy doing a deal with the
SU). At least to me, following the rules and playing fair are distinct.
It's possible that the western society was more fair before 90s, I can't know. But again,
I suspect that a lot of it was almost a self-protection against the SU and "communism", which
disappeared in the 80s., but possibly started disappearing even in 70s (when you live with
some danger for a while, you get oblivious to it).
I do think that the Brexit was a reaction to the word that was. But I disagree that it was
really the EU specific reaction, as in "the EU is the source of all this". It played the
part, but the underlying reasons were IMO much more varied than the EU – where I have
doubts many of the people there really understood in any way, except as an externality you
can rail against.
You get the crawing for the world-that-was in the US, and it doesn't have any EU. You get
it in Russia, and it has the EU and the US, or, if you want, "the West" which puts
conveniently both of them together.
The world as most people knew it is coming apart, and chances are it will get worse (and
who knows it it ever gets better). In times like those, people want the world-that-was.
Sometimes it can actually be a force for good, like after WW2 in "the west". Except even
there it wasn't the world-that-was, but more of the world-we-want (on both sides of the iron
curtain, there was a reason why the communist regimes were, at least initially, strongly
supported by the populace). But wanting the world-that-was was also what brought Nazis and
Fascist into the power.
And PlutoniumKun's:
A key casualty of neoliberalism was corporatism in its more benign form. It used to be
that policy was made in the early hours in those proverbial smoke filled rooms where
different groups at least made some type of attempt at compromise. This is still a feature of
many countries and sectors, but I think its significant that the rot is most advanced in the
neolib early adopters. It's not just the formal art of making compromises, it's the simple
force of human contact when people in the same room together. It's unfortunate I think that
the UK joined the EU just as it lost interest in being run by civil servants having endless
meetings with sectoral interest groups. This is a core reason I think why the UK never really
engaged with the EU, even if in the short term its engagement was quite effective
(essentially bullying other countries into getting its way on issues like agriculture and
competition policy).
But as we've discussed before, the long term destruction of the British civil service has
in many ways been just as stupid, and just as damaging, as the long term destruction of
Britain's manufacturing base. In both cases, the reasons have been ideological, not
pragmatic.
Outsiders I think see it more clearly. I was travelling in Asia for a while and I was
really surprised at how casually people would discuss what they see as the once admired
anglosphere fall apart. Most Asians in my experience viewed Britain with a mixture of
distrust and some awe and admiration. Now the commonest response seems to be a shrug of the
shoulder or just plain schadenfreude.
This bodes particularly badly for the UK's trade negotiators when they start face to face
meetings. They will be a little like late 19th Century Russia or Turkey -seen as a country
who's only right to be at the top table is due to history, not present circumstances. The
gradual retreat of the US from the eastern Pacific is pretty much seen as a done deal,
everyone is frantically scrambling to ensure they are not caught on the hop. I'm a great
believer that the true indicator of what a country sees as its future can be seen in what it
spends its military budget on. Every major Asian country is spending serious cash on
domestically sourced air superiority, long distance strike capability, in addition to A2AD
for its brown water coasts.
There are many parts of the world where the 'old ways' are still pretty much intact
– much of Europe still likes the EU and the way it works and vaguely corporatist/social
democratic ways of doing things. Its easy to get carried away with stories of austerity and
decay, but when I travel in Europe much of it (including countries like Spain and Portugal)
look pretty good and no more or less full of discontent than they ever were. Much of northern
Europe and individual countries like Portugal are doing very well indeed, and France has been
defying the naysayers for as long as I've been reading English language economics papers and
magazines. Its not clear to me that the foment in those countries – even in France
– is much worse than its been in any given post war decade. There are cycles within
cycles for these things. Ireland is, all things considered, booming economically and
culturally content, austerity a long forgotten problem for most people.
What we are seeing is the postponed breakdown of the traditional centre left and rights.
The wipeout of traditional left wing parties has been much commented upon, but less obvious
is the breakdown of the old Christian Democrat/centre right tradition in much of Europe and
other parts of the world in favour of a more libertarian/populist/nationalist form. It's just
that the change has tended to be more within parties, while the left is always more
fissiparous.
I think the left is slowly, very slowly, reformulating along lines closer to the older
anarchy tradition, as seen by the rise of Green Parties – but it will take time before
a more grassroots, collaborationist form of left wing politics really starts to make a
difference. I think the libertarian/neolib wing of the right is being well and truly wiped
out by the more ruthless nationalistic (I hate to use the F word) tradition. The
transformation of the Tory party into an English nationalist party with a focus on serving
its new working class/lower middle class base has been carried out with quite remarkable
speed. The Tory business class will come to deeply regret its silence over the internal
revolution that took place post the Brexit vote.
All this of course is within the context of slowing growth and a rapid climate
deterioration. All bets are off in significant parts of the world as the fires rage. The only
certainty about climate change is that there will be completely unforeseen negative
impacts.
Sorry, I forgot to say that this was one of these think-provoking posts that I like so
much.
In a loosing fairness world, what is the proper personal conduct one must follow? Go with the
trend, or try to keep the old-style way as much as you can?
I would expect the whole spectrum of answers to this question. Fortunately, there will
always be some people that put fairness forefront.
" Fortunately, there will always be some people that put fairness forefront "
Yes Ignacio but I do hope youngsters don't become embittered by a world that is certainly
a lot harsher for them than it was for me 40 odd years ago.
After a year of fighting to get money from those who have plenty of it, am now working on
a transatlantic commission for a wealthy guy from Colorado, who has actually shocked me with
his fairness – particularly as I was worried about the possible downsides of getting
into such a far flung relationship.
He has actually kept my head above water while am waiting for a large long overdue payment
from a public institution that I almost wish privatisation on for their lack of effort in
addressing the situation.
I had a great Christmas trying to play Santa without the suit, with the best bit being the
giant full facial smile received from one of those likely old beyond her years Roma women
selling " The Big Issue " as she sat as if clinging to the wall in the pouring rain.
I hope everyone at NC is having a fine Holiday can anyone post the link to some of the
videos explaining neoliberalism posted at NC a short while ago? Can't seem to find them.
Thanks
I've just tried, for the second time, to watch that video. For me, it is too quickly paced
to be effective, or even informative -- and mind you, like other NC regulars, I KNOW this
stuff. IMO, Nancy MacLean's "Democracy in Chains" does a much better job. Yes, it takes more
than 26 minutes to read -- but I think understanding what has happened to the world over the
last 75 to 80 years SHOULD take more than 26 minutes.
Yes, it is quick paced. I had to do the pause-rewind-replay this or that bit,
pause-rewind-replay steps several times to get what was being said. Too much condensed info
for me to take in all at once.
Thank you, Yves. This post is about exactly the sort of thing that keeps me up at night.
Frankly I spend a lot of time mourning for what our society used to be, and the notion that
nobody has the backbone to do the right thing regardless.
I spend my share of time in conversation with many people in the upper/middle class,
business leaders and Conservatives in particular. The entire thinking is, "Losers cry about
being fair, winners go home and bang the Prom Queen". [paraphrased]
I always ask them if this is the kind of society they want to live in, and raise their
kids in. It is lizard brain, writ large.
Anyway, I just want to say "thank you" for all your efforts as a beacon in the darkness.
It is comforting to know that someone else also can see.
They dont have the backbone as we are deep into the "time of the end" where the love of
the greater number will cool off, they will be lovers of money and themselves, and the list
goes on. This system of things is all Satans and its on the verge of being extinguished
forever.
What disappeared from that world was playing fair. Everyone played fair, or, at least,
playing fair was a bedrock than you could drift away from, but, sooner or later, you fell
back on it.
Was it "fair" or was it Because the Soviet Block offered an alternative, purportedly
Communism but what appears to me as totalitarianism. The alternative to the Communist block
had to appear more appealing for the players to gain advantage in the great game.
With the Communist block gone, do we now just see the reality, and whatever accommodation
was made to have the Western/US based system more appealing has now changed. How is the US'
system viewed in Latin America? As "fair?"
When the British Empire controlled much of the world, was it "fair"? I was a part of that,
and I could not describe it as "fair".
In the British Empire's demolition the US played a good part of being "fair," but it was
"fair" only if it advanced the US' interests. An example of this is the forgiveness of War
Loans. Germany, on the Soviet systems' door step had war debts forgiven. The UK, which paid a
huge penalty for fighting the wars received no such favor for its "special relationship" with
the US, coupled with a not-so-polite demand to dismantle the British Empire (aka Self
Determination).
I perceive the world's governing system not in terms of left and right, but as the surface
of a sphere, with the the horizontal axis being changing from "free" to "totalitarian" which
can be approached from the political left or the right, and the vertical axis varying from
market based (neoliberal) to centrally controlled, and any country is always being affected
by words or threats to slide from one point on the sphere along some rhumbh line to another
point.
The idea of "fairness" is one of those things that used to be a lot more clear in the past
than it seems to be today. In general, the rules were the rules, and anyone who decided to
play accepted them. A level and "fair" playing field, with the same rules for everyone, was
what determined the "winner," and made "winning" legitimate.
But lately society has apparently decided to determine the "winners" first, and change the
rules to match the desired outcome. That approach has wreaked havoc with the concept of
"fairness."
Everybody gets a trophy for "participation." Eliminate the electoral college
because hillary didn't win it. Pretend that biological males are actually women because
that's how they "self-identify," and let them "compete" against biological women instead of
those with the same chromosomes.
You can't have "fairness" without rules, and playing fast and loose with the rules means
you can never tell who the cheaters are.
Thanks for this post. It seems like many of the economic and democratic govt and even
social rules once reliably enforced by laws and custom have become mere suggestions. The idea
of rules or fair play that existed from, say, the 1930's – 1980's, in the US now seem
entirely overtaken by a sort of modern, re-invigorated, social Darwinism, a once rightly
discredited moral theory. imo.
Everything old is new again, unfortunately. Neoliberalism is like the old social Darwinism
dressed up in newer, erudite, clothes. Substitute today's words 'the market' for yesterday's
words 'the strongest and fittest' and you have a pretty close 1:1 match. Misapplying Darwin's
studies in biology to sociology.
The following text was written for school kids' history class. It's a quick read.
And way before Darwinianism, at the dawn of capitalism, we had the Puritans.
According to their doctrine, if you were wealthy it was because you were favoured by God.
If you weren't wealthy, God didn't intend you to be. In every era, the selfish and the greedy
have a justification.
Nothing to do with the fact that you stitched up your fellow countrymen by enclosing
common land and kicking those that had used it for generations off their means of self
subsistence.
Your comment about the courts role in eroding a sense of fairness and, by extension, trust
in the system called to mind the courts' role in maintaining the vast US prison system. The
Supreme Court was recently considering a case filed from a pro se prisoner and Justice
Sotomayor referenced a secret policy within the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals of denying all
petitions filed by pro se prisoners for thirteen years without even so much as glancing at
the briefs. The policy only came to light when an employee of the court referenced it in
their note before committing suicide, apparently out of guilt.
The Fifth Circuit happens to include Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate
of any state. Eventually the policy was reversed, but in practice I'm sure most filings from
pro se petitioners in prison are met with a similar lack of interest and consideration.
Perhaps there are good reasons to dismiss some filings quickly given the large backlogs and
legal rumors and nonsense that makes it way through prisons.
However, the courts remain the last best hope for prisoners in trying to overturn wrongful
convictions or address abuse at the hands of prison officials, at least for now. If the
courts are happy to deny these people fair consideration for efficiency's sake unless they
can secure outside counsel you can bet this abuse and neglect will continue. Maybe that
sounds like a fine trade-off to those in power now, but the long-term effect is the erosion
of trust and confidence in the system beyond just those directly affected.
Another consequence of the loss of fair play is a termination of the phenomenon that many
workers, especially white collar workers, wanted to believe that their employer was
trustworthy and, as a consequence, they trusted their employer at a higher level that is or
was warranted. This trust was mis-placed to some extent but served as a bulwark when
relationships between employee and employer became strained.
I wonder now, whether this is still the case. It seems not to be. Granted employers have
earned their employees distrust or, at a bare minimum, lack of trust that formerly was
granted (due to wishful thinking).
I know exactly what you're talking about. Before I was laid off, I watched as many
colleagues were shown the door. Oddly from a trust perspective, most of these people were
vastly more talented and experienced than the employees who continued to keep their jobs.
(Though, of course, from a strictly shareholder perspective, their high pay levels justified
their dismissal.)
So from the canned employees' point of view, after years of awards, high praise and
affirmation from management, the fact that they were being hustled out the door (sometimes
literally) amounted to a profound betrayal of trust. And you could see it in the look of
shock on many of their faces.
When my time came, I had absorbed the lesson and had completely detached my ego from my
work, no longer taking any pride in what I did for a living. And I never will again as long
as I'm working for someone else, even an employer who in the moment is kind and appreciative.
They can turn on you in a heartbeat, and for the flimsiest of reasons.
Just to add in impeachment (prexit?), it once was considered a big deal that Nixon lied
("the coverup is worse than the crime"). And lying was at the center of the Clinton
impeachment. But that's less true with the current dispute and perhaps that's because the
impeachers themselves are shamelessly lying. The truth no longer seems to matter to anyone as
long as a fairy tale "narrative" can be found to substitute. Perhaps it's not so much that
the world has become more evil or selfish but that modern society has a serious reality
problem. People still understand fairness but simply pretend they are being fair as long as
nobody is challenging their narrative (see Amazon post today). And that may be because we are
saturated with media that are all too willing to tell us what we want to hear.
Thank goodness for NC where some of us come–and for a long time–to find out
the truth. Perhaps it's not just a coincidence that many of those who hang out here seem to
be older–old enough to remember a time when truth mattered.
A little more patience, but not too much, is needed in awaiting the inevitable and
continuing sunlight disinfectant applied to so many top level employees of the FBI, DOJ,
their institutions and other malefactors in other branches. When, not if, that day arrives,
when perp walks, trials, sentencing, mea culpas and much feckless deflection and gnashing of
teeth occur, then will there be some perception of a symbolic return to the fairness that was
once felt by much of the country. The preponderance of evidence, not punditry or spin, points
to likely criminal convictions, ruined careers and discredited institutions. Repairing those
institutions, and regaining public trust will be difficult given the inertia and FUD residues
that have built up, but we do have a country at stake for all of us.
There are many other aspects of the justice system that need review and reform, as noted
by other commenters. Without some highly publicized changes to those institutions to restore
some initial and fundamental element of trust, then people both in the US and abroad will
have doubts about the Rule of Law. Most people do not want to have a country where that
statue of a blindfolded justice has to peek to see who is trying to tip the scales.
The main word used here is fairness but what we are really talking about is justice. It
does not matter what country or culture that we are talking about, we all know when we are
being treated fairly, or justly, and when we are suffering an injustice. An example? Two
people have a meal together when one reaches over and helps themselves to the food on the
other person's plate. That sort of unfairness can get you killed in some places. But likely
that feeling of unfairness or injustice is universal.
And here is the crux of neoliberalism. It picks sinners and losers – deliberately
– and abandons those they deem to be losers. But it does not do so on the basis of
worth but on what it perceives to be worth which is why a college sports coach or
administrator can earn millions while a professor earns peanuts. If anything, there is a
strong streak of Social Darwinism to this as a justification to who these "winners" are. But
most of us can think of people in business, sports, politics, etc. who in reality aren't
worth two bits based on their performance.
The result for the UK? Those designated the losers who were abandoned, policed and watched
by the winners saw their chance to strike back at them by picking Leave in the Brexit
campaign. Life was not good for them and it was not going to get any better and so they
decided to make a choice to deny the winners something that they valued – Remain. There
is not a doubt in my mind that if these people had not been abandoned but had been able to
share in the success of the country, then they too would have chosen Remain. You saw the same
with the Trump vote in 2016 in the US. And this is only the first installment.
I think the insight in your last paragraph, more than any other single factor, explains
Donald Trump's electoral success in 2016 and identifies who his "base" really are.
The court system is perhaps the best example of how Fair Play has been degraded in the
US.
For 20+ years we ran a small mom-and-pop consulting business for large companies, all
Fortune-500. We did highly technical work with such efficiency and economies of scale
providing industry standings and granular decision support, the companies themselves or
McKinsey-types could never come close to doing a similar product. At least until an industry
association, facilitated by a customer decided to steal misappropriate our
intellectual property and produce a knock-off product. This happened even though we offered
to collaborate with the industry association and had a "good" contract prohibiting
stealing misappropriation.
Let it suffice to say that a mom-and-pop consulting business is at serious disadvantage as
soon as you get a lawyer and file a lawsuit in federal court. The defense attorneys were
given a blank check by their members and spent high 7 figure sums trying to pulverize us. By
the time the thing was winding down, we were paying our attorneys our of our retirement
account. I understand that in the UK and EU things are even more stacked against
plaintiffs.
While 98% of federal civil cases and tossed out or settled, we ended up with a 3 week
trial. The defendants team had 3 partners, an IT person and paralegal from a national firm in
court at all times, plus 3 people working locally at rented office space. We had a mid-size
regional firm represent us -- it was not cheap.
What strikes us most is the defendants seemed to be on home turf from the get-go with the
court. There were YEARS of delays and all sorts of spurious filings and even a counterclaim
based on fiction. This is standard procedure. Further, it was a highly technical case and we
performed thousands of hours of work to refine the details for the lawyers and jury to
understand. The defendants had unlimited resources to obfuscate and confuse, which they did
masterfully. The majority of evidentiary ruling were in favor of the defendants. It was a
huge upward struggle.
What is even worse is there is zero incentive for defendants not to lie
mis-remember facts. Our lead attorney told us in 25 years of litigation practice he had never
seen or heard of a sanction, much less prosecution, for perjury. In fact some of these
liars were promoted and rewarded for their courtroom performance.
This whole process took 5 years. We "won"; the jury didn't buy the industry's arguments.
But our business was destroyed, we've been blacklisted and any residual value a business with
20+ years of stable income was destroyed. The industry group pays their staff handsomely (its
just added to your monthly bill) and while a few people were pushed aside, the main perps
remain and are well compensated. They plod along with a garbage imitation, but the
associations membership executives don't care -- there is no third party assessment of their
performance -- they grade their own performance now.
Needless to say, we are tired, disgusted and cynical. But glad we won and that it is over.
I would not do it again
It reminds me a bit of the Phone Hacking trial in the UK. Peter Jukes has a good book on
it – Beyond Contempt. The mismatch between the resources available to the News
International people and those available to the British Government was risible. As a result
News International was effectively in control of the proceedings almost from start to finish,
though the Crown was able to get Coulson as there was incriminating evidence against him in
writing.
Yes there may well have been perjury as well and the police seemed as I recall to have
been very slow to get to a farm where there were reports that major bundles of paper were
going on to a bonfire. Hugh Grant, when he taped a journalist, was told that 20% of
Metropolitan Police officers had been bribed by the press. Wonder if that had anything to do
with it?
And yet many Britons still think that the UK is a pretty straight place ..so much more
honest than those foreign countries.
Have recently watched series The Loudest Voice about Fox News. They make Murdoch look like
an avuncular figure in order to heighten the villainy of Ailes but of course you don't let
the organ grinder off the hook so as to blame the monkey. No Rupert no Fox News and perhaps
no current version of the NYT that acts like Fox News.
Thanks for the summary of the courts' action as a millstone around the neck of honest
commerce, and my sympathy for your loss.
It's worth remembering this kind of thing has consequences too. Fred Koch patented the
basic refining processes to turn crude oil into useful products, then the Rockefellers'
refineries essentially stole those processes (used them without paying patent royalties) in
their refineries. Koch sued .and *lost*! A few years later it came out that the Rockefellers
bribed the judge and Koch re-sued and won but at what cost? And ever after Koch and his
offspring came after the government whose courts were so corrupt.
The lament about declining standards is as old as the Pharaohs–read Howard Zinn's
People's History of the U.S. which exposes the New World's history of
venality–but recent events seem to be sounding the depths of the most profound
dishonesty. It's gotten bad enough that political economist Mark Blythe talks about the
positive impact a disaster like the Climate catastrophe would have in breaking up this cabal
of evil.
Your story reminds me of Florida inventor Steve Morton's case against copyright theft
being closed down and covered up by then-FBI Director Mueller and then-Attorney General Eric
Holder. Definitely a good example of unfairness at the top of the system.
For further information on Morton's case and story a good search engine for "Steve Morton"
, " Fincantieri ", " Mueller", " Holder" , "Comey" , ought bring up an outlet covering said
situation.
> The gradual retreat of the US from the eastern Pacific is pretty much seen as a done
deal,
> everyone is frantically scrambling to ensure they are not caught on the hop.
Not sure I understand this. Eastern Pacific? What retreat?
Wall*Street is often described as a casino, but in reality most every house of chance has
a security exchange commission of it's own, making sure that there is no cheating, and fair
play on both sides of the green felt jungle, and should a dealer in it's employ be caught in
an act of larceny, they'll be arrested toot suite.
When Wall*Street was paid off on losing wagers a dozen years ago, fair play lost it's
luster and has only become more meaningless in it's absence.
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble
for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption
in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its
reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few
hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now
that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the
people's money to settle the quarrel."
speech to Illinois legislature, Jan. 1837.
I find your Lincoln quotes curious. I thought Lincoln that after splitting wood for rail
supports Lincoln made his name and money as a lawyer arguing cases for the large rail road
corporations. If so, the quote you provided seems much like Eisenhower's speech on the
Military Industrial Complex.
"Lincoln made his name and money as a lawyer "
How better to learn about the 'real' machinations of the ruling elites? What Lincoln did with
that 'education' was what made him famous, not the education itself.
The word 'multiculturalism' has a range of meanings, both sociological and political. You
need clearly define your meaning of the word. As it is, your assertion is vague, imo.
I imagine that the operative word in his or her comment is "imposed." That implies an
'authority' that can dictate to everyone else. Such a state of affairs would be the opposite
of what I grew up imagining "progressivism" was.
What are the conditions imposed?
Because as much of a problem as people have with the idea of "cancel culture" there still is
the flip side that people aren't going to continue to let themselves be treated like
garbage.
The ultimate 'problem' in all this is the perennial one of who controls the resources, or,
as Marx and Engels put it, the means of production.
People will be "treated like garbage" for as long as 'garbage' is all that is available to
them. In an extremely unequal society, as the modern Wast has evolved into, once some
threshold of resource 'ownership' is crossed, the only feasible method of redressing the
balance seems to be outright revolt and warfare. Except for the example of Cincinnatus in the
Roman Republic period, (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus
) who knows of a time when concentrated power ever voluntarily gave up any significant
portion of their powers?
Inequality is inherently unfair.
With the site admin's forbearance.
We encountered the 'ground level' fruits of the loss of the ethos of fairness yesterday.
Phyl was told to see the "Pain Management Practice," an independent section of the local
medical apparat in order to 'manage' her use of the pain meds she was prescribed for her
amputation. So far, so good. The appointment is for two o'clock. Show up at one thirty
o'clock to fill out paperwork. Due to a tight schedule and other impediments, we show up at
the office at a quarter to two o'clock. The receptionist nurses, who sit at a desk behind an
armoured glass partition, tell us that we are late and must reschedule the appointment for
two weeks later. At which time, Phyllis begins to argue. This is normal behaviour with her
when confronted with 'unfair' conditions. One of the receptionists relents somewhat and goes
back into the back room and consults with someone.
She returns and declares; "No exceptions are allowed. You are late and that is that."
Phyl replies: "You can see my problem. Are you going to be rigid?"
Receptionist; "The best I can do for you is two weeks off."
Phyl; "Is there anything sooner?"
Receptionist; "Do you want the appointment or not? We have work to do here!"
Me, sotto voice to Phyl; "We will get nowhere with this bunch. Take the next appointment and
we'll see what we can do later."
Phyl; "All right."
As we left the waiting room, one of the two patients sitting there was visibly trying not to
laugh. The other patient got up and helped open the large glass door so I could maneuver the
wheelchair out into the hallway.
The point of all this, (besides an apologetically admitted venting on my part,) is that this
medical establishment has opted for a rigid and formalized rules based imposition of
authority in place of any sort of fairness or flexibility in dealing with their clients. (I
use the word client in it's original [?] Roman sense.) Speaking with several of our neighbors
yesterday I have discovered that this sort of rigidity in scheduling is becoming more common
around here.
One of the main features of fairness, at the least in medical situations is the belief that
the patients deserve some leeway in their treatment at the hands of 'officials.' This new
experience of ours highlights the emerging ethos that the system is paramount now. The
patients are now there for the convenience of the providers, and their stockholders. Fairness
has now officially been banned.
I was going to make a remark about this system change being an example of late stage
capitalism, but just realized that formalism and inflexibility are hallmarks of late stage
anything.
'Fairness,' however one defines it is a function of flexibility. 'Fairness' shows the desire
and ability to think out complex situations and move to balanced outcomes. All 'actors' in
the social situation are considered and dealt with in some semblance of a socially supportive
ethos. Communitarian at root, this has been, as is mentioned several times above, replaced by
an atomistic and minimalist pseudo philosophy. The foregoing because a strategy of adherence
to a rigid and simplistic set of rules in social situations is a rejection of thought and
reflection. "I was just following orders." Does that sound familiar?
Alas, I fear that "things" are going to get much worse in the times ahead, for everyone.
Thanks for your indulgence.
Ambrit, I am so sorry you and Phyl have to deal with humans utterly lacking in compassion
and human decency. If think if this happened to me, I would argued forcefully –
screamed- which would have probably had me removed from the office or banished from the
practice. This kind of treatment from people who are dealing with patients who need help just
makes my blood boil. Unfortunately, I think this kind of treatment towards others is a side
effect of living in an unfair/unjust society. Many people's hearts become bitter and hardened
( like I'm suffering and I don't care if you suffer too). The dark world we live in now is
cold hearted and full of tears. My heart goes out to you and Phyl and all others who are
suffering because of this.
Thanks Elizabeth. The Home Health nurse this morning didn't want to believe our tale. She
finally suggested that we complain directly to the top level of the Medical Organization that
this practice is a part of. I'm going to try that Monday. As a side note, the Physical
Therapist this afternoon mentioned that the nurses are stymied because absolutely no pain med
scrips are written on Fridays. (I found it hard to credit, but reflection seemed to prove her
correct.) This is evidently not just a function of the doctors wanting Fridays off, but a
conscious policy on the part of the local medical establishment. [Your only recourse would be
to admit yourself in to the Emergency Room I was told. Hmmm . what's the most expensive part
of a Hospital practice? You guessed it!]
My favourite aspect of the "visit" to the Pain Management Office was the presence of the
armoured glass partition between the Lobby and the receptionist's desk. This assumes that
someone in the physical office planning stage anticipated a high potential for violence in
that office. {I wonder why?}
I was tempted to let Phyl scream her head off, but remembered the presence of a uniformed
'Security Person' in the building lobby. The two behind the glass partition looked like, and
acted like the sort who would love to smack an unruly 'client' down. /Bored and smug would be
how I summed up how the two women appeared.\
Luckily, Phyl is already tapering off her drugs usage, so, there is a small cushion with
which to maneuver around this unholy edifice of Mammon.
I wonder if Phyllis's doctor could refer her to another clinic, one a little more
compassionate to people in pain? (Couldn't they let you finish the paperwork while you wait
in that little room for the always late doctor?)
This story has me enraged for Phyllis and also you. I am so sorry. Two weeks. The
audacity. Making her wait even a day! (I am almost crying in frustration. So very sorry)
While I definitely agree that ruling classes have deteriorated remarkably over the last
few decades, I don't think the old days were very fair either. Fairness is of interest -- in
fact, it's crucially important -- in a society composed of people who are more or less equal
and autonomous. It's a way to get along without a lot of conflict and risk. In an highly
unequal society, like those of the US and the UK, it's much less valuable than access to the
levers of power. You don't have to get along with those you can crush or brush aside. As the
scene here in the US continues to deteriorate, I expect concepts like fairness and justice to
seem more and more quaint to the movers and shakers and fixers, until finally the general
system breaks down completely. It's anybody's guess what will succeed that.
I think this loss of fair play is partly because many have realized that fortunes can be
made simply by gaining exceptions to established rules and laws. There have always been
exceptions, here and there, but our situation now is there are exceptions to established
rules everywhere. Companies can now simply lobby for some exclusive benefit or to ignore some
law that everyone else must follow, and then collect a risk free guaranteed profit for
essentially doing nothing.
Many large firms use these exceptions in the form of legal protections not available to
their competitors to both attain and maintain their competitive advantage. These protections
include ignoring existing laws, profiting from illegal businesses where profits exceed fines,
and profiting from exclusive U.S. government subsidies not available to competitors. The
banking and drug industry are notorious for routinely engaging in illegal practices that
generate profits which far exceed the fines that regulators impose when these firms are
caught. Preferential government subsidies that benefit a single company in an industry are
now also acceptable business strategy as companies like Amazon can obtain confidential
agreements with the U.S. Post office to ship packages for at least half of what UPS and FedEx
would charge for the same deliveries. A subsidy like this contributes to the many reasons
that its competitors are driven into bankruptcy, and probably explains why Amazon's retail
business
loses money everywhere except in the U.S.
Many small firms, especially tech unicorns in their early days, use these exceptions in
the same way. Amazon started as a small company that would sell mail-order books in a way
that allowed it to avoid sales tax. Early Uber investors were probably attracted by a belief
that government will look the other
way while it made cab rides cheaper by ignoring local taxi regulation, then transferring
all its business costs to its drivers, and then collecting a substantial fee for each of taxi
fare. AirBnB started as a small company whose rent would also ignore local hotel regulations,
zoning laws, health laws to prevent public health hazards, and fire safety codes. Small drug
companies like Turing Pharmaceuticals can simply acquire patents for drugs with no substitute
and then raise prices by 5,456%.
The problem is that too many of these risk free 'rent seeking' opportunities can overwhelm
an economy filled with corporations who are all chasing the highest risk adjusted rate of
return. When there are too many of these rent seeking opportunities in an economy then its
companies will select only these risk-less rent seeking strategies, while abandoning all
riskier but socially productive profit strategies like the pursuit of new breakthroughs,
product innovations, design quality, superior service, and product reliability. A related
negative outcome which you hint at with 'fair play' is most of these rents offer particular
exclusions from laws designed to protect society like those prohibiting consumer or investor
fraud, prohibiting worker exploitation, ensuring consumer safety, and maintaining financial
market stability.
So an economy with systemic rent seeking often incentivizes its corporations to abandon
their socially productive profit strategies, and then replace them with risk-less 'rent'
strategies where profit comes from ignoring laws that protect our society from fraud,
exploitation, and economic disruption.
Jeff Bezos was the first thing that popped into my mind. The Technocracy –with no
room for humanity, where the masses serve as hosts for 24/7 parasites – the second.
In this neck of the woods,Silicon Valley, the infestation of unfairness reflects itself
everywhere, particularly in the homelessness. Cars, the way they're driven, and how they are
judged, are also a perfect example. You can see it in very pricey new model cars with
dangerously blinding LED lights as the norm (which an insane National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration has yet to address after over a decade of complaints); so called demon
light headlight adaptations which make the car appear like a predatory night stalker in
one's rearview mirror; and disturbing personalized license plates, saw one the other day that
said MALWARE. And then there's the judgment by vehicle. After having lived where I am for
over a decade, was asked by a new neighbor, in a brand new vehicle, if I needed directions,
as if I was lost, when I stopped to speak with another neighbor in my not clunker looking,
almost 20 year old car. It cut me to the bone, as words can.
Small businesses are increasingly losing their shirts and being shut down due to amoral
commercial property owners; Amazon; Google, Facebook and Apple Campuses ™; and
corrupt mayors and city council members' neighborhood planning ™.
The Silicon Valley CalTrain commuter line just had its 16th pedestrian fatality of the
year in early December (a thirty two year old female youth therapist), and a hospitalized,
attempted 17th fatality, 9 days later; despite ever increasing rail vigilance. Meanwhile the
Local News™ keeps alluding to track improvements versus addressing the now tangible
despair. It's all gut rending and no surprise that Santa Clara County led California in
negative migration between 2018 – 2019. Unfortunately many were left with no means to
even leave, and/or couldn't leave their loved ones who needed them..
The age old term walking in another person's shoes – implying looking beyond
oneself, treating others fairly, and not taking ones luck in life as an indicator that
they're worthier people – seems utterly lost on many who are doing well and wish the
millions of 'losers' would disappear from their sight.
Who will be the new Wright Patman?
Who will be the new Sal Pecora?
Prior generations provided guidance on how to identify and call out unfairness, and get
meaningful results, for the benefit of the citizenry.
With absolutely 100% respect to the original posters and their points, I'd side w/Vlade
and argue that there are some serious rose-tinted glasses being worn.
Yes, (in my opinion) there was an era of "fair play" .but this was a flash-in-the-pan
consequence of WWII. As rightfully the bottom 95% earned their just desserts after years of
sacrifice for their country and rescuing the elites from the literal existential threat of
authoritarianism.
Now we're merely reverting to the time immemorial-style of 'every person for themselves'
social ruthlessness. sadly.
As I recall, the elites were in no danger from authoritarianism in the 1900s. Au
contraire, they profited at every turn from the acts of authoritarianism. Prescott Bush and
other business leaders (sic) did business with the Nazis and Fascists, and even with the
Japanese imperium. These days, platforms and algorithms setvup by the Elites of this time
loot and pollute and accelerate the many races to the bottom.
Good thing for that "life force" that when the last Elite human (possibly the last human
of any sort) dies, there will be other species already carving out niches of precedence and
preference It hurts, a little, to know we won't be missed
This post is a tad deceptive. It sounds like a review of neoliberalism and all that has
happened since c. 1980 when in fact it is now The Question. What is fair play/ What is/was
fair play and how do we create it going forward. Now that there can be no growth, very little
manufacturing and no labor unions as we once knew them. Automation and an elite class of
oligarchs and their functionaries are taking over. States/Nations still have their
constitutions but they are creating internal conflict as the old ways disappear back into
what Varoufakis calls a new feudalism. Like upstart above, however, I have only experienced
fair play in the courts, never in economic situations. But then I'm old, b. 1946, and female.
So I'm keeping an open mind as best I can, like the above clips from David, Clive, Vlade and
PK. One thing to add from the FR24 Debate on good regulation – it was pointed out by
one panelist that regulations are stricter in the EU for going into business, but on a
"horizontal" basis. Whereas it is easy to go into Bz in the US, all you need are vertical
connections. I took this to describe the fact that many corporations are monopolies. But
connections are few and far between. And lurking in the wings, as we all know, is climate
change. The new discussion about societal collapse has started. Now would be an excellent
time to interject the concept of fair play. I am optimistic because there is a basic, rock
solid strength in fair play that might serve to make it a survivor.
I've mentioned before that my father, an investment manager who retired around the time
Yves started, made a similar point prospectively. Background: he ran a smallish private firm
in Indiana, but it gave him rather wide exposure, including in a large industrial firm, plus
direct investments, besides the stock market.. Plus, my mother inherited a (then) good-sized
farm that was operated by a tenant.
His comment was that a culture of honesty saved a lot of money, otherwise spent on
guarding your interests, watching the watchers, hiring lawyers, etc. His firm shied away from
investing in anything with a hint of shadiness.
This is merely confirmatory of Yves' point, but from a different point of view and from
before the cultural changes (aka crapification) her post goes over.
And come to think, a younger relative who is a corporate lawyer told us, from her
contemporary experience, that handshake agreements are NOT a good idea. They tend to lead to
her getting involved, and she ain't cheap, nor are the consequences predictable.
I would add that I think human institutions, like human beings, have a life cycle, so to a
great extent the vagaries of, say, Brexit are a result of predictable senescence. Not that
you want to experience the down side, as we seem to be doing.
Your word is your bond.
Another old-fashioned saying that might yet make a comeback, starting with some undergrad
research paper on forgotten sayings of, say, the mid-20th century.
On the opening mention of recruiters and employees ghosting I'd like to add a few thoughts
of how different things are in that regard.
We're now all supposed to be part of some social network or another because we need to get
our names out there and grow our networks. Those services then turn around and pelt you with
emails and phone calls non-stop if you're whatever flavor of the moment they deem desirable.
They also don't give you the time of day if they decide you're not. And those services have
tried to evolve new tools to prevent you turning them away or ignoring them. Emails with
"decision required" and polls and notices that seem to imply if you don't respond they'll
kick you off. That's problem since any boss can fire you for any reason at any time. And they
definitely mention that you're not being polite or fair by not responding to an email
conversation you didn't initiate for a job position you didn't inquire about on a service you
didn't ask them to use.
I have a job I like so I was really annoyed that one recruiter on Indeed couldn't take no
for an answer and demanded I tell them why I wasn't going to permit them to sell my resume to
a potential job opening. I don't understand why we're supposed to be at everyone else's beck
and call and they don't have to respond to even polite overtures from us.
So it's more than just fair play seems to be missing in our society right now. It's that
whatever echoes of fairness exist are used to abuse the people who believe in them. They
steal your time, your attention, your professional connections, anything they can. Then they
complain about you not responding. That's another facet of this that I really don't like.
There is so much one can say on this topic. Unfortunately, I am increasingly pessimistic
and of the view that nothing will really change until we suffer a true calamity as was the
case in the past.
An oversimplifying example. My father was a combat veteran from the Korean War, having
been just a little young to serve in WWII. There was a clear sense of inter-relationship in
this generation. They experienced the depths of the depression and the massive loss of life
and destruction of WWII. My dad eventually became the COO of one of the most powerful
financial services firms in the US. His generation of leaders would never have considered the
(1) levels of compensation relative employees as appropriate, (2) becoming predators on their
customers, they prized their customer relationships, (3) using the firms balance sheet to
gamble at the casino in a heads they win, tails you lose game. It simply wasn't in their DNA.
They had suffered too much to jeopardize shared prosperity and general welfare.
When my father took early retirement he had a unique resume and was offered very serious
positions of prestige and power, with high levels of compensation. He turned them all down,
as did his piers, as they violated an inherent code of ethics and fairness that they didn't
need to articulate it was just their from their shared sacrifices earlier in life.
In my experiences on Wall Street, both as a banker and as a CFO of firms, this would be
anathema.
My only source of hope is that our daughter's generation, she is 27, sees this for what it
is. They fully understand that our society is failing and eschew the loss of fairness on
multiple levels. They consciously avoid politics and participation, not out of laziness, but
because they see our leaders (both political and business) as fundamentally corrupt. She and
her friends have no interest in voting for a neo-liberal (e.g., Biden, Buttagieg, etc.) who
is just better behaved than Trump. They are well educated, have gone to excellent schools,
and want something more from life than a high paying Wall Street job.
We see so much goodness in them, yet worry that it will take a global war or financial
collapse leading to depression to reset our society.
Reagan pocketed a huge, at the time, $2,000,000 speaking fee. That provided the imprimatur
that cashing in was okey-dokey. Later grifters looked on with amusement pondering the blood,
sweat, toil and tears of others that led to their own book and speaking shakedown deals with
multiples of that fee in laundered money.
Two assertions in this post caught my eye:
Firms "that adopted nobler objectives did better in financial terms than ones that focused on
maximizing shareholder value."
I believe firms that adopted nobler objectives -- may -- have done better over the
long-term than firms that focused on maximizing shareholder value but next I wonder about how
well the managers did in the short-term [perhaps even the long-term after correcting for the
differences in the qualities and abilities of the management] in each type of firm. I suppose
mediocre managers did very much better when "focused on maximizing shareholder value". Before
engaging the relatively long read of the linked post discussing details of the study which
the main post refers to -- I also wonder how the referenced study deals with immoral acts
which are not quite clearly immoral -- like outsourcing. Over the long-run outsourcing is bad
for a country, bad for the resilience of a firm, and bad for the firm over the long-run
before we are dead. However, I believe many of the firms that "adopted nobler objectives" --
and remained steadfast to them -- were driven out of business by price competition.
The second assertion:
"Another aspect of the decline in the importance of fair dealing is the notion of the
obligations of power, [w]hat individuals in a position of authority have a duty to."
In regard to this assertion, I immediately recalled Machiavelli's "the Prince". Many of
the ideas of noblesse oblige were anchored in the power and authority of the Catholic
[Universal] Church. Though in conflict with a God Chosen Monarch -- noblesse oblige operated
to attach similar moral authority to the Aristocratic Classes. In my Youth I thought of
Machiavelli as completely unmoral. Later when I learned more about his life and actions I
realized his "Prince" unveiled the unmoral reality behind the operations of monarchical and
aristocratic actions. Neoliberalism has succeeded in stripping all moral coverings from power
and through the efforts of an extremely well-funded Thought-Collective and propaganda machine
it has divorced thinking about morality from power -- except as a thin fig-leaf. Most
significantly it has exalted Power and its co-worker Wealth to positions of 'moral goodness'.
Fair dealing in the Neoliberal moral universe is a slogan without content to fool those
unaware and/or unwilling to 'see'.
I also feel much of the nostalgia for noblesse oblige and critique of the Neoliberal Age
may originate from the residual conflicts and cross-envies between 'Old'-money and
'New'-money. Old-money has already forgotten the immoral origins of its wealth.
Much of this post is related to Brexit -- something I avoided study of or comment upon and
still little understand. I excuse myself as someone squeamish about traffic accidents and
train wrecks though powerful feelings of sadness overwhelm me.
The heart of this post resides in the ancient question of the tie between morality and its
enforcement -- the question for how you would act given a "cloak of invisibility" which is a
prop for posing concrete questions about how you might act without the constraints of dealing
with any of the moral consequences or implications of your acts. I may be a fool -- but I
believe most all of Humankind believes in Justice [and acts Justly] -- the Justice which I
believe The Rev Kev equates to 'fairness' -- which is a much weaker word. But I also believe
there are a certain number of individuals who do not care about Justice and the Neoliberal
Thought Collective has somehow transformed this indifference ['disregard' -- 'disdain for']
Justice into a moral imperative and belittled Justice as a throw-back to benighted times
past.
We live in DarkTimes when the very worst among us claim the most and worse still brand
themselves as praise-worthy while using their colossally disproportionate Power and Wealth to
squelch criticism and amplify their accolades often self-accolades through their wholly owned
Media.
Lyttennburgh, I can think of a couple of reasons for Erdogan's Libyan adventure. First, he'd
rather have those battle tested jihadis in Libya than on his border or in his country.
Second, he may have his eyes on Mediterranean oil. Lastly, he may see a friendly Libyan
government as an ally or province of his Ottoman Empire dream. No matter what the reason,
he's setting himself up for another confrontation with Russia.
None of the kids wanted toys for Christmas this year, they just wanted cash.
Understandable, but cash as a gift, while practical, always feels impersonal, so I made
special packaging. Went over well pic.twitter.com/urXVCHtDyW
— Donnachaidha O'Chionnaigh (@TwoClawsMedia) December
26, 2019
Tech companies take your privacy seriously, and also use data from inside your home for
cutesy press releases about visits from carolers and people seeking cookie recipes.
https://t.co/o5Lk0G47QL
pic.twitter.com/QX6fvcCFAB
#2 This is known as "the season of giving", but one 65-year-old guy in Colorado decided it
would be more fun to do it
with other people's money : Just after noon on Monday, a 65-year-old man walked into a
downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado bank and stole thousands of dollars before running outside
and tossing the cash up into the air while yelling "Merry Christmas!"
#8 One rapper in Los Angeles decided that the best way to address the problem of
homelessness was to climb on top of a tall building and throw cash down on to the
homeless people living on Skid Row so they could fight over it: The 22-year-old rapper
known as Blueface climbed onboard a black Mercedes SUV in Skid Row before throwing money out of
a bag while dozens of people below scramble to catch the flying cash and pick it up from the
ground. The artist, whose real name is Jonathan Michael Porteris, is known for the Benjamin
Franklin tattoo on his cheek and a handful of hit tracks that reached viral status in recent
years.
The Deplorables are ascending in America, with Trump, in Britain with Brexit, in Hong Kong,
in much of Europe, in Latin America, in Iran.
...The Mandate of Heaven has been removed from the elitist establishment. It is passing to
the Deplorables.
The Deplorables are ascending in America, with Trump, in Britain with Brexit, in Hong Kong,
in much of Europe, in Latin America, in Iran. Deplorables are the antidote to arrogant
globalists.
Deplorables everywhere say "from now on we will make our own decisions."
What is it with
the Deplorables? What gives them such power?
Three things, I believe, are elevating them.
Deplorables are pragmatic . They are not wedded to any extreme ideology. Deplorables will
go with anything that works. It is no wonder that the Deplorables began in America. For, as
Americans we inherit the pragmatism of our pioneering ancestors.
The article incorrectly lumps the astro-turfed Hong Kong protests in with the "Deplorable"
populist movements in the USA and western Europe.
The Hong Kong protests are being backed by Soros and the Davos globalist elites as well
the the CIA, MIC, and the DC Uniparty. This same bunch of Swamp scum are enemies of the
"Deplorables".
More pure American establishment propaganda as if the globalist movement is essentially a
creature of the socialists, government bureaucracies, and the Asian block. The truth is that
it is a creature mainly of the Rothschild banking cartel and with the support of most Western
based multi-nationals, which have utilized the Rothschild & Soros backed international
socialists, the Western mainstream media, most Western governments, plus the Catholic Church
hierarchy, in order to bring about a world government. The Rothschild wet dream is control of
world finances just like they control those in the West, and their stated intentions are for
a One-World Bank with a one-world currency. However, the cartel cannot do that without a
world government with real enforcement powers for trade and protection with their world
currency. The multinonals mainly want borderless nations for freer access to resources and
markets.
Trump has been used to whump up US stature and ultimately will be seen as much an
instrument of the globalist cause as was Obama. Perhaps he was put in the game by his backers
to secure a higher return on the US dollar when they are cashed in for the proposed one-world
currency, and by the Zionists to secure more turf for Israel. Israel is getting very itchy
with the old trigger finger and we await in the New Year another false flag at least on the
scale of 9/11. It will likely have to involve a US city.
As we know, the term 'deplorables' came from Hillary in the last US presidential election
and was applied to people who amplified "hateful views and voices" about her, but later the
term was used to characterize mainly Trump supporters. The Hong Kong protesters as not
"deplorables" because their cause in not for Trump or for the US. It is for their own liberty
against the communist Chinese government usurping their basic legal and local rights, which
Trump could care less about. Aslo, he is not a populist. He is an elitist and he is totally
controlled by elitists with more money and power than even he every dreamed of.
Left or right, Democrat or Republican, the puppet masters are the same and run the show.
They are all global elites using their money and power to swing the public audiences left and
right with every pull at the strings of their dummy politicians. What they fear the most, is
the people in the middle uniting without their money or the media and taking control of their
lives and their nations.
I'm finding it hard to think of examples where the formerly norm-giving group becomes
derided or humiliated.
You can probably try to look at the situation in (now independent) republics of the former
USSR. Simplifying previously oppressed group, given a lucky chance, most often strive for
dominance and oppression of other groups including and especially former dominant group. This
is an eternal damnation of ethno/cultural nationalism.
And not only it (look at Mutual Help and The State in Shantytowns.) In them ethnic
comminutes often own protection markets, offer services that hire people and replace the state,
pay off gang leaders. they also provide some community support for particular ethnic group,
enforce the rules of trade within themselves, etc. In GB the abuse of children by ethnic gangs
was sickening ( https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/sep/30/abuse-children-asian-communities
)
In many cases of ethnic/cultural nationalism this looks more like a competition for
resources with the smoke screen of noble intentions/human rights/past oppression/
humiliations/etc
Or you can look at the language policy in the USA and the actual situation in some
areas/institutions of Florida and California and how English speakers feel in those
areas/institutions. Or in some areas of Quebec in Canada.
That actually suggests another meaning of famous Randolph Bourne quote " War is the health
of the state " (said in the midst of the First World War.) It bring the unity unachievable in
peace time or by any other methods, albeit temporarily (from Ch 14. Howard Zinn book A People's
History of the United States ):
the governments flourished, patriotism bloomed, class struggle was stilled, and young men
died in frightful numbers on the battlefields-often for a hundred yards of land, a line of
trenches.
In the United States, not yet in the war, there was worry about the health of the state.
Socialism was growing. The IWW seemed to be everywhere. Class conflict was intense. In the
summer of 1916, during a Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco, a bomb exploded, killing
nine people; two local radicals, Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, were arrested and would
spend twenty years in prison. Shortly after that Senator James Wadsworth of New York
suggested compulsory military training for all males to avert the danger that "these people
of ours shall be divided into classes." Rather: "We must let our young men know that they owe
some responsibility to this country."
The supreme fulfillment of that responsibility was taking place in Europe. Ten million
were to die on the battlefield; 20 million were to die of hunger and disease related to the
war. And no one since that day has been able to show that the war brought any gain for
humanity that would be worth one human life. The rhetoric of the socialists, that it was an
"imperialist war," now seems moderate and hardly arguable. The advanced capitalist countries
of Europe were fighting over boundaries, colonies, spheres of influence; they were competing
for Alsace-Lorraine, the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East.
Neo-McCarthyism now serves a somewhat similar purpose in the USA. Among other thing (like
absolving Hillary from her fiasco to "deux ex machine" trick instead of real reason -- the
crisis and rejection of neoliberalism by the sizable strata of the USA population) it is an
attempt to unify the nation after 2016.
Then-RNC chairman Jim Nicholson said of Schumer "No self-respecting jury would allow
somebody who's already formed an opinion on the guilt or innocence of the accused," adding "but
Chuck Schumer has loudly proclaimed that he's pre-judged the case. He's already announced that
he's decided the President shouldn't be impeached , much less removed from office."
Schumer responded days later, telling NBC 's "Meet the Press": "The Founding Fathers --
whose wisdom just knocks my socks off every day, it really does -- set this process up to be in
the Senate, not at the Supreme Court, not in some judicial body ."
NEVER MISS THE NEWS
THAT MATTERS MOST
ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.
"Every day, for instance, hundreds of people call us up and lobby us on one side and the
other. You can't do that with a juror," he added. "The standard is different. It's supposed to
be a little bit judicial and a little bit legislative-political. That's how it's been.
Meanwhile, Schumer said in a 1998 Op-Ed that he would be voting to acquit Clinton , and that
he'd made up his mind that September.
"My decision will not come as a surprise," Schumer
wrote . "I will be voting to acquit the president on both counts. I had to make my decision
in September as a member of the Judiciary Committee in the House, and while I was in the middle
of the campaign."
Responding to CNN 's recent report (yet failing to explain the 'impartial juror' hypocrisy),
Schumer's office said that his statements came after the conclusion of the Starr investigation,
"which included testimony from key witnesses including President Clinton, had concluded and
been made public for months and as Sen. Schumer was in the anomalous position of having already
voted on impeachment in both the House Judiciary Committee and on the House floor."
"As is reflected in these quotes, Schumer believed then and still believes now that all of
the facts must be allowed to come out and then a decision can be made -- in stark contrast to
the Republicans today in both the House and Senate who have worked to prevent all the facts and
evidence from coming out."
Another term unlimited parasite shows that he has become an utter hypocrite, if he wasn't
one in the first place. Praising the wisdom of the founding fathers is such a rookie move,
the kind of thing you say to get elected. Like all other politicians he picks and chooses the
parts of the Constitution that are conducive to his hold on power. The Democrats do not have
a leg to stand on, and for that reason they are going down. What Trump will do with his
second term terrifies me. I still cannot believe this dissembling confidence artist, former
NYC liberal, arch Zionist, Rothschild beneficiary has the best interests of America in
mind.
The idea we have members of the House or Senate still serving who participated in the last
impeachment should be a warning to us all. Yet the number is surprisingly high.
but the larger issue is the money favoring...reducing that will be complic
Never happen. People are ****, and everybody has their price. Term limits would probably
make it worse; if you know you're only getting one or two terms you'll be trying to maximize
your take.
The whole thing is scripted. I've been waiting for stuff exactly like this, actually.
They're not really trying to get rid of Trump; in fact they NEED him in office next term.
Another term unlimited parasite shows that he has become an utter hypocrite, if he wasn't
one in the first place. Praising the wisdom of the founding fathers is such a rookie move,
the kind of thing you say to get elected. Like all other politicians he picks and chooses the
parts of the Constitution that are conducive to his hold on power. The Democrats do not have
a leg to stand on, and for that reason they are going down. What Trump will do with his
second term terrifies me. I still cannot believe this dissembling confidence artist, former
NYC liberal, arch Zionist, Rothschild beneficiary has the best interests of America in
mind.
Legislators have begun to hold hearings on impeaching Santa Claus after an overheard
conversation seemed to imply he was offering a quid pro quo: gifts in exchange for good
behavior. FBI agents spied on Claus at various malls as he repeatedly said things like, "Sure,
I'll get you a pony. But first, I need you to do something for me... be a good little boy!"
The FBI was able to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Claus, because it's easier to get a FISA
warrant than to get a Costco membership.
"Ho ho noooooo!" Santa Claus cried as investigators leaped out and cuffed him at a Dayton,
OH mall. "Not good! Sad!"
A
beautiful public performance today by the Paris Opera's striking ballet dancers & orchestra. France's strike vs. austerity is
bringing art back into the streets.
Legislators have begun to hold hearings on impeaching Santa Claus after an overheard
conversation seemed to imply he was offering a quid pro quo: gifts in exchange for good
behavior. FBI agents spied on Claus at various malls as he repeatedly said things like, "Sure,
I'll get you a pony. But first, I need you to do something for me... be a good little boy!"
The FBI was able to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Claus, because it's easier to get a FISA
warrant than to get a Costco membership.
"Ho ho noooooo!" Santa Claus cried as investigators leaped out and cuffed him at a Dayton,
OH mall. "Not good! Sad!"
Joe diGenova has been talking about the seditious plot to overturn the 2016 election for at
least a year, maybe longer. Unlike a lot of the people commenting on this in the mass media, he
is not using it to sell books or boost his cable career. He also knows how the FBI and DOJ
works from a practical matter. Being knowledgeable makes him a rare guy in the commentariat.
Most of the people brought on as experts for the cable chat shows know very little about their
alleged areas of expertise.
Regardless, he has been one of the most hawkish people on the Barr investigation, claiming
that it is a real investigation with real criminal targets. In this recent radio interview he goes into the details of both
the Barr investigation and the ongoing impeachment fiasco. He is a Trump partisan, so his
opinions on impeachment are predictable, but his thoughts on the conspiracy are interesting. He
probably has access to information from the Trump White House.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/BpTvjkTsaCQ
The interesting thing about all of this is just how widespread the conspiracy was during the
2015-2016 period. In that interview he talks about former NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers, who
is allegedly cooperating with Barr and Durham. What makes the Rogers issue interesting is that
he was the original whistle-blower. He is not treated as such, because the media hates Trump
and anyone associated with him, but Rogers was the guy who blew the whistle on the spying to
the Trump people.
What's also interesting about Rogers is he seems to have been a good guy, who decided to put
an end to the shenanigans with regards to access to top-secret data by FBI contractors. He
closed off their access at some point in 2016, which put him in bad odor with the Obama
administration. He was eventually pushed out, which suggests the conspiracy has roots into the
Obama inner-circle. That may explain why the easy cases to be made against the FBI conspirators
are on hold.
That's the other thing about the Rogers case. As
CTH explains in that post , his addition to the story reveals that the use of the NSA
database by political contractors working for the Democrats goes back to at least 2012. It is
an axiom of white-collar crime that the practice always goes back much further than the
evidence initially reveals. Anyone who has done forensic accounting knows this. You find the
first evidence of a crime, but it turns out that the pattern goes back much further.
That may be what lies beneath all of this. The great puzzle thus far has been the lack of
prosecutions, despite ample evidence. The FBI agents are all guilty of crimes that have been
detailed in public documents and the IG reports. There is now proof that Comey perjured himself
many times. Just from a public relations perspective alone, rounding up these guys and charging
them with corruption seems like a no-brainer. Almost a year into his tenure and Barr has
charged no one with a crime.
One obvious explanation is that Barr is running a long con on Trump and the rest of the
country, on behalf of the inner party. Robert Mueller was supposed to use his investigation to
hoover up all the data so it could not be made public, in addition to harassing the Trump White
House. His incompetence meant Barr took over the job and is now hoovering up all the
information on the various parties. That way, everyone has an excuse for not doing anything
about plot.
One bit of evidence in support of this is the handling of the James Wolfe issue. He was the
Senate staffer caught leaking classified information to one of the prostitutes hired by the
Washington Post. Big media hires good looking young women to sleep with flunkies like Wolf in
order to get access to information. Wolf was caught and charged, but instead of getting a
couple years in jail,
he got two months . He will come out and land into a six-figure job as a reward for being a
good soldier.
An alternative explanation is that what started as a straight forward political corruption
case bumped into a long pattern of behavior. In the course of investigating that pattern, the
trail went much further back than the 2016 election. If there is evidence of abuse going back
to 2012, maybe it goes back further. It was the Bush people, after all, who pushed for the
creation of secret courts and secret warrants. Maybe Dick Cheney was listening to your phone
calls after all.
It is not just the linear aspect of this. The sheer number of people involved in just the
FBI scandal is phenomenal. There are at least 20 FBI people named and dozens of bit players in
the media and DOJ. So far, the "contractors" with access to the NSA database have not been
revealed, but that could be hundreds of people, given that it seems to have been a
free-for-all. The corruption may not only go back a long time, but cover a wide swath of
official Washington.
That may be the answer to the great cover up. That's what we are seeing. This is a great
cover up of the biggest scandal in American history. To date, no one has been charged with a
crime, despite hundreds of crimes being documented. Many of the principals are now enjoying
high six figure lives, based on the fact they were part of the seditious plot to overturn the
2016 election. Instead of the scandal of the century, it is the celebration of the century for
the inner party.
One of the signs of ruling class collapse is when they can no longer enforce the rules that
maintain them as a ruling class. When the Romans started making exceptions to republican
governance, it was a matter of time before someone simply decided the rules no longer applied
to them. Perhaps the robot historians will consider Obama our Marius or Sulla. Maybe that
person is in the near future. Either way, the rule of law is over and what comes next is the
rule of men.
For the second year in a row, Art Cashin, the head of UBS's floor operations at the NYSE,
was spot-on with his market calls in 2019.
Last December, Cashin told CNBC that he expected the Federal Reserve wouldn't raise interest
rates during the coming year. In fact, Cashin said late last year that he felt there was now
"an outside chance" that the Fed would cut rates in 2019. At the time, many scoffed at that
call. But Cashin turned out to be correct.
He was also correct about whether the US and China would manage to strike a long-term trade
deal. "I don't believe so," Cashin said. "I think we will get something that approximates it,
and you'll get perhaps in midyear a relaxation rally, but - with - with the problems of -
political sequencing, whatever, I don't think it works out."
As for whether the US would succeed in striking a lasting trade deal with Beijing before the
end of the year, Cashin insisted that the answer was 'most likely no'.
"I don't believe so. I think we will get something that approximates it, and you'll get
perhaps in midyear a relaxation rally, but - with - with the problems of - political
sequencing, whatever, I don't think it works out."
So, Cashin sat down with CNBC's Bob Pisani at Bobby Van's Steakhouse, across from the NYSE,
to discuss what Cashin sees coming down the pipe for markets in 2020.
Cashin offered three predictions - that's fewer predictions than usual: His first prediction
was that there will be no Fed hikes over the coming year. His second is that the market's
winning streak will continue, and that the big US stock indexes will finish the year
higher.
Finally, although Cashin expects stocks to rise next year, their ascent will be punctuated
by several periods of extreme volatility, particularly during the months of January, March and
July.
Prediction one: Despite a still-strong U.S. economy, there will be no Fed rate hikes in the
next year.
"I think the Fed is somewhat intimidated by the market... And the market, if anything,
thinks the Fed is ahead of itself on higher rates."
Prediction two: The market winning streak will continue and the broader indexes will be up
in 2020.
"Eight out of nine times that we've had an up year like we had this year, it's followed by
another decent up year. Not quite as strong, but still strong, and so I'll go with
history."
Prediction three: Stocks may be up, but there will be several periods of volatility,
particularly in January, March and July.
"In late January, we'll get to see if there's going to be a Brexit now that [Prime
Minister Boris] Johnson got a sweeping move in Parliament . And will he, in fact, push
through a no-deal Brexit? That could make the markets very volatile and jumpy. The next thing
will be the U.S. election. Number one, in early March, we will get Super Tuesday, and
one-third of the U.S. populace will vote. And we'll get to find out where [Democat Mike]
Bloomberg's strategy is. Who looks to be the leader? Has anybody locked it up? If not, then
it could be a brokered convention, and that date would be in the middle of July, when the
convention will be."
The truth is that the one-percenters got a $1.5 trillion tax cut, another trillion in
military industrial complex spending, continued suppression of workers' wages, more imperialist
war (even as we now know that Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan were all lies and fraud that cost
the American people trillions of dollar), more big pharma raping the **** out of us all,
totally ignoring of climate change that will destroy humanity, etc. The 99% got nothing. That's
why Trump can only talk about how great his trade deal is going to be for you one day. And how
great it will be when there one day are no more "illegals" (which nobody noticed at all being
removed from society when Obama set the "illegals" deportation record (which still stands
today).
No, we the 99% have gotten ****. Trump, the billionaire president (who's paid zero taxes
over the past decade) has done nothing but **** the **** out of the American people for the
benefit of himself and his one-percenter BFFs. No right-wing member of the base can point to
even one tiny thing that Trump has done that personally benefited them. That is not true for
the 1%. Remember, even the Democrat/liberal 1% have done fabulously well under Trump. But
regardless of how much the Trump base loves him, he's done absolutely nothing of any substance
for them. NOTHING! That's why Trump has to try to tell you what to say to your relatives.
Please acknowledge the difference between Democrats/Liberals and Progressives.
Establishment Democrats like to call themselves Progressives, because they want to gain
popularity.
The real Progressives like Jimmy Dore, Status Coup, Michael Tracy, and anti-war real
Jewish activists/journalists like "The Gray Zone" Max Blumenthal, Arron Matte, The Real News,
Glen Greenwald have been against this fake #RussiaGate/ Muller/ Impeachment scandals.
"Jimmy Dore: until we fix Democratic Party elites' corruption, we won't defeat Trump's"
https://youtu.be/ufduP0bLfAY
"Aaron Maté: from Russiagate to Ukrainegate, liberals enlist in self-defeating Cold
War: https://youtu.be/M9ZzERen_U8
"Max Blumenthal on how corporate media manufactures consent for war and regime change":
https://youtu.be/oOV-RYnpQH4
Despite the latest Sino-American phase one deal to ease tensions over trade, one former top
US official is now calling for a decoupling between both economies, reported the
South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Former US ambassador to India Ashley Tellis explains in a new book titled Strategic Asia
2020: US-China Competition for Global Influence -- that the world's two largest economies have
entered a new period of sustained competition.
Tellis said Washington had developed a view that "China is today and will be for the
foreseeable future the principal challenger to the US."
"The US quest for a partnership with China was fated to fail once China's growth in economic
capabilities was gradually matched by its rising military power," he said.
Tellis said Washington must resume its ability to support the liberal international order
established by the US more than a half-century ago, and "provide the global public goods that
bestow legitimacy upon its primacy and strengthen its power-projection capabilities to protect
its allies and friends."
He said this approach would require more strategic cooperation with allies such as
Australia, Japan, and South Korea.
"The US should use coordinated action with allies to confront China's trade malpractices
should pursue targeted decoupling of the US and Chinese economies, mainly in order to protect
its defense capabilities rather than seeking a comprehensive rupture."
The latest phase one deal between both countries is a temporary trade truce -- likely to be
broken as a strategic rivalry encompasses trade, technology, investment, currency, and
geopolitical concerns will continue to strain relations in the early 2020s.
A much greater decoupling could be dead ahead and likely to intensify over time, as it's
already occurring in the technology sector.
Tellis said President Trump labeling China as a strategic
competitor was one of "the most important changes in US-China relations."
The decoupling has already started as Washington races to safeguard the country's
cutting-edge technologies, including 5G, automation, artificial intelligence, autonomous
vehicle, hypersonics, and robotics, from getting into the hands of Chinese firms.
A perfect example of this is blacklisting Huawei and other Chinese technology firms from
buying US semiconductor components.
Liu Weidong, a US affairs specialist from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told SCMP
that increased protectionism among Washington lawmakers suggests the decoupling trend between
both countries is far from over.
The broader shift at play is that decoupling will result in de-globalization ,
economic and financial fragmentation, and disruption of complex supply chains.
If Boeing and the FAA are still at loggerheads in six months, with still no date for the 737
Max going into service, it isn't just that pressure on Boeing's suppliers and customers will
become acute, perhaps catastrophic for some. Boeing's practice of booking future, yet to be
earned, profits as current income means persistent negative cash flow could lead to an
unraveling. The last time we saw similar accounting was how supposedly risk free future income
from CDOs was discounted and included in the current earnings of banks. Remember how that movie
ended? 1
Now hopefully we are just being unduly worried, since the downside of the 737 Max remaining
grounded with no date as to when it will go into service is more considerable than the press
seems to appreciate.
But a big red flag is the lack of any specifics about where the FAA and Boeing are, and I
don't mean just dates. For instance, if the FAA and Boeing were not all that far apart on a
remedy and the FAA just needed Boeing to satisfy the agency on a few more issues, you'd expect
both sides to be making cautiously positive noises. The absence of anything like that is a bad
sign.
Muilenburg Ouster: Too Little, Too Late
Muilenburg left under duress. It appears that the shock of Boeing needing to suspend 737 Max
production to conserve cash flow roused the board out of its complacency.
Even though Boeing issued a tart statement showing an intent to chart a better course, and
Mr. Market obligingly gave the stock a 3% pop, there's every reason to regard the shift as too
little, too late. 2 We were hardly alone in saying early on that Boeing was totally
botching how it was handling the grounding.
From a March post :
Boeing is breaking the rules of crisis management and making what may well prove to be a
bad "bet the company" wager .
It is important to recognize that the global grounding of the 737 Max is the result of
trying to compensate for questionable, profit-driven engineering choices by adding a safety
feature (the MCAS software system) and then going cheap on that, in terms of selling planes
not kitted out fully and acting as if it was perfectly fine to install software that could
take control of the plane and barely tell pilots about it. Two paragraphs more than 700 pages
into a manual does not qualify as anything approaching adequate disclosure.
Boeing is taking steps that look designed to appear adequate, when given the damage done
to the 737 Max and its brand generally, this isn't adequate. No one has any reason to give
Boeing the benefit of the doubt. The scale of this failure is so large that it's called the
adequacy of FAA certifications into question. Until this fiasco, aviation regulators deferred
to the judgment of regulator in the country where the manufacturer was headquartered. But
with China embarrassing the FAA by (correctly) being the first to ground the 737 Max, foreign
regulators will make their own checks of Boeing's 737 Max fixes .and that practice may
continue with other US-origin planes unless Boeing and the FAA both look to have learned a
big lesson. So far, Boeing's behavior says not.
Some other posts explained the need for a Muilenburg defenestration, starting in March:
The fact that Muilenburg remained long past his sell by date is a sign of how deeply
disconnected the Boeing board is. It seemed reminiscent of the way Wells Fargo chairman and CEO
John Stumpf held on, trying to maintain the pretense that institutionalized unrealistic sales
goals that virtually required employees to cheat customers were the doing of 'a few bad
apples". The Wells directors may have rationalized their head-in-the-sand posture by the fact
that Stumpf had long been a key driver of Norwest Bank and later Wells' acquisition and growth
strategies, which then became his downfall. After Stumpf left, the bank was caught out in even
more abuses, such as unwarranted car repossessions and force placing home insurance.
Even the complacent Boeing board should have been jolted out of its stupor in November.
Then, FAA director Steve Dickson pushed back on Boeing pressure to recertify the 737 Max by
year end via his weekly video to the troops, which was guaranteed to be picked up by the press.
The bit about the 737 Max starts at 0:59:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/N71s4_Q3Fe4
This message should have alarmed the Boeing board, since Dickson made clear he was not
committing to any timetable. But apparently Boeing continued to pressure the FAA privately,
leading Dickson to make an even more pointed statement earlier this month. Even so, the Boeing
top brass seemed incapable of recognizing that it wasn't anywhere near having the plane back in
business until Muilenburg initiated the production halt, sending shock waves through Boeing's
supply chain.
Boeing Still Not Taking the Crisis Seriously Enough
There isn't much reason to be optimistic about the installation of the Boeing chairman David
Calhoun as CEO effective January 13. On paper, he looks credible: former executive from GE's
jet engine operation; a seasoned "corporate fixer,"
according to the Wall Street Journal , with a turnaround at Nielsen to his credit; and a
Blackstone executive.
But being an executive at a top parts maker isn't the same as leading a regulated business
and one in deep trouble. And the depiction of Calhoun as a fixer suggests that his strong suit
is behind-the-scenes cleanups and talking customers and money people out of trees.
Mr. Calhoun and Boeing finance chief Greg Smith, who will serve as interim CEO, face the
same challenges as Mr. Muilenburg: winning back the confidence of government officials,
suppliers, airlines and the traveling public. Mr. Calhoun spent much of Monday phoning some
of those constituents, including lawmakers, a Boeing spokesman said.
This is completely and utterly backwards. Yes, as a matter of ritual, a new CEO calls key
constituents ASAP and he needs to call more people and do more listening if he's inheriting a
big mess.
But Boeing has a massive immediate and longer-term problem and they are reality problems,
not perception, aka "confidence" problems.
The 737 Max needs to be fixed . The fact that the FAA hasn't accepted the software patches
that Boeing has attempted and that the FAA is having to tell Boeing to drop its pressure is a
strong tell that whatever Boeing-submitted remedies the agency is looking at now may not do
either, or at best, they will require simulator training, something Boeing has fiercely
resisted.
If our reading of the tea leaves is correct, and Boeing is still not close to satisfying the
FAA and foreign regulators, who have no reason to cut the US manufacturer any slack, all of
this confidence building is besides the point.
In fact, as a gander through the Wall Street Journal's comment section shows, even more
readers are saying they won't get on the plane until it has been in the air for quite a while.
Now those sentiments may not translate into action. If you are coming home and you find to your
surprise that your plane is a 737 Max, will you really refuse to board and go on a later
flight? The flip side is serious refusniks can make a point of booking as often as possible on
737 Max-free Delta. And the longer the plane's grounding continues, the more the bad press will
feed passenger fears.
Boeing needs a fundamental turnaround . Quite a few journalists have described how Boeing's
once vaunted engineering prowess went out the window as a result of the reverse takeover by
McDonnell Douglas. The decision to go cheap and expedient with a 737 product extension in the
form of the Max, as opposed to biting the bullet and building a new fuel-efficient narrow-body
that would presumably be the first in a new long-lived model family, typifies the short-termism
that has brought Boeing to this sorry juncture. Its bean-counters-masquerading-as-leaders have
bizarrely shed what even MBAs ought to recognize as its core competence, namely its engineering
prowess. The production problems with the 787 Dreamliner and the embarrassment of an aborted
"Starliner" space capsule demo are further evidence of institutional rot.
Troublingly, Calhoun has been a Boeing director since 2009, so he participated in the board
approval of the 737 Max in August 2011. In other words, he's never had a problem with the
long-term gutting of Boeing's engineering chops; there's no reason to think he has adequate
perspective on how bad things have gotten.
A former Boeing senior leader, who asked for anonymity to speak freely, admitted doubts
about whether Calhoun is the one to revive the company's historic culture of engineering
prowess that's been eclipsed for years by a focus on financial performance.
"If it's just more cost cutting, that's not what we need," he said. "We have to restore
the culture of engineering excellence that has served us so well for over a century."
In an interview, Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at aviation consulting firm
Teal Group, offered similar concern that Calhoun may have "the wrong skill-set to change
Boeing."
"He's been on Boeing's board for 10 years, coming from the private equity industry and
from GE in the Jack Welch era," Aboulafia said. "This is the kind of résumé
that Boeing has not been lacking and it's not as if he's bringing a fresh perspective."
He said Boeing needs a leader now with not only a firm grip of the jetliner market but
also with "a strong understanding and appreciation for engineering."
"That's what's been lacking at Boeing, and that's what this company really needs," he
said.
Analyst Rob Stallard at Vertical Research Partners argued that Calhoun won't be at the helm
all that long, that his job will be to get the 737 Max flying and choose a successor. But as we
suggested, our sense remains that Boeing is not all that close to having the 737 Max approved
as safe. It's not clear what happens if the crisis were to drag on, say, for another six
months, and still have no timetable for resolution. And given how much of an overhaul Boeing
needs, a more engineering-minded CEO, even in the unlikely event Calhoun would recommend one to
the board, would only be a first step on the airplane maker's road to recovery. The company
needs an executive-level housecleaning, but Calhoun and this board are unlikely to back a
radical course change.
We thought our take on Boeing's managerial rot was grim, but a fresh edition of the highly
regarded industry newsletter Leeham News if anything says we haven't been caustic enough.
From yesterday's release :
Boeing needs to take bold steps -- and I mean, really bold steps -- to recover from the
worst crisis in its 103 year history.
I outlined in an Oct. 7 column why the top executives and half the Board of Directors need
to go. This was limited to the MAX crisis.
Things only got worse since then
As noted in the Oct. 7 column, the Boeing board is entrenched.
It also fails to include a pilot of high stature -- someone like a Chesley Sullenburger or
the late Al Haynes. Given what's happened, a former investigator from the National
Transportation Safety Board or a former member of the EASA regulatory agency might be a good
addition.
The GE cost-cutting culture in the executive ranks and the Board that's been prevalent for
20 years needs to go.
Crucial is a Board that has fresh perspective and is not married to "shareholder value" as
the No. 1, 2 and 3 priorities.
Shareholder value is important, of course. But not at the expense of safety and investing
in new airplanes rather than derivatives of a 50-year old design (the 737) or a band aid (the
777X).
While I agree wholeheartedly that Boeing needs to get rid of most of its C-Suite and a lot
of its board, I don't see how this happens any time soon. Board directors have staggered terms.
It is hard to see what deus ex machina could force half of the board out in short order. And
only a new board would be sufficiently ruthless about the current executives.
As with Wells Fargo, the most likely source for root and branch reform at Boeing will be
outside pressure, but absent a bona fide crisis, again it is hard to see big enough changes
soon. Even so, Boeing's suppliers and its 737 Max customers are already at their wits' end.
Many of them are powerful companies in their own right, either nationally or in Congressional
districts. If Boeing does not get its act together on the 737 Max in relatively short order,
the knock-on effects will only get worse.
Boeing is one of the few companies that uses a technique called program accounting. Rather
than booking the huge costs of building the advanced 787 or other aircraft as it pays the
bills, Boeing -- with the blessing of its auditors and regulators and in line with accounting
rules -- defers those costs, spreading them out over the number of planes it expects to sell
years into the future . That allows the company to include anticipated future profits in its
current earnings. The idea is to give investors a read on the health of the company's
long-term investments.
As we indicated above, the last time we saw anything remotely like this booking
not-yet-earned future profits on a current basis was with CDOs, and that very abuse was a major
driver of the financial crisis. The idea that Boeing could unravel seems far fetched. But the
idea that AIG could fail would have been dismissed as fantastical in 2006.
Again, it's easy to dismiss these concerns as a tail risk. But those tails are fatter than
you think.
___
1 We have way more detail on how this scheme worked in ECONNED and past posts,
but here is the short version: The links between the demand for CDOs and the "negative basis
trade" that was arguably a widespread form of bonus fraud. When a AAA instrument, in this case
the AAA tranche of CDOs, was insured by an AAA guarantor (think AIG or the monolines), internal
reports typically treated it as if all the expected income in future years was discounted to
the present. As we know now, in the overwhelming majority of cases, bonuses were paid on income
that was never earned. This mechanism was THE reason many banks would up holding so much AAA
CDO inventory – it was more lucrative for the traders to retain and "hedge" it than sell
it.
2 We see
via Leeham News that this appears to be a widely-shared take; for instance, Lion Air used
the same expression in a letter commemorating the Muilenburg exit.
Re: Boeing's fierce resistance to simulator training:
This has been portrayed, no doubt correctly, as a cost-containment agenda to make the
Max-8 more appealing to customers.
The thought occurs that avoiding simulator training might also have a "conceal the
behavior" agenda, in that if the simulator were to actually train pilots on the new
"features", they would have the privilege of memorable experiences of trying to override MCAS
and correct the stabilizer trim (with the 'too-small' manual trim wheel) while plummeting
toward earth.
Simulator training for MCAS would IMO have been "anti-marketing" for this aircraft.
Which suggests a marketing chicken-and-egg catastrophe, in that MCAS was supposed to avoid
the need for retraining, but having implemented MCAS, retraining remains undesirable as it
might disincentivize customers whose pilots, having experienced simulated MCAS emergencies,
might be, quite reasonably, chary of flying this craft.
Boeing was selling the MAX as requiring almost no retraining to save airlines expense and
lost pilot time. Southwest in particular insisted on it.
Canada has called for removing MCAS, the trigger of this whole problem, from the MAX. Am I
correct that modifications required to get the MAX back in the air at some point void
common-type recertification and lead to the need for a ground up certification like a clean
sheet design? It seems in that case Boeing would be truly screwed.
The comment from the Canadian source was the view of someone at the regulator, and not a
formal position. So it isn't clear how widely his opinion is shared.
No MCAS = permanent grounding of the plane. The hardware would have to be redesigned,
which would take the better part of a decade.
Have no idea about the issue of re- versus de novo certification.
I have the impression that without MCAS, the 737 Max-8 cannot safely ascend steeply on
takeoff; the AoA is too high and the tendency is to pitch up, risking a stall. I think that
means a significantly shallower and slower ascent to cruising altitude.
The cynic in me wonders if the retirement fund should be short the parent company, rather
than long.
I posited previously that the MCAS solution, with dual AoA sensors was the best design
Boeing could find for the bad flight characteristics, a hardware problem, for the 727
Max.
And that now Boeing is trying to invent a better than best solution.
Software cannot compensate for bad hardware. Or one cannot fix a hardware problem with
software.
One did wonder about the wisdom, the risk, of continuing to build a flawed plane for
inventory when it could not fly safely.
It appears to be throwing good money after bad with a plan based on "then a miracle
occurs."
Nowhere have I read how much money Boeing saved by using single AOA sensors rather than
dual sensors. Not sure that the polling would have corrected the MCAS software, but supposing
it did:
If x = cost savings / plane, y = # of planes, and -$7bn equals return on the investment,
then wouldn't ROI = -$7bn / (x*y) * 100%.
Which whatever figures x and y represent, this decision would seem to me to result in one
of the most astonishing ROIs in history. Operation Barbarossa probably doesn't even come
close.
An aside, interesting how many people are treating the 737 Max crashes as Black Swans when
in fact they are the inevitable result of allowing MBAs to make engineering (and many other)
decisions.
From a number of sources (my first notice of this was at the Moon of Alabama 'blog), the
737 flight control computer, which is based on a 286-class CPU, is at the thresh-hold of
overburdened with the current software.
It's conceivable to me that the single-AoA data input was related to limitations on how
much additional number crunching the FCC could deal with.
It seems likely that improvements to the software or the cockpit user interfaces, if
possible, would add to the computing burden, and if the FCCs are already near their limit,
the fix may be very difficult to realize.
Those tens of billions of dollars spent on share buy-backs are looking very poorly
spent.
I've spent (wasted?) years of my early IT career developing real-time software in
286-based environments. These things are not really processing powerhouses, but there is
more. When you design hardware around them, the options for channeling interrupts, I/O,
accessing memory etcetera are limited. In short, the whole hardware package puts severe
constraints on what you can do.
If the developers effectively did run into FCC capacity problems forcing them to
oversimplify MCAS implementation, the only ways out that I can see are either leaving out
MCAS completely (the "Canadian option") or replacing the 286-based FCC with something
significantly more powerful, with the latter option probably required in the future
anyway.
If the FCC indeed needs to be redone and replaced on all 737max planes, don't expect them
to fly anytime soon. I would wager a rough guess of a few years at least not to speak of
what's needed to re-certify the thing, or the plane.
From what I have seen elsewhere, mainly Moon of Alabama, replacing the FCC would be such a
major change as to require re-certifying the entire aircraft. There are also issues of the
existing software being written within the limitations of 286-based CPU's as another
commentator has mentioned. Boeing really has boxed themselves in.
Fired? No way. He and the rest of the directors officers C-suiters current and former and
their family members should be in the jump seats on every flight.
Same goes for GM's coverup delay on Cobalt ignition switches and Ford Focus locking
transmission in drive.
As a software engineer with many decades experience I can say that (a) this is generally
true, but (b) it doesn't stop people from trying it on every project!
"We'll fix it in software" is a punch line at almost every tech company.
From my experience in embedded software controlling hardware, fixing hardware "problems"
depends on what the hardware issues (problems) are.
For example stable and predictable non-linear behavior in a sensor may appear to be a
problem, but may it be easily compensated for by software that compensates for the sensor's
behavior.
If the hardware "problem" does not have stable and predictable behavior, then one can't
fix it in software. For example, one can't compensate for a completely failed or unstable
sensor.
One can view data corrupting noise in information channels as a "hardware problem" that
has been extremely well compensated for by software for many years in computer networks and
hardware.
The success of the computer hard drive depends on recorded cyclic redundancy codes that
are used to verify that data read back is indeed "good", otherwise a re-reading of the drive
is launched.
Effectively this software compensation for noise in communications channels traces back to
Claude Shannon's 1948 work on information theory.
The masters of fixing hardware problems with software have to be in NASA, the people who
care for space probes that develop glitches over the years. It's amazing how they can work
around one device after another breaking down, using computers with the processor power of a
microwave oven.
Not that those fixes would pass FAA, but when you don't have a choice you can do a lot
with software.
I'm still unclear about why the MAX hardware is "bad", other than it doesn't respond to
pilot input the same way the earlier 737 hardware did. They therefore added MCAS as a type of
compatibility layer. That seems like a reasonable idea to me except that 1) the pilots should
know that it is there, and 2) there has to be a way to turn it off if things get weird! And
of course 3) Both 1 and 2 require additional pilot training which was a no-go the way the MAX
program was sold.
Now that everyone knows about MCAS though, the above all seem fixable. The MAX has other
problems as well that might further delay re-certification. I see mention of the FAA pushing
back at Boeing, so I guess we will see whether the FAA is really out of Boeing's pocket this
time.
MCAS was not well documented and past flight envelope protection systems had less
authority and could be physically overidden as the flight crew went through the process to
turn off the system. In the past main trim and autopilot stabilizer trim had cutout
switches.
Airbus uses three sensors, each feeding a different make computer. The three results are
compared, consensus among at least two determine the truth. So to equal this, Boeing needs
two more sensors, not one more. But as noted, their ancient computer chip might be maxed out.
IMO they need to emulate airbus, but maybe that costs too much takes too long? How costly to
retrofit the existing fleet?
At least it would avoid activating the Frankenstein Mcas unnecessarily.
Almost. For an A320 series aircraft there are three Angle Of Attack (AOA) sensors and
three Air Data Inertial Reference Units (ADIRU). The sensors and the ADIRUs come from the
same vendor and no intermix is allowed between vendors or often even mod level. Each ADIRU
gets AOA information from channels in two AOA sensors and information is compared internally
between the two channels in the ADIRU and then also cross checked with the other two ADIRUs
calculations. With three units each flight crew display has two sources to choose from as
well as a standby fourth system with limited functions. Also, all systems using ADIRU data,
such as the two Flight Augmentation Computers (FAC), will fault mismatched inputs. All of
these systems have been refined over the thirty years of service of this type of
aircraft.
One of the features of the 1980/90s Airbus A320 avionics architecture is that trend
monitoring of air data systems (Pitot, Static, AOA) and inertial systems is on the horizon.
This will speed up the refinement process of the systems. In the past flight test aircraft
and operator's aircraft equipped with special add on data logging equipment was needed to
refine the systems.
I wouldn't be surprised if Boeing either went back to a SMYD type computer with two AOA
channels to remove the MCAS function from the FCC or added a boat-load of aerodynamic add-ons
to correct the pitch fault.
(See the Beechcraft 1900 airliner or a McDonnell Douglas MD-90 as an example of
aerodynamic patches.)
I understand that Airbus even had independent teams program the software for each AOA
sensor so as to make it impossible for a software bug to be replicated across sensors.
I don't believe that is true. An airframe manufacturer (Airbus) will often offer several
vendor supplied units that meet specifications. So there may be two or three AOA sensor
suppliers to choose from and two or three ADIRU suppliers. The AOA vane only supplies
position information, the ADIRU then takes the input and determines how to use the position
information while also comparing the calculations the other two ADIRUs come up with. Some
tolerance between inputs is allowable and wild information such as when airspeed is too low
it make the AOA track correctly (Take off and landing roll) is a function located inside the
ADIRU. A few years ago an A320 operator reported problems from the three AOA sensors freezing
due to water in the bearing area which led to the ADIRUs not being able to discriminate
between bad inputs so a Service Bulletin was issued to replace that model/mod level units.
(It's a very dynamic environment and depending on what regulating authority an operator is
under controls how the operator updates their aircraft. FAA and EASA are usually very
strict.)
The independent team approach is usually used in flight control and flight guidance, where
you would want one team to determine flight command and the other team to determine
monitoring due to the same input. The two systems have different architecture and if a
disagree occurs the computer drops out and the next in the chain of control takes over. Early
on control would be Intel architecture and monitoring would be Motorola, which led to a lot
of "I'm a PC/I'm a MAC" jokes when troubleshooting in service faults.
>added a boat-load of aerodynamic add-ons to correct the pitch fault.
Thanks *very much* for this full comment. From this lookie-loo's seat the above really
seems to be the least-bad option, but it'll be interesting to see what shakes out from the
OEM, the FAA, and other regulators.
Quite a climb-down involved with that proposed solution, though.
Adding: aerodynamic fixes for the MAX's issues would almost certainly
reduce fuel efficiency, and airlines would not be happy with that.
That could be partly why that approach (which the MAX's first
chief test pilot recommended, IIRC) was not approved by
management.
This reminds me of the apocryphal quote attributed to a Spanish admiral before the Armada
sailed "we have the confident hope of a miracle (to beat the English)."
What I'm wondering about is the current administration is (correctly) letting the FAA put
safety first in this instance at the expense of business and growth.
They cannot do otherwise since the EU and China, especially China, keeps them honest.
If it were a purely inside-US problem, the plane would already be in the air again is my
guess. However, they cannot sign off on Boeing when China has legitimate reasons not to.
As for the article's outlook of a possible AIG-type disaster, I sort of agree this is
likely. Tho it will more be a GM like disaster and rescue plan since Boeing is in
manufacturing. There is no way in gehenna (family blog) Boeing will fail. Boeing is certainly
much more too big to fail than any other manufacturing business in the US. The US government
must and certainly will step in when, probably not if, Boeing's C-suite is incapable. This
kind of rescue is also the only realistic way imho, how this totally incapable board can be
fired for incompetence and a back to engineering roots leadership installed. If the US
government has the will to do this of course. In the name of national security even, which
this is, for once, actually sort of, is. Boeing has a military business side as well, which
needs the civilian one and vice versa.
So I see a "it has to get a lot worse before it can better" scenario for Boeing, since
there have obvious problems at the whole Boeing board-level, not just with Muilenburg. The
govenment on the other side will only be allowed to step in if actual bankruptcy looms, which
is still quite a bit away.
Having worked for the gov and seen many directors come and go, I ask that too! He doesn't
fit in any of the categories that the pols usually pick for those positions, i.e.,
politically well connected, good looking, yes men with MBA's and with little knowledge of the
agency they are supposed to direct.
And how is he keeping that job – the pressures on him must be enormous. He must have
a backbone of steel.
Isn't it obvious? The FAA is well and truly screwed if they don't improve their
credibility with their foreign counterparts as quickly as possible. That credibility will not
come from being acquiescent–it will come from visibly demonstrating that they are
willing to cause severe pain to the industry they regulate when it is necessary to act in
such a manner.
I would be absolutely astonished if it turns out that the FAA was not significantly
responsible for Muilenburg's very justified firing. And whatever Calhoun's shortfalls, I
suspect that he has learned the lesson and will not be stupid enough to pressure the FAA
going forward (at least not publically).
He was appointed in August. Someone in the Trump Administration must have been
uncharacteristically alert enough to realize that getting the FAA seen to be credible again
with other regulators was a necessary if not sufficient condition for saving Boeing's hide.
The US losing its ability to have its certifications accepted by other regulations is deadly
to US aviation.
We said in our November post we thought Dickson was the real deal. Glad you agree.
You could easily be right, but I didn't see it similarly.
"Straight talk from Steve" sounds like more PR-concocted spin to me, from the title on
down. Telling staff to take their time (privately) is good, for sure, but publicly pointing
it up feels like "Reassure Investors™ 101", to me.
Dickson came from Delta Airlines where he had experienced the transition to good
management, leadership and the development of a strong safety culture. He also has experience
with flying Airbus and Boeing aircraft.
I think they're pretty well hosed. My understanding is they tried to fix a physics (or
physical) problem with software. The engine is simply too big for the plane. Until they
replace the engine or resize the plane, the Max is a no-fly for me. It's hard enough to
accept fly by wire when the plane is engineered correctly. To make it so the plane doesn't
want to stay aloft by design and then patch with a single, non-redundant sensor/system is
lunacy.
I could see Boeing splitting into three parts: defense, commercial air, and parts/service.
Much like when the financial services guys were caught, they will attempt to "bad bank" the
commercial air division.
This will be a case study one day. Hopefully the MBA/managerial class will learn the right
lesson from this. Absolute tragedy.
Seems like an opportunity for an Airbus only Southwest knock-off
If they were capable of learning this wouldn't have happened in the first place. The
reason they are not capable is pride and arrogance. It isn't the first time in history that a
company was endangered or destroyed by short-sightedness and hubris. Examples abound:
GM
LTV
GE
HP
Bethlehem Steel
Sears Roebuck
The list goes on and on and on .
In each case, the downfall happens after the "financialization" of the makeup of the board
of directors. Simply put, when they make [money] instead of [product], they whole thing
eventually tanks. The best years at Bethlehem was when it was run by steel men. The best
years at GM was when it was ran by car people. The best years at HP was when it was run by
engineers.
Failure is an easily observable and repeatable, historic pattern of activity.
I am wondering if this fiasco along with the others exposes some psychological fault of
humans. It's like taking a moderately intelligent person -> modern business school
education -> functional idiot that couldn't find his way out of a paper bag -> company
is destroyed.
Boeing seems to be merely collateral damage of the particular path the American Empire has
chosen to take to die. Is there anything that can arrest this trajectory? Anyone, anyone?
Making stock buybacks illegal would certainly help – if done ten years ago. But now?
And I found out recently that in 2017 Boeing had its own employee pension plan invest in its
own stock. No one could possibly think that was anything than a stock buyback. A board that
does that might as well be in private equity. But then they are. Jesus.
> If they were capable of learning this wouldn't have happened in the first place. The
reason they are not capable is pride and arrogance.
I am not sympathetic to Boeing's plight (and in fact very much hope that criminal charges
will be laid in this instance, which in fact may be required for credibility reasons), but if
you want to understand the situation rather than polemize, you need to understand the
double-bind that "they" are in. Arrogance (especially to pre-conceived political views) was
likely a factor, but the point is that if they did not choose to prioritize short-term
earnings, they would have likely lost their jobs in favour of someone who pursued more or
less the same strategies that was eventually followed.
The system-wide incentives/penalties cannot be emphasised enough–this is not limited
to Boeing.
"The system-wide incentives/penalties cannot be emphasised enough–this is not
limited to Boeing."
Indeed, as I said, there is a long list of failure..
However, I do not buy the argument of "The competition made me do it". Dong something
provably wrong and risking everything because of what competition * might * do is
flawed logic at best.
The game is dirty because the payers are dirty, and that is an individual choice that they
make. These are the same class of people who have been lecturing us all for decades about
"personal responsibility" while concurrently doing everything possible to evade said
responsibility. See: regulatory capture, FAA.
"Waah waahh mommy the market made me do it!!" is BS, and those who disclaim responsibility
should not have any, nor should they have the rewards when things go right.
That is not true. Costco has for two decades stared down analyst pressure to pay their
store employees less. Costco understands that having well paid employees (by retail
standards) is important and in the end helps insure better margins by:
1. Making affluent people feel better about shopping at Costco, since they get cheap
prices without abusing the help. The guilt reduction factor is apparently non-trivial in
where they choose to shop
2. Reducing shrinkage. Way less employee theft at Costco
3. More motivated and cheerful employees, which pays off per #1 (making Costco less
unpleasant as a big box crowded store) and probably other ways.
Boeing is vastly more powerful than Costco. It is in a much better position to sell a "we
need to focus on engineering to compete with Airbus" story than Costco to make an analogous
pitch in retail.
Former proud HP employee here. I left the company before the fiasco that was Carly
Fiorina–why do the 'business' TV shows still trot her out?–but my BFF was there
and saw how the reverse takeover by Compaq she engineered nearly destroyed the company. The
collegial HP employees were no match for the hardened Compaq infighters.
> Failure is an easily observable and repeatable, historic pattern of activity.
Oops–this comment was actually what originally had me wanting to reply.
Failure in *any* system is actually the norm, which is why it is so "easily observabel and
repeatable" and so historic. Competitive advantages are difficult to come by and tend to be
very fleeting, and complex systems (e.g. current sociological, business, economic, political,
etc. environment and the interactions between them) are inherently hazardous and failure
prone **by their very nature**.
There is no way to remove thie failure-prone aspect of the system indefinitely–it is
endemic to the nature of the system itself. Any organization (or human, for that matter)
almost always has to ride the line between profits (revenues and costs) and other factors
such as safety. Inevitably, they eventually make the wrong decisions, but it is statistically
inevitable that they eventually do so.
The trick is to structure things such that failure on a single decision or two does not
threaten survival of the individual or entity. That requires truly understanding the key
aspects of the system and the impacts of any decision, which is probably impossible
Happy Holidays to every one! And especially to Jules for rescuing so many of my comments
from spam. This new laptop has the world's worst mousepad – I never know if I am
left-clicking or right clicking or double clicking – so it's no surprise that Skynet
thinks I'm spamming.
'Boeing's practice of booking future, yet to be earned, profits as current income means
persistent negative cash flow could lead to an unraveling.'
Is it to late to re-adopt that old maxim again that it is not a profit until it goes into
the bank? After reading this excellent article, I am betting for sure that there will be not
return to the skies for this bird in 2020 and it is Boeing's fault. Will Trump be persuaded
to bail out Boeing down the track? Hard to say.
Came across an article a long time ago which talked about Boeing having so much of the
plane built under contract. I think that Japan got a lot of these contradicts. But Boeing was
even willing to have the wings built by foreign countries which was a good as giving their
technology away which would be a long-term disaster for Boeing but excellent for short -term
executive bonuses.
Bonus points too for PK in pointing out that for Ryanair, that this plane is as good as a
petard.
The problem is that aviation is long term affair. So if Boeing starts new plane now and
even if everything goes more or less accordig to plan, it will be more than decade before
they will be selling the pieces for more than it costs them to manufacture. And if the plane
is success, it will become reliable cash cow somewhere in its second decade.
You can count profit only after the money is in your bank, but that means it's like first
ten years you are digging multibilion hole, next ten years you are trying to get out of it
and after that you start to show profit.
I don't think it's possible to make any sense of such programs without guessing into far
future.
What if the process of building a new plane would reveal yet another deep problem within
the company? What if that is a bigger part of their reluctance, even bigger than the brain
dead greed?
Interesting point. Do they even have the capabilities in designing, testing, and
certifying an entirely new plane anymore? Looking at the other botches in engineering, not
just the MAX. one wonders.
A small but still important issue may be that, even though Boeing seems to have 'captured'
the regulators, consider the pressure on any regulator that recertifies the 737 max. There
has been so much publicity, that if ANYTHING happens to a 737 max in the year after it
restarts flying, the government employee that signed off on it will be toast there is likely
a very powerful administrative conservatism at this point that may be very hard to overcome.
These are planes, remember, and flying at 560 mph at 35,000 feet is a very difficult regime
and things can go wrong even on 'perfect' planes Who wants to bet their career and reputation
that NOTHING will happen to any 737 MAX?
As regards the comment by "Summer," yes, another thing to consider. What if Boeing is no
longer capable of competently designing a modern cutting-edge airliner? What if it has
outsourced and downsized its core engineering capacity so much that it just can't do it any
more? That's the sort of ability you can't rebuild by just hiring another 100,000 foreign
nationals on H1B visas – talented though they may be as individuals, they don't have
the collective experience needed. Look at how hard it has been for other countries to make
competitive jetliners, not even Japan has succeeded yet.
Boeing has captured the FAA but not necessarily Canadian and European regulators. The
Canadians are still pissed about the forced sale of Bombardier to Airbus while the Europeans
have Airbus. Then there are the Asian regulators .
I think Boeing has pushed the 737 one plane model too far. They should have bit the bullet
several years ago and designed a new plane. By now they would probably be getting it
certified by the FAA with glowing comments from the airlines.
With regards to revamping an existing plane vs. designing a new plane from scratch, from
my experience as a design engineer retrofitting something is almost always header to get
right than something purpose built from the start, as long as the specifications and wish
list are rational (the F-35 had too many competing wishes to be an efficient program and
would have been better as 2-3 separate planes) . Retrofits sound good at the beginning
(especially to accountants), but you are always end up trying to shoehorn something into
somewhere where it doesn't fit, which is what happened to the 737 MAX.
You missed that the FAA under new director Steve Dickson is standing up to Boeing. He and
they realize the worst thing for the FAA (and US aviation) would be for other regulators to
reject its certification if and when it approves the 737 Max. The Chinese may do so out of
cussedness. but they need the Europeans and the Canadians to agree pretty pronto for
credibility's sake and to reassure passengers.
All of our regulators–FAA, FTC, SEC, etc.–have to feel under siege after more
than 50 years of the GOP convincing everybody that 'government is the problem' and
regulations, ALL OF THEM, are bad*. The loyal civil servants who hang in there and do their
level best in spite of declining funding and morale have my gratitude and respect.
* Unless, of course, a 'conservative' is harmed, then it's "Why didn't the government DO
SOMETHING?!"
Clinton appointee Arthur Levitt had only modest regulatory goals, that of protecting
retail investors. He was nevertheless under almost constant attack from the Senator from
Hedgistan, Joe Lieberman, who threatened to and if memory serves correct, actually did cut
the SEC's budget to hamstring the agency.
Just to add that the fact that some regional airlines are heavily into the 737 is likely
one reason Boeing didn't make an all new airplane. With a largely similar plane parts can be
shared, mechanic retraining less necessary etc.
Boeing and Airbus have systematically improved flight safety significantly over the last
40 years. The industry is facing a serious challenge with degrading pilot skills,
globalization and the demand for more automation to further improve safety. These are the
most complex vehicles made by mortals. The best engineers use to go into aerospace, now they
go into other industries. So, increased demands as we take safety from 5 sigma to 6 sigma,
and increased competition for the best engineers.
People are simply wrong to attribute this to MBAs, McDonnell Douglas, accounting and the
like. It is frankly laughable to call McDonnell an MBA culture. The challenge is to engineer
better in a tougher competitive market. Boeing has the capacity to continue doing great
things. People in the cheap seats maybe need to change their view on how they value these
markets.
A fair question to ask is why did Boeing use its free cash flow to buy back stock, rather
than invest in 737 replacement? The answer to that question is important to the Boeing story
and US innovation generally. Answer that question, and we can fashion a better strategy for
US technology competitiveness.
Isn't that decision to use free cash flow for stock buybacks rather than investing in
product or processes itself evidence of financialization and "an MBA culture?"
If there are degrading pilot skills, why did Boeing skimp on pilot training, obscure the
MCAS system in the pilot manual, and focus more on "shareholder value" than passenger safety?
Talented engineers (like most talent) are attracted to pay and working conditions and a
challenge: Boeing offered none of that. It seems an MBA culture pushed the talented engineers
aside.
Boeing chose not to challenge its engineers to build a truly modern aircraft to drive
profits into the future. It chose to jury-rig an old air-frame to maximize current profits;
at the expense of 346 living souls.
In large part the degrading of pilot skills is in the developing countries. There is a
vast difference between a trained-by-rote pilot and an airman. The earlier flight of the Lion
air MAX had a pilot that brought it in with a defective angle of attack sensor. Subsequently
the airline installed a junky rebuilt angle of attack sensor, then a much less capable pilot
took off and crashed the same plane.
The developed countries have their own concerns with adequate pilot training and a
generation of experienced pilots nearing retirement age as the industry grows.
"It is laughable to call McDonnell an MBA culture." Make shit up much?
What planet are you from? Numerous press accounts based on insider views say the reverse.
Start with Moe Tkacik's widely lauded report at the New Republic:
This New Yorker account similarly provided specific incidents from after the reverse
takeover of how Boeing prioritized its financials over engineering, and how its executives
abandoned practices like process improvement that were both pro-safety and pro-long term
profits:
Very good article, IMO. The board is still invested in the beast that might turn the giant
company to its knees. I foresee the application of MMT ideas to the rescue of both shale oil
drillers and Boeing. B-bonds and Oily-bonds combined make Boiled Bonds.
One aspect of this fiasco is that it is a systemic problem rather then an isolated one;
the bad practices that led to this situation are supposed to be due to importing the business
practices of the military side of the company to the civilian side. This means that the same
practices that led to the 737 MAX are operating elsewhere– in the military side, and
likely causing problems there as well. Of course, the existence of bad practices in the MIC
isn't exactly news, which may be why little is said about it, because everyone already knows
this.
The same can be said about the FAA role in this mess.
Yah, let's see if "we" can parse what went wrong with the 737MAX as supposedly being the
next dependable (safe and profit-generating -- discounting externalities) Boeing aircraft
wafting millions of people off on vacations or junkets or to those terribly important
business meetings. Got to be a fix in there somewhere, right? Some combination of change of
leadership and re-institution of some set of corporate values, maybe undoing some of the
outsourcing (though there you have another set of claimants for bailouts,) whatever.
I see only one bit of notice given to a really much bigger failure here: It takes a huge
amount of petroleum extraction and combustion, with those "knock-on effects" like what is
happening in Australia. Looks to me that people are so wedded to their own immediate
gratification that a big swath of the planet will eventually be stripped of most species,
including our own, as ambient conditions become "untenable."
Of course the French and Chinese and even the evil Russians are going to keep building
their jet fleets to use or sell on to lesser places, all aiming at "growth" and profit. Fun
to project and speculate what might or will be happening to the seeming juggernaut known as
Boeing. Also perversely fun to project and speculate on the fate of the biosphere, which
suffers because of MCAS-class and MBA thinking. But the PR tells us that Boeing is
indispensable to life as we know it, having settled parasitically into its niches in commerce
and war.
"Fix" Boeing? That's like nursing back to health the sociopathic guy who has sworn to rob
and kill you.
Is there any analysis, or perhaps it was included in Congress questioning that never made
it on air, that shows whether the performance of the MAX in the conditions that MCAS was
designed to counteract (i.e. increased likelihood of stalls while turning during a steep
climb vs. other 737-rated designs) was objectively not allowed (meaning the flight envelope
can't pass even under a new type certification) or just relatively not allowed in order to
keep the 737 type cert?
This to me is the key to understanding how the FAA is proceeding. If it's just an issue
relative to keeping the 737 certification, then seems like there are more paths forward here
to get the plane back in the air, albeit still painful for Boeing. Just take out MCAS and
call the plane a Boeing 740 or something under a certification different than the 737. That
seems to be what that Canadian engineer is implying can be done when he asked about whether
it makes sense to just remove MCAS.
But if the FAA would never approve the performance of any plane, even under a new type
cert, that operates like the MAX would without MCAS, then this is a more severe problem. It
really seems like the hardware and cockpit design issues raised as Boeing iterates their
"software solution" overwhelm the baseline design, and there is no way to certify this
airframe.
This blog, by an engineer who has worked for Boeing in the past is the best source I have
found on the matter. As yet I have not found any source definitively stating the extent of
the handling characteristics of the MAX without the MCAS active. Without the MCAS the
documents I have been able to find say only that the sick force/g does not progressively
increase in two flight regimes (the higher speed range wind up turn and at lower speed with
the flaps retracted) but I haven't seen any statement about whether it meets the
certification requirements for handling characteristics of a transport category aircraft if
the MCAS is not installed. We do know that without the MCAS it couldn't be sold as requiring
very little in the way of type specific training for pilots of earlier versions of the 737
and this was the main driving force behind the design. I have also read that implementing
input from multiple AOA sources and giving a disagree warning when they don't say the same
thing would have required enough type specific training that this would have resulted in the
aircraft failing to meet the guarantees Boeing had made to customers about transition
training needs and associated costs.
We have posted repeatedly that the 737 Max is dynamically unstable to a degree that is
unprecedented in a passenger airplane. MCAS was intended to compensate for that. No MCAS or
fix that accomplishes the same end, no recertification.
And a recertification of the 737 Max a new model would take even longer even if that were
possible.
We are saying this looks like a serious problem. If Boeing were able to fix MCAS
sufficiently to satisfy the FAA and other regulators, it probably would have happened by now.
At least the FAA and Boeing would be making more positive noises about making progress.
Boeing could well be the next AIG. If the 737 Max is not certified to carry passengers in
four or five months, the negative cash flow will hit the fan. The only way it can fly safely
in the near term without a new flight control system is to require extensive training and
washing out pilots who can't stay out of high angle of attack stall conditions and resolution
of the confusing cockpit warnings. It will cost lots of money.
Everything is coming together. Neoliberalism and neutering government do not work. Worse
the media propaganda avoids mentioning that the world has changed and has gone multi-polar.
Russia has cut itself off of the internet. Donald Trump has wandered off into impeachment
anger and know nothingness. Professionals are required to design, build, maintain and fly the
737 Max safely. Boeing profited from short changing them. If this is finally the start of the
"haute" middle-class revolt against the profit driven exploitative aristocracy, not just
Boeing will be restructured.
"..A senior Boeing executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the new Forkner
documents contain the same kind of "trash talking" about the FAA as in the October
messages.
He said he doesn't think they will be explosive but that they will generate headlines and
continue to be a problem for Boeing. He added that there might be additional documents he is
unaware of.
Forkner poses a continuing problem for the company, because he hired his own high-powered
criminal defense attorney instead of lawyers retained by Boeing, and the company doesn't know
what he's doing, the executive said.
While Forkner invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid
turning over records to DOJ, Boeing doesn't know if he might cut a deal with prosecutors in
exchange for his cooperation, he said.."
Interesting phrasing in this Seattle Times piece on this Christmas Eve docu-dump.
Placing financials over engineering at Boeing has put one of the crown jewels of US
capitalism at risk. This affects the entire economy. A functional ruling class would not have
let this happen or at least would be moving fast to correct it if it had happened.
"Still, Muilenburg, 55, is in line to receive $26.5m in cash and stock as part of his exit
package.
His payout could reach as high as $58.5m, depending on how it is structured, according to an
SEC filing, including a pension of $807,000 annually and Boeing stock worth another $13.3m"
– Reported in The Guardian
Cult of The CEO – a strange cult to me. As a regular schnook reading about this
mess, I can't fathom these friggin contracts given to corporate executives. This guy signed
off on what was a fatal disaster. The bucks evidently don't stop here
Why is there no sward to impale himself on? Instead, this crazily opulent goodbye gift,
pre-arranged, in a no-skin-in-the-game world $58.5 million. Something to do with
Capitalism?
I'd always argue the Romans were the most effective in ancient times. Even they struggled
to control Gaul it was still ahead of it's time technologically and administratively. The
British were exceptional at extracting resources in modern times but couldnt even control the
Irish and Scottish. Great philosophical discussion at the end of the day with no clear
winner. I'd say the Mongols were amateur at best compared to the afore mentioned
The British Empire never really fell. It simply mutated into Anglo-American empire. Teddy
Roosevelt and Edward VII should be credited for forging the coalition (With Redshield pulling
the strings from behind).
You can thank these three entities for total takeover of USA and for warming the seat for
Woodrow Wilson (the patsy who ushered in Income Tax, Federal Reserve and America's entry in
WW-1).
Yes. I don't know why the US Empire isn't counted. After all, what is an empire? It's a
central government that controls other countries. By that measure - and I think it's a fair
one - the US Empire includes most of the world that isn't controlled (one way or another) by
China and Russia. What does it not control? A few squabbling little places that
struggle for independence - but every empire has those. Remember that the US of A began as an
empire, in 1789. ( See link below for a brief summary I wrote a few years ago .) Just
because America's is not ordinarily referred to as an empire doesn't deny the reality. When
the USSR existed, we didn't deny its status as an empire; we didn't pretend that Poland and
Bulgaria weren't controlled from Moscow.
Leftist revolutionaries have long been in the habit of reworking the calendar so as it
make it easier to force the population into new habits and new ways of life better suited to
the revolutionaries themselves.
The French revolutionaries famously abolished the usual calendar, replacing it with a
ten-day week system with three weeks in each month. The months were all renamed. Christian
feast days and holidays were replaced with commemorations of plants like turnips and
cauliflower.
The Soviet communists attempted major reforms to the calendar themselves. Among these was
the abolition of the traditional week with its Sundays off and predictable seven-day
cycles.
That experiment ultimately failed, but the Soviets did succeed in eradicating many
Christian traditional holidays in a country that had been for centuries influenced by popular
adherence to the Eastern Orthodox Christian religion.
Once the communists took control of the Russian state, the usual calendar of religious
holidays was naturally abolished. Easter was outlawed, and during the years when weekends
were removed, Easter was especially difficult to celebrate, even privately.
But perhaps the most difficult religious holiday to suppress was Christmas, and much of
this is evidenced in the fact that Christmas wasn't so much abolished as replaced by a
secular version with similar rituals.
Emily Tamkin writes at Foreign Policy :
Initially, the Soviets tried to replace Christmas with a more appropriate komsomol
(youth communist league) related holiday, but, shockingly, this did not take. And by 1928
they had banned Christmas entirely, and Dec. 25 was a normal working day.
Then, in 1935, Josef Stalin decided, between the great famine and the Great Terror, to
return a celebratory tree to Soviet children. But Soviet leaders linked the tree not to
religious Christmas celebrations, but to a secular new year, which, future-oriented as it
was, matched up nicely with Soviet ideology.
Ded Moroz [a Santa Claus-like figure] was brought back. He found a snow maid from
folktales to provide his lovely assistant, Snegurochka. The blue, seven-pointed star that
sat atop the imperial trees was replaced with a red, five-pointed star, like the one on
Soviet insignia. It became a civic, celebratory holiday, one that was ritually emphasized
by the ticking of the clock, champagne, the hymn of the Soviet Union, the exchange of
gifts, and big parties.
In the context of these celebrations, the word "Christmas" was replaced by "winter."
According to
a Congressional report from 1965 ,
The fight against the Christian religion, which is regarded as a remnant of the
bourgeois past, is one of the main aspects of the struggle to mold the new "Communist man."
the Christmas Tree has been officially abolished, Father Christmas has become Father Frost,
the Christmas Tree has become the Winter Tree, the Christmas Holiday the Winter Holiday.
Civil-naming ceremonies are substituted for christening and confirmation, so far without
much success.
It is perhaps significant that Stalin found the Santa Claus aspect of Christmas worth
preserving, and Stalin apparently calculated that a father figure bearing gifts might be
useful after all.
And Christmas replaced the celebration of the winter solstice, the sun was "reborn" on
the 25th when it appeared to be heading north again from those viewing it in the northern
hemisphere, hence why so many gods were "born" on the 25th of December, and is why
Christianity was influenced by pagan traditions like the winter solstice and spring
equinox.
Exactly. The Bolsheviks were Jewish. The real Russians are Orthodox and celebrate
Christmas on the sixth, when the three wise men followed the star and found Jesus Christ.
And why should all the Christians in the world follow Western style Christmas? Christians
in the rest of the world have different cultures, they don't need the tree. However they
still use the tree, same in the Middle East!
Mother Russia is back with Christmas, the symbolic birthday of the Son of God visiting
His creation as the Son of Man, offering men eternal life, advising them to keep faith in
the Father and treat all men, the Fathers children, as brothers. He was murdered for His
troubles and that murder was interpreted to be a blood sacrifice to appease a vengeful
Father who needed appeasement for the wayward ways of His dark, primitive, confused and
often innocent children. To this day all Christian denominations adhere to this barbaric
blood sacrifice inspired interpretation carried forward from global ancient superstitions.
Much of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is admixed with the superstitions of
men, and mischaractetizes the nature of the Father as it was represented by the Son on
earth.
In the meantime in America the same Bolsheviks who wrecked Russia are busy trying to
remove God from the country and turn his Sons symbolic birth rememberance into "Happy
Holidays" and the Son Himself into some kind of ****** rebel human. They are after all the
antichrist, it is evident in their adoption and rekindling of the once extinct temple of
Caiaphas that murdered Christ and in the adopters present day legacy.
They will not succeed for the Truth is that we are all the children of the Father under
the management of the Son. The Father of all existence will not be challeged by mere men
some who follow the legacy of His fallen child Lucifer, that elevated angel who thought too
much of himself. Earth is a spirit rebellion sphere whose lifeforms obtain energy via
various forms of predation arising out of its primitive animal evolution. We must learn to
tame this via sentient evolution by applying our free will to this purpose. The Son is
still here to gently suggest the way without inpinging on our individual sovereign free
will. Suggesting ways to leave behind many of our natural predatory animal ways and lean
towards more spiritual methods of love, brotherhood and ever evolving win/win cooperation.
We are spirit animals who will evolve towards the spirit, it is our destiny as ordained by
the Father, and whether you know him or not you will pass towards the Father through the
guidance and watchcare of the Son, our King. This us the fundamental true Christian
message, the Fatherhood of God over ALL men and His desire that we recognize all men as the
brothers we are because all have the same Father and each is valued by the Father as if he
were the only one.
Putin whether a Christian or an atheist gets political reality and meaning of commonly
shared culture for stabilizing a nation. The same happened during Roman Empire, when
Constantine the Great converted into Christianity 313 AC and used the faith skillfully to
unite a crumbling empire. Does anybody believe he was a devoted Christian or is Putin now
one.
The U.S. as the Global Cop Gorilla calls the shots. The Gorilla would never allow a value
added technology to be utilized by its client states no matter how benign unless it itself
was selling it. E.g., the Nord Stream 2 strong arm of Germany is the Gorilla doing its Mafia
henchman schtick at its best.
A floating nuke plant is actually a very clever idea. The U.S. Navy has been powering
aircraft carriers (floating cities) for decades. I wonder why no one has thought about
developing a floating Nuke plant before.
Japan Proposes Dumping Radioactive Waste Into Pacific As Storage Space Dwindles by
Tyler Durden Tue,
12/24/2019 - 23:30 0 SHARES
As the decade comes to an end, the future of nuclear power in the west remains in doubt.
Almost nine years ago, a powerful underwater earthquake triggered a 15-meter tsunami that
disabled the power supply and cooling at three of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
power plant.
The accident caused the nuclear cores of all three damaged reactors to melt down, prompting
the government to issue evacuation orders for all people living within a 30 kilometer radius of
the damaged reactors, a group that included roughly 100,000 people.
And the evacuation zone:
Now, the
Epoch Times reports that Japan's Economy and Industry Ministry has proposed that TEPCO
gradually release, or allow to evaporate, massive amounts of treated but still radioactive
water being stored at the power plant. TEPCO, or the Tokyo Electric Power Co, is the owner of
the Fukushima plant, and is also responsible for leading the clean-up of the damaged
reactors.
But as regulators have stepped in to try and guide TEPCO as it struggles to dispose of all
the contaminated water, one ministry has offered a proposal that is almost guaranteed to anger
the fishermen who have resisted all of TEPCO's other plans for dumping the contaminated
water.
In its Dec. 23 proposal, the ministry suggested a "controlled release" of the contaminated
water into the Pacific. Offering another option, the ministry also suggested allowing the water
to evaporate, or a combination of the two methods.
But the ministry insisted that the controlled release of the contaminated water into the sea
would be the best option because it would "stably dilute and disperse" the water from the
plant, while also allowing the government and TEPCO to more easily monitor the operation.
And as
we have reported , the Japanese fishing industry isn't the only party that objects to the
government's plan. South Korea has also complained to the IAEA about TEPCO's plans to dump the
radioactive water.
The project is expected to take years to fully dispose of the water.
Still, the fishermen are bound to be skeptical because of one radioactive element that TEPCO
has been unable to remove from the contaminated water: It's called tritium.
Fukushima fishermen and the National Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations
have strongly opposed past suggestions by government officials that the water be released to
the sea, warning of an "immeasurable impact on the future of the Japanese fishing industry,"
with local fishermen still unable to resume full operations after the nuclear plant
accident.
The water has been treated, and the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., states that
all 62 radioactive elements it contains can be removed to levels not harmful to humans except
for tritium. There is no established method to fully separate tritium from water, but
scientists say it isn't a problem in small amounts . Most of the water stored at the plant
still contains other radioactive elements including cancer-causing cesium and strontium and
needs further treatment.
Tritium is routinely found in nuclear explosions and other nuclear accidents, including the
meltdown at Three-Mile Island back in 1979. But experts at the IAEA recommend that the
controlled release of the tritium-laced water at Fukushima into the sea is probably the best
option for handling the situation - even if the Japanese decide to wait until after the Summer
Olympics in 2022.
The ministry noted that tritium has been routinely released from nuclear plants around the
world, including Fukushima before the accident. Evaporation has been a tested and proven
method following the 1979 core meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the United
States, where it took two years to get rid of 8,700 tons of tritium-contaminated water.
TEPCO says it is currently storing more than 1 million tons of radioactive water and only
has space to hold up to 1.37 million tons, or until the summer of 2022, raising speculation
that the water may be released after next summer's Tokyo Olympics. TEPCO and experts say the
tanks get in the way of ongoing decommissioning work and that space needs to be freed up to
store removed debris and other radioactive materials. The tanks also could spill in a major
earthquake, tsunami, or flood.
Experts, including those at the International Atomic Energy Agency who have inspected the
Fukushima plant, have repeatedly supported the controlled release of the water into the sea
as the only realistic option.
On Dec. 22, some experts on the panel called for more attention to be given to the impact
on the local community, which already has seen its image harmed by accidental leaks and the
potential release of water.
"A release to the sea is technologically a realistic option, but its social impact would
be huge," said Naoya Sekiya, a University of Tokyo sociologist and an expert on disasters and
social impact.
Other possible strategies for disposing of the contaminated water have included injecting
the water deep into the Earth's crust. Another strategy, which called for storing the nuclear
waste in large industrial tanks outside the plant, was ruled out because of fears that leaks in
the tanks could contaminate some of Japan's most important fishing waters.
And as liberal family members arrive packing a battery of Maddow-approved, Media Matters
talking points beamed directly into their outrage cortex, conservatives may find themselves ill
equipped to handle the firehose of vitriol pouring out of their loved ones.
In anticipation of holiday triggerings, the 2020 Trump campaign reserved the website "
snowflakevictory.com " two weeks
ago, filling it with all sorts of facts and logic that can be deployed to "win an argument with
your liberal relatives," which can also be viewed in short video clips set to patriotic
background music.
51 minutes ago (Edited)
I read this earlier on ZH, but it was priceless. Just tell your liberal and Democratic relatives that since the House of Representatives
impeached Trump, he is now eligible for two more terms as President. Thanks GunnyG for posting this earlier in this thread.
41 minutes ago (Edited)
If Trump had actually done anything for the American masses, we
would all know it and no list of talking points issued from the Trump administration would be
necessary.
adding: I listened to part of an NPR report on the French strikes. It was a first person
account by the young US reporter (judging from her voice) living in Paris about how the
strike was affecting her. She started out well enough, then complained that the strike makes
it hard for her nanny to travel to-from her apartment, making it a terrible hardship on the
nanny, and upsetting her childcare arrangement. Then her real complaint about the strikes was
aired: it's making it ever so much harder for her, the intrepid reporter, to travel to all
the upscale holiday parties she's been invited to. (Oh, the humanity!)
NPR foreign correspondents today; "My nanny is inconvenienced. I am inconvenienced.
Workers' pensions are all well and good, but what is that compared to my inconvenience?!"
Not exactly Eric Sevareid reporting from London during the blitz
Tulsi had the sense to see impeachment for what it is, a farce that only helps Trump, and
look how she is treated by the party for refusing to go along with it.
Transgenders are the new saints of the alt-left. No one dare criticize them, everyone
wants their child to be one, no expense must be spared in glorifying them.
I read JHK's post-apocalypse 4 book series. Don't remember any trannies. A word of advice
to Jim. If you want the establishment media's seal of approval you better put some drag
queens in volume 5. Tough ones who read library stories and practice kung-fu on the bad guys.
Some real role models for the young kids.
As I recall, the critics said your female characters were too feminine. So include some
butchie bitches next time. The New York Times might finally have a kind word.
Considering there are three billion Muslims determined to rule the planet with their
Sharia Law and forcing everyone to face Mecca five times a day to "pray" while waiting for
Mahamed to return, adding to that millions of Christians, many nutty enough to believe we
need a nuclear war destroying Israel in order to save it and cause Jesus to return on a
cloud, plus good luck converting the billions of Chinese to ANY of this! Destroy the planet
in order to save it! Light a candle, take off your shoes and burn some incense! The end is
nigh!!!
Human beings on this planet, I have come to believe, are all just batshit crazy and
delusional regarding their various "beliefs".
Just look at what that nut editor of "Christianity Today" did to President Trump!
For God's sake! (cough), Trump and his GOP crew are against abortion, going so far as to
stop ALL funding of abortions with federal money, they hate the Commies and on and on.
Probably the fact that neither Trump nor his wife have set foot in a church on a Sunday
morning in four years toting his well-worn Bible, was what really did him in! No regular
photo-ops like with Jimmy and Rosalind or Bill and Hillary. Tsk, tsk
Seriously. I am almost 70 years old and have lived in Los Angeles for the past ten years.
This place has no soul. My friend and I want to leave and buy a small house in a nice town
with normal people. The only problem is that any of these towns that might exist are filled
with depressed people, some slumped over their steering wheels dying of heroin overdoses
while their toddler children sit in the back seats of the cars freezing, screaming and
starving.
Starving for food, warmth and affection.
Too old to fight the snow and frozen roads and sidewalks. Wish I had a pretty lake to swim
in Spring, Summer and Fall with a nice mild Winter.
And the quaint town of my childhood back again.
I wish it wasn't so, but I will probably die here in this hell hole with nothing but my
memories of swimming lakes and pretty gardens with bluebirds and robins and cardinals
singing.
And in my memories I can hear my grandma saying, "If wishes were horses, beggars would
ride".
I think the Democrat establishment has decided to throw Mayor Pete under the bus. This is
why Warren went after him and some donors appear to be stabbing him in the back. A
fascinating situation to watch.
Just read the same article a few minutes ago and thought of what Yves had said today of
those hired by Mckinsey, "the firm tries very hard to hire individuals who are very insecure
and want badly to do well, including at the firm."
Was driving cross country on debate day listening to NPR as much as I could stand. More
than the combined total of the last fifteen years. They played up Pete as if he were a sports
star about to wipe every opponent off the playing field. And they never mentioned Sanders by
name but included a clip of his voice saying something along the line of "of course taxes
will have to go up" at least a hundred times.
And their impeachment Dem/Donald derangement syndrome made me wonder just what kind of
drugs have they put in the coffee/water cooler.
Intentional dumbing-down of all who listen without question or nausea.
Mayor Pete's base is upper-middle-class, middle-aged, moderate-to-liberal-leaning, white
people. Which is pretty much NPR's core donor base. Their Buttimania could just be fan
service, like the most recent Star Wars movie.
It's painful for me to agree that the early efforts of so many journalists of integrity
have evolved into what you noticed today. I trusted Noah Adams despite him never pleading to
be my trusted news friend or emotional support in hard times.
so much of the bare language–nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and their linking
language is replicated by varying 'personalities' that I find it difficult to believe that
talking points are not circulated by NPR Editors hourly.
I am also increasingly agitated in my listening by being force fed soooo many stories about
Pop Culture 'hooked' to a 'news' item–like Hanukah Shopping events filed under
Religion.
Sympathy, Eureka Springs. We listen to NPR on long trips; usually the choices are
Religion, Country or NPR. Or Sports Talk Call-Ins. I invariably end up banging my head on the
dashboard (not while it is my turn to drive!) and/or screaming into thin air.
Yikes! You could get an old mp3 player and fill it up with your favorite music and
podcasts. It would completely transform your car travel experience. If you don't have a hook
up for the player to the stereo, you can get great FM transmitters for 20 dollars or so. Good
luck!
yeah.
i got out of the habit of listening to the radio a long while ago. we're in an in between
major markets place where if the wind is out of the north, we get stations from abilene and
san angelo out of the south, san antonio.
none very good reception.
only local stations(2, in different towns) are porter wagoner fans that at least have live
coverage of the ball games(for wife,lol. i can't stand it)
so i just got used to having music in my head when on the road, and literally forget that
there's a thing called "radio"..
When I was bicycling around the country, I carried a harmonica. Didn't play it while I was
riding, but boy, would I pull that thing out in campgrounds.
Never became a good player, but gawd, that little Hohner was fun!
Well when we drive the 2 hours each way to San Diego, usually at least once a week, my
wife reads the NC links and commentary. Sometimes she'll save the comments for the trip home
and get so excited when she refreshes the page and , "There are 243 comments, that should
keep us."
A two pack of Buttigieg stories, showing that all the Atlantic should be asking for
Christmas is a clue
First, they're confused about why
people in the Democratic pre-primary season aren't flocking to Mayo Pete when he's
enthusiastic about maintainjng establishment power and welcoming "former republicans" to the
fold. As if "Radical Centrism" hasn't passed its sell by date yet.
And then, they're confused about
why young people don't like Mayo Pete. Clearly it's jealousy for his success and not his
noxious ideas mixed bland centrism.
It's pretty clear Mayor Pete is running for President for two reasons. His own
gratification and to receive big payouts from donors after his time in office. He has nothing
substantial to offer to anyone. People in Indiana don't even like him enough to support him
for a state office. He hasn't done anything worthwhile in little South Bend to show any
promise for higher office either. His history and accomplishments vary between meritocratic
box checking and crude virtue signaling. He's the political equivalent of a bunch of old rich
men trying to create a boy band out of whole cloth. There's nothing there. And the people at
the Atlantic can't figure out why voters don't like him???
My interpretation of Mayo Pete is: identity politics for white, middle-aged,
middle-to-upper-class Americans.
NC linked to a poll the other day that showed that 97% of his supporters were white,
compared to around 47% for Bernie and around 70% for Klobuchar, the next highest after the
Mayor.
Most Democrats hate Republicans (true technically any vote will do when it comes to an
election, but it's often more emotional than rational and not going to be much of a selling
point to Dems, that you are attracting the other tribe they hate and kumbaya).
There is the problem of him not being qualified of course, and not likely to win. The
annoying part is centrists seem to have picked the least promising centrist candidates ever,
so if we are stuck with a centrist, it's going to be one that seems to have little shot of
winning.
Democrats hating republicans? Evidently not when they are DINOs, like Senator Peters
(MI).
But, seriously, I am tired of those in the grip of Trump derangement who say that they
will vote blue no matter who the nominee is. I just wish they would sit out the Democratic
primaries and leave the selection to people who actually follow and mull over issues.
I saw where some celebrity was defending him and his donors and described him as
"guileless ". I was flummoxed. Guileless? He may be over his head as mayor and as candidate,
but there is nothing real there.
I do look at records, but Buttigieg has always struck me as the smart kid B*ll Sh*tting
their way through an assignment when ever I hear him speak. Donors buying a Trojan horse I
get but I don't know how anyone sees sincerity.
I'd like to see a list of his accomplishments in office. What? There isn't one. Oh, wait,
apparently he was really good on fixing the potholes in the roads.
Kind of like Obama, when I encounter the faithful, I pretend to go along, and then ask
"what do you think were Obama's best three things he accomplished while in office?"
Squirming in chair, followed by vague platitudes, followed by "he would have done a lot if
he wasn't blocked by Republicans
I caught a TV news piece over the weekend that claimed Buttgag had been voted "most likely
to become president" (or something to that effect) when he was a senior in high school. That
got me thinking "Why does this not surprise me?"
Well because I had encountered exactly this type of person in some advanced placement
classes in my HS senior year who claimed that his goal was to one day become president of the
US. The word that comes to mind when I recall that guy is "insufferable". I had never
encountered anyone before that proudly displayed such naked ambition. I hadn't really thought
much about that fellow since then – until Buttgag came on the scene and I was
immediately reminded
Yes, the new Netflix series "The Politican" is exactly about one of these types (student
at a rich high school who plans to be president). Not sure yet exactly what angle they take
since I've only watched the pilot and other random bits, but it's at least interesting. As
with any good writing they seem to want to show complexities of the character.
That spec screenplay was considered one of the greatest unproduced films for many years
before it was finely shot.
Read it sometime, there are plenty of copies in circulation. It's simply brilliant.
The film differs slightly from the script, I suppose it was hard to do it exactly. There
are two different endings that I've seen. Neither is the one from the original script.
On my current tangent about proper language. I like that we are able to make fun of his
name and turn it into new nicknames. The guy's name has "butt" in it, after all. Let's free
our inner 12-year olds.
As a gay man, I call him Butt****, with all the derision normally associated with that
term. Theoretically that should be offensive to me.
Booty judge is a spook, Obama the phony pseudo-endorses Warren – the Democrat party
is going to nominate a Republican whether the plebes like it or not!
"The letter is interesting for what it says about Buttigieg's increasingly conventional
and hawkish foreign policy and the preferences of many Democratic foreign policy
experts."
And as liberal family members arrive packing a battery of Maddow-approved, Media Matters
talking points beamed directly into their outrage cortex, conservatives may find themselves ill
equipped to handle the firehose of vitriol pouring out of their loved ones.
In anticipation of holiday triggerings, the 2020 Trump campaign reserved the website "
snowflakevictory.com " two weeks
ago, filling it with all sorts of facts and logic that can be deployed to "win an argument with
your liberal relatives," which can also be viewed in short video clips set to patriotic
background music.
51 minutes ago (Edited)
I read this earlier on ZH, but it was priceless. Just tell your liberal and Democratic relatives that since the House of Representatives
impeached Trump, he is now eligible for two more terms as President. Thanks GunnyG for posting this earlier in this thread.
41 minutes ago (Edited)
If Trump had actually done anything for the American masses, we
would all know it and no list of talking points issued from the Trump administration would be
necessary.
There is nothing wrong with hierarchy in and of itself. After all, is seniority to mean
nothing? Is demonstrated competence meaningless? Should an individual's efforts to build
skill sets be treated as equivalent to the couch potato's efforts to build up an epic Body
Mass Index (BMI)? Should notions of winners and losers be banned from athletic competitions
and sporting events, along with any associated prizes? Everybody gets a trophy whether they
run the race or not?
As I understand it there were plenty of routes through life in the Soviet Union in which
people could distinguish themselves, perhaps more than in the West. There were plenty of ways
to rise in society's hierarchy. None of those routes resulted in fabulous and opulent wealth,
but if some did then the society would necessarily be able to afford fewer such routes.
The only problems with hierarchy in society is if the process of rising in it is corrupt
(being born into wealth, for instance) or if the span between the bottom and the top of that
hierarchy is larger than what the population considers fair.
"...The only problems with hierarchy in society is if the process of rising in it is
corrupt (being born into wealth, for instance) or if the span between the bottom and the top
of that hierarchy is larger than what the population considers fair."
That is true, the only problem being (for the lower classes) that by the time the gap
becomes evident to all, mechanisms of 'law' and power (plus bread and circuses) have been set
in place to prevent or repress the necessary changes from happening from below. This is
evident to the US populace as the few who saw it coming and protested could not rouse enough
support when it could have mattered. We looked and still look for helpers among the children
of the hierarchs because those are the only ones who can work within the current system. So
far, such are few, if they exist at all. But we saw with FDR it only takes one or two. (I
don't know if you saw my previous post that finance was not the governmental powerhouse it
has become in FDR's time. First they came for the legislators!!)
I still have hope that the system in the US will of its own weight become unweildly. There
are already signs of that happening in the increasing inability of US powermongers to have
their way on the world stage, and in their search for ephemeral 'boltholes'. And while they
are still able to inflict harm on others and do so with reckless abandon, I do not believe
they are ready to risk their own skins or those of their near and dear - or the fortunes they
have staked everything to gain. My hope is that even that damaging ability will peter out as
climate change necessities force a refocus on what actually threatens said skins and
fortunes.
"80% sure that Mifsud is dead". What has become of the Russiagate professor? InsideOver
(Furzy Mouse).
When is a CIA asset not an asset?
When the asset is made up out of thin air.
Somebody should make a movie out of this. Yes, Ghost Writer comes close and I highly
recommend it if you've not seen it. But this takes it a big set forward.
Of course, the director will have to be especially attentive to character development.
That could be difficult unless it's thought thru.
Top recommendation, Polar Socialist. Alec Guinness by way of Graham Greene makes for an
excellent combination to poke fun at the whole world of state-sponsored spycraft.
timbers: The story posted today is bizarre indeed. So the university consortium (Agrigento
doesn't have its own university and the plan is to continue to sponsor a branch of the
University of Palermo) wants a leader and ends up with Mifsud?
From Italian Wikipedia, entry Agrigento:
Agrigento, oltre ad essere sede di varie scuole medie superiori (alle quali sono iscritti
anche studenti provenienti dalla provincia), ospita una sede distaccata
dell'Università degli Studi di Palermo. Il polo universitario della provincia di
Agrigento nell'anno accademico 2008/2009 contava 3.613 studenti iscritti, così
suddivisi nelle 6 facoltà attivate nella sede decentrata
Mifsud, head of a small branch of a major university? Odd. And then he starts
grifting.
Yet Agrigento is the home turf of Andrea Camilleri and, supposedly, one of the models for
his city of Vigàta. This story is definitely something for Inspector Montalbano.
Background: Il Giornale was founded by Indro Montanelli, who was a "classic" Italian
conservative. He was notoriously stubborn. Kneecapping didn't stop him. One of the products
of Il Giornale is Marco Travaglio, who founded Il Fatto Quotidiano. So the source is
legitimate. I can't find an Italian version of the article, which is strange.
But the oddities of the obviously dodgy Mifsud and the hapless Papadopoulos are just part
of the whole saga of the current palace coup.
No wonder Nancy Pelosi can't figure out to send the charges to the Senate.
In March 2016, Papadopoulos first met Mr. Mifsud impromptu at Link Campus University, a
for-profit college in Rome that instructs NATO intelligence personnel.
Link Campus instructs NATO intelligence personnel[2] and the US intelligence and law
enforcement officials are also involved with Link.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have
sent their officers to lecture at Link.
Regarding "the mysterious audio file sent to the editors of Adnkronos and Il Corriere
della Sera", that was found to be fake by the "expert in forensic sciences, one of the most
important in Italy working in the field", it is interesting to note that NATO-aligned
propaganda outlet Bellingcat
claims the voice in the recording is authentic (i.e. Mifsud).
Bellingcat deciding to "investigate" something is always a giant red flag.
"... we have sent the factories to distant lands and eliminated your jobs, and all the meaning and purpose in your lives -- and cheap stuff from Asia is your consolation prize. Enjoy ..."
"... Homelessness in America runs way deeper than just the winos and drug addicts living on the big city sidewalks. ..."
All the people of America, including the flyovers, are responsible for the sad situation
we're in: this failure to reestablish a common culture of values most people can subscribe to
and use it to rebuild our towns into places worth caring about. Main Street, as it has come to
be, is the physical manifestation of that failure. The businesses that used to occupy the
storefronts are gone, except for second-hand stores. Nobody in 1952 would have believed this
could happen. And yet, there it is: the desolation is stark and heartbreaking.
Even George Bailey's "nightmare" scene in It's a Wonderful Life depicts the
supposedly evil Pottersville as a very lively place, only programmed for old-fashioned
wickedness: gin mills and streetwalkers. Watch the movie and see for yourself.
Pottersville is way more appealing than 99 percent of America's small towns today,
dead as they are.
The dynamics that led to this are not hard to understand. The concentration of retail
commerce in a very few gigantic corporations was a swindle that the public fell for.
Enthralled like little children by the dazzle and gigantism of the big boxes, and the free
parking, we allowed ourselves to be played.
The excuse was "bargain shopping," which actually meant we have sent the factories to
distant lands and eliminated your jobs, and all the meaning and purpose in your lives -- and
cheap stuff from Asia is your consolation prize. Enjoy
The "bones" of the village are still standing but the programming for the organism of a
community is all gone: gainful employment, social roles in the life of the place, confidence in
the future. For a century starting in 1850, there were at least five factories in town. They
made textiles and later on, paper products and, in the end, toilet paper, ironically enough.
Yes, really.
They also made a lot of the sod-busting steel ploughs that opened up the Midwest, and cotton
shirts, and other stuff. The people worked hard for their money, but it was pretty good money
by world standards for most of those years.
It allowed them to eat well, sleep in a warm house, and raise children, which is a good
start for any society. The village was rich with economic and social niches, and yes, it was
hierarchical, but people tended to find the niche appropriate to their abilities and
aspirations -- and, believe it or not, it is better to have a place in society than to have no
place at all, which is the sad situation for so many today.
Homelessness in America runs way deeper than just the winos and drug addicts living on
the big city sidewalks.
It seems there's a major political party exactly working against a common American
culture. They jeer at the thought of it. It seems to be the main platform, above all
else.
It is a major party alright BRH, but it is no so much political as it is economic and
socially stratified. They are opulent, self consumed and greedy as hell (literally). There
can only be so many parasites sucking the lifeblood out of any herd of servant beasts, and
they can only suck so long on their hosts before the poor beasts fall over and die. And that
is the tipping point, where we lose enough life blood that we can no longer stand upright,
but drop to the deck and are consumed. It is the classic Goose that laid the Golden Egg fairy
tale being acted out in real life and coming to a neighborhood near you soon.
Log in to Reply
Beautiful, thoughtful post Jim, yet to be honest it fills me with a sense of anxiety, and
this is simply because the catastrophic events you forecast, although for the better in the
long run (as they will compel a return to a world made by hand, or the recovery of human
scale) will nonetheless bring much suffering to a lot of people ( including my own family). I
would personally like to believe there is another way a more sustainable civilization could
be attained than on the heels of societal collapse. I do believe the world is full of
mystery, and that life itself is a series of unfolding miracles we lack the capacity to
comprehend due to our limited perspective. Yet perhaps you are right and some type of
collapse is inevitable before a new beginning can be made. If such be the case, as
individuals we will be compelled to tap into inner potentials that will needed to meet the
approaching apocalypse, potentials which currently lie dormant and undeveloped. Maybe in the
process of doing so we will recover our wholeness as well.
I caught a TV news piece over the weekend that claimed Buttgag had been voted "most likely
to become president" (or something to that effect) when he was a senior in high school. That
got me thinking "Why does this not surprise me?"
Well because I had encountered exactly this type of person in some advanced placement
classes in my HS senior year who claimed that his goal was to one day become president of the
US. The word that comes to mind when I recall that guy is "insufferable". I had never
encountered anyone before that proudly displayed such naked ambition. I hadn't really thought
much about that fellow since then – until Buttgag came on the scene and I was
immediately reminded
Yes, the new Netflix series "The Politican" is exactly about one of these types (student
at a rich high school who plans to be president). Not sure yet exactly what angle they take
since I've only watched the pilot and other random bits, but it's at least interesting. As
with any good writing they seem to want to show complexities of the character.
That spec screenplay was considered one of the greatest unproduced films for many years
before it was finely shot.
Read it sometime, there are plenty of copies in circulation. It's simply brilliant.
The film differs slightly from the script, I suppose it was hard to do it exactly. There
are two different endings that I've seen. Neither is the one from the original script.
On my current tangent about proper language. I like that we are able to make fun of his
name and turn it into new nicknames. The guy's name has "butt" in it, after all. Let's free
our inner 12-year olds.
As a gay man, I call him Butt****, with all the derision normally associated with that
term. Theoretically that should be offensive to me.
Booty judge is a spook, Obama the phony pseudo-endorses Warren – the Democrat party
is going to nominate a Republican whether the plebes like it or not!
"The letter is interesting for what it says about Buttigieg's increasingly conventional
and hawkish foreign policy and the preferences of many Democratic foreign policy
experts."
I think the Democrat establishment has decided to throw Mayor Pete under the bus. This is
why Warren went after him and some donors appear to be stabbing him in the back. A
fascinating situation to watch.
Just read the same article a few minutes ago and thought of what Yves had said today of
those hired by Mckinsey, "the firm tries very hard to hire individuals who are very insecure
and want badly to do well, including at the firm."
Was driving cross country on debate day listening to NPR as much as I could stand. More
than the combined total of the last fifteen years. They played up Pete as if he were a sports
star about to wipe every opponent off the playing field. And they never mentioned Sanders by
name but included a clip of his voice saying something along the line of "of course taxes
will have to go up" at least a hundred times.
And their impeachment Dem/Donald derangement syndrome made me wonder just what kind of
drugs have they put in the coffee/water cooler.
Intentional dumbing-down of all who listen without question or nausea.
Mayor Pete's base is upper-middle-class, middle-aged, moderate-to-liberal-leaning, white
people. Which is pretty much NPR's core donor base. Their Buttimania could just be fan
service, like the most recent Star Wars movie.
It's painful for me to agree that the early efforts of so many journalists of integrity
have evolved into what you noticed today. I trusted Noah Adams despite him never pleading to
be my trusted news friend or emotional support in hard times.
so much of the bare language–nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and their linking
language is replicated by varying 'personalities' that I find it difficult to believe that
talking points are not circulated by NPR Editors hourly.
I am also increasingly agitated in my listening by being force fed soooo many stories about
Pop Culture 'hooked' to a 'news' item–like Hanukah Shopping events filed under
Religion.
Sympathy, Eureka Springs. We listen to NPR on long trips; usually the choices are
Religion, Country or NPR. Or Sports Talk Call-Ins. I invariably end up banging my head on the
dashboard (not while it is my turn to drive!) and/or screaming into thin air.
Yikes! You could get an old mp3 player and fill it up with your favorite music and
podcasts. It would completely transform your car travel experience. If you don't have a hook
up for the player to the stereo, you can get great FM transmitters for 20 dollars or so. Good
luck!
yeah.
i got out of the habit of listening to the radio a long while ago. we're in an in between
major markets place where if the wind is out of the north, we get stations from abilene and
san angelo out of the south, san antonio.
none very good reception.
only local stations(2, in different towns) are porter wagoner fans that at least have live
coverage of the ball games(for wife,lol. i can't stand it)
so i just got used to having music in my head when on the road, and literally forget that
there's a thing called "radio"..
When I was bicycling around the country, I carried a harmonica. Didn't play it while I was
riding, but boy, would I pull that thing out in campgrounds.
Never became a good player, but gawd, that little Hohner was fun!
Well when we drive the 2 hours each way to San Diego, usually at least once a week, my
wife reads the NC links and commentary. Sometimes she'll save the comments for the trip home
and get so excited when she refreshes the page and , "There are 243 comments, that should
keep us."
A two pack of Buttigieg stories, showing that all the Atlantic should be asking for
Christmas is a clue
First, they're confused about why
people in the Democratic pre-primary season aren't flocking to Mayo Pete when he's
enthusiastic about maintainjng establishment power and welcoming "former republicans" to the
fold. As if "Radical Centrism" hasn't passed its sell by date yet.
And then, they're confused about
why young people don't like Mayo Pete. Clearly it's jealousy for his success and not his
noxious ideas mixed bland centrism.
It's pretty clear Mayor Pete is running for President for two reasons. His own
gratification and to receive big payouts from donors after his time in office. He has nothing
substantial to offer to anyone. People in Indiana don't even like him enough to support him
for a state office. He hasn't done anything worthwhile in little South Bend to show any
promise for higher office either. His history and accomplishments vary between meritocratic
box checking and crude virtue signaling. He's the political equivalent of a bunch of old rich
men trying to create a boy band out of whole cloth. There's nothing there. And the people at
the Atlantic can't figure out why voters don't like him???
My interpretation of Mayo Pete is: identity politics for white, middle-aged,
middle-to-upper-class Americans.
NC linked to a poll the other day that showed that 97% of his supporters were white,
compared to around 47% for Bernie and around 70% for Klobuchar, the next highest after the
Mayor.
Most Democrats hate Republicans (true technically any vote will do when it comes to an
election, but it's often more emotional than rational and not going to be much of a selling
point to Dems, that you are attracting the other tribe they hate and kumbaya).
There is the problem of him not being qualified of course, and not likely to win. The
annoying part is centrists seem to have picked the least promising centrist candidates ever,
so if we are stuck with a centrist, it's going to be one that seems to have little shot of
winning.
Democrats hating republicans? Evidently not when they are DINOs, like Senator Peters
(MI).
But, seriously, I am tired of those in the grip of Trump derangement who say that they
will vote blue no matter who the nominee is. I just wish they would sit out the Democratic
primaries and leave the selection to people who actually follow and mull over issues.
I saw where some celebrity was defending him and his donors and described him as
"guileless ". I was flummoxed. Guileless? He may be over his head as mayor and as candidate,
but there is nothing real there.
I do look at records, but Buttigieg has always struck me as the smart kid B*ll Sh*tting
their way through an assignment when ever I hear him speak. Donors buying a Trojan horse I
get but I don't know how anyone sees sincerity.
I'd like to see a list of his accomplishments in office. What? There isn't one. Oh, wait,
apparently he was really good on fixing the potholes in the roads.
Kind of like Obama, when I encounter the faithful, I pretend to go along, and then ask
"what do you think were Obama's best three things he accomplished while in office?"
Squirming in chair, followed by vague platitudes, followed by "he would have done a lot if
he wasn't blocked by Republicans
"... This character development and ad-libbing/a b testing is then always in use when dealing with the media and when tweeting. Since the President is a caricature his followers aren't bothered by his incorrect statements and when the Democrats/media point out his mis-statements it doesn't register because everyone knows wrestling is fake. A rhetorical analysis of Trump's letter shows that he will be a formidable opponent in 2020, and that he's crazy like a fox. Make America Great Again. Trump trademarked that saying 1 week after the 2012 election. He isn't crazy he's sly like a fox. ..."
"... I hear you, Chuck. I'm of the same generation and vaguely remember Ike. I recall, in particular, the U2 incident. Didn't Eisenhower himself deny to the world that the US did spy flights, even while the Soviets were displaying wreckage and parading Capt. F. G. Powers? It was a major embarrassment. ..."
Lambert describes President Trump's style as schtick but another way is to consider it as
a wrestling character named "President Trump." Remember President Trump was involved with the
WWE and had the owners wife Linda McMahon in his cabinet and she is now running a pro-Trump
super PAC.
Having grown up watching professional wrestling President Trump's campaign rallies are
exactly like a wrestling show. He is playing a character and has to be quick thinking and
able to ad-lib to manipulate the crowd's emotions. The crowd also has to become part of the
show as well and overreact to signal to the performer (in this case who happens to be the
President) they are engaged with the show. The baby face (Trump) is cheered loudly and the
heels (Democrats/media) are booed in an exaggerated manner.
This character development and ad-libbing/a b testing is then always in use when
dealing with the media and when tweeting. Since the President is a caricature his followers
aren't bothered by his incorrect statements and when the Democrats/media point out his
mis-statements it doesn't register because everyone knows wrestling is fake.
A rhetorical analysis of Trump's letter shows that he will be a formidable opponent in
2020, and that he's crazy like a fox.
Make America Great Again. Trump trademarked that saying 1 week after the 2012 election.
He isn't crazy he's sly like a fox.
I've been around for a while and my attitude is that all of these "prexies", with the
exception maybe of Ike, have been lying sacks of shit. Now while they all facilitated mass
thievery by their friends and associates (as the mob would say), they could have at least had
the good form to be funny. But no! They were all so earnest and sanctimonious. Kind of like
my parish priest handing out the wafers.
I probably spent way too many hours warming various bar-stools next to a variety of
knuckleheads, so I'm going to give Trump his due, OK? The guy has given me more chuckles,
laughs, guffaws and all around hilarity than six decades worth of well dressed socio-paths.
And as a bonus, a big bonus, he has greatly discomforted all of the smartest grifters in the
room. Whenever I see the guy, Im in the Catskills.
> all of these "prexies", with the exception maybe of Ike, have been lying sacks of
shit.
I hear you, Chuck. I'm of the same generation and vaguely remember Ike. I recall, in
particular, the U2 incident. Didn't Eisenhower himself deny to the world that the US did spy
flights, even while the Soviets were displaying wreckage and parading Capt. F. G. Powers? It
was a major embarrassment.
Editor's Note: Last month, Foreign Policy ran an article, "Open Borders Are a
Trillion-Dollar Idea," which advocated for Open Borders. So for all those who say, "Oh, no
one supports Open Borders," here it is in writing! Every point made by author Bryan Caplan,
an economics professor, is refutable, and, while the piece is long, we believe it's important
"for the record" to counter all of his points.
As I first read Bryan Caplan's "Open Borders Are a Trillion-Dollar Idea" in Foreign
Policy, besides disbelief, my thoughts were that this person must not get out much or must
not read much. A quote from writer Upton Sinclair came to mind as well: "It is difficult to
get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." https://progressivesforimmigrationreform.org/open-borders-trillion-dollar-mistake/
Re Bill Mitchell–his theme is that the Labour disaster is all due to the failure of
the party to follow their working class base–if that is their base–and support
Brexit. I believe that was Clive's theme as well. This is definitely not my topic but any
Remainers care to rebut?
It is interesting how the situation in Britain seems to mirror the political situation
here and the dilemma of the Dems–aka our Blairites. People like Hillary denounce the
deplorables and Obama calls them bitter clingers but these verbal targets were once the
backbone of a party that stood in opposition to the party of the bankers and finance.
The problen for the DemoRats is that their new, hoped for diversity base isn't large
enough to replace the former great unwashed base. Perhaps that's Labour's problem too. We
have a party of the people whose leaders are (in secret when not in public) batting for the
other team.
All polls indicated that around 40% of Labour supporters were Brexiters, 60% Remainers (of
course the intensity of support might be different). Those were mostly the older working
class 'old Labour' types along with some ideological left wingers. Doing what Mitchell
suggested would certainly have shored up Labours working class bases. It would also have lost
Labour its base in the major metropolitan areas and most voters under 40. In short, it would
have been politically suicidal.
In the months after the referndum, people like Owen Jones tried to convince the Remainer
Labourites that they had to accept the result of the referendum and fight for the "softest"
Brexit possible (I remember because he was bringing that up in his post-mortems after the
election). And of course, most Remainers were having none of it. They came up with "The
People's Vote" and eventually Jones and the rest of the Labour bigwigs got on board.
But objectively, Brexit will be, and can only be, a disaster for Britain and most
pro-Brexit voters are badly misinformed, so what were Labour leaders supposed to do?
It looks undemocratic to stop people from shooting themselves (and you too!) in the foot, but
are you supposed to just let them pull the trigger?
The constituency where I canvassed, the divide was very clearly generational – the
old were Tory, the young were Labour or Libdem. It was very stark. I have not seen any
national data on this – has anyone else?
Yep, chechout the 3rd chart on this post. Very generational split moving from Labour to
Tories with age. 18-24 yos voted 19% Tory, 67% Labour, and it virtually reversed when looking
at 65yo+ which voted 62% Tory, 18% Labour, with an almost linear movement inbetween. I think
someone linked to this a few days ago
> Doing what Mitchell suggested would certainly have shored up Labours working class
bases. It would also have lost Labour its base in the major metropolitan areas and most
voters under 40. In short, it would have been politically suicidal.
I would say that what Labour ended up doing was suicidal, quite evidently. Labour (and
Corybn's) problem was existential, the fractured base (not merely by age, but geographically
and by class) bequeathed to them by Blair. I would say that Mitchell's proposal is not like
suicide, but like an animal caught in a trap chewing off a leg to escape -- the leg, in this
case, being PLP. Of course, if Labour wants to be the party of London professionals, that's
fine, but rebranding from "Labour" might be in order.
Richard North has been running some interesting material recently, including today,
raising the question to what extent the traditional working class still exists in England in
the sense it was once understood. I have no real insights into what is clearly a very large
topic but I found todays piece especially interesting.
I am doubtful Labour wants to be the party only of London professionals – there are
far too few of them to win elections. At present it is clearly the party of the young. Any
strategy for its future needs to take this into account. Although I am old myself I know a
fair number of the young in the UK through my children and their friends. They are having a
very hard time of it as their jobs are very insecure and their prospects of owning their own
homes/better quality housing are far poorer than those enjoyed by the boomers. They also face
a high risk of being made redundant at 40.
Rather than a class-based analysis of UK politics I wonder if a generational analysis
– boomers v the rest – would not be more fruitful at present. Though of course
you can see this as a rich/old versus young/poor struggle.
Labour lost biggest among the pensioners, who by definition, are not labouring. The reason
they lost all those Northern towns was that they had so many pensioners.
Doing deliveries on a bicycle, teaching children, and keeping the elderly alive,
meanwhile, are all labour, even if they don't take place in a factory or a mine. Certainly
not "professional" in the traditional sense.
Labour's error was failing to build a legacy media operation (print, TV, radio) to reach
the pensioners, and not turning out the younger vote.
This comment on Muilenburg's departure from Boeing found at Leeham News, seems about right
to me:
"Old Tart
December 23, 2019
Muilenburg's departure is WAY overdue, but Calhoun is not the answer. He will be a
continuation of the GE/McDonnell Douglas cancer that has metastasized through Boeing since
1997. He was part of the decision making process that approved a $20 billion stock buyback
almost exactly a year ago (after the first MAX crash), following his approval of more than
$40 billion in buybacks the 5 years prior to that. Boeing could have launched at least two
new airplane programs with that cash. And as long as all Boeing managers are cycled through
the Harry Stonecipher charm school in St. Louis, that culture will continue to trickle down
throughout the company."
Adding: As I see it the 737 MAX situation is a bellwether event, and the corporatists
really
don't, so far, get it.. "labor force" issues will be coming to the fore, and soon, IMO.
It's rare that I read something on the Washington Post that I don't find highly biased, even
repugnant. But with
their recent article on the Afghanistan Papers, they truly knocked the ball out of the
park.
The facts they shared should have every American protesting in the streets.
Trillions of dollars have been spent on a war that the Pentagon knew was unwinnable all
along. More than 2300 American soldiers died there and more than 20,000 have been injured. More
than 150,000 Afghanis were killed, many of them civilians, including women and children.
And they lied to us constantly.
Congress just proved that the truth doesn't matter, though. A mere 22 hours after the
release of this document, the new National Defense Authorization Act that breezed through the
House and Senate was signed by the President. That bill authorized
$738 billion in military spending for 2020 , actually increasing the budget by $22 billion
over previous years.
So, how is your representation in Washington, DC working out for you?
What are the
Afghanistan Papers?
The Afghanistan Papers are
a brilliant piece of investigative journalism published by the Washington Post and the
article is very much worth your time to read. I know, I know – WaPo. But believe me when
I tell you this is something all Americans need to see.
This was an article that took three years of legal battles to bring to light. WaPo acquired
the documents using the Freedom of Information Act and got more than 2000 pages of insider
interviews with "people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid
workers and Afghan officials." These documents were originally part of a federal investigation
into the "root failures" of the longest conflict in US history – more than 18 years
now.
Three presidents, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have been involved in this
ongoing war. It turns out that officials knew the entire time this war was "unwinnable" yet
they kept throwing American lives and American money at it.
Here's an excerpt from WaPo's report. Anything that is underlined is taken verbatim from the
papers themselves – you can click on them to read the documents.
In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went
wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of
warfare.
With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints,
frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.
The important thing to note about these interviews is that the interviewees never expected
their words to become public. They weren't "blowing the whistle." They were answering questions
for a federal investigation. So they didn't hold back. These aren't "soundbites." It's what the
real witnesses are saying.
The U.S. government has not carried out a comprehensive accounting of how much it has
spent on the war in Afghanistan, but the costs are staggering.
Since 2001, the Defense Department, State Department and U.S. Agency for International
Development have spent or appropriated between $934 billion and $978 billion, according to an
inflation-adjusted estimate calculated by Neta Crawford, a political science professor and
co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University.
Those figures do not include money spent by other agencies such as the CIA and the
Department of Veterans Affairs, which is responsible for medical care for wounded
veterans.
"What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion?" Jeffrey Eggers, a
retired Navy SEAL and White House staffer for Bush and Obama, told government interviewers.
He added, "After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in
his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan." (
source )
The US government deliberately misled the American people.
What's more, if you officials, up to and including three presidents, knew they were throwing
money at something that could never be achieved. They did it anyway and they lied to our faces
about it.
The documents also contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents,
military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making
progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.
Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S.
government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military
headquarters in Kabul -- and at the White House -- to distort statistics to make it appear
the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.
It's been an epic 18-year-long exercise in CYA. (Cover Your A$$). I don't see how anyone
could fail to be outraged by this. And what I've cited here is just the crap icing on the
maggot cupcake. It's a festering mess and I urge you, if you really want to know the truth, to
read this article on WaPo and click on these links.
How was all this money spent?
A lot of it went to building infrastructure in Afghanistan. It was flagrantly and
frivolously used there while we live in a place where people are going bankrupt at best and
dying at worst because they
can't afford medical care and there are places in our country without clean running
water or toilets.
The defense industry certainly reaped rewards and it's highly likely a lot of people who had
the power to allow it to go on made some "wise investments" that have paid off for them. But
for the rest of us, this conflict has done nothing except ensure that our tax dollars are not
here improving our infrastructure or helping Americans lead better and more productive
lives.
Dr. Ron Paul refers to this as the crime of the century.
It is not only members of the Bush, Obama, and Trump Administrations who are guilty of
this massive fraud. Falsely selling the Afghanistan war as a great success was a bipartisan
activity on Capitol Hill. In the dozens of hearings I attended in the House International
Relations Committee, I do not recall a single "expert" witness called who told us the truth.
Instead, both Republican and Democrat-controlled Congresses called a steady stream of neocon
war cheerleaders to lie to us about how wonderfully the war was going. Victory was just
around the corner, they all promised. Just a few more massive appropriations and we'd be
celebrating the end of the war.
Congress and especially Congressional leadership of both parties are all as guilty as the
three lying Administrations. They were part of the big lie, falsely presenting to the
American people as "expert" witnesses only those bought-and-paid-for Beltway neocon think
tankers.
What is even more shocking than the release of this "smoking gun" evidence that the US
government wasted two trillion dollars and killed more than three thousand Americans and more
than 150,000 Afghans while lying through its teeth about the war is that you could hear a pin
drop in the mainstream media about it. Aside from the initial publication in the Washington
Post, which has itself been a major cheerleader for the war in Afghanistan, the mainstream
media has shown literally no interest in what should be the story of the century. (
source )
And it's most likely that nobody will ever face punishment for this deception. If this is
not the very definition of the term "war crimes" I can hardly imagine what is. Dr. Paul
continues:
We've wasted at least half a year on the Donald Trump impeachment charade – a
conviction desperately in search of a crime. Meanwhile one of the greatest crimes in US
history will go unpunished. Not one of the liars in the "Afghanistan Papers" will ever be
brought to justice for their crimes. None of the three presidents involved will be brought to
trial for these actual high crimes. Rumsfeld and Lute and the others will never have to fear
justice. Because both parties are in on it. There is no justice . (
source )
The response? Silence and a budget increase.
The people in government don't care that we know about all this. Sure, it's mildly
inconvenient but "whatever."
How do I know this?
Simple. Less than a full day after the story broke, the new NDAA ended up on President
Trump's desk and was signed, authorizing an additional 22 billion dollars for next year's
defense spending. And all anyone can talk about is, "Oooohhhh Space Force!!!"
Government: "Merry Christmas. We're going to blow through more of your tax money and you
won't get a damned thing for it."
I couldn't make this up if I tried. In a notable, must-read op-ed ,
Darius Shahtahmasebi cited some horrific incidents and concluded:
We can't let this recent publication obscure itself into nothingness. The recent reaction
from Congress is a giant middle finger designed to tell you that (a) there will never be
anything you can do about it and (b) they simply don't care how you feel. Democracy at its
finest from the world's leading propagator of democratic values. ( source )
When is enough going to be enough? Why are we not enraged en masse? Why haven't we recalled
these treasonous bastards and taken our country and our budget back?
For a country that is ready to take up arms and waste countless hours "impeaching" Trump
over something he said on a phone call, it sure says a lot about those same people ignoring 18
years of treasonous behavior by three separate administrations.
Why isn't the media raising hell over this? Why aren't these lives important? Why isn't
sending trillions of our dollars to be frittered away an outrage?
People love to say "America First" and "impeach Trump for treason" and all that jazz. They
love to call anti-war people "un-American" and recommend a quick, one-way trip to Somalia if we
don't "support our troops." However, I think is far more evidence of supporting our troops to
want out of there, not risking their lives based on a castle of lies that further enriches
powerful and wealthy people who have nothing to lose.
Most people love to be outraged about frivolous matters. But when a report like this and its
following insult are met with resounding silence, it's pretty obvious that hardly anybody is
really paying attention.
So, cut funding for prisons; cut necessary levels, to insure safety, prison guard
staffing; watch as prison violence escalates; then print a story where the Union leader,
trying to protect his remaining too small workforce from the rising violence, sounds like an
inhuman bad guy in the story. Neolibs gotta love that angle.
I'm seeing the same thing in my US state over the past several years. The politicians'
answer is not to increase staffing of unionized prison guards or spend more on safety for
state prisons, but to outsource prisoner housing to the private sector. Neolibs love that
angle.
Considering there are three billion Muslims determined to rule the planet with their
Sharia Law and forcing everyone to face Mecca five times a day to "pray" while waiting for
Mahamed to return, adding to that millions of Christians, many nutty enough to believe we
need a nuclear war destroying Israel in order to save it and cause Jesus to return on a
cloud, plus good luck converting the billions of Chinese to ANY of this! Destroy the planet
in order to save it! Light a candle, take off your shoes and burn some incense! The end is
nigh!!!
Human beings on this planet, I have come to believe, are all just batshit crazy and
delusional regarding their various "beliefs".
Just look at what that nut editor of "Christianity Today" did to President Trump!
For God's sake! (cough), Trump and his GOP crew are against abortion, going so far as to
stop ALL funding of abortions with federal money, they hate the Commies and on and on.
Probably the fact that neither Trump nor his wife have set foot in a church on a Sunday
morning in four years toting his well-worn Bible, was what really did him in! No regular
photo-ops like with Jimmy and Rosalind or Bill and Hillary. Tsk, tsk
Seriously. I am almost 70 years old and have lived in Los Angeles for the past ten years.
This place has no soul. My friend and I want to leave and buy a small house in a nice town
with normal people. The only problem is that any of these towns that might exist are filled
with depressed people, some slumped over their steering wheels dying of heroin overdoses
while their toddler children sit in the back seats of the cars freezing, screaming and
starving.
Starving for food, warmth and affection.
Too old to fight the snow and frozen roads and sidewalks. Wish I had a pretty lake to swim
in Spring, Summer and Fall with a nice mild Winter.
And the quaint town of my childhood back again.
I wish it wasn't so, but I will probably die here in this hell hole with nothing but my
memories of swimming lakes and pretty gardens with bluebirds and robins and cardinals
singing.
And in my memories I can hear my grandma saying, "If wishes were horses, beggars would
ride".
adding: I listened to part of an NPR report on the French strikes. It was a first person
account by the young US reporter (judging from her voice) living in Paris about how the
strike was affecting her. She started out well enough, then complained that the strike makes
it hard for her nanny to travel to-from her apartment, making it a terrible hardship on the
nanny, and upsetting her childcare arrangement. Then her real complaint about the strikes was
aired: it's making it ever so much harder for her, the intrepid reporter, to travel to all
the upscale holiday parties she's been invited to. (Oh, the humanity!)
NPR foreign correspondents today; "My nanny is inconvenienced. I am inconvenienced.
Workers' pensions are all well and good, but what is that compared to my inconvenience?!"
Not exactly Eric Sevareid reporting from London during the blitz
Easier to demonize Putin than to have long boring articles about how different countries
have different national interests, and how he works for Russia not us. To say nothing about
discussing who exactly is it that decides what national interests are anyway
I very much enjoy watching or reading Putin's speeches. No doubt he's lying in the same
way all politicians do. Yet, when he castigates the West he is right on target and I like him
for it.
The "Afghanistan Papers" are not the "secret history" the Post says they are. What
struck me as I read them, was how drearily familiar it all was The real problem is not that
bureaucrats and politicians lied to the public, but that the institutional incentives of our
foreign policy often encouraged them to lie to themselves.
And why would they "lie to themselves?" The article doesn't dig deep enough. Rather than
accept that the Afghanistan war was a failure, viewed from the trillion dollars plus dollars
spent over 18 years, maybe it was a resounding success. Maybe instead of the WaPo doing a
retaliatory "expose" it really is just running cognitive interference.
Yes, if it was a failure, lessons can be learned, but what if it went all according to
plan, what if there really never was a desire to stamp out the poppy trade or root out the
terrorist, what if there are more nefarious forces at work? Or, maybe I've come to a point in
when I read any MSM story my first instinct is what's their angle, where do these bread
crumbs they are dropping for me lead to, or away from?
An English fellow I knew was the master of understatement, and when he related that he
made "a small but useful profit' on something, it meant he caught a whale, but claimed it was
a minnow.
'Bread crumbs' is a nice way of describing making money on a war you really don't want to
ever see the ending of, as it's just too profitable and to quit cold turkey would doom the
bottom line.
The article is basically right. My own experience with the subject and in the country is a
lot less than that of the author, but this accords with what I saw and heard. In fact it was
worse than that, because this series of stories is confined to the US, but many other nations
were involved as well, as was a complete alphabet soup of international organizations from
the UN and the EU downwards, with almost no real coordination and often conflicts of
objectives and interests.
In spite of many attempts, there never was an agreed strategy, and
within a couple of years people who'd been involved were saying basically what these articles
are saying now.
Why? Well two reasons in my experience. First is the sunk costs problem. The longer an
operation like this goes on, the longer it will go on, because it becomes
progressively more difficult to explain why you are pulling out when all this money and all
these lives have been apparently wasted. So the temptation is to stay and just hope that next
year things will get better. There are also lots of mega-political reasons for the US not to
pull out which have nothing to do with the country itself – NATO leadership, image vs
Russia etc. etc. These things are important for some people. As a result, rather than asking
yourself what you are trying to accomplish, you wind up trying to accomplish what you think
you can do – destroying poppy, for example, was never part of the original plan, but
became so because in theory it could be measured.
In addition, the military in every society are very mission oriented, and, whilst they are in
the field, will try their best to make whatever the politicians want them to do work. It's
later that they start to have doubts. After all, nobody will follow a General who tells his
men that the whole thing is a waste of time, whatever they may privately think. This is a
well-known problem in all counter insurgency wars.
So no, it's not the Pentagon Papers 2 – all this has been known to anybody interested
for a good fifteen years, and I've heard many people, military and civilians, say these sorts
of things when they come back from the front, even if they tend to be professionally
optimistic when they are there.
Now nobody wants to be the one who "lost" Afghanistan, negotiating the terms of America's
surrender to the Taliban will have awful optics.
I like what the Chinese did with the Uighur concentration camps: they declared that all of
the Uighurs had now "graduated".
Maybe get one of the Taliban guys to lose the headcovering and robes, put him in a suit
and tie and have a "historic" signing of a "peace deal".
(They won't have footage of helicopters being pushed off the decks of aircraft carriers
but maybe they can drive multi million dollar tanks off a cliff or something)
I keep hearing John Kerry's question "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a
mistake?" on Vietnam.
Wonderful isn't? 48 years since then and 44 years since the last helicopter flew off the
embassy's rooftop in Saigon and we haven't learned anything except being better
propagandists, crooks, liars, and credulous fools.
Speaking of officers encouraging the troops, "leading," I recall a scene in one of the
several Notagainistan documentaries quite a few years ago, where a colonel in the US Marines
(going from memory, I did not bookmark the video) was heating up his troops for a New Push
into I believe Wardak Province,, or maybe Kandahar. Telling the Troops to keep in their
fighting hearts the knowledge that this was going to be the operation that broke the back of
The Enemy, that they should remember every moment of it so they could tell their
grandchildren that they were part of the great victory in this noble effort.
Quite the locker room speech, as I recall it -- late enough in "the war" that his delivery
was pretty insincere, and the growled responses from the Troops made it unclear what muddled
motivations they might have, after a couple of "deployments" getting blown up by IEDs and
"kicking in doors in Kandahar " And in the rest of the world: http://vvawai.org/archive/wot/kicking-doors.html
The documenters were good enough to point out that said colonel had helicoptered in to the
marshaling area for the Big Push, then hopped back into his nicely appointed personal
Blackhawk and flown away. Leading from the rear
"Professional optimism," indeed. All of a piece with today's discussion of CEO
compensation (aka "looting.")
Correct me if I am wrong, but prior to our invasion of Afghanistan there was no poppy
problem because the Taliban did not permit it to be grown. Poppy growing for cash crops only
began after the insurgency to pay for weapons to fight the US forces there. So that is more a
measure of blowback than an initial aim of the invasion.
Further, I distinctly remember the Taliban saying that they did not have the ability to
root out AQ themselves, and just before the invasion they actually invited GWB to send in the
troops to get them. The fact that GWB ignored this invitation in favor of an invasion makes
the entire process a measure of blowback rather than progress.
It just strikes me that this was always just an excuse to start a war that accreted yet
more excuses to stay in one.
Right up there with going without a plan. By refusing the hard choice to keep all the
competing factions out of power (Taliban, Northern Alliance, Warlords) and refusing to have
new deal/bottom up extensive reconstruction plans for rebuilding they guaranteed Afghanistan
would not recover but remained mired in conflict and corruption.
Instead they went placeholder revenge war until they could get the ill conceived invasion
they wanted.
The hubris is endless. All that was required to ensure "a good outcome" would have been to
have that plan "to keep all the competing factions out of power (?Taliban, Northern Alliance,
Warlords," and then to have a "NewDeal.bottom up rebuilding ([sic -- one can't "rebuild" what
was never built in the first place]." Just "keep them out of power." Say what?
Then, that land of "tribes with flags" would somehow "recover" (from what -- the invasion
and destruction of all that "war" stuff?) and "democratically" avoid all the conflict and
corruption that are endemic to the terrain. A War College pipe dream, as in opium pipe? That
somehow a Middle Class and Constitutional Rule of Law and Chambers of Commerce and all that
would grow out of the rocks and brambles?
Choosing to empower warring factions and rebuild the opium trade which that did wasn't
hubris? We already know that it did little or nothing for the majority of the population. If
you are going to kick out a ruling party maybe not pick the successors especially when your
choice is based on who will take bribes to traffic guns and disruption to neighboring
areas.
We have never really tried a real hearts and minds operation. Seeds, farm equipment,
tools, schools, roads, building supplies and providing the time and space to use them.
I don't think there was a chance of there being no military response. Saner and better
respected leadership might have been able to do something limited and directed, but not one
better idea between doing nothing and what we did appears to have ever been considered.
It was not long before 9/11 that Cheney and crew had the Taliban in the US and took them
around to Disneyland, I kid you not. I have no idea what they thought that would do for
religious fundamentalists.
They always had big plans for the Middle East. In lots of areas.
Never forget that Cheney had barely gotten sworn in before he was on a diplomatic junket to
The ME and Europe to try to drum up a coalition to address the problem of Iraq. Funnily
enough saner people tried to tell him the problems were Israel, Palestine and yes terrorists
fixated on those areas. That didn't stop them from having plans for an invasion of Iraq on
Rumsfeld's desk seven months later on 9/11.
Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iraq and Syria are exactly like South Vietnam. If American Elite and
Technocrats admitted that the US Army was middle of a Civil War, invaders, and on the side of
warlords; they'd admit that it is pointless except to profit from the death and chaos. None
of the wars are in Americans' best interests. That realization ends the money flow.
Corruption is the applicable term.
It would be like Boeing admitting it killed 346 people and will kill more unless they have
a cultural change and spend money for the right people and rebuild an organization that works
together to build and fly airliners safely.
Yeah that article was just another " but we had good intentions" riff. As you suggest, the
reason people keep " failing" in these spectacular ways is that there is a lot of money to be
made in " failure", especially when accountability amounts to people saying " but we meant
well -- we just didn't understand".
what if there really never was a desire to stamp out the poppy trade
When the US began arming the Mujahiddin back in '79, it was accepted that opium smugglers
were ideally suited to smuggling weapons into Afghanistan. And when the US invaded in 2001,
it was in support of the Northern Alliance, well known for their involvement in the opium
business.
Since then, one of the few areas of development in the country has been the refining of opium
into heroin domestically, rather than exporting it raw.
No, there never was a desire to eradicate poppy.
The whole Afghanistan campaign (after the first year which was generally successful at
achieving its limited goal) has reminded me of the Tet offensive in Vietnam where entire
divisions of North Vietnamese soldiers infiltrated areas, including major cities, and no
locals would tell anybody. If you have that little support of the local population, then
there is no way you can "win a war" without simply simply creating a police state where
everybody's every move is monitored or committing genocide and wiping everybody out.
If the US couldn't identify partners that could get the population support, then the whole
"nation-building" exercise (a tacked-on goal) was doomed to failure. If the police and
soldiers aren't willing to fight for their government, then there isn't much purpose in
creating one.
I think the biggest US foreign policy failure is generally the assumption that everybody
wants to be just like the US. The Marshall Plan and Cold War were able to create stable
democracies in Western Europe and Japan where there weren't ones before. But these are the
exceptions to the rule. Most other countries have started with or reverted to strongmen or
simply devolved into chaos.
Then there is the installing the corrupt and often very partisan leadership to run the
countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Vietnam while pushing away any honest, or at
sincerely patriotic, leadership. It seems that being good for business is more important than
being good for a country, forget about winning a war.
This may be a good time to pull on my yellow waters, and take a look at Trump's letter to
Pelosi, since his letter is simultaneously a parting shot as the House votes impeachement, and
--
assuming impeachment doesn't die in the House -- the opening gun not only for his trial in
the Senate but for election 2020.
Here is the letter ; if you have time, it's worth reading it to form your own opinions.
One tip to make reading Trump more tolerable is to hear him as a borscht belt comedian like
Rodney Dangerfield or Henny Youngman.
Clifford A. Rieders , who grew up with enduring memories of the borscht belt, commented in
2016:
The humorists spanned the spectrum from Yiddish-speaking Brooklynites to Midwestern
Protestants. Each comedian had a shtick. What exactly is a shtick? A "shtick" was an
approach, an act, a way of relating to people that could be funny, serious, entertaining or
crass, but always memorable in some way. Donald Trump is surging in the polls because he has
a shtick. He is very much like a borscht belt entertainer, memorable because of how he speaks
and the way he presents himself, rather than his content. The experts will have to parse the
substance of Trump's message, if any, but his entertainment value should not be
underestimated. He is making people sit up and take notice, whether he is hated, loved, or
whether he just makes people shrug their shoulders and giggle.
... ... ...
Even more amazingly, the Times leaves this passage, which occurs immediately before the
passage they corrected, uncorrected:
Before the Impeachment Hoax, it was the Russian Witch Hunt. Against all evidence, and
regardless of the truth, you and your deputies claimed that my campaign colluded with the
Russians -- a grave, malicious, and slanderous lie, a falsehood like no other.
One must assume that the Times does not correct what it believes to be true. Therefore,
RussiaGate -- which the Times assiduously propagated, to its great profit -- is "a grave,
malicious, and slanderous lie"? Alrighty then.
Similarly:
What the Times is looking at is a blueprint for Trump's case to the voters in 2020. And yet
the Times can find only two corrections to make? If I were a liberal Democrat, I would be very,
very worried about 2020.
I'm not going to make an armchair diagnosis of Trump's mental state, or shoot fish in a
barrel with factchecking. Rather, I'm going to look at Trump's letter through the lens of his
schtick , or, using the seventy five-cent word, his rhetoric. (I will be the first to
say that Trump is not a superb technician; for an analysis of an orator who is, see NC
here on Julia Gillard .) First, I will show that Trump's letter falls naturally into two
parts: His defense against the indictment, and his 2020 case against the fitness of Democrats
to govern). Given that the text has such a structure, it's simply not tenable to call it an "
unhinged rant ," which disposes of the first mainstream response. Nor it is especially
useful to fact-check it, especially when the facts are so disputed[1], which disposes of the
second. Unfortunately, I cannot annotate the entire six-page letter, but I will comment on the
rhetoric used in each part. Now let's look at the two parts.
Here is the division point between the two parts. Using direct address (" inter se pugnantia "),
Trump writes:
There is nothing I would rather do than stop referring to your party as the Do-Nothing
Democrats. Unfortunately, I don't know that you will ever give me a chance to do so.
There are two reasons this paragraph marks a division. First, it's the first and only joke (
irony ). Second, it's
the first use of one of Trump's favorite figures: paralipsis , here saying something while pretending that one
does not wish to say it ("unfortunately," my sweet Aunt Fanny).
So, let us turn to the first part, Trump's defense. After some hyperbole about the
Constitution , Trump addresses each claim in the House indictment in turn. On (1) "Abuse of
Power," Trump responds that (A) "I had a totally innocent conversation with the President of
Ukraine," (B) "You are turning a policy disagreement between two branches of government into an
impeachable offense", (C) "you are trying to impeach me by falsely accusing me of doing what
Joe Biden has admitted he actually did," and (D) "President Zelensky has repeatedly declared
that I did nothing wrong." On (2), "Obstruction of Congress," Trump responds, (A) "if you make
a high crime and misdemeanor out of going to the courts, it is an abuse of power," (B) "you
have spent three straight years attempting to overturn the will of the American people and
nullify their votes," (C) "Congressman Adam Schiff cheated and lied all the way up to the
present day", and (D) "You and your party are desperate to distract," followed by the
accomplishedments listed in the second Times "correction" above." I've lettered and numbered
the responses because the structure is perfectly clear to those who are willing to look for it.
(There is a minor Twitter controversy over whether Trump wrote the letter himself, but I would
say he, like any President, has people for that. I think that Trump, for whatever reason, had a
lot more input into part two, for reasons I will show.)
A second feature of the first part is that it's virtually devoid of rhetorical devices:
Tricolon and
anaphora are the
only ones used frequently ("[1] no crimes, [2] no misdemeanors, and [3]
no offenses"; "[1] you are violating your oaths of office, [2] you
are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and [3] you are declaring
open war on American Democracy"; "[1]misquoted, [2]mischaracterized, and [3]fraudulently
misrepresented").
Now let's turn to the second part. Unlike the first part, it can't be represented with an
outline structure. Indeed, it might be considered to be grist for Trump's improvisations and
A/B testing on the trail. From
my post describing Trump's visit to Bangor :
I want to focus on how [Trump] made [his] points: He didn't just emit them in
bulleted-list form. Rather, he treated them as waypoints. He'd state the point, clearly and
loudly, and then begin to move away from it in ever-widening circles, riffing jazzily on
anecdotes, making jokes, introducing other talking points ("We're gonna build the wall"),
introducing additional anecdotes, until finally popping the topical stack and circling back
to the next waypoint, which he would then state, clearly and loudly; rinse, repeat. The
political class considers or at least claims Trump's speeches are random and disorganized,
but they aren't; any speech and debate person who's done improvisation knows what's going
on.
You can just see Trump cutting up bits of part two, revising some, discarding others,
re-arranging them, and so on.
The primary rhetorical device in the second part is tu quoque , colloquially "The pot calling the
kettle black." Here it is combined with anaphora (and a dash of tricolon and alliteration ):
You are the ones interfering in America's elections. You are the
ones subverting America's Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice.
You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish
[1] p ersonal, [2] p olitical, and [3]p p artisan gain.
And here Trump combines tu quoque with straight up [A] ad hominem plus [B] mesarchia , [C] tricolon, [D] hyperbole , and [E]
ad populum .
(I have to change the notating system for this one because the devices are so numerous and
interlocked.)
Perhaps most insulting of all is [A]your false display of solemnity. You apparently have
so little respect for the American People that you expect them to believe that [B] you
are approaching this impeachment [C]somberly, reservedly, and reluctantly. [D]No
intelligent person believes what you are saying. Since the moment I won the election, the
Democrat Party has been possessed by Impeachment Fever. There is no reticence. This is not a
somber affair. [B] You are making a mockery of impeachment and you are
scarcely concealing [C]your hatred of me, of the Republican Party, and tens of millions of
patriotic Americans. [E]The voters are wise, and they are seeing straight through this
[C]empty, hollow, and dangerous game you are playing.
Now, tu quoque is indeed a logical fallacy with respect to claims . But is it
a fallacy with respect to the right to govern, which is one way for Trump to structure the 2020
campaign?[1]
...A rhetorical analysis of Trump's letter shows that he will be a formidable opponent in
2020, and that he's crazy like a fox. Trump has form. His schtick has worked, and may well work
again.
It will come as a great shock to the dem establishment, a shock i tell you, that the
reporting they ignored coming from aaron mate and the other tinny (to their ears) voices to
their left was the
revealed truth
and could be wielded like a mighty club against them by trump
only not in the people's interest, because of course not, he's a republican
but anyway, who could have known? /s
as to Trump's charge of Do Nothing Democrats, the Democratic House has passed an entire
agenda of good things that the Senate has not acted upon. Also, is there ANY evidence to
suggest that African American unemployment is at an all time low? A favorite Trump technique
is to issue an obviously false statement as if it were true.
Overall rate, and rates by ethnicity have been declining since 2011, so record or near
record lows are recorded during the Trump years. YMMV as to how much Trump economic policies
have contributed to and/or not impeded the trend.
They have passed a few interesting bills. But how much time have they spent talking about
those bills, and other issues on which they want to move ahead for the people? Compared to
the media time sucked up by TrumpRussia, Impeachment, and the rest of the sh*tshow. I don't
watch any TV news, but to judge from headlines and other coverage I'll guess very little.
Thanks for the analysis. I'm not sure that the bit about the false display of solemnity is
an ad hominem. It seems to me that it would count as a fallacy if he were arguing that the
case against him is flawed for the reason that those making that case are bad people (people
who feign solemnity). But that's not how I read it.
I read it as an attempt to work up anger against his accusers. At one point in the
Rhetoric, Aristotle claims that people become angry with someone when they think they have
been slighted by that person. One way of slighting people is to take them for fools. This is
an insult. If Trump were right and Democrats really were feigning solemnity while gleefully
engaged in a narrowly self-interested effort to overturn an election, then Democrats would be
taking voters for fools. Many voters would find this insulting. Also, Aristotle thought that
angry people are moved to take revenge. This amounts to a desire to bring the insulting party
low. Bringing low, in this case, would surely involve voting against Democrats, punishing
them by keeping them out or throwing them out of high office.
I suppose, then, that this particular passage looks to me like good rhetoric as opposed to
fallacious argument. Or at least partly good. He seems to know what he's doing where pathos
is concerned.
Lambert describes President Trump's style as schtick but another way is to consider it as
a wrestling character named "President Trump." Remember President Trump was involved with the
WWE and had the owners wife Linda McMahon in his cabinet and she is now running a pro-Trump
super PAC.
Having grown up watching professional wrestling President Trump's campaign rallies are
exactly like a wrestling show. He is playing a character and has to be quick thinking and
able to ad-lib to manipulate the crowd's emotions. The crowd also has to become part of the
show as well and overreact to signal to the performer (in this case who happens to be the
President) they are engaged with the show. The baby face (Trump) is cheered loudly and the
heels (Democrats/media) are booed in an exaggerated manner.
This character development and ad-libbing/a b testing is then always in use when dealing
with the media and when tweeting. Since the President is a caricature his followers aren't
bothered by his incorrect statements and when the Democrats/media point out his
mis-statements it doesn't register because everyone knows wrestling is fake.
A rhetorical analysis of Trump's letter shows that he will be a formidable opponent in
2020, and that he's crazy like a fox.
Make America Great Again. Trump trademarked that saying 1 week after the 2012 election. He
isn't crazy he's sly like a fox.
I've been around for a while and my attitude is that all of these "prexies", with the
exception maybe of Ike, have been lying sacks of shit. Now while they all facilitated mass
thievery by their friends and associates (as the mob would say), they could have at least had
the good form to be funny. But no! They were all so earnest and sanctimonious. Kind of like
my parish priest handing out the wafers.
I probably spent way too many hours warming various bar-stools next to a variety of
knuckleheads, so I'm going to give Trump his due, OK? The guy has given me more chuckles,
laughs, guffaws and all around hilarity than six decades worth of well dressed socio-paths.
And as a bonus, a big bonus, he has greatly discomforted all of the smartest grifters in the
room. Whenever I see the guy, Im in the Catskills.
I am convinced that the Dems are not actually interested or focused on defeating Trump, or
they would adopt an effective strategy. The question I keep wrestling with is, what is the
point to the strategy that is so ineffective?
They are perhaps infiltrated by malicious actors, or positioning for something bigger? The
clarity of the critique mentioned above by Aaron Mate to me isn't mysterious or difficult to
find.
How about this:they are preparing for election 2024? I'm not joking.
Rodney Dangerfield? Don Rickles? Our political culture has truly been debased by popular
culture into a stand-up competition. Trump's base knows that he's channeling New Wave/Punk
comedians Sam Kinison and Bobcat Goldthwait.
Whose schtick eventually erased Kinison and the Bobcat's out-of-control nihilism from the
popular culture? The laid-back Jerry Seinfeld as written by Larry David -- yet another reason
to support Bernie Sanders over the other wooden Dem contenders. Did you see the "debate" on
SNL last weekend? Get them on a stage together and Bernie's schtick will slay Trump's
As the days go by I become more convinced that the impeachment drama was used to cover up
the passing of the usmca and axing of the venture capital in health care bill and containing
surprise medical billing https://khn.org/news/investors-deep-pocket-push-to-defend-surprise-medical-bills/
FTA "We've started to realize it's not us versus the hospitals or the doctors, it's us versus
the hedge funds," said James Gelfand, senior vice president of health policy at ERIC, a group
that represents large employers.
From the KHN article on surprise billing
"surprise medical bills, which generally arise when an insured individual inadvertently
receives care from an out-of-network provider."
How did "inadvertently" get in there when it is a revenue generation model? Asymmetry of
information is always how profits are made.
I like to invert the model and estimate the outcomes for a lot of these fictions: if
working class people controlled the upward distribution of wealth, how would society be
different?
In China's history when the largest landowners, the wealthiest individuals connived or
bribed their way out of paying taxes and the burden shifted down the income scale, the result
sooner rather than later was an uprising that ended with a new dynasty.
Why is there always more money than is even asked for for the "defense budget", but social
security and medicare are budget problems?
This is a constant in Chinese history, even the French Revolution was set up by the
exclusive taxation of the poor and middle classes. Eviscerating one's sources of income while
weakening the overall economy including the general population does not make for a strong
state able to withstand an unanticipated emergency. Somehow people keep doing the same thing
over and over.
in the US pols are still making masssive tax cuts for billionairs and big
corporations – 60 of America's largest corporations in the US
paid no federal taxes last year.
At the same time, both parties say there isn't enough money to continue Social Security, as
we know it, because of deficits. They say Social Security is the budget problem. right .
France's govt is doing the economic same trick, imo.
Trump weighed in on the saga Sunday, suggesting that Democrats have realised they are
driving off a cliff:
Crazy Nancy wants to dictate terms on the Impeachment Hoax to the Republican Majority
Senate, but striped away all Due Process, no lawyers or witnesses, on the Democrat Majority
House. The Dems just wish it would all end. Their case is dead, their poll numbers are
horrendous!
Trump weighed in on the saga Sunday, suggesting that Democrats have realised they are
driving off a cliff:
Crazy Nancy wants to dictate terms on the Impeachment Hoax to the Republican Majority
Senate, but striped away all Due Process, no lawyers or witnesses, on the Democrat Majority
House. The Dems just wish it would all end. Their case is dead, their poll numbers are
horrendous!
Buttigieg presents himself as having had little to no impact . Buttigieg presents his
initial work, on a cost-cutting study for Blue Cross Blue Shield, as being about "rent, travel
costs, mail, and printing." Perhaps his little corner of data crunching focused on that, but
Buttigieg is being disingenuous in averting voter attention from the fact that the study was
almost certainly about cutting headcount.
In my day, McKinsey only reluctantly took on what it called "activity value" or "overhead
value" studies, which were its lingo for cost reduction assignments, because there was no way
to make much of a dent unless you got rid of bodies. 70% of most firm's costs are
employment-related and most costs, like rent, key off headcount. In other words, those
"overhead expenditures" that Buttigieg's team was tasked to reduce included employees.
McKinsey didn't like getting people at clients fired because it recognized it might be
creating future enemies, via axed professionals who eventually landed well and would likely do
what they could to prevent McKinsey from getting hired at their new home. And consultants hated
those studies too. They followed a cookbook, which meant they didn't allow the consultants to
develop or show off problem-solving skills, plus it was just plain depressing to go to client
when the people in the corridors correctly saw you as an executioner. 2
Buttigieg is proud of the monster data-crunching pricing exercise he did on his second study
for the Canadian store Loblaw's. There's a bizarre grandiosity in how he presented his role as
a still-wet-behind-the-ears consultant in the Atlantic interview: " .brought him in to figure
out how to do it in a way that would actually help the bottom line." Structuring the analysis
falls to the engagement manager. That isn't to say Buttigieg didn't improve considerably upon
the initial ideas, but it seems wildly implausible that someone who presents himself as having
to be taught spreadsheeting and doesn't have a degree in math, engineering, hard sciences, or
at least a solid knowledge of statistics, would be "brought in" as if he had pre-existing
expertise.
And oddly, he never says this big exercise was valuable to the client. There are acceptable
in McKinsey-speak ways of taking credit without violating the norm of giving the glory to the
client.
This part from the Atlantic interview is also grandiose:
By the time of the Loblaws project, Buttigieg was becoming known within the company for
being a particularly good McKinsey consultant..
This is ludicrous. He's merely nine months into the firm and he has yet to demonstrate any
client-related or project management skills. At most, Buttigieg might have gotten noticed
within the Chicago and/or Toronto offices as being a good number cruncher and quantitative
analyst.
Buttigieg also tries to depict his getting a foreign assignment as a badge of honor. In
reality, when an office can't staff a project from its own team (and Buttigieg was sent from
the Chicago office to work on an Iraq/Afghanistan project staffed out of the Washington
office), nearly all of the time, this is the project everyone else in the office turned down.
Only once in a great while is an office so busy that it can't even staff the good projects
internally. I made this mistake in accepting a London project. I got to the the office in St.
James and discovered that the partner to which I was now assigned was widely despised.
Mind you, Buttigieg no doubt learned a lot from this gig, even if it may not be want he
wanted to learn. But getting put on it didn't mean he was special.
Buttigieg doesn't adequately explain the anomaly of his bugging out to work on a campaign
.
How do we explain this?
I stepped away from the firm during the late summer and fall of 2008 to help full-time
with a Democratic campaign for governor in Indiana, returning after the election.
This is sufficiently unusual that I suspect those who have taken notice of it are likely to
have drawn the wrong inferences, so indulge me for a bit.
McKinsey, high-power professional firms, and most employers do not take well to employees
saying they want to take a disruptive break to pursue personal interests.
McKinsey is even less good about making accommodations for women partners who have children
than other top consultants; Bain by contrast has developed a reputation for being enlightened
on this front, so there's no reason to think they are habituated to being accommodating in
general .particularly for someone who has only been there a bit over a year.
Keep in mind that unlike other types of professional firms, where a young hire might join a
particular department, like the bankruptcy practice, and those partners could have the power to
run their own business and cut "their" staffers some slack, McKinsey non-partners are in a pool
and a assignment specialist (who even when not a partner has a lot of clout) negotiates with
partners as to who goes on what study. Even though the partners' interests are important, the
assignment specialist also pays attention to the so-called "development needs" of the
associates and managers, as well as other issues (like they were just on an out of town study
in a terrible location and putting them on another might result in them quitting).
Shorter: for the purpose of keeping peace among the partners, individual partners do not get
to act as godfathers with respect to associates or even engagement managers. 3
So how to make sense of this? Look at the timeframe again: Late summer-fall 2008.
The only thing I can fathom is that enough McKinsey clients saw the crisis unfolding and
stopped signing up for new work so as to create a lot of underutilization. The firm might have
let it quietly or not so quietly be known that it would consider requests for short-term leaves
of absence.
McKinsey was badly hit in the dot-bomb era and wound up reducing its staffing in North
America by nearly 50% in two years. With the benefit of hindsight, the firm might have come up
with other ways to reduce payroll when faced with sudden slack besides cutting hiring and
getting more aggressive about pushing weak performers out the door (both of which take time to
implement).
Why did Buttigieg leave? Buttigieg strongly suggests he was never serious about McKinsey,
that he was there to get his ticket punched. While that may be true, the firm tries very hard
to hire individuals who are very insecure and want badly to do well, including at the firm. And
if you really aren't that serious about your long-term career at the firm, it is hard to put up
with the indignities of being an associate, like insecure managers wanting you to do analysis
that is obviously a waste of time or who nag associates thinking that that will motivate them,
or alternatively the stereotypical bad consulting gig of being on the road all the time, worse
mainly in locations with not-good hotels and restaurants. 4
When I came to McKinsey, I was ambivalent but willing to be persuaded. I wasn't. I saw too
little evidence that McKinsey actually added value, to use its pet expression. Most clients
didn't seem to get better. Now it is true they might have gotten worse without McKinsey, but
that's hard to establish.
One fellow 'Zoid who left around when I did had these observations:
The problem with consulting is you are hired by the problem.
The most profitable clients are the most diseased.
So consulting seemed to me to be a lot like therapy, in a bad way, in that I knew too many
people who were in therapy, were convinced therapy was helping, yet there wasn't much objective
evidence that their lives were getting better (they didn't seem less anxious, or to be having
more success in their relationships or with whatever their presenting problem seemed to be).
5 At my remove, it looked as if in too many cases, the therapist had done a good job
of creating patient dependence. And I saw the same phenomenon at McKinsey.
By contrast, Buttigieg is he exhibits no reservations about what McKinsey does generally,
just some specific bad acts. From the
Atlantic interview :
He said he's disappointed in some of the work the company has done. "Since I've left," he
said, "there are at least four cases that I can think of where someone at McKinsey has done
something upsetting."
Of course, McKinsey partners have turned out to be important funding sources for Buttigieg,
so he has mercenary reasons for avoiding offending members of the firm. Nevertheless, it would
seem more genuine to come up with some reason why consulting wasn't a fit for him, even if that
reason wasn't the operative truth. But Buttigieg doesn't do genuine.
1 I don't consider Kennedy having worked for one month as a correspondent thanks
to his father arm-twisting William Randolph Hearst as "private sector experience." LBJ briefly
taught in public schools, again not a private sector position. Clinton decided at age 16 that
he wanted to be a public servant. He worked on some political campaigns and was a law professor
at the University of Arkansas (public school!) before he won his first race, for governor, at
the age of 32.
3 The dynamic can change later when a consultant has worked regularly on a core
client team. Then the client might actually start asking for a particular consultant to manage
or lead a study. The firm views that positively since consultants that get known at a client
will be contenders to take over the account later. But the earliest when clients start asking
for a specific person is at the engagement manager level, when Buttigieg was a mere
associate.
4 I was exceptionally lucky in getting way less of that than most associates
did.
5 Admittedly New York is very competitive and few people have friends that aren't
part of their professional circle. So the therapist might have filled an important role by
being a safe sounding board/sanity check.
Thanks Yves. In a few paragraphs you summed up the entire world of the big consulting
firm. It can be fun but there's a heck of a lot of misery, especially for the associates and
more junior managers. Getting assigned to a bad MD can set a career back for years and I've
seen at least a dozen times where it led to illness or leaving the firm. Or both.
The odd thing that I noticed about Buttigieg was that at times he sounds like he's trying
to oversell a flimsy resume of consulting experience and at other times sort of clumsily
hiding what he really worked on. I agree with you that he was probably told that his part of
the firm was "taking a break" before he went off to do campaign work. Otherwise it makes no
sense to lose
My basic feeling is that Buttigieg is a creation of the media. Some candidates, like Tulsi
Gabbard, Mike Gravel, or Sanders, are diminished by the press. Others, like Buttigieg, are
promoted. The hype about Buttigieg reminds me of the hype about George Bush giving Michelle
Obama some candy, or about Alito's wife crying during his confirmation hearing.
Here's a post on mgt consulting from awhile back that this post reminded me of. James Kwak
helped place the proper role of consulting projects into the right frame.
I think it helps compliment Yves' very valid questions.
The larger takeaway I'm getting is that Buttigieg doesn't come across as particularly
honest about much of anything on his resume. I know the elites of media and team dem really
want to push this guy, but he's really struggling to catch on with voters, not least because
he's hopelessly unqualified. There's no scenario where you can say:
"I was a low man on the totem pole at McKinsey" and then say, "I'm qualified to be
president" in the next breath.
The same is true with his record as Mayor of South Bend. He's admitted he's not understood
the black community and not represented them all that well, and yet, he wants a big
promotion.
This kind of resume-based critique seems appropriate to me because he's running as the
candidate who's trying to persuade the elite, PMC (prof mgr class) within the democratic
party that he's the man for the job (and tell the larger working class base of the democratic
party that they should just jump on board because he's electable) and he's not even qualified
from their own frame of reference.
What seems to me telling about Buttigieg is that he worked for the occupation and seems to
have bought the imperial cool-aid, which indicates to me that he is not that smart. Some
people, like Gabbard, have enlisted in the military, but were able to think independently and
critically about the wars.
"... Currently the United States is assisting Ukraine against Russia by providing some non-lethal military equipment as well as limited training for Kiev's army. It has balked at getting more involved in the conflict, rightly so. ..."
"... The Ukrainians were not buying any of that. Their point of view is that Russia is seeking to revive the Soviet Union and will inevitably turn on the Baltic States and Poland, so it is necessary to stop evil dictator Vladimir Putin now. They inevitably produced the Hitler analogy, citing the example of 1938 and Munich as well as the subsequent partition of Poland in 1939 to make their case. When I asked what the United States would gain by intervening they responded that in return for military assistance, Washington will have a good and democratic friend in Ukraine which will serve as a bulwark against further Russian expansion. ..."
"... But Obama chose to stay home as punishment for Putin, which I think was a bad choice suggesting that he is being strongly influenced by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the other neocons who seem to have retained considerable power in his administration. ..."
"... Obama told a crowd gathered outside the Nike footwear company in Oregon that the deal is necessary because "if we don't write the rules, China will " ..."
"... Obama takes as a given that he will be able to "write the rules." This is American hubris writ large and I am certain that many who are thereby designated to follow Washington's lead are as offended by it as I am. Bad move Barack. ..."
Currently the United States is assisting Ukraine against Russia by providing some non-lethal military equipment as well as
limited training for Kiev's army. It has balked at getting more involved in the conflict, rightly so. With that in mind,
I had a meeting with a delegation of Ukrainian parliamentarians and government officials a couple of weeks ago. I tried to explain
to them why many Americans are wary of helping them by providing lethal, potentially game changing military assistance in what Kiev
sees as a struggle to regain control of Crimea and other parts of their country from militias that are clearly linked to Moscow.
I argued that while Washington should be sympathetic to Ukraine's aspirations it has no actual horse in the race, that the imperative
for bilateral relations with Russia, which is the only nation on earth that can attack and destroy the United States, is that they
be stable and that all channels for communication remain open.
I also observed that the negative perception of Washington-driven
democracy promotion around the world has been in part shaped by the actual record on interventions since 2001, which has not been
positive. Each exercise of the military option has wound up creating new problems, like the mistaken policies in Libya, Iraq and
Syria, all of which have produced instability and a surge in terrorism. I noted that the U.S. does not need to bring about a new
Cold War by trying to impose democratic norms in Eastern Europe but should instead be doing all in its power to encourage a reasonable
rapprochement between Moscow and Kiev. Providing weapons or other military support to Ukraine would only cause the situation to escalate,
leading to a new war by proxies in Eastern Europe that could rapidly spread to other regions.
The Ukrainians were not buying any of that. Their point of view is that Russia is seeking to revive the Soviet Union and will
inevitably turn on the Baltic States and Poland, so it is necessary to stop evil dictator Vladimir Putin now. They inevitably produced
the Hitler analogy, citing the example of 1938 and Munich as well as the subsequent partition of Poland in 1939 to make their case.
When I asked what the United States would gain by intervening they responded that in return for military assistance, Washington will
have a good and democratic friend in Ukraine which will serve as a bulwark against further Russian expansion.
I explained that Russia does not have the economic or military resources to dominate Eastern Europe and its ambitions appear to
be limited to establishing a sphere of influence that includes "protection" for some adjacent areas that are traditionally Russian
and inhabited by ethnic Russians. Crimea is, unfortunately, one such region that was actually directly governed by Moscow between
1783 and 1954 and it is also militarily vitally important to Moscow as it is the home of the Black Sea Fleet. I did not point that
out to excuse Russian behavior but only to suggest that Moscow does have an argument to make, particularly as the United States has
been meddling in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine where it has "invested" $5 billion, since the Clinton Administration.
I argued that if resurgent Russian nationalism actually endangered the United States there would be a case to be made for constricting
Moscow by creating an alliance of neighbors that would be able to help contain any expansion, but even the hawks in the U.S. Congress
are neither prepared nor able to demonstrate a genuine threat. Fear of the expansionistic Soviet Union after 1945 was indeed the
original motivation for creating NATO. But the reality is that Russia is only dangerous if the U.S. succeeds in backing it into a
corner where it will begin to consider the kind of disruption that was the norm during the Cold War or even some kind of nuclear
response or demonstration. If one is focused on U.S. interests globally Russia has actually been a responsible player, helping in
the Middle East and also against international terrorism.
So there was little to agree on apart from the fact that the Ukrainians have a right to have a government they choose for themselves
and also to defend themselves. And we Americans have in the Ukrainians yet another potential client state that wants our help. In
return we would have yet another dependency whose concerns have to be regarded when formulating our foreign policy. One can sympathize
with the plight of the Ukrainians but it is not up to Washington to fix the world or to go around promoting democracy as a potential
solution to pervasive regional political instability.
Obviously a discussion based on what are essentially conflicting interests will ultimately go nowhere and so it did in this case,
but it did raise the issue of why Washington's relationship with Moscow is so troubled, particularly as it need not be so. Regarding
Ukraine and associated issues, Washington's approach has been stick-and-carrot with the emphasis on the stick through the imposition
of painful sanctions and meaningless though demeaning travel bans. I would think that reversing that formulation to emphasize rewards
would actually work better as today's Russia is actually a relatively new nation in terms of its institutions and suffers from insecurity
about its place in the world and the respect that it believes it is entitled to receive.
Russia
recently celebrated the 70 th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe. The celebration was boycotted by
the United States and by many Western European nations in protest over Russian interference in Ukraine. I don't know to what extent
Obama has any knowledge of recent history, but the Russians were the ones who were most instrumental in the defeat of Nazi Germany,
losing 27 million citizens in the process. It would have been respectful for President Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry to
travel to Moscow for the commemoration and it would likely have produced a positive result both for Ukraine and also to mitigate
the concern that a new Cold War might be developing. But Obama chose to stay home as punishment for Putin, which I think was
a bad choice suggesting that he is being strongly influenced by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the other neocons
who seem to have retained considerable power in his administration.
And I also would note a couple of other bad choices made during the past several weeks. The Trans-Pacific multilateral trade agreement
that is currently working its way through Congress and is being aggressively promoted by the White House might be great for business
though it may or may not be good for the American worker, which, based on previous agreements, is a reasonable concern. But what
really disturbs me is the Obama explanation of why the pact is important. Obama
told a crowd gathered outside the Nike footwear company in Oregon that the deal is necessary because "if we don't write the rules,
China will "
Fear of the Yellow Peril might indeed be legitimate but it would be difficult to make the case that an internally troubled China
is seeking to dominate the Pacific. If it attempts to do so, it would face strong resistance from the Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipinos
and Koreans among others. But what is bothersome to me and probably also to many in the Asian audience is that Obama takes as
a given that he will be able to "write the rules." This is American hubris writ large and I am certain that many who are thereby
designated to follow Washington's lead are as offended by it as I am. Bad move Barack.
And finally there is Iran as an alleged state sponsor of terrorism. President Obama claims that he is working hard to achieve
a peaceful settlement of the alleged threat posed by Iran's nuclear program. But if that is so why does he throw obstacles irrelevant
to an agreement out to make the Iranian government more uncomfortable and therefore unwilling or unable to compromise? In an
interview with Arabic
newspaper Asharq al-Awsat Obama called Tehran a terrorism supporter, stating that "it [Iran] props up the Assad regime in
Syria. It supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It aids the Houthi rebels in Yemen so countries in the region
are rights to be deeply concerned " I understand that the interview was designed to reassure America's friends in the Gulf that the
United States shares their concerns and will continue to support them but the timing would appear to be particularly unfortunate.
The handling of Russia, China and Iran all exemplify the essential dysfunction in American foreign policy. The United States should
have a mutually respectful relationship with Russia, ought to accept that China is an adversary but not necessarily an enemy unless
we make it so and it should also finally realize that an agreement with Iran is within its grasp as long as Washington does not overreach.
It is not clear that any of that is well understood and one has to wonder precisely what kind of advice Obama is receiving when fails
to understand the importance of Russia, insists on "writing the rules" for Asia, and persists in throwing around the terrorist label.
If the past fifteen years have taught us anything it is that the "Washington as the international arbiter model" is not working.
Obama should wake up to that reality before Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush arrives on the scene to make everything worse.
Tom Welsh, May 19, 2015 at 7:02 am GMT • 100 Words
All of this misses the point, IMHO. There is really no need to explain that Russia has no plans to conquer Europe, China has
no plans to take over the Pacific, etc. Anyone with a little historical knowledge and some common sense can see that plainly.
What is happening is that the USA has overweening aspirations to control (and then suck dry) the entire world – and Europe, Russia
and China are next on its hit list.
So it naturally accuses those nations of aspiring to what it plans to do. Standard operating procedure.
The Priss Factor, May 19, 2015 at 7:19 am GMT • 100 Words
"The Ukrainians were not buying any of that. Their point of view is that Russia is seeking to revive the Soviet Union and will
inevitably turn on the Baltic States and Poland, so it is necessary to stop evil dictator Vladimir Putin now."
I can understand Ukrainian animus against Russia due to history and ethnic tensions.
But that is ridiculous. They can't possibly believe it. I think they're repeating Neocon talking points to persuade American
that the fate of the world is at stake.
It's really just a local affair.
And Crimea would still belong to Ukraine if the crazies in Ukraine hadn't conspired with Neocons like Nuland to subvert and
overthrow the regime.
Buttigieg presents himself as having had little to no impact . Buttigieg presents his
initial work, on a cost-cutting study for Blue Cross Blue Shield, as being about "rent, travel
costs, mail, and printing." Perhaps his little corner of data crunching focused on that, but
Buttigieg is being disingenuous in averting voter attention from the fact that the study was
almost certainly about cutting headcount.
In my day, McKinsey only reluctantly took on what it called "activity value" or "overhead
value" studies, which were its lingo for cost reduction assignments, because there was no way
to make much of a dent unless you got rid of bodies. 70% of most firm's costs are
employment-related and most costs, like rent, key off headcount. In other words, those
"overhead expenditures" that Buttigieg's team was tasked to reduce included employees.
McKinsey didn't like getting people at clients fired because it recognized it might be
creating future enemies, via axed professionals who eventually landed well and would likely do
what they could to prevent McKinsey from getting hired at their new home. And consultants hated
those studies too. They followed a cookbook, which meant they didn't allow the consultants to
develop or show off problem-solving skills, plus it was just plain depressing to go to client
when the people in the corridors correctly saw you as an executioner. 2
Buttigieg is proud of the monster data-crunching pricing exercise he did on his second study
for the Canadian store Loblaw's. There's a bizarre grandiosity in how he presented his role as
a still-wet-behind-the-ears consultant in the Atlantic interview: " .brought him in to figure
out how to do it in a way that would actually help the bottom line." Structuring the analysis
falls to the engagement manager. That isn't to say Buttigieg didn't improve considerably upon
the initial ideas, but it seems wildly implausible that someone who presents himself as having
to be taught spreadsheeting and doesn't have a degree in math, engineering, hard sciences, or
at least a solid knowledge of statistics, would be "brought in" as if he had pre-existing
expertise.
And oddly, he never says this big exercise was valuable to the client. There are acceptable
in McKinsey-speak ways of taking credit without violating the norm of giving the glory to the
client.
This part from the Atlantic interview is also grandiose:
By the time of the Loblaws project, Buttigieg was becoming known within the company for
being a particularly good McKinsey consultant..
This is ludicrous. He's merely nine months into the firm and he has yet to demonstrate any
client-related or project management skills. At most, Buttigieg might have gotten noticed
within the Chicago and/or Toronto offices as being a good number cruncher and quantitative
analyst.
Buttigieg also tries to depict his getting a foreign assignment as a badge of honor. In
reality, when an office can't staff a project from its own team (and Buttigieg was sent from
the Chicago office to work on an Iraq/Afghanistan project staffed out of the Washington
office), nearly all of the time, this is the project everyone else in the office turned down.
Only once in a great while is an office so busy that it can't even staff the good projects
internally. I made this mistake in accepting a London project. I got to the the office in St.
James and discovered that the partner to which I was now assigned was widely despised.
Mind you, Buttigieg no doubt learned a lot from this gig, even if it may not be want he
wanted to learn. But getting put on it didn't mean he was special.
Buttigieg doesn't adequately explain the anomaly of his bugging out to work on a campaign
.
How do we explain this?
I stepped away from the firm during the late summer and fall of 2008 to help full-time
with a Democratic campaign for governor in Indiana, returning after the election.
This is sufficiently unusual that I suspect those who have taken notice of it are likely to
have drawn the wrong inferences, so indulge me for a bit.
McKinsey, high-power professional firms, and most employers do not take well to employees
saying they want to take a disruptive break to pursue personal interests.
McKinsey is even less good about making accommodations for women partners who have children
than other top consultants; Bain by contrast has developed a reputation for being enlightened
on this front, so there's no reason to think they are habituated to being accommodating in
general .particularly for someone who has only been there a bit over a year.
Keep in mind that unlike other types of professional firms, where a young hire might join a
particular department, like the bankruptcy practice, and those partners could have the power to
run their own business and cut "their" staffers some slack, McKinsey non-partners are in a pool
and a assignment specialist (who even when not a partner has a lot of clout) negotiates with
partners as to who goes on what study. Even though the partners' interests are important, the
assignment specialist also pays attention to the so-called "development needs" of the
associates and managers, as well as other issues (like they were just on an out of town study
in a terrible location and putting them on another might result in them quitting).
Shorter: for the purpose of keeping peace among the partners, individual partners do not get
to act as godfathers with respect to associates or even engagement managers. 3
So how to make sense of this? Look at the timeframe again: Late summer-fall 2008.
The only thing I can fathom is that enough McKinsey clients saw the crisis unfolding and
stopped signing up for new work so as to create a lot of underutilization. The firm might have
let it quietly or not so quietly be known that it would consider requests for short-term leaves
of absence.
McKinsey was badly hit in the dot-bomb era and wound up reducing its staffing in North
America by nearly 50% in two years. With the benefit of hindsight, the firm might have come up
with other ways to reduce payroll when faced with sudden slack besides cutting hiring and
getting more aggressive about pushing weak performers out the door (both of which take time to
implement).
Why did Buttigieg leave? Buttigieg strongly suggests he was never serious about McKinsey,
that he was there to get his ticket punched. While that may be true, the firm tries very hard
to hire individuals who are very insecure and want badly to do well, including at the firm. And
if you really aren't that serious about your long-term career at the firm, it is hard to put up
with the indignities of being an associate, like insecure managers wanting you to do analysis
that is obviously a waste of time or who nag associates thinking that that will motivate them,
or alternatively the stereotypical bad consulting gig of being on the road all the time, worse
mainly in locations with not-good hotels and restaurants. 4
When I came to McKinsey, I was ambivalent but willing to be persuaded. I wasn't. I saw too
little evidence that McKinsey actually added value, to use its pet expression. Most clients
didn't seem to get better. Now it is true they might have gotten worse without McKinsey, but
that's hard to establish.
One fellow 'Zoid who left around when I did had these observations:
The problem with consulting is you are hired by the problem.
The most profitable clients are the most diseased.
So consulting seemed to me to be a lot like therapy, in a bad way, in that I knew too many
people who were in therapy, were convinced therapy was helping, yet there wasn't much objective
evidence that their lives were getting better (they didn't seem less anxious, or to be having
more success in their relationships or with whatever their presenting problem seemed to be).
5 At my remove, it looked as if in too many cases, the therapist had done a good job
of creating patient dependence. And I saw the same phenomenon at McKinsey.
By contrast, Buttigieg is he exhibits no reservations about what McKinsey does generally,
just some specific bad acts. From the
Atlantic interview :
He said he's disappointed in some of the work the company has done. "Since I've left," he
said, "there are at least four cases that I can think of where someone at McKinsey has done
something upsetting."
Of course, McKinsey partners have turned out to be important funding sources for Buttigieg,
so he has mercenary reasons for avoiding offending members of the firm. Nevertheless, it would
seem more genuine to come up with some reason why consulting wasn't a fit for him, even if that
reason wasn't the operative truth. But Buttigieg doesn't do genuine.
1 I don't consider Kennedy having worked for one month as a correspondent thanks
to his father arm-twisting William Randolph Hearst as "private sector experience." LBJ briefly
taught in public schools, again not a private sector position. Clinton decided at age 16 that
he wanted to be a public servant. He worked on some political campaigns and was a law professor
at the University of Arkansas (public school!) before he won his first race, for governor, at
the age of 32.
3 The dynamic can change later when a consultant has worked regularly on a core
client team. Then the client might actually start asking for a particular consultant to manage
or lead a study. The firm views that positively since consultants that get known at a client
will be contenders to take over the account later. But the earliest when clients start asking
for a specific person is at the engagement manager level, when Buttigieg was a mere
associate.
4 I was exceptionally lucky in getting way less of that than most associates
did.
5 Admittedly New York is very competitive and few people have friends that aren't
part of their professional circle. So the therapist might have filled an important role by
being a safe sounding board/sanity check.
Thanks Yves. In a few paragraphs you summed up the entire world of the big consulting
firm. It can be fun but there's a heck of a lot of misery, especially for the associates and
more junior managers. Getting assigned to a bad MD can set a career back for years and I've
seen at least a dozen times where it led to illness or leaving the firm. Or both.
The odd thing that I noticed about Buttigieg was that at times he sounds like he's trying
to oversell a flimsy resume of consulting experience and at other times sort of clumsily
hiding what he really worked on. I agree with you that he was probably told that his part of
the firm was "taking a break" before he went off to do campaign work. Otherwise it makes no
sense to lose
My basic feeling is that Buttigieg is a creation of the media. Some candidates, like Tulsi
Gabbard, Mike Gravel, or Sanders, are diminished by the press. Others, like Buttigieg, are
promoted. The hype about Buttigieg reminds me of the hype about George Bush giving Michelle
Obama some candy, or about Alito's wife crying during his confirmation hearing.
Here's a post on mgt consulting from awhile back that this post reminded me of. James Kwak
helped place the proper role of consulting projects into the right frame.
I think it helps compliment Yves' very valid questions.
The larger takeaway I'm getting is that Buttigieg doesn't come across as particularly
honest about much of anything on his resume. I know the elites of media and team dem really
want to push this guy, but he's really struggling to catch on with voters, not least because
he's hopelessly unqualified. There's no scenario where you can say:
"I was a low man on the totem pole at McKinsey" and then say, "I'm qualified to be
president" in the next breath.
The same is true with his record as Mayor of South Bend. He's admitted he's not understood
the black community and not represented them all that well, and yet, he wants a big
promotion.
This kind of resume-based critique seems appropriate to me because he's running as the
candidate who's trying to persuade the elite, PMC (prof mgr class) within the democratic
party that he's the man for the job (and tell the larger working class base of the democratic
party that they should just jump on board because he's electable) and he's not even qualified
from their own frame of reference.
What seems to me telling about Buttigieg is that he worked for the occupation and seems to
have bought the imperial cool-aid, which indicates to me that he is not that smart. Some
people, like Gabbard, have enlisted in the military, but were able to think independently and
critically about the wars.
This was an objective and readable history of libertarian economics (sometimes called
neo-liberal economics) especially in the United States beginning in the 50s. It will be
highly influential book especially if the next recession is as terrible as 2007 and a strong
reform movement develops. Whether you support libertarian ideas of the free market or you
support the reform and regulation of our current form of capitalism the book is informative.
If you are an ideologue you will not be satisfied and the book offers no solutions. One
reviewer seems to think book is pro-Democratic but the book gives ample evidence that the
elites of both parties have bought in to libertarian economic ideas. Whether you watch CNBC
or follow politics this book will help you understand the buzz words used by some
commentators and what they really mean. The personal history of economists was interesting
too.
When the economy was booming after WWII, economists were found primarily in academia, but
as the economy slowed and solutions were sought, the economists came out of hiding. Starting
with Milton Friedman, economists entered the political arena, and their ideas began to shape
the economy not just of the United States, but of the world.
The author tells the story of how these economists came to the forefront of political
thought with their belief that the economy given the impetus of free markets would bring
prosperity and did not need so much government intervention. The author tells the stories of
Walter Oi, whose calculations persuaded President Nixon to end conscription, and Thomas
Shelling who made value assessments of human life to underpin his suggested policies.
This book is very readable. It focuses on the stories of individual economists, their
ideas, and how the ideas impacted the lives of people. I enjoyed the book very much. It tells
you a lot about policy and economics, but isn't preachy or dry. The author uses his focus on
individuals and episodes in their lives to bring this rather deep discipline to life. I
highly recommend it.
I think less then a century is more plausible forecast. The end of "plato oil" means the
crumbling of the USA centered neoliberal empire and nothing can prevent this.
Very interesting and candid testimony by an American that lived through the transition
period between the End of History era (1991-2008) and the Multipolar (?) Rise era
(2008-):
Contrary to my perception, he considers the Invasion of Iraq as the end of the End of History
era, and not the 2008 meltdown, as is my perception. Also interesting - which coincides with
my own perception - is that he saw the whole process as a disease that spread quickly among
the American people, i.e. it was a very quick process of descent. His metaphor of a virus,
pandemia or disease never crossed my mind: from my point of view - a person from the "rest of
the world" the metaphor that arose was that of a big house or big structure collapsing from
its base, but not completely: it still resembles the old structure, but it clearly isn't the
same as the old structure.
And, in fact, in the 1990s, me and the people I talked to in Latin America saw the USA as
definitely invincible. We could easily see it lasting forever, like if it really was the End
of History: the only debate left was if it was better to invest in a career in our native
countries or try to immigrate to the USA.
I remember talking to an American at the time (it was already the 21st Century, don't
remember the exact year), and, although he agreed that every empire ends, he said the USA
could take at least more 830 years to fall. Maybe his prophecy turns out to be true, maybe
the USA really pulls out another miracle like the one it pulled off in 1941-1945 - but it
certainly doesn't look like that right now, and there is solid evidence it won't ever recover
the status it enjoyed in 1992-2003.
No,vk @ 38, "America" didn't all turn bone mean on that horrible day. There were plenty of
people demonstrating against that illegal war; plenty writing letters, townships passing
resolutions against it. There was an ongoing protest movement worldwide as well. We all,
including young people, had a brief moment of sheer joy - I remember it vividly - when Obama
was elected. Because he was going to be the presider over change we could believe in, as was
his Democratic party - and they were elected overwhelmingly as the anti-Bush remedy.
He had the chance then and there, with the people behind him, to bring us all back to
peaceful times. He chose not to. And yes, that was a choice - only look at where he is now.
He chose money; he chose to be one of the rich guys. He was so shallow as to betray his own
chance to be one of the greats, and all so he could have millions and live like a king.
That's when the real rot, which had been festering under Clinton, though the Supreme Court
started the ball rolling in the election of 2000 -- oh yes -- that's when the real rot set
in.
You are interested in history. Get that straight. Those who were first time voters in 2008
weren't infected with any rabies. All they wanted was to stop that illegal rush to war, and
they campaigned their hearts out and they voted their hearts out and they cheered their
hearts out when he won.
Trump weighed in on the saga Sunday, suggesting that Democrats have realised they are
driving off a cliff:
Crazy Nancy wants to dictate terms on the Impeachment Hoax to the Republican Majority
Senate, but striped away all Due Process, no lawyers or witnesses, on the Democrat Majority
House. The Dems just wish it would all end. Their case is dead, their poll numbers are
horrendous!
Trump weighed in on the saga Sunday, suggesting that Democrats have realised they are
driving off a cliff:
Crazy Nancy wants to dictate terms on the Impeachment Hoax to the Republican Majority
Senate, but striped away all Due Process, no lawyers or witnesses, on the Democrat Majority
House. The Dems just wish it would all end. Their case is dead, their poll numbers are
horrendous!
President Trump also had words for Pelosi on Monday after the Speaker called for "fairness"
in a Senate trial.
"Pelosi gives us the most unfair trial in the history of the U.S. Congress, and now she is
crying for fairness in the Senate, and breaking all rules while doing so," Trump tweeted,
adding "She lost Congress once, she will do it again!"
Pelosi gives us the most unfair trial in the history of the U.S. Congress, and now she is
crying for fairness in the Senate, and breaking all rules while doing so. She lost Congress
once, she will do it again!
Pelosi says she will only transmit the impeachment articles to the Senate after Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announces the process they will use for Trump's
trial.
AG Barr Blasts Soros For Stoking Hatred Of Police by Tyler Durden Sun, 12/22/2019 - 21:00 0
SHARES
"They have started to win in a number of cities and they have, in my view, not given the
proper support to the police. "
That is the warning that Attorney General William Barr has for Americans, as he told
Fox News' Martha MacCallum in a recent interview that liberal billionaire George Soros has
been bankrolling radical prosecutor candidates in cities across the country .
"There's this recent development [where] George Soros has been coming in, in largely
Democratic primaries where there has not been much voter turnout and putting in a lot of
money to elect people who are not very supportive of law enforcement and don't view the
office as bringing to trial and prosecuting criminals but pursuing other social agendas, "
Barr told Martha MacCallum.
Specifically, Barr warned that if the trend continues, it will lead to more violent crime ,
ading that the process of electing these prosecutors will likely cause law enforcement officers
to consider whether the leadership in their municipality "has their back."
"They can either stop policing or they can move to a jurisdiction more hospitable," he
said.
"We could find ourselves in a position that communities that are not supporting the police
may not get the police protection they need."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/UnnnpiYQODk
The Washington Post recently reported that while two Virginia prosecutorial candidates -
funded by Soros' Justice and Public Safety PAC - have never prosecuted a case in a state court,
they beat candidates with more than 60 years of experience between them .
This month, the energy consulting firm Wood MacKenzie gave an
online presentation that basically debunked the whole business model of the shale industry.
In this webinar, which explored the declining
production rates of oil wells in the Permian region , research director Ben Shattuck noted
how it was impossible to accurately forecast how much oil a shale play held based on estimates
from existing wells.
" Over the years of us doing this, as analysts, we've learned that you really have to do it
well by well," Shattuck explained of analyzing well performance. "You cannot take anything for
granted."
For an industry that has raised hundreds of billions of dollars promising future performance
based on the production of a few wells, this is not good news. And particularly for the
Permian, the nation's most
productive shale play , located in Texas and New Mexico.
Up until now, the basic premise of the fracking business model has been for a company to
lease some land, drill until finding a high-volume well, hype to the press this well and the
many others it plans to drill on the rest of its acreage, and promise a bright future, all
while borrowing huge sums of money to drill and frack the wells.
Throughout the seminar, Wood MacKenzie analysts emphasized that companies can't reliably
predict future oil production by "clustering" wells, that is, estimating volumes of many future
wells based on the performance of a small number of nearby existing wells, and described the
practice as potentially "misleading."
Shattuck called out how the old business model of firms borrowing money from investors while
hoping for future payouts on record-breaking wells no longer works. He summed up the
situation:
" We're transitioning to a point in time, where the investment community was enamored of
the next well and how big it might be. That has changed for a variety of reasons. One very
important reason is the next well might not be bigger. It might be smaller."
The fracking industry is now being asked to produce positive financial results -- not just
promises of new
super wells, or cube development, or artificial intelligence. And yet the industry couldn't
deliver profits while drilling all the best acreage over the last decade. Now, shale companies
need to do that with oil wells that may not produce as much.
Seven years ago, Rolling Stone referred to the fracking industry as a "
scam " while profiling the "Shale King" Aubrey McClendon, the man generally credited with
inventing the business model the shale industry has used the past decade. Today, McClendon's
old company Chesapeake Energy is
in danger of going bankrupt .
Perhaps investors are finally catching on.
Are Child Wells the New Normal?
Last year I covered the issue of
child wells , or secondary wells drilled close to an existing "parent" well, and the risk
they posed to the fracking industry. Child wells often cannibalize or damage parent wells,
leading to an overall drop in oil production.
At the time, I cited a warning about this situation from Wood MacKenzie, which said,
"Closely spaced child well performance presents not only a risk to the viability of the ongoing
drilling recovery but also to the industry's long-term prospects."
Over a year later, has the shale oil industry abandoned this approach or are child wells
still an issue?
During this month's webinar, Ben Shattuck answered that question, making a statement that
should strike fear in the heart of shale investors and the owners of all this shale
acreage:
" We know we're on the cusp of a child-well world."
One of the biggest problems with fracked oil well production is child wells, and according
to Shattuck, that looks like the new normal. When the bug in an unprofitable business becomes
the main feature of the business model, its future is definitely at "risk."
In the Eagle Ford shale, average production per foot of well length and per pound of
"proppant" has been falling steadily. Mr Kibsgaard blamed the decline on a rising proportion
of child wells, which are now up to about 70 per cent of all new wells drilled https://t.co/uG58KcNNJp
As long as shale firms could keep borrowing and losing money to drill new wells, producing
more oil was simple. When profits weren't a concern, the debt-heavy business model worked. But
similar to the dot com boom and bust, the fracking industry is learning that if you want to
stay in business, you need to make a profit.
Without a doubt, drilling and fracking shale can produce a lot of oil and gas in the right
geological regions. It just usually costs more to get the oil and gas out of the rock than the
fossil fuels are worth on the free market. Now, however, the much-lauded "shale revolution" is
facing two big issues -- the best rock has been
drilled and few are eager to
loan money to drill the remaining acreage.
E&E News recently highlighted
what this reality means for Texas's Eagle Ford shale play, where production is now 20 percent
lower than at its peak in early 2015. For an oil basin that's only been producing oil via
fracking for
just over a decade , that is a pretty grim number. However, an analyst quoted by E&E
News highlights the secret to making money while fracking for oil: Simply stop fracking.
"Generating free cash is easy: Stop spending on new wells," said Raoul LeBlanc, vice
president for North American unconventionals at IHS Markit. "The catch is that production will
immediately move into steep decline in many cases."
# IHSM arkit
forecasts capital spending for shale drilling & completions to fall by 10% to $102
billion this year. By 2021, we'll see a near $20 billion decline in annual spending. What's
causing this? Raoul LeBlanc comments- https://t.co/7q1QTiWZVs @HoustonChron
Ah, the catch. To generate cash while fracking requires companies to stop fracking and sell
whatever oil they have left from rapidly declining wells. Because fracked wells decline quickly
even when everything goes perfectly, if a producer isn't constantly drilling new wells, then
the oil production of a field drops off very quickly -- the "steep decline" noted by
LeBlanc.
That's exactly what happened in the Eagle Ford shale, an early darling of the fracking
industry, and most of the top acreage
in the Bakken shale play in North Dakota and Montana has already been drilled, and will
likely see similar declines.
LeBlanc emphasizes this point again in the Journal of Petroleum Technology
, where he is recently quoted saying that the decline rates in the Permian region have
"increased dramatically" for new fracked wells.
A year and a half ago, DeSmog launched a special series exploring the finances
of the fracking industry , putting a spotlight on its financial failings. At the time,
optimism about the future of fracking was still filling the pages of the financial press.
Hughes told DeSmog that with the finances of fracking, "Ultimately, you hit the wall. It's
just a question of time."
With the industry on the cusp of a "child-well world," that wall appears to be approaching
quickly -- unless you still believe the industry promises that fracking's big money is right
around the corner.
As the article says, the key scary thing for investors and the industry about fracking is
that fracked wells don't tail off over years like conventional ones – they stop
producing quite abruptly. Once the sweet spots are sucked dry, the drop off in production
will be calamitous with all sorts of potential impacts through both the oil/gas and the
finance world. It will probably happen far too quickly for most investors to jump off the
carousel in time. It will be a game changer when it happens (and probably, sadly, quite good
news for the Gulf States).
In past years, whenever I've expressed scepticism about the finances of fracking, the
usual response is 'but those guys wouldn't be putting in billions unless they knew there was
lots of oil and gas there'. What they don't seem to grasp is that making money from oil and
gas exploration is not the same as making money from oil production. Its not about selling on
the fuel. Its about first of all extracting money from investors for the exploration (and
getting your cut), then its about developing a prospect and selling it on for a big profit.
They don't really care if the well is profitable in the long term or not. I know of at least
one oil company (not in fracking, mostly off-shore), which has made millions for its owners
over the 40 years of its existence, despite the fact that it has never sold one barrel of
oil, nor ever found a field which could be brought to full production. All their profits have
come from their cut in selling on prospective fields, not one of which has ever come to
production.
===Its about first of all extracting money from investors for the exploration (and getting
your cut)==
==All their profits have come from their cut in selling on prospective fields, not one of
which has ever come to production===
What that tells me is there are a lot of investors that have soo much idle money floating
around the world and can literally throw huge sums of money at some venture and if the
venture fails oh well.
Many authors (Susan Strange, etc.) have used the term Casino Capitalism and this seems to
fit that.
It's like taking millions of dollars and making an idle bet at the roulette wheel and if
you lose oh well it was just pocket change or I'll just make up the losses on some other
scam. Meanwhile millions of people are homeless, without healthcare, hungry, etc. It's is
long past time to storm the castles! Pitchforks Up!!
I predict a nightmare of numerous abandoned wells as the many unprofitable fracking
companies go belly up, leaving the public with an expensive environmental mess to clean
up.
Just another example of western cronie capitalism where you privatise all profit, and
socialise all losses including both monetary and environmental.
The only way to stop this is to make shareholders personally responsible for such losses
including environmental clean up, even after a company goes belly up. Only then will
shareholders demand long term viability and more sustainable environmental practices, instead
of only short term profits.
A much simpler way is to simply insist that any license to drill can only be granted if it
is tied to a certified insurance bond for correct capping and abandonment. It would be
interesting to see just how many insurance companies would be willing to take on that
risk.
This should be the norm for all resource extraction permits: mining, logging, drilling,
whatever. A "restoration bond" has to be in place to finance the restoration of the site
after the valuable resources have been carted away.
This would be cheap in some cases, and very expensive in others (e.g., uranium mining). It
would be a way of factoring the externalities (as economists like to call them) into the
overall cost of the project, as well as decreasing the odds that fly by night operators will
trash the planet.
"You wouldn't know you were near an uranium mine any more ."
Alas, the residents of Red Shirt, South Dakota, a tiny Lakota community on the fringes of
the Pine Ridge Reservation, know about uranium mining. Past uranium mining
activity has resulted in the leaching of radioactive materials into their ground water
and wells. Even the nearby Cheyenne River has been contaminated. They can't drink the water.
Or use it for irrigation or fishing. The entire region is an official National Sacrifice
Area. Just a bunch of poor Indians.
The Defenders of the Black Hills are now fighting efforts to mine uranium using in-situ
leach mining. In this process, holes are dug, water and solvents injected to dissolve the
uranium, then the waste water is brought to the surface and temporarily stored in mud waste
ponds. Sounds like 'fracking?' Concerns are for the spread of contaminants in ground water
and aquifers. Where you can't see it.
Granted, no type of mining is without its problems.
But you could live in an area like mine where well water has to be tested routinely for
the high levels of uranium that occurs naturally in our water. No uranium mines around
here.
I'm going to be polite and ignore the tone of your comment. I was merely pointing out that
uranium mining is not the only reason for high uranium levels in ground water. There is a lot
of uranium in the earth's crust and it is dissolvable in water. All well water should be
checked for uranium levels but it is rarely done.
I'd favor forcing the investors and executives that want to erect these horrors to
personally (along with their family members) do the on-site labor of closing and cleanup,
while breathing the air and drinking the water that locals do. Still, of course, possible to
game even that by capturing the regulatory process of setting cleanup standards and
requirements, a la the federal and state Superfund programs.
Malum prohibitum vs. malum in se
" Latin referring to an act that is "wrong in itself," in its very nature being illegal
because it violates the natural, moral or public principles of a civilized society. In
criminal law it is one of the collection of crimes which are traditional and not just created
by statute, which are "malum prohibitum." Example: murder, rape, burglary and robbery are
malum in se, while violations of the Securities and Exchange Act or most "white collar
crimes" are malum prohibitum." https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1201
The public won't be asked to fund the cleanup because there will be no cleanup. The
responsible parties aren't interested, and our government is no longer interested either.
It's another one of those issues in which communities without power will insist on government
action, and they will be ignored.
I wonder if could it be the case that some government considers strategically important to
keep production from free-falling, no matter if the economics are not sound, and shifting the
cost to the Treasury. MMT to the rescue of shale plays and financiers.
If the article is correct, calling for a plateau as soon as in 2021, the shale boom will
prove more transient than expected.
I can't keep up with all the interlocks and back-scratches. But Banksters are getting
rich, the intermediators in exploration and production are getting rich, the petroleum Bigs
are getting rich and using the notional global competition and Market to damage one
"nation's" comparative advantage to their own ends. And as with all the behaviors leading to
the conclusion that humanity is a failed, and maybe more honestly a plague species, all the
incentives and flows of power are in the direction of what I believe it was a Reagan
appointee offered as the moral underpinning of globalization and ruination: "God gave us
dominion over the planet, and Jesus is coming back real soon and if we have not used up the
whole place in accordance with His Holy Word as i read it, He is going to be really pissed
"
As with all the stuff we NCers read here, everything seems to drive the truly awake soul
in the direction of despair and that sense of vast futility, and that mindset of "Eat, drink
and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die " And screw future generations – past
generations said that to us, so why should we, or some small elite among us, who now are in a
position to have all our pleasure centers fully engaged and satiated to the max, behave
"Responsibly?" "Responsible people maximize shareholder value (and executive looting)!"
5 million EV takes inevitably back to nuclear energy. Without nukes you can anticipate
losing your residential AC for several hours/day. PG&E is the future.
The Forbes article is crap. Any analysis of electricity costs coming from renewable power
that does not include the costs of the energy storage systems required at high
penetration levels will underestimate the costs. Badly. The solar panels and wind turbines
are the easy part. The energy storage systems will easily cost 10X as much (and take 10X as
much time). Because of this, we've seen renewable energy deployment efforts stall out in
Germany, Spain, China, Denmark, and elsewhere, as they bumped into grid stability issues that
require storage to mitigate. And the storage costs too much.
Using "batteries" also produces a 10%* net loss to charge the batteries right off the bat.
You need 110% of the electricity to get to same 100% you were getting before the battery.
Rather than batteries helping, they actually end up using more electricity. That's also
before counting the electricity to make the battery.
* that's best case, theoretical, scenario.
Batteries are net users of electricity. The do not make it.
The Forbes article talks about balancing the grid so that variable energy sources can be
incorporated reliably. To whit:
Actually, battery storage, though often cost-effective today, is rarely needed to "firm"
the output of variable renewables (photovoltaics and windpower), because there are eight
ample cheaper methods.
I believe the author's thesis is for the electricity from renewables to be fed into the
grid when it is available, not to store it.
Do you think nuclear power plants run continuously and are never taken off the grid? Do
you think we use huge storage batteries when they are down?
Both your quote, and the pdf 'talk about' that. That's all they do. The forbes author
really is a treat. "There are 8 ample, cheaper methods" What are those eight methods? why
only 8? No further details.
"I believe the author's thesis is for the electricity from renewables to be fed into the
grid when it is available, not to store it."
It seems you noticed it too. No details, just numbers spelled out as words and asserted as
evidence.
Well, unfortunately the link that explains his 8 methods is behind a paywall.
But I think we are talking apples and oranges here.
The author of the Forbes article is talking about how a grid works. When a power plant is
taken off the grid, energy is moved in from some other area to take up the slack as long as
that power plant is offline. He expects that should be done with renewable energy also.
If you are depending on only one form of renewable energy, then of course you would need
batteries when that form of energy is not available. But batteries are an added cost and not
as efficient as moving energy via the grid. A better method would be to have many types of
renewable energies available so that you can switch between them as necessary. It is what he
means when he is talking about needing to firm the output of variable renewables.
So for example, in my area, the winds kick up when the sun goes down so it makes sense to
switch from solar to wind power at dusk.
I'm don't buy Amory Lovins' thesis. Bob's criticism is correct. The other 8 methods aren't
listed. The required sizes and associated costs aren't listed. It is impossible to judge the
viability of the scheme he envisions when the relevant information is missing.
A real plan would list nameplate GW for all types of generation assets and GW and
GWh for all energy storage assets. In other words, full details.
The only "plan" I've seen for supplying US energy needs with 100% renewable power that
actually contained full details came from Mark Jacobson of Stanford University: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USStatesWWS.pdf
. To his credit, he did the time-domain analysis necessary to determine the amount of
load-sharing and energy storage necessary to keep the lights on through even extended periods
of unfavorable weather.
Unfortunately, his "solution" required two things: (1) expanding US hydro capacity by a
factor of 10, and (2) deploying a stupendous 541 TWh of energy storage. Neither is feasible.
The first would cause massive flooding and ruin river ecosystems if ever run at full power,
and the second would cost over $100 trillion at today's energy storage costs of $200/kWh. His
plan was so wildly unrealistic (and yet popular with Democrats) that a team of scientists and
engineers issued a formal rebuttal: https://www.pnas.org/content/114/26/6722 .
Jacobson's plan has been debunked .
The South Koreans deployed their nuclear fleet for approximately $3000/kW. At this cost,
we could completely de-carbonize the US electrical system for less than $2.5 trillion. It
would be quite the bargain in comparison.
The South Koreans do have one of the lowest costs for nuclear energy production – a
LCOE of about $2021/kWe compared to the US of $4100/kWe and the world average of $4702/kWe
– but the way they do that is by having much looser regulations and by severely
underestimating the decommissioning, waste management, and accident compensation costs. Is
that what you want for nuclear energy in the US?
I think it's kind of dangerous to just throw numbers around unless you understand what
they actually mean.
Ah, the wonderful "Heaters". They are situated outside EBR-1, just south of ID-20, west of
Idaho Falls, and east of Arco.
The whole of the area around there is a fascinating place to visit for a nuclear nerd like
me, plus you have the wonderful Craters of the Moon NM there too.
Other interesting places to visit are Atomic City, which has a population of around 25,
and is a weird time capsule from the '60s, plus Big Southern Butte, which is a, er, big
butte.
You can also find a gate leading off ID-20 to the north, into INL (Idaho National
Laboratory), which used to be the access road to the army's SL-1 reactor, which underwent a
steam explosion due to a core excursion in 1961, and is (as far as is admitted) the only
nuclear accident that led to immediate deaths in the US.
For a really interesting review of nuclear history read the three books by James Mahaffey.
He was a nuclear plant operator for a while, and describes the little pastime of "reactor
racing", which was seeing who could get a reactor up to nominal operating capacity in the
shortest time.
I guess that this means that Trump and his crew will make another run at Venezuela –
before the fracking industry goes down the gurgler. All of Venezuela's oil fields are like a
big box of chocolates in America's backyard. But if they try to take it, like life, you never
know what you are going to get.
Am I right in guessing that this will significantly impact forecasts of aggregate US
domestic oil production? Do we remain the global "swing" producer?
As PlutoniumKun says above, the collapse of the shale field production will be great news
for the Gulf Coast's petroleum industry. Not only is the Gulf a proven reserve, but with the
inevitable higher prices for crude oil, many more of the offshore wells will become
profitable.
The American shale collapse will also be good news for other world producers of petroleum.
OPEC will regain some of it's lost political influence.
On the down side; all forms of shipping and transportation will have a spike in per unit
costs. A canny politician could use this factor to push an onshoring of lost industrial and
manufacturing capacity. Put Americans back to work in America. That will be a winning
strategy.
Yes, well, I generally assume that the definition of "profitable" in use in the board
rooms of the giant conglomerates 'rules the day.' Until some method of 'regulating' the
actions of the board rooms of industry are brought into play, I'm afraid we are stuck with
some version of the status quo.
Just as the German usual suspects moved nations into 'Realpolitik' after the War, so too have
the modern Austrian usual suspects moved the world into 'Realeconomik.' Both have led our
best of all possible worlds into a Neoliberal Paradise.
Didn't Chesapeake Energy declare bankruptcy a good ten years ago? And then restructured
itself into a shale fracking company with the extreme help of the Obama administration? When
Obama "pivoted" away from KSA he went straight to US drillers. Allowing any hype necessary to
get the needed investments. Obama was clearly panicked. I wonder if it is possible that that
is when he learned that Aramco's reserves were only a fraction of the Saudi hype? Bin
Sawbones was subsequently allowed to provide the estimate of the worth of KSA's oil reserves
at 2 Trillion. The IPO went forward at that estimate and just today there is an article in ZH
about Aramco's actual value being much less. It looks to me like we just up and left KSA. Why
on earth would we do that unless they were running dry? And why would they have fought that
obscene war with Yemen unless they (the Saudis) were getting desperate? Secure people
generally don't do things that stupid. And the next logical question might be, How long will
Russian reserves hold up as they supply both China and the EU? The simple answer is it is all
just a question of time. We need to envision a lifestyle that is far more compatible with the
planet. Fracking was just a distraction. A farce. It would be better to own warm sox than oil
shares. And electricity is not going to help us out if we do not aggressively restrict our
use. I'd just like to know why we can't all come together and admit this one elemental
fact.
Drainage! Draaaainage, Eli, you boy! Drained dry. I'm so sorry.
Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is,
that's a straw, you see? You watching? And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts
to drink your milkshake.
I drink your milkshake! slurp I drink it up! Every day I drink the Blood of Lamb from
Bandy's tract.
The last man standing might be profitable.
Not so long ago gas was much higher I think the peak during a pre fracking cold winter was
$15 now under $3. Plus we're exporting the stuff bc us price is so far below Eu price. But us
price is clearly unstable Bc it's too low for frackers to break even, much less make
money.
It's the large fracking production that's driven price down to sub $3. Maybe foolish
investors and banks will soon stop burning $, after which price will rise towards $10 as this
happens utilities will really jump on solar bc gas will be increasingly non competitive.
Ca should refuse all utility requests to build more gas-fired generating plants existing ones
will be shut over the next decade as solar plus storage price continues falling and gas price
rises.
From graphs 2 and 3, you can see that half or more of the national oil production comes
from about 50,000 high producing wells (out of roughly 1mm total). These are of course on the
treadmill of decline and need continuous investment to be renewed.
Anyway after 2014 the national production responded to the price collapse within about a
year. This is what is somewhat different about fracking -- the short time horizon and the
outsize contribution of the "top" wells -- constant depletion and investment -- results in a
fairly fast response to the price environment.
Factor in pipeline capacity shortages come and go, affecting the share of $$ taken by the
midstream. In any case, they're losing money when the WTI price is in the $50-$60 range. What
does that mean? Great question.
So, the shale/fracking industry has ~$200bn in debt, god only knows how much market cap is
at risk on Shale and fracking alone, and it's COMPLETELY UN PREDICTABLE. And people buy
shares in this snake oil on the market? SEC sleeping? what a crock.
I suspect that shale plays like OXY, with marketwatch assigning a "beta" of (get this!)
0.99 to this stock, are fundamental misallocations of capital. In a political sense, it's a
red state SOE type play that doesn't pass snuff. I saw the entire Wood MacKenzie webinar
linked in Lambert's article, and even THEY themselves are amazed at the range of valuations
in the shale sector. No two wells can be compared truly. The webinar references when Ben
Shattuck asked a wall street analyst for their comps on some company, and Wood MacKenzie's
analysis using on the ground depletion knowledge, was 40% lower, versus a higher paid wall
street "comps" analysis!
This entire sector is SNAKE OIL, imho, not to mention the environmental degradation not on
the balance sheets. But it is politically privileged, so we must zip it.
Earlier this week, the Observer reported on a spat that had broken out between a
division of the giant Samsung empire and the American hedge fund Elliott Management. The
most newsworthy feature of the dispute involved a series of articles on Korean business
sites that pointedly criticized Elliott's CEO Paul Singer and directly attacked him for
being Jewish, noting that "Jewish money has long been known to be ruthless and merciless"
and claiming "It is a well-known fact that the US government is swayed by Jewish
capital."
"Do the Jews Really Control America?" asked one Chinese newsweekly headline in 2009. The
factoids doled out in such articles and in books about Jews in China -- for example: "The
world's wealth is in Americans' pockets; Americans are in Jews' pockets" -- would rightly
be seen to be alarming in other contexts. But in China, where Jews are widely perceived as
clever and accomplished, they are meant as compliments. Scan the shelves in any bookstore
in China and you are likely to find best-selling self-help books based on Jewish knowledge.
Most focus on how to make cash. Titles range from 101 Money Earning Secrets From Jews'
Notebooks to Learn To Make Money With the Jews.
Does productivity explain income? I asked this question in a
previous
post
. My answer was a bombastic
no
. In this post, I'll dig deeper into the reasons that
productivity doesn't explain income. I'll focus on wages.
The Evidence
Let's start with the evidence trumpeted as proof that productivity explains wages. Looking across firms, we
find that sales per worker correlates with average wages. Figure 1 shows this correlation for about 50,000 US
firms over the years 1950 to 2015.
Figure 1: The correlation between a firm's average wages and
its sales per worker.
Data comes from Compustat. To adjust for inflation, I've divided wages and sales
per worker by their respective averages (in the firm sample) in each year. I've shown stock tickers for select
firms.
Mainstream economists take this correlation as evidence that productivity explains wages. Sales, they say,
measure firms' output. So sales per worker indicates firms' labor productivity. Thus the evidence in Figure 1
indicates that productivity explains (much of) workers' income. Case closed.
The Problem
Yes, sales per worker correlates with average wages. No one disputes this fact. What I dispute is that this
correlation says anything about productivity. The problem is simple. Sales per worker
doesn't measure
productivity
.
To understand the problem, let's do some basic accounting. A firm's sales equal the unit price of the firm's
product times the quantity of this product:
Sales = Unit Price × Unit Quantity
Dividing both sides by the number of workers gives:
Sales per Worker = Unit Price × Unit Quantity per Worker
Let's unpack this equation. The 'unit quantity per worker' measures labor productivity. It tells us the
firm's output per worker. For instance, a farm might grow 10 tons of potatoes per worker. If another farm grows
15 tons of potatoes per worker, it unambiguously produces more potatoes per worker (assuming the potatoes are
the same).
The problem with using sales to measure productivity is that
prices
get in the way. Imagine that
two farms, Old McDonald's and Spuds-R-Us, both produce 10 tons of potatoes per worker. Next, imagine that Old
McDonald's sells their potatoes for $100 per ton. Spuds-R-Us, however, sells their potatoes for $200 per ton.
The result is that Spuds-R-Us has double the sales per worker as Old McDonald's. When we equate sales with
productivity, it appears that workers at Spuds-R-Us are twice as productive as workers at Old McDonald's. But
they're not. We've been fooled by prices.
The solution to this problem seems simple. Rather than use sales to measure output, we should measure a
firm's output
directly
. Count up what the firm produces, and that's its output. Problem solved.
So why don't economists measure output directly? Because the restrictions needed to do so are severe. In
fact, they're so severe that they're almost never met in the real world. Let's go through these restriction.
1: Firms must produce identical commodities
To objectively compare productivity, you have to find firms that produce the same commodity. You could, for
instance, compare the productivity of two farms that produce (the same) potatoes. But if the farms produce
different things, you're out of luck.
Here's why. When firms produce different commodities, we need a common dimension to compare their outputs.
The problem is that the choice of dimension affects our measure of output.
To see the problem, let's return to our two farms, Old McDonald's and Spuds-R-Us. Suppose that Spuds-R-Us
produces 10 tons of potatoes per worker. Tired of growing potatoes, Old McDonald's instead grows 5 tons of corn
per worker. Which workers are more productive?
The answer depends on our dimension of analysis.
Suppose we compare potatoes and corn using mass. We find that Spuds-R-Us workers (who produce 10 tons per
worker) are more productive than Old McDonald's workers (who produce 5 tons per worker).
Now suppose we compare potatoes and corn using energy. Furthermore, imagine that corn has twice the caloric
density of potatoes. Now we find that workers at Spuds-R-Us (who produce half the mass of food at twice the
caloric density) have the same labor productivity as Old McDonald's workers.
The lesson? Unless two firms produce the same commodity, productivity comparisons are subjective. They
depend on the choice of dimension.
Restriction 2: Firm output must be countable
When you read economic textbooks, it's clear that the discipline of economics is stuck in the 19th century.
Firms, the textbooks say, produce
stuff
.
But what about all those other firms that don't produce stuff? What is their output? What, for instance, is
the output of Goldman Sacks? What is the output of a high school? What is the output of a hospital? What is the
output of a legal firm?
Yes, these institutions do things. But it defies reason to give these activities a 'unit quantity'. In other
words, it defies reason to quantify the output of these institutions.
Restriction 3: Firms must produce a single commodity
Complicating things further, we can objectively measure output only when firms produce a single commodity.
If a firm produces two (or more) commodities, its output is affected by how we add the commodities together.
To see the problem, let's return to Old McDonald's and Spuds-R-Us. Suppose that both farms have diversified
their production. Spuds-R-Us produces 5 tons of potatoes and 1 ton of corn per worker. Old McDonald's produces
1 ton of potatoes and 5 tons of corn. Which workers are more productive?
The answer depends on our dimension of analysis. In terms of mass, both farms produce 6 tons of food per
worker. So labor productivity appears the same. But suppose we measure the output of energy. Again, we'll
assume that corn has double the caloric density of potatoes. Suppose corn contains 2 GJ (gigajoule) per ton,
while potatoes contain 1 GJ per ton. Now we find that Old McDonald's workers are about 60% more productive than
workers at Spuds-R-Us. Here's the calculation:
Spuds-R-Us:
5 tons potato × 1 GJ / ton + 1 ton corn × 2 GJ / ton = 7 GJ
Old McDonald's:
1 ton potato × 1 GJ / ton + 5 ton corn × 2 GJ / ton = 11 GJ
This 'aggregation problem' is why the neoclassical theory of income distribution assumes a single-commodity
world -- a world in which everyone produces and consumes the same thing. In this one-commodity world, we can
measure productivity unambiguously. In the real world (with many commodities) productivity depends on our
choice of dimension.
The Severity of the Problem
Let's take stock. If we want to measure productivity objectively, the restrictions are severe:
Firms must produce the same commodity
This commodity must be countable
Firms must produce only one commodity
These conditions are so stringent that they're rarely met in the real world. This is a bit of a problem for
neoclassical theory. It proposes that everyone's income is explained by their productivity. But only in the
rarest of circumstances can we measure productivity objectively.
It's hard not to laugh at this predicament. It's like Newton proclaiming that gravitational force is
proportional to mass. But in the next sentence he realizes that mass can be measured only in the rarest of
circumstances.
The Neoclassical Sleight of hand
Neoclassical economists don't think of themselves as Newtons who can't measure mass. Instead, economics
textbooks don't even mention the problems with measuring productivity. In these textbooks, all seems well in
neoclassical land.
But all is not well. Neoclassical economists perpetuate their fantasy by relying on a sleight of hand.
Here's what they do.
First, economists argue that the purpose of all economic activity is to give consumers
utility
. Buy
a potato and you get utility. Buy a cigarette and you get utility. Utility, economists say, is the universal
dimension of output. By measuring utility, we can compare the output of any and all firms (no matter what they
produce).
After proclaiming that utility is the universal dimension of output, economists pull their trick. Utility,
they say, is
revealed through prices
. So a painting worth $1000 gives the buyer 1000 times the utility
as a $1 potato.
With this thinking in hand, economists see that a firm's sales measure its output of utility:
Sales = Unit Price × Unit Quantity
Sales = Unit Utility × Unit Quantity = Gross Utility
So sales become a universal measure of utility, and utility is the universal measure of output. Now, when we
compare sales per worker to wages (as in Figure 1), economists proclaim that we're comparing productivity to
wages.
Except we're not.
The problem is that this whole operation is circular. The idea that prices reveal utility is a
hypothesis
.
And as every good scientist knows, you can't use your hypothesis to test your hypothesis. But that's what
neoclassical economists do. They assume that one aspect of their theory is true (the link between prices and
utility) to test another aspect of their theory (the link between productivity and income). This is a big no
no.
Why do economists use this circular reasoning? Probably because they don't know they're doing it. Economists
take as received wisdom the idea that prices reveal utility. But this is just a hypothesis. In fact, it's a bad
hypothesis. Why? Because we can never measure utility independently of prices.
Why are Sales Related to Wages
Whenever I go through the logic above, mainstream economists will retort: "But look at the correlation
between wages and sales! How can this not show that productivity explains wages?" Their reasoning seems to be
that, absent an alternative explanation, this correlation must support their hypothesis.
In
No,
Productivity Does Not Explain Income
, I gave an alternative explanation. The correlation between wages and
sales per worker, I argued, follows from accounting principles.
Sales isn't a measure of output. It's an
income
stream. Once earned, this income gets split by the
firm into different categories. Some of it goes to workers. Some of it goes to other firms (as non-labor
costs). And some of it goes to the firm's owners as profit.
Figure 2: Dividing a firm's income stream.
Accounting
principles dictate that a firm's sales get divided into profits and wages.
By
definition, the terms on the left must sum to the terms on the right. So it's not surprising that we find a
correlation between wages and sales. They're related by an accounting identity.
In comments on
No,
Productivity Does Not Explain Income
(and on other sites), some economists pounced on this argument, saying
it was fatally flawed. And in hindsight, I admit that I wasn't clear enough about my reasoning. I was thinking
about the real world. But the economists who critiqued my reasoning were thinking in terms of pure mathematics.
To frame the debate, let's think about something more concrete than income. Let's think about volume. In
rough terms, the volume of an object is the product of its length, width and height:
V = L × W × H
Now, let's pick a dimension -- say length. Will the length of an object correlate with its volume? In general
terms, no. I can make an object with any volume using any length. I just have to adjust the other dimensions
appropriately. By doing so, I can make a cube have the same volume as a box that is long and thin.
So in pure mathematical terms, the accounting definition of volume doesn't lead to a correlation between
length and volume.
But when we look at real-world objects -- like animals -- we
will
find a correlation. If we took all
the species on earth and plotted their length against their volume, we'd expect a tight correlation. A bacteria
has a small length and a small volume. A blue whale has a big length and a big volume. Fill in the gaps between
and we should get a nice tight line.
The reason for this correlation is that animals cannot take any shape. You'll never find an animal that is a
mile long and a few micrometers wide. Such a beast doesn't exist. Yes, the shapes of animals vary. But in the
grand scheme, this varation is small. As a first approximation, animals are roughly cubes. Or, if you're a
physicist,
they're
spheres
.
With this shape restriction, it follows from the definition of volume that animal length should correlate
with animal volume. We'd be astonished if it didn't.
So too with the correlation between sales per worker and wages. True, this correlation doesn't follow purely
from accounting principles. It follows jointly from accounting principles, and the fact that firms can't take
any form. We don't find firms that pay their workers nothing. That's slavery and its illegal. Similarly, we
don't find (many) firms that pay their workers the entirety of sales. That leaves no room for profit.
So in the real world, there are restrictions on how firms can divide their income stream. Here's what these
restrictions look like. In Figure 3, I've plotted the distribution of firms' payroll as a portion of sales.
This is the portion of sales that goes to workers. Across all firms, it's a pretty tight distribution,
clustered around 25%.
Figure 3: The distribution of firm payrolls as a fraction of
sales.
Data is for US firms in the Compustat database over the years 1950–2015.
Yes, it's theoretically possible for a firm to give any portion of its sales to workers. But this isn't what
happens in reality. In the real world, most firms give between 10% and 50% of their sales to workers. Just like
with the shape of animals, there are real-world restrictions on the 'shape' that firms can take.
Given these restrictions, it's not surprising that we find a correlation between sales per worker and wages.
When a firm's income stream grows, so does the amount going to workers.
None of this has anything to do with productivity. It's all about income. Sales are the firm's income. And
wages are the portion of this income given to workers.
Prices The Elephant in the Room
Let's conclude this foray into neoclassical thinking. The reason that sales don't measure firm output is
because they mix unit prices with unit quantities. Yes, sales per worker correlates with wages. But the
elephant in the room is prices. Greater sales may be due to greater output. But it can also be due to greater
unit prices.
In many cases, price differences are
everything
.
Imagine that a lawyer and a janitor both work 40 hours a week as self-employed contractors. The lawyer
charges $1000 per hour, while the janitor charges $20. At the end of the week, the lawyer has 50 times the
sales as the janitor. This difference comes down solely to price. The lawyer charges 50 times more for their
hourly services than the janitor.
The question is
why
?
Neoclassical economists proclaim they have the answer. The lawyer, they say, produces 50 times the utility
as the janitor. Ask economists how they know this, and they'll answer with a straight face: "Prices revealed
it."
It's time to recognize this sleight of hand for what it is: a farce. The reality is that we know virtually
nothing about what causes prices. And we will continue to know nothing as long as researchers believe the
neoclassical farce.
Further Reading
The Aggregation Problem: Implications for Ecological and Biophysical Economics.
BioPhysical Economics
and Resource Quality
. 4(1), 1-15.
SocArxiv
Preprint
.
Economists are always prepared for yesterday's problems.
Inflation was a big problem in the Keynesian era and every effort has been made to ensure that it doesn't
return.
Exceptionally intelligent Chinese economists have been looking at today's problems.
Davos 2018 – They know financial crises come from the private debt-to-GDP ratio and inflated asset prices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WOs6S0VrlA
The PBoC know how to spot a Minsky Moment coming, unlike the FED, BoE, ECB and BoJ.
The black swan flies in under our policymaker's radar.
Our policymakers are always looking in the wrong direction.
They fixate on public debt, and so don't see the problems emerging in private debt
The central banks look at consumer price inflation, while the problems are emerging in asset price inflation.
Your salesperson might negotiate higher prices on every deal, and that might correlate with their higher
productivity in a regulated and truly competitive market.
What does sales at higher prices in a (de facto) deregulated and increasingly monopolist market space
point to? Not to greater productivity, imo, but to deregulated monopoly. It too oftern points to unregulated
rentier-ism, or price gouging. Why has the cost of, say, insulin
tripled
over
the past decade? Not because of greater productivity. How can these price increases in this deregulated
market environment possibly point to real productivity? It points to price gouging. Since there is more
rentier-ism in the market, the old idea that prices/wages can be reliably equated with productivity becomes
meaningless, imo.
Do your other employees building widgets become "less productive" suddenly when your salesman catches a
cold? (You can come up with a bunch of these showing that productive can not be precisely equal to money
earned, because they exist on different time scales measuring different firm aggregates).
Is the salesman "more productive" if he kidnaps the children of a client and blackmails him into buying
more product? What would "productive" mean in any useful sense if there's no independent definition of
utility? Not every dollar earned is a measure of "productive" -- unless you redefine productive to mean
"every dollar earned by any measure".
When the US invaded Santo Domingo to extract debts, was that "productive" in any meaningful sense? That
would seem to be an abuse of language, rather than saying what you mean.
The problem here is that "productive" is a
moral
justification -- and so it must continue to mean
something more than simply money earned in order to morally justify the order. That's the goal of the use of
the word productive -- that thus the results are
just
.
"It's time to recognize this sleight of hand for what it is: a farce. The reality is that we know
virtually nothing about what causes prices. And we will continue to know nothing as long as researchers believe
the neoclassical farce."
This is what I don't understand, I think its obvious why there are prices. The whole idea of business, and
capitalism generally, is to charge as much as possible while spending as little as possible.
Beyond a certain point I do believe greed drives inflation -- companies will charge whatever they think they
can get away with long before there is wage pressure. Wage pressure in my experience is a reaction to
inflation, not a driver of it. For some reason many people of the conservative persuasion seem to get this
backwards.
Absolutely. The use of "we" here is problematic. What needs to be made clear is the fundamental
distinction between those who study capitalism, where the fundamental driver is the search for profit, and
those who study "the economy," for whom profit either doesn't exist or is the "marginal productivity of
capital," a concept which has been shown over and over to be nonsensical, and the fundamental drivers are
things we can't explain – individual wants and preferences and various completely unpredictable "shocks."
There is no collective "we." It's them against us.
It is obvious that prices are seriously out of kilter with actual value of products & services but is this a
result of all that extra money that was created to save the banks after 2008? And what about the vital function
of price discovery then. How does that work out? I do believe that there is something missing from this article
and that is a break-out of "wages". I suppose you could break it down to wages, salary & management which may
be more instructive. How does productivity relate to management then, both internally and externally? By
externally I mean when consultants are called into a company to do management's job. If you think that this
cannot be a serious concern, then reflect that the UK's NHS paid out between $350 million and $600 million
worth of taxpayer money on management consultancy in 2014 alone. What effect did that have on the NHS's
productivity then?
It sounds like the sure path to higher productivity is to encourage monopolies and oligopolies that can
raise prices pretty much at will while reducing the number of workers. The question becomes: why hasn't US
productivity surged as its markets became increasingly concentrated?
Blair Fix touches on an important issue behind the layers of terminology, concepts and policies that have so
impacted our everyday lives. So if labor productivity doesn't explain wages, income or prices, then what are
the true factors influencing prices and stagnant real wages?
Pricing power, labor cost, and profit margins of large transnational corporations have benefitted from their
increasingly monopolistic control of markets to suppress competition, use of global labor arbitrage, enjoyment
of very low and even negative real interest rates, tax policies and use of tax havens, hidden subsidies,
automation, neutering of organized labor, and purchased political influence. The productivity of labor in the
West has essentially been made irrelevant in many cases. Important stuff in so many ways.
Still appreciate the famous EPI chart that shows how the wealthy have captured the entire differential
between stagnant real wages and the rising productivity of labor since neoliberal capitalism made its
appearance on the world stage four decades ago. Trillions:
Hence 'private equity' is a euphemism for cannibalizing any source of equity for a quick profit. We have
an entire paradigm that is a farce. Based on value (equity) which in turn is based subjectively on whatever
you can snooker. It is one step forward and two steps backwards at this point. The Chinese have a beautiful
view of our debacle. No wonder they can tease out the contradictions. But it's not like we, places like NC,
haven't been screaming about all this loud and clear. (Steve Keen for starters.) The thing the aptly named
Mr. Fix is saying resides beneath the surface: If we are ever in so desperate a position to raise prices too
much nobody will buy and the system will collapse. And because of our horror-at-the-thought we have avoided
pricing oil where it belongs. Instead we have burned it with abandon, devastating the environment while we
were at it. A very expensive abandonment. It was an unrecognized consequence; an unavoidable one for the
sake of profit – whereas the other accounting anomalies are more "discretionary". When you are desperate
nothing is discretionary. If price ever comes to equal "utility" aka value, then there will be very little
commerce. It makes Richard Murphy's advocacy for Oil Bankruptcy a very rational suggestion. Mitigate the
devastation – that's about all we'll be able to do.
Even Adam Smith admitted that the economic value of something has no relation to its intrinsic utility, but
only to the relative balance of supply and demand for it.
If there are more workers than jobs, wages will be driven down and productivity gains will decouple from
wages – although with low wages, there will be little incentive to invest in making workers more productivity
so productivity may decline as a second-order effect.
If there are more jobs than workers, wages will be bid up, and productivity gains will be largely captured
by workers because it is the limiting factor in any economy that captures the profits. At the same time, high
wages will tend to spur higher productivity because there will be strong incentive to make efficient use of
relatively expensive labor.
At the base of Niagara Falls, water is cheap and it is not used efficiently. Using water efficiently in
Niagara Falls will not increase its price. In the Gobi desert, water is expensive and it is used efficiently.
Not using water efficiently in the Gobi desert will not make it cheaper.
The core of modern macroeconomics is to take what is fundamentally simple and confuse the heck out of it.
then what are the true factors influencing prices and stagnant real wages?
That would be the human factor. Greed, honesty, and desires and conscious acts. Economics cannot capture the
human factor.
Every human on Earth is capable of affecting markets dramatically by one act. Humans making multiple
decisions every day. All 7.5 billion. One person can change markets and history with one act. Gavrilo Princip,
for instance. Or by using an Internet post to affect markets.
To accurately model economics? All decisions made by each and every person on the planet would have to be an
input into any model. Each person's actions would have to have a solid, predictable outcome with no deviations.
A person becomes depressed, then A and B and C can ONLY happen.
Which would rule out occurrences such as Malaysia Flight 370 and quite a few other possibilities.
Economics and economists are in no way, shape, or form capable of accounting for the human factor. Which is
why there should be no laws of economics. More like, guesswork and observing trends in a general and gross
manner. Only to pray for accuracy.
LTCM was an example of economics and economists over-stepping their intellect. LTCM employed the
observations from John Nash (the subject of the move, A Beautiful Mind) and his Nobel prize winning work. Their
system worked until it didn't. Other humans made decisions that trashed.
People chose not to play the game. For LTCM? Such decisions by others outside of LTCM's control were fatal.
The issue with game theory, etc? For it to work, one has to have enforcers or project power to force people to
play by a set of rules. One could call this, the basis of American foreign policy – financial in nature.
The "Law of Supply and Demand"? Routinely violated. A person can decide arbitrarily to put items on sale.
The Human Factor.
Trends in economics are like trends on Twitter. You just never know. Economists are trend chasers. Having
more in common with Internet "influencers" trying to convince people that a $5 pair of shoes is actually worth
$400, than with actual science. THAT being an example of how prices are determined, in part.
Neoliberal economics is a case study of a select group (economists) influencing politicians and others, to
support their version of economics.
Economics and economists are in no way, shape, or form capable of accounting for the human factor.
Which is why there should be no laws of economics.
+1000
Great post DF! This whole discussion reminds me of the shortest job I ever had – selling crappy stereo
speakers out of the back of a white van for a day.
I'd answered an ad not knowing what I'd be getting into. The people who were "training" me would drive up
to an unsuspecting person in a mall parking lot and try to sell these speakers. They had a set dollar amount
per day there were supposed to sell to get a bonus, so if they could sell a speaker for $200 they would and
if at the end of the day they needed $25 to meet their sales quota, the last speaker would go for $25. The
whole thing depended on two very big human factors – greed and gullibility.
I'm sure an economist could come up with productivity figures for this operation, but what it really was
was a scam.
The job you describe reminds me of Eastern European bazaars back in the day where items being sold
"fell off" the back of a truck. Or Hoboken, NJ market on a certain block. :)
Thank you NC for yet another article exposing the sham of neoclassical economics. Here's a paragraph from a
book I happen to be reading yesterday
"..the neoclassical economic perspective is
the
ideology par excellence of capitalist political
economy. It is a theory that explains nothing more than how to assure that capitalism remains capitalism. That
is, neoclassical economics demonstrates how wealth and resources may continue to function to the advantage of
the minority that controls wealth and the immediate access to political power. It is an ideology because it
depicts as "rational" only economic behavior that seeks the "utility maximization" characteristic of market
exchange. That other motives and values might deserve priority in our action as economic agents is either
unthinkable (ruled out by definition) or, worse, held to be economically "irrational." Neoclassical economic
theory is itself a system of morality- and theology and ethics – masquerading as "science." Yet those who
dissent from this hidden morality have a difficult task before them. For this debate concerning the ethics of
economics is consistently suppressed in public discourse. Reigning economic theory makes calls for the
substantive realignment of existing economic power appear as madness. Dissenters are
by definition
"unrealistic," "utopian," or "irresponsible.""
And
this was written almost 30 years ago
in the book 'God and Capitalism – A Prophetic
Critique of Market Economy'. The excerpt is from chapter three – 'The "Fate" of the Middle Class in Late
Capitalism' by Beverly W. Harrison.
Can we please get an SEC or FASB ruling requiring the explicit breakout of salary payroll on the income
statement of EVERY public listed company?
Capitalism has ALL manner of enumeration of uses of capital, but nowhere is labor listed! I don't care for
labor hidden inside direct/indirect "costs of goods sold", "SG&A", "R&D" etc. Just put a payroll expense (minus
payroll taxes, minus the healthcare and whatnot, straight payroll) line item somewhere in the 10-k. Is it a
crime to ask?
Forgive me if this has been discussed previously. It's from a September Atlantic article on
economics I happened upon, a review of a book by Applebaum written by Sebastian Mallaby:
"...Applebaum opens his book with the observation that economics was not always the
imperial discipline. Roosevelt was delighted to consult lawyers such as Berle, but he
dismissed John Maynard Keynes as an impractical 'mathematician'. Regulatory agencies were
headed by lawyers, and courts dismissed economic evidence as irrelevant. In 1963, President
John F. Kennedy's Treasury secretary made a point of excluding academic economists from a
review of the international monetary order, deeming their advice useless. William McChesney
Martin, who presided over the Federal Reserve in the 1950s and '60s, confined economists to
the basement.
Starting in the l970s, however, economists began to wield extraordinary influence..."
I know all who are discussing financial matters here know this - it was just good for me
to see it spelled out. I see, however, the rest of the review is very economist oriented and
no mention of Michael Hudson whatsoever; it is, after all, the Atlantic. Yay for Roosevelt
and Kennedy though!
"... Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon pulled no punches in an interview with Fox Business Network's Trish Regan saying that the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump will be the "trial of the century." ..."
"... Bannon said Republicans ought to "turn the tables" on Democrats and demand a full trial that will force it to go into the Democratic presidential primary. ..."
"... "I think you ought to demand a full trial, where to get witnesses -- and, hey, if it takes too long, it's the Democrats to force this constitutional crisis over the Christmas holidays. If this trial goes on for a month or two into the Democratic primary, that's a tough break for them. They're the ones that forced this. One of the reasons they forced it is their field is so weak going in there. Nobody cares. Like I said, witness protection program. Nobody cares about their debate. They're the ones that force this. " ..."
"... "... this is the managed decline of the United States. This is about the Washington consensus. The Washington Post published the Afghanistan papers last week. Two trillion dollars. 2,400 dead. Tens of thousands wounded. What's that? That's the inter-agency consensus in 18 years that betrayed our country. That's what betrayed our countries. With Brennan, that's what betrayed our country, not Donald Trump. Donald Trump has stood up. The reasons people cheer for him, it's their sons and daughters that have died in Afghanistan. It's their lives, their kids' lives being thrown away, and their tax dollars. " ..."
Having blasted the liberal elites earlier in the week for
"not giving a f**k" about the average joe in America:
"Look, this is what drives me nuts about the left. All immigration is to flood the zone
with cheap labour, and the reason is because the elites don't give a fuck about African
Americans and the Hispanic working class . They don't care about the white working class
either. You're just a commodity" .
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon pulled no punches in an interview with
Fox Business Network's Trish Regan saying that the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald
Trump will be the "trial of the century."
" I think this trial is going to be the trial of the century, a nd the mainstream media is
going to be all over it," Bannon said.
"That's why I think it's so important not just for his legacy, but for his presidency and
his second term. He's got to engage in this. He's got to take them on. He's got to have the
whistleblower; we have to have the Bidens in front of the nation and the world. They're going
to have to stand and deliver under oath. And we're going to get to the bottom of this . And I
think that's going to lead to an exoneration, not just an acquittal, but an exoneration of
President Trump."
Bannon said Republicans ought to "turn the tables" on Democrats and demand a full trial
that will force it to go into the Democratic presidential primary.
"I think you ought to demand a full trial, where to get witnesses -- and, hey, if it
takes too long, it's the Democrats to force this constitutional crisis over the Christmas
holidays. If this trial goes on for a month or two into the Democratic primary, that's a
tough break for them. They're the ones that forced this. One of the reasons they forced it is
their field is so weak going in there. Nobody cares. Like I said, witness protection program.
Nobody cares about their debate. They're the ones that force this. "
Bannon went on to reiterate his belief that Hillary Clinton will "inevitably" be the
Democratic Presidential nominee... but will lose... again:
" Hillary Clinton comes in at the moment that she feels that she can step in to save the
Democratic Party and try to convince people that a rematch with President Trump is the best
way that they have to try to defeat President Trump," Bannon said.
"They won't beat him. Right now, there's nobody, including Hillary Clinton out there, that
can beat Donald Trump. But they're going to get desperate here because look at tonight.
Nobody cares about this debate, this debate's in Los Angeles."
Finally, the former strategist raged against "the Washington Consensus":
"... this is the managed decline of the United States. This is about the Washington
consensus. The Washington Post published the Afghanistan papers last week. Two trillion
dollars. 2,400 dead. Tens of thousands wounded. What's that? That's the inter-agency
consensus in 18 years that betrayed our country. That's what betrayed our countries. With
Brennan, that's what betrayed our country, not Donald Trump. Donald Trump has stood up. The
reasons people cheer for him, it's their sons and daughters that have died in Afghanistan.
It's their lives, their kids' lives being thrown away, and their tax dollars. "
And that, Bannon exclaimed, is why we need a trial in the Senate to expose the swamp.
"And they understand that Donald Trump is fighting that. That's why we need a trial, a
real trial and Senate with witnesses. So, before the world, Donald Trump could get his day in
court. "
Trish Regan: I do believe the president heard that she wants to run again from this show,
from none other than Mr. Stephen Bannon here on set with me, who talked about Hillary Clinton
getting back in potentially again. And also, you called Bloomberg as well. So, Bloomberg's in,
is Hillary going to join?
Steve Bannon: I think it's inevitable. They had a poll out today that showed Biden at like
28, Bernie 21, Elizabeth Warren in the high teens. It looks like something that's going to get
to a -- particularly with Super Tuesday, when Biden drops the nuclear weapon of his money on
these in these big states. It's going to lead to a brokered convention. Hillary Clinton, I
think, is going to come in when it's evident that none of the radical left of the Democratic
Party can beat the President Trump --
[cross talk]
Steve Bannon: -- A brokered convention. I think Hillary Clinton comes in at the moment that
she feels that she can step in to save the Democratic Party and try to convince people that a
rematch with President Trump is the best way that they have to try to defeat President Trump.
They won't beat him. Right now, there's nobody, including Hillary Clinton out there, that can
beat Donald Trump. But they're going to get desperate here because look at tonight. Nobody
cares about this debate, this debate's in Los Angeles.
Trish Regan : They should be watching you.
Steve Bannon: Well, I'm talking about on MSNBC and CNN and their networks. They're not
they're not running around saying, this thing is great. They understand these people, not just
are boring, it's not just about their star quality, it's what they're talking about is so off
the mainstream, it's not connecting with people. And they're going to start getting desperate.
Remember, their number one thing is that Donald Trump is an existential threat to the
Democratic Party, to the established order and to the mainstream media, and they will do
anything to take him down and destroy him. In particular, you saw last night what he's talking
about to the people; hey, they're trying to come after you, they're trying to come after me to
get to you. We are in this together. And he saw people respond to that. That response of that
audience last night for two hours, that stood out for hours in, what, 15- or 17-degree cold is
quite remarkable.
Trish Regan: What I find remarkable and, you know, we can say this is a couple Irishmen --
or Irishman and an Irishwoman. You think about traditional Democrats, right? And I think about
my family and how my dad's family was, historically, big Irish Catholic family and you were a
Democrat like you're Catholic. Like, it was part of your religion, right? And, you know, my --
and if you were lucky enough, you got a job in the union. And so, there was a feeling that you
always voted blue, and that has changed.
Steve Bannon: Last night you saw that. He's connected with working class -- listen to this.
It's the reason he won Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa. States they never thought
we'd win again. And altogether because he went and he got, you know, Democrats, blue collar
Democrats to vote for it and they believe in it. And they're seeing -- here's the thing they're
seeing, the manifestation of his actions are making their lives better. You know, the Zogby
poll today said that 53 percent of Democrats think that their party is spending too much time
on impeachment instead of getting things done legislatively. It is so --
Trish Regan: And they got that right. And it's not just, you know, we talk about Irish
Americans. I mean, I look at the African American population right now and you look at some of
the poll numbers there. And he's doing extremely well in a way that you wouldn't really think
he would with that particular population, given the media.
Steve Bannon: Well that's what the immigration policy -- remember everything was to make
sure that wasn't more labor pressure on African Americans and Hispanics. That's why you seen
the approval rate -- I think it's 34 percent of African Americans approve now by Pew, and 36
percent of Hispanics. Because you're seeing wages starting to rise. People -- unemployment's at
historic lows, wages starting to rise. That's why I think it's so important, since they've
smeared him in this process. He didn't get to call any witnesses in this trial. And I think
this trial will be -- it's going to be the trial of the century, and the mainstream media is
going to be all over it. That's why I think it's so important not just for his legacy, but for
his presidency and his second term. He's got to engage in this. He's got to take them on. He's
got to have the whistleblower; we have to have the Bidens in front of the nation and the world.
They're going to have to stand and deliver under oath. And we're going to get to the bottom of
this. And I think that's going to lead to an exoneration, not just an acquittal, but an
exoneration of President Trump.
Trish Regan: The trial of the century. Wow. You know, a lot of people are worried, well, you
get John Bolton. What is he going to do? What is John Bolton going to say? And what is this one
going to say? What is that one going to say? What do you say to those concerns?
Steve Bannon: The president -- the call was perfect. He looked at everything that led up to
it. This is why the American people heard him. And you just saw the bureaucrats that were in it
that were testified. This is because that is the managed decline of the United States. This is
about the Washington consensus. The Washington Post published the Afghanistan papers last week.
Two trillion dollars. 2,400 dead. Tens of thousands wounded. What's that? That's the
inter-agency consensus in 18 years that betrayed our country. That's what betrayed our
countries. With Brennan, that's what betrayed our country, not Donald Trump. Donald Trump has
stood up. The reasons people cheer for him, it's their sons and daughters that have died in
Afghanistan. It's their lives, their kids' lives being thrown away, and their tax dollars. And
they understand that Donald Trump is fighting that. That's why we need a trial, a real trial
and Senate with witnesses. So, before the world, Donald Trump could get his day in court.
Trish Regan: And you call them all. Disruption, right? It is the decade of disruption, and
you're one of the main disruptors there, according to The Wall Street Journal. In fact, one of
the most powerful people here in Washington, the power players. Can we see that? So, you're in
some pretty significant company, there Mr. Bannon.
Steve Bannon: Well, I got the disrupt look on President Trump. As President Trump says, I'm
his top student and that's where the top student got for being the top student. I got my
slot.
Trish Regan: Well, listen, we appreciate you being here tonight for that.
Steve Bannon: Thank you for having me, Trish.
Trish Regan: Very interesting insight, as always, Steve Bannon. I do want to point out to
everyone they can listen to you every day. You can tune into a syndicated radio show and
podcast on iTunes, War Room: Impeachment. Well, that's aptly named. It airs seven days a week.
Forgive me, I was thinking weekdays. Seven days a week, you're on the case.
Steve Bannon: Got to do it. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaking of Steve Bannon, here's what he had to say about Trump and conspiracy theories he
(Bannon) cooked up to distract the rubes and yahoos. From a review of Michael Wolff's book,
Siege: Trump Under Fire:
" . . . Wolff’s guide, the major-domo of Trump’s 2016 campaign who became a
White House adviser until he wasn’t, enjoys tweaking his former boss. Bannon volunteers
that he helped concoct the story that the Mueller investigation was the demon spawn of the
“deep state”, and says there was never much substance to it.
As Wolff tells it, “among the nimblest conspiracy provocateurs of the Trump age,
Bannon spelled out the … narrative in powerful detail”. But then Bannon’s
voice pierces his own self-generated din: “You do realize … that none of this is
true.” Allow that one to sink in.
Wolff also has Bannon calling the Trump Organization a criminal enterprise and
predicting its downfall : “This is where it isn’t a witch-hunt – even
for the hardcore, this is where he turns into just a crooked business guy … Not the
billionaire he said he was, just another scumbag.” Allow that to sink in, too.
Expect Bannon to be quoted by Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Nadler, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the
eventual Democratic candidate. Also look for the Democratic National Committee to send
chocolates to Bannon, once head of Breitbart and a partner in Cambridge Analytica, next
Easter."
Bannon is trying to save the now compromised and degenerated system throughout the West by
reversing the trend line, the social basis for determining a self-reform is there but the
opposing forces are those that manage real power.
Readers at the international-news site South Front tend to be technologically far more
knowledgeable about the internet than most people (including myself) are, and so their
responses to a news-report that I did on December 17th, titled
"Former NSA Tech Chief Says Mueller Report Was Based on CIA-Fabricated 'Evidence'" ,
explaining some technological details which enable a deeper understanding of how the CIA had
perpetrated the 'Russiagate' hoax that Robert Mueller in his report as the U.S. Special Counsel
had asserted to be a "Russiagate" fact (i.e., Mueller's allegations that the Russian Government
had hacked computers of the Democratic National Committee). Especially informative there was
this reader-comment, which comes from one of the world's leading
experts on cyber technology, Luke Herbert-Hansen :
Well FAT may not [be] a common OS file system anymore, but it is still widely used on
various removable media such as a USB sticks.
As everyone knows who has been closely following the most-reliable evidence regarding the
question of how DNC emails had been copied and supplied to Wikileaks, there has been much
credible, soundly-sourced, speculation that the DNC employee Seth Rich had physically copied
the data from a computer there onto a thumb drive (or "USB stick"), which then was picked up in
the U.S. by a Wikileaks agent, who physically delivered it to Julian Assange at London's
Ecuadorean Embassy .
The great independent investigative journalist (virtually barred since 2007 from being
published in the U.S. anymore), Seymour Hersh, personally investigated the records of the
murder of Seth Rich , both at the Washington DC police and at the FBI, and this is from
the transcript I had made of his statement in a Web-posted phone-call [my boldfaces for
emphasis]:
(2:50-) At some time in late spring, which we're talking about in June 21st, I don't know,
just late spring early summer, he makes contact with Wikileaks , that's in his computer, and
he makes contact. Now, I have to be careful because I met Julian [Assange] in Europe ten
twelve years [ago], I stay the fuck away from people like that. He has invited me and when I
am in London, I always get a message, 'come see me at the Ecuadorean' [Embassy], and I am
fucking not going there. I have enough trouble without getting photographed. He's under total
surveillance by everybody.
They found, what he had done, he [Seth Rich] had submitted a series of documents, emails
from DNC -- and, by the way, all this shit about the DNC, you know, was it a 'hack' or wasn't
it a 'hack' -- whatever happened, it was the Democrats themselves wrote this shit, you know
what I mean? All I know is that, he offered a sample , he sends a sample, you know, I am sure
dozens of emails, and said ' I want money' . Later Wikileaks did get the password [SETH RICH
DID SELL WIKILEAKS ACCESS INTO HIS COMPUTER.] He had a drop-box, a [password-]protected
drop-box, which isn't hard to do. I mean you don't have to be a whiz at IT [information
technology], he was not a dumb kid. They got access to the drop-box. This is all from the FBI
report . He also let people know with whom he was dealing, I don't know how he dealt, I'll
tell you all about Wikileaks in a second, with Wikileaks the mechanism, but according to the
FBI report, he shared his box with a couple of friends, so 'If anything happens to me, it's
not going to solve your problem', okay? I don't know what that means. But, anyway, Wikileaks
got access. And, before he was killed, I can tell you right now, [Obama's CIA Director John]
Brennan's an asshole. I've known all these people for years, Clapper is sort of a better guy
but no rocket-scientist, the NSA guys are fuckin' morons, and the trouble with all those guys
is, the only way they'll get hired by SAIC, is if they'll deliver some [government]
contracts, it's the only reason they stayed in. With Trump, they're gone, they're going to
live on their pension, they're not going to make it [to great wealth]. I've gotta to tell
you, guys in that job, they don't want to live on their pension. They want to be on
[corporate] boards like their [mumble] thousand bucks [cut].
I have somebody on the inside, you know I've been around a long time, somebody who will go
and read a file for me, who, this person is unbelievably accurate and careful, he's a very
high-level guy, he'll do a favor, you're just going to have to trust me, I have what they
call in my business, long-form journalism, I have a narrative, of how that whole fucking
thing began.
(5:50-) It's a Brennan operation. It was an American disinformation, and the fucking
President, at one point when they even started telling the press -- they were
back[ground]-briefing the press, the head of the NSA was going and telling the press, the
fucking cocksucker Rogers, telling the press that we [they] even know who in the Russian
military intelligence service leaked it. All bullshit.
In other words, besides the information from Bill Binney, who was an NSA whistleblower who
took early retirement so he wouldn't have to continue doing what people such as John Brennan
demanded, Seymour Hersh there provided yet additional confirmation to this account from the
also-early-retired whistleblowing UK Ambassador Craig Murray -- a close friend of Assange --
who claimed that he had "met" the person in DC who
supplied the thumb drive (USB stick), which then was delivered (he didn't say how) to
Assange :
Murray received the Hillary-campaign information on September 24th. Little over a week
later, on October 7th, Wikileaks published documents from the computer of Hillary's Campaign
Chairman John Podesta, and politico announced it headlining " The
most revealing Clinton campaign emails in WikiLeaks release" . That same day, Politico
also bannered " Podesta: 'I'm
not happy about being hacked by the Russians'," and the legend that 'Russia hacked the
Clinton campaign' started immediately to compete in the day's 'news' stories, and diminish
focus on, the contents of that information which had been 'hacked'.
However, the information from the DNC itself had been published much earlier, on July 22nd , and so this could not
have come from the September 24th leak. Whether it came from the same person, or through the
same courier (i.e., Murray), isn't yet known. [But it is now, from
what Binney has just said , and the answer is "yes."] The Obama Administration has made
no distinctions between those two data-dumps, but charges that all of the leaks from the
Obama-Clinton-DNC conspiracy -- both the anti-Sanders campaign during the primaries, and the
anti-Trump campaign during the general-election contest -- came from 'Russian hacking'. The
reason why the emphasis is upon the anti-Trump portion is that the conspirators now are
trying to smear Trump, not Sanders, and so to make this a national issue, instead of only an
internal Democratic-Party issue. They are trying to de-legitimize Trump's Presidency -- and,
at the same time, to advance Obama's aim for the U.S. ultimately to
conquer Russia . The mutual hostility between Obama and Trump is intense, but Obama's
hatred of Russia gives had Russia in his gunsights well before he, as a cunning politician,
made political hay out of Mitt Romney's statement that "Russia, this is, without question
America's number one geopolitical foe."added impetus to his post-Presidential campaign here.
This Nobel Peace Prize winner
Only a fool trusts the U.S. government (and the U.S. 'news'media) after ' Saddam's
WMD' (which despite all the lies to the
contrary, didn't exist). Like Craig Murray said , "I used to be the head of the FCO
unit that monitored Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and I know for certain, I can tell
you, they knew there weren't any."
In my records, the politically progressive Craig Murray was the first individual to post to
the Web a clear case that Russiagate was a U.S. Deep-State hoax: He headlined, on 31 December
2016,
"Exit Obama in a Cloud of Disillusion, Delusion and Deceit" , and discussed the case which
now is commonly called "Russiagate." In fact, I had never found any evidence that anything he
has said was false, and -- especially considering the sheer number of his postings at
his blog -- this was a remarkable
record of truthfulness (100%), which is attained by very few journalists, none of whom are
publishable in the United States. These reporters are too honest, and too careful about the
quality of the documentation they cite, to be publishable in the United States. They refuse to
intentionally deceive their readers; and, to the exact contrary, they take great care never to
deceive them. (However, I unfortunately did finally see
a posting from him that included some false allegations.)
As to whom the individuals are who are America's Deep State, that's discussed here . In
other words: the operatives (such as mainstream American journalists) are only agents for those
individuals -- they are not the Deep State itself. They can easily be replaced, but the Deep
State is a far more deep-seated infection, in the American body-politic, and maybe cannot be
removed, at all, without replacing the entire system.
More-drastic measures than "reform" would therefore be needed, in order to eradicate the
Deep State and restore whatever degree of democracy the United States formerly did have. (It's
now a dictatorship . In
fact, that's even been scientifically
proven .) My research indicates that the Deep State took control of America starting on
26 July 1945 .
Further depth on all these subjects can be realised by perusing the collected sayings of
P.T. Barnum... he created the meme for the modern media perversion of reality in accordance
with their Usury Empire masters' wishes.
FISA Court Refuses Review Of FBI Deception by Tyler Durden Sun, 12/22/2019 - 11:30 0
SHARES
Submitted by anonymous attorney and journalist Techno Fog ( @Techno_Fog ), emphasis ours
This week, Presiding Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) Judge Rosemary Collyer,
released two stern Orders taking the FBI to task for its repeated failures, omissions, and
misrepresentations in its application and subsequent renewals to surveil Carter Page.
And while one FBI employee has received a criminal referral for doctoring evidence in the
scheme to defraud the court, key players with oversight responsibilities - under penalty of
perjury - have been given a pass.
Judge Collyer's December 17, 2019 Order, written after the publication of Inspector General
Michael Horowitz's long-awaited report on FISA abuse, emphasized the role the FBI plays when it
makes its assessment on whether probable cause exists to a warrant. In particular, FISC
requires the FBI agent swearing to the application fully and accurately provide "information in
its possession that is material to whether probable cause exists."
FISC Judge Collyer responds to the IG Report.
Court orders remedial measures.
There is also a December 5 FISC Order - currently pending classification review -
discussing the court's "concerns"
She noted that the IG Report revealed "troubling instances in which FBI personnel provided
information to NSD which was unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession."
Judge Collyer also expressed concerns about the FBI Office of General Counsel attorney,
reported to have been Kevin Clinesmith, who altered evidence to mislead about Carter Page
acting as a source for the CIA.
That Order required:
(1) The government to inform the Court in a sworn written submission of what it has done,
and plans to do, to ensure that the statement of facts in each FBI application accurately and
completely reflects information possessed by the FBI that is material to any issue presented by
the application. (A January 10, 2020 deadline was given for this submission and left the
government with room to maneuver if it needed more time.)
On December 20, FISC released Judge Collyer's mostly unredacted December 5, 2019 Order to
the United States. This was apparently prepared in response to letters filed with FISC by the
government relating to the issues found with the Carter Page application and renewals during
the course of the Inspector General's investigation. She ordered the United States inform FISC
by writing of the following:
(1) Identify all other matters currently or previously before this Court that involved the
participation of the FBI OGC [Clinesmith] attorney whose conduct was described in the
Preliminary Letter and Supplemental Letter;
(2) Describe any steps taken or to be taken by the Department of Justice or FBI to verify
that the United States' submissions in those matters completely and fully described the
material facts and circumstances; and
(3) Advise whether the conduct of the FBI OGC [Clinesmith] attorney who has been referred to
the appropriate bar association(s) for investigation or possible disciplinary action.
This is a serious Court that deals with serious matters of national security and
counterintelligence. The secret nature of FISC requires the United States to be in strict
compliance with all certification and verification requirements. It's a matter of trust. As
Judge Collyer observed: "FISC expects the government to comply with its heightened duty of
candor in ex parte proceedings at all times. Candor is fundamental to the Court's effective
operation."
This trust was broken by the FBI agents and officials whose factual assertions to FISC were
inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, and unsupported by the evidence. The duty of candor was
breached in the continued reliance on Christopher Steele via DOJ official Bruce Ohr (after they
represented to FISC that he had been terminated as a source) and the omission of material facts
and exculpatory evidence that undercut their now-debunked representation that Carter Page was
operating as a Russian agent.
You'll hear a lot about "omissions" in the upcoming IG Report.
To put those omissions into context as you read:
There is a duty under the FISC Rules to include material facts and to correct a
"misstatement or omission of material fact" pic.twitter.com/g3V70D14g3
While it's laudable that Judge Collyer has ordered the government to double-check their
submissions in the prior FISA applications that involved Clinesmith, what about the previous
FISA applications verified by the FBI agents who lied – under penalty of perjury, we
might add – in the Carter Page applications and renewals?
The IG Report found that under Pientka's supervision and approval, there were incorrect
factual assertions in the 1st FISA app.
In other words, whether an FBI lawyer changes an e-mail about a target's history of
cooperation with the CIA or an FBI agent lies about the underlying intelligence, the goal is
the same: secure the warrant through deception. Both these acts are criminal. Why is only one
deserving of review?
The abuses are apparent. The FISC needs to determine whether they're pervasive. That starts
with reviewing all applications verified by the FBI agents involved in the Carter Page
hoax.
***
Related: A Techno_Fog thread on Joe Pientka , and the FBI's efforts to keep him out of the
spotlight (click a tweet to read the rest):
IF SSA 1 is Pientka (who participated in Flynn interview)...
He knew "the information from Steele's reporting about a Russian consulate being located
in Miami was inaccurate" pic.twitter.com/azwql8kcmR
In the FISA Court who represents the Accused? Is the Accused allowed to produce evidence
to declare themselves innocent? So the Accused is Guilty till proven innocent. The people
producing evidence to get the warrent are unlikely to come back and have evidence that make
them look bad.
Bill Priestap would be the person to approve of arranging, paying, or reimbursing,
Christopher Steele for the Russian Dossier used in their counterintelligence operation and
subsequent FISA application.
Without Bill Priestap involved, approvals, etc. the entire Russian/Trump
Counterintelligence operation just doesn't happen. Heck, James Comey's own March 20th
testimony in that
FISA court is COMPLICIT IN THE COUP.........................The FISA court needs to be
REVIEWED BY THE HIGHER AUTHORITY. If that is God, then this crap court needs to be TAKEN
DOWN.........The fisa JUDGES WERE COMPLICIT IN THE ONGOING COUP AND ELECTION MEDDLING.
That's if they cared, I bet you're right but doubt anything will be done. As scapegoat
indeed but little else if even that. Perhaps after Trump gets re-elected, if not, then
never.
This is all as expected... the "one rotten apple" dodge... the only hope for some sort of
Justice is Barr-Durham... but don't hold your breath... one reason the Deep State survives is
the Mutually Assured Destruction/ Blackmail built into the system. Going hard against the
earlier leaders from the predecessor party, including the former President, means that when
the other party takes power, in retaliation, they go after THEIR predecessors in office, who
are the incumbents today. Real banana republic stuff
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 to oversee requests for surveillance
warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and
intelligence agencies.
The first video is an excellent introduction to Neoliberalism even for someone who has been
reading about it for a few years. It takes all the facts and makes an informative, easy to
follow, clear documentary.
This speech on neo-liberalism omits fundamental questions. Economic system begin XX
century from military dominion of England on world commerce, concreted in social elites
over the world that are fitted to this dominion. Description of this dominion was clear by
America independence fighters. who signal hard taxes on artisan, farmers and manufactures
and low prices in prime matter. English supremacy was continuation of Napoleon Bonaparte
defeat in 1815 and US-England war in 1820 stalemate. Like Persian and another empires,
England submit defeated countries and make war using France and her army to submit other
countries
England dominion system causes in all countries unsupportable misery and hungry states.
England speak of free trade when was necessary to sustain her oppression system but several
times, England don't need to speak, deplorable states were sustained by France or other
countries like Brazil in wars as Brazil Triple Alliance war against Paraguay 1864-70.
England system suffers a defeat in France-Prussian war 1871.
American industry was colonized by England capitals and begin a monopoly system on
beginning manufactures. This one was battled by American manufacturers opposition what
produces anti-monopolies laws and corresponding control organs. This fight counter
monopolies was triumph after 1929 great depression that Roosevelt develops a state
intervention in economy. Roosevelt limits monopolies but no eliminate that at all. Several
monopolies must to accept business as normal and not to put monopoly price to they
merchandise. For example oil industry,That is England capitals and standard-oil capitals
dominated. Much economists made a cover-up of Roosevelt politics, a societal reality, and
give credits to John Maynard Keynes. Of this guy only remember what a functionary of
British East India Monopoly Company was.
Here we can to consider video on Neo-liberalism, Roosevelt as govern was result of a
long fight between American people and they manufacturers against monopolies.
Partisans of international monopolies defeated remain in hibernation state. This was the
Neo-liberalism seedbeds.
Economic crisis were maintained faraway by anti monopolies politics but causes were not
suppressed. Too many countries were obliged to consume few merchandise and this originates
crisis., By 1974 economic crisis explode. And to skip some consequences Kissinger China
accords were signed..Main question resolved was low profit in manufacture.
Monopolies augment their power and appears Neo-liberalism as reality triumphant first an
after as triumphant speech.
Big production in China first was competitions in all markets but after appear a jam in
in merchandise , neo-liberalism attacks state institutions that protect local markets from
dumping coming from China bring by old monopolies. Political financial and military power
was exerted on local elites to suppress manufacture support, and old assemble factories
were suppressed. Free market speech was cover up of these military and political driven
actions.
Fight counter neo-liberalism must to base in anti monopoly criteria, but sufficiently
informed of history of monopolies that is not said in video referenced.The only one exit to
defeat misery and Neo-liberalism is to disrupt power concentration that fall in monopolies
practices with exclusion of monopolists of economic activity and condemns to prison to
violators.
Despite the handwringing otherwise, there are quite a few well-off people outside the
coast who like decorating in gold and even being so tacky as to have cars that match.
At what point up the socio-economic ladder do these sorts of concerns become manifest? And
how does one know? I'm an upper lower-class "coastal," and I'm mostly concerned with eating
properly and keeping my dilapidated 50s rambler from leaking. Years ago, when my children
were at home, and our family was solidly upper middle-class (at least that's what I thought),
I still didn't consider what other people thought of my cars, nor did I think much about
decorating colors.
Honestly, I think I find simple survival more interesting.
All of my life, those with immense, some might claim obscene amounts of wealth have been
celebrated in these United States, but you can sense a backlash is coming to them & showy
displays that come with the territory.
Well there was that period–late 60s, early 70s–when people like Leonard
Bernstein dressed in jeans and conspicuous wealth was very un-hip. Tom Wolfe wrote an article
about it,
I really think the turning point came around 1975 when the first pro athletes got million
a year contracts, and you can just imagine the jealousy of Ivy League types on Wall*Street as
the pros started making moon money.
By the time we got around to Reagan, high finance figured out how to hit the long ball via
Milken, etc.
I mentioned a week or 2 ago in regards to a pitcher who inked a nearly 1/3rd of a Billion
$ contract, contrast that with the $125k 1 year deal that Sandy Koufax signed in 1966.
Koufax and Don Drysdale (1965 World Series heroes) asked, together, for a $1 million, 3
year deal. That equated to a yearly salary of $166,000 for each of them for 3 years. (The
highest paid player in MLB at the time was Willie Mays at $105,000.) The Dodgers, with by far
the highest game attendance in baseball, offered Koufax $120k and Drysdale $105k. I believe
that was the salary that they accepted.
Much has changed since then. TV has made MLB a 7-8 $Billion a year enterprise. The LA
Dodgers as a team are now worth billion$. Marvin Miller wrenched union power for the players.
And remember, players have a very short earning window; Koufax retired at the age of 30 due
to an elbow worn out from throwing curve balls. (Sandy was a condo neighbor of mine when I
lived in Sun Valley, ID. A very special man.)
I graduated from college in 1979. Women wore (depending on the season), T-shirts,
sweatshirts, and jeans. Only the women from the the colleges that were seen as matrimonial in
orientation (one was called "Pine Mattress") wore makeup.
2 years after that, I was part of the group that did campus recruiting. Just walking
around, you could see a significant % of women wearing makeup, skirts, and hose, just to go
to class. Gah.
I think you are missing the point of my comment, that of all the things to get upset about
re Trump, it's his taste? Really? IMHO this is another manifestation of the fact that a
significant amount of the upset about him is his being so flagrantly nouveau riche and not
caring.
And you managed to miss the status signaling from the bourgeois on up? Women who color
their hair feel unkept if their roots grow in. Cars are huge status symbols, up and down the
line. Try driving an early 2000s car, even if in fine shape, and watch the reactions if
someone you've first met walks you to it. People look at the quality of leather in shoes,
tailoring and fabric as other status markers. Being thin is another status marker, as are
teeth ..
If you are really rich, the signals include flying on private jets, what charities you
support, what art you collect, if you own a vineyard (or have your name on a hospital wing or
building at a school .)
I read that Nixon acquired his hatred step by step and it was only really baked in after
about the 20000th time he got snubbed. For a long time he wanted to be one of them and he
could hardly believe it that it wasn't ever going to happen.
That was my take as well.
Snobbery is snobbery, and I thought Yves was pointing that out in a forceful manner, not
criticizing R.V.'s comment.
In any event, I find R.V.'s comments a welcome point of view adding depth to the larger
economic picture and its effects.
"because the bourgeois flavor of this corner of the Internet just doesn't suit my
proletariat tastes"
I think you completely misunderstood her point. She wasn't defending Trump's tastes in any
way, but pointing out that ALL the wealthy share similar tastes and singling Trump out as
some kind of singular aberration leaves out that this is standard of our ruling class.
None of us here support this kind status consumerism, and many of us likely share your
'proletarian tastes', its just that around here notions that Trump is some unique monster
different from the rest of his class hold little water.
I can't relate to a world where what you wear, what you drive and what you drink and the
conveyance which moves you around, really means anything.
That said, it's all part of the pecking order on high, and I get it. If Trump was seen in
a 2007 Toyota Matrix with 136k miles, his world would come undone.
Added to what the others have said; don't cut off your nose to spite your face. It takes a
thick skin to comment anywhere on the internet.
Also, so what if this blog commenteriat skews a bit bourgeois? Do you want to lock yourself
in an echo chamber? What good would that do for your understanding of the 'reality' on the
ground? I and others admit to frequenting conservative blogs. It doesn't mean we fully agree
with the reigning philosophies on those blogs, but we do tend to learn much of a substantive
nature that is not displayed on the "standard" MSM 'news' sources.
The entire lesson of the internet is that "Knowledge Is Power." Control the 'knowledge' or
it's accessibility, and you "rule" the society. Thus, a wide range of sources of information
is required. Locking yourself away in the anarchist sphere of the internet is going to stunt
your knowledge set, and limit your range of options for action. To effectively fight one's
enemies, one must understand them. So, to discommode the bourgeois, you first must get to
know them.
Finally, class has always been "..an unbridgeable chasm in western society." Else why all the
revolts and movements on the part of the working classes?
Anyway, don't leave in a huff. You are better than that.
This particular line of attack on Trump is exactly the line that used to be taken by the
old rich and New England rich against the new rich. (And the ethnic rich)
If you've ever wanted to understand what neoliberalism is, this is
the series for you.
Neoliberalism is an economic ideology that exists within the framework of capitalism. Over
four decades ago, neoliberalism become the dominant economic paradigm of global society.
In this video series, we'll trace the history of neoliberalism, starting with a survey of
neoliberal philosophy and research, a historical reconstruction of the movement pushing
for neoliberal policy solutions, witnessing the damage that neoliberalism did to its first
victims in the developing world, and then charting neoliberalism's infiltration of the
political systems of the United States and the United Kingdom. Learn how neoliberalism is
generating crises for humanity at an unprecedented rate.
Our "education" system has raised generations of useful idiots, unable to fight back
or even recognize the threat of the establishments breakaway civilization.
Good video. Reminded me of this bit I saved from Twitter some time ago:
"Probably
no man in history has had so little understanding of the workings of his own society
– and hence so little power to effect change – as liberal democratic man. We talk
about this with regard to capitalism – we're (supposedly) buffeted by impersonal and
unaccountable 'market forces' – but not with liberal democratic politics, although
it's fundamentally the same thing. Even if you could organize an angry mob, whose
residence would you march on? The serf knew, the slave knew. You do not. You have no
idea who your masters are or where they live. A 'liberal democracy' is a political
system where you have no idea who's in charge, no idea what they're planning, no
idea why they have the policies they have, and no idea of how to change any of it."
"free traders mistake money for wealth, wealth is derived from making things, money
is just a medium of exchange: any government that prints money with no regard to its
material basis in commodity production risks disaster."
"Whenever you hear the words "a country has to be competitive," it's not more
competition among businesses, it's that every country has to do whatever it can to
make available the closest thing to slave labor as possible. Period. No wishy-washy
jargon needed to cover the basic fact"
Excellent vid. Really puts it all together well. The Neoliberals are sucking as much
money and work out of us folks as they can get away with before they kill us all off
and use robots.
I love the content, just not the pacing. If you listen to most documentaries, you
will notice the is a pacing or cadence in the spoken narrative. Speak a little, then
give some time to absorb. This series would be a lot easier to listen to with some
added space... thanks. Look forward to this series.
"one of the main reasons why even sophisticated societies fall into this suicidal
spiral is the conflict between the short-term interests of decision-making elites
and the long-term interests of society as a whole, especially if the elites are able
to insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions. the reason why even
sophisticated societies fail is because the elites are never made to pay a price for
their follies"
What's not mentioned is this second phase of "liberalism" is the most dangerous
because we are more dependent on capitalist production than ever before. People
exist on a razors edge.
"All this is contrary to what classical economists urged. Their objective was for
governments elected by the population at large to receive and allocate the economic
surplus. Presumably this would have been to lower the cost of living and doing
business, provide a widening range of public services at subsidized prices or
freely, and sponsor a fair society in which nobody would receive special privileges
or hereditary rights. Financial sector advocates have sought to control democracies
by shifting tax policy and bank regulation out of the hands of elected
representatives to nominees from world's financial centers.
The aim of this planning
is not for the classical progressive objectives of mobilizing savings to increase
productivity and raise populations out of poverty.
The objective of finance
capitalism is not capital formation, but acquisition of rent-yielding privileges for
real estate, natural resources and monopolies. These are precisely the forms of
revenue that centuries of classical economists sought to tax away or minimize. By
allying itself with the rentier sectors and lobbying on their behalf – so as to
extract their rent as interest – banking and high finance have become part of the
economic overhead from which classical economists sought to free society.
The result
of moving into a symbiosis with real estate, mining, oil, other natural resources
and monopolies has been to financialize these sectors. As this has occurred, bank
lobbyists have urged that land be un-taxed so as to leave more rent (and other
natural resource rent) "free" to be paid as interest – while forcing governments to
tax labor and industry instead. To promote this tax shift and debt leveraging,
financial lobbyists have created a smokescreen of deception that depicts
financialization as helping economies grow. They accuse central bank monetizing of
budget deficits as being inherently inflationary – despite no evidence of this, and
despite the vast inflation of real estate prices and stock prices by predatory bank
credit.
Money creation is now monopolized by banks, which use this power to finance
the transfer of property – with the source of the quickest and largest fortunes
being infrastructure and natural resources pried out of the public domain of debtor
countries by a combination of political insider dealing and debt leverage – a merger
of kleptocracy with the world's financial centers. The financial strategy is capped
by creating international financial institutions (the International Monetary Fund,
European Central Bank) to bring pressure on debtor economies to take fiscal policy
out of the hands of elected parliaments and into those of institutions ruling on
behalf of bankers and bondholders. This global power has enabled finance to override
potentially debtor-friendly governments." Excerpt From Killing the Host Michael
Hudson
16:23
"Chile experienced a peaceful democratic rule for 41 years, that now has
violently come to an end. Pinochet and his followers described the coup as 'a war'.
It definitely looked that way. It was a Chilean example of 'instilling shock and
awe'. The days thereafter saw 13000 opposers arrested and locked up ." may be too
much of a literal translation but Dutch isn't my first language. (edited the time
stamp)
"... The problem with an unseen stimulus is that no one thinks it's helping them. Obama provided tax relief for nearly every working American, but instead of sending citizens a check, as George W. Bush had done, his economists decided to structure it as a payroll tax cut, subtly increasing the size of everyone's paycheck. The administration then intentionally did not advertise the fact that it had given nearly every working American a tax cut , in the hopes that people would be nudged into spending, rather than saving, that extra cash. Predictably, in 2010, one poll showed that only 12 percent of Americans believed they'd received a tax cut; 24 percent thought Obama had raised their taxes. ..."
"... A program that was supposed to help underwater homeowners turned down 70 percent of those applying for permanent loan modifications , even as over six million families lost their homes. The point of the program was never actually to help people stay in their homes, of course; it was to preserve the finance industry by spacing out foreclosures. In the end, it achieved its aim: The banks today are as profitable as ever, while more households are renting than in 50 years . ..."
"... The individual mandate, similarly designed to force the healthiest young invincibles to enter the market to bring down costs, is equally dead. And a decade into the ACA, it has become more apparent than ever that the best way to reduce America's absurd health care costs would simply be a single-payer program. ..."
"... The political scientist Suzanne Mettler coined the term "the submerged state" in 2010 to refer to the jungle of hidden government "programs" designed not to call attention to themselves, often perpetuated not because they are still helping the neediest, but because they are lucrative to the finance, insurance, and/or real estate industries. ..."
Welcome to The Decade From Hell , our look
back at an arbitrary 10-year period that began with a great outpouring of hope and ended in a cavalcade of despair.
As 2009 ended, the editors of this magazine at the time
took their measure of the first year of Barack Obama's
presidency and declared it, with some reservations, a modest success. "All of this might not exactly place him in the pantheon next
to Franklin Roosevelt," they said of his major domestic achievements (the stimulus package, primarily, as the Affordable Care Act
had not yet been signed). "But it's not a bad start, given all the constraints of the political system (and global order) in which
he works."
That was the broad consensus of American liberals at the time, ranging from nearly the most progressive to nearly the most neoliberal.
Over the ensuing years, that consensus would crack and eventually shatter under the weight of one disappointment after another. The
story of American politics over the past decade is that of a political party on the cusp of enduring power and world-historical social
reform, and how these once imaginable outcomes were methodically squandered.
The bulk of that unsigned New Republic editorial in 2009 was dedicated to Obama's foreign policy, specifically the question
of whether he was waging enough war. The conclusion: He was. The editors praised "the escalation of the war in Afghanistan" as "the
most consequential action of the first year of his presidency," even though it
offended the base of his party and possibly injured his future political prospects. On strategic grounds, we believe he made
the right choice. But the thoroughness and logic of the process by which he arrived at this decision double our confidence in
that choice. The is exactly the type of pragmatism and non-ideological policymaking that sentient humans have craved after the
Bush years.
(Sure, escalate the endless wars -- but for God's sake, please do it non-ideologically .)
In December of this year, The Washington Post
obtained thousands of pages of documents from a government oversight project called "Lessons Learned," which included interviews
with more than 600 people involved in the war in Afghanistan at some point over its 18-year history. An interview with a National
Security Council official described, according to the Post , "constant pressure from the Obama White House and Pentagon to
produce figures to show the troop surge of 2009 to 2011 was working, despite hard evidence to the contrary." Nearly every piece of
data used over the last decade to try to convince Americans that the war was going well, or even going according to any sort of coherent
logic or reason, was phony or meaningless.
"I don't want to be going to Walter Reed for another eight years," Obama
reportedly said in 2009 , as he struggled
with the decision to escalate the war. The president and his closest advisers were determined to avoid the mistakes of Vietnam. Since
then, overwhelmed by billions
in U.S. "aid," the country has sunk into kleptocracy. Last year, according to the United Nations, was the single deadliest year
of the war for Afghan civilians. Today, around 13,000 American service members remain in Afghanistan. The Trump administration is
attempting to negotiate a peace with the Taliban that would leave it in charge of the country, just as it was prior to America's
invasion. The war in Afghanistan may finally end, but not before the close of this decade that began with that oh-so-carefully considered
decision to escalate it.
"We Are All Socialists Now," Newsweek declared on its cover in early 2009, when
it was still part of the prestige press (it is currently run by
a different sort of cult ).
Editor Jon Meacham, evincing the usual historical and political amnesia of airport bookstore historians, justified the claim by writing
that "for the foreseeable future Americans will be more engaged with questions about how to manage a mixed economy than about whether
we should have one." A mixed economy run according to Keynesian principles was, you may recall from reading slightly more rigorous
historians, the primary alternative to socialism on offer in the West throughout the twentieth century. The stimulus had been
large (if not large
enough ), but with $288 billion of it dedicated to tax credits and incentives for individuals and businesses, it scarcely resembled
socialism. Indeed, rather than giving Americans a greater hand in managing the economy, much of it was designed to be almost invisible.
This was intentional. In the May 6, 2009, issue of The New Republic , Franklin Foer and Noam Scheiber
described Obama's "Nudge-ocracy," a belief, inspired
by behavioral economics, that the best way for the government to create good outcomes for the people was not through "heavy-handed
market interventions" but via technocratic attempts to change the behavior of individuals and the incentives of market actors.
The problem with an unseen stimulus is that no one thinks it's helping them. Obama provided tax relief for nearly every working
American, but instead of sending citizens a check, as George W. Bush had done, his economists decided to structure it as a payroll
tax cut, subtly increasing the size of everyone's paycheck. The administration then
intentionally did not advertise the fact that
it had given nearly every working American a tax cut , in the hopes that people would be nudged into spending, rather than saving,
that extra cash. Predictably, in 2010,
one poll showed
that only 12 percent of Americans believed they'd received a tax cut; 24 percent thought Obama had raised their taxes.
The flaw in this strategy was apparent to another author at this magazine. In late 2009, John B. Judis
foresaw a presidency in serious political trouble, because
Obama's fortunes were tied not just to the state of the economy, or even economic trends, but to people's perceptions of the
state of the economy. Noting how Roosevelt "dramatized the New Deal's contribution to the economy" by creating "colorful new agencies,"
thereby "ensuring that Roosevelt was given credit for the rise in employment," Judis called on Obama to "introduce programs that
provide jobs and capture the public's imagination." He also suggested the president
turn a deaf ear to those who are calling for fiscal responsibility. He should keep pouring money into jobs and into the pockets
of people who will spend until the unemployment rate begins going down and wages begin going up.... And, whatever he does to try
to mend the economy, Obama should never stop loudly trumpeting his efforts -- so that he is able to reap the credit when improvements
occur.
Roosevelt liked to wrestle his enemies in public, and Team Obama preferred to be above it all.
What Judis didn't consider, though, was that Obama didn't want to do any of those things. The president, along with economists
who worked for him such as Austan Goolsbee and Tim Geithner,
all pointedly rejected comparisons to
Roosevelt , based in part on a seemingly inaccurate understanding of the history of his first term but also seemingly based on
aesthetics: Roosevelt liked to wrestle his enemies in public, and Team Obama preferred to be above it all. It's hard to remember
now how wise everyone made it sound that the president and his team intentionally avoided doing things they worried would be too
popular, but there would not be another New Deal. Indeed, instead of ostentatious acts of helping people, the administration almost
preferred being seen standing athwart attempts to provide relief. A program that was supposed to help underwater homeowners
turned
down 70 percent of those applying for permanent loan modifications , even as over six million families lost their homes. The
point of the program was never actually to help people stay in their homes, of course; it was to
preserve the
finance industry by spacing out foreclosures. In the end, it achieved its aim: The banks today are as profitable as ever, while
more households are renting than in 50 years .
By far the most effective part of the Affordable Care Act, in terms of helping Americans get care, was simply expanding Medicaid.
But what many Democrats and liberals were most excited about was the bill's many experimental and technocratic attempts to "bend
the cost curve" -- reduce costs without price controls -- and "improve quality," mainly by encouraging insurers, with incentives,
to strive for outcomes that market forces alone weren't incentivizing them to aim for. The signature example of this may be the "Cadillac
tax," which was designed to nudge companies to force employees onto cheaper insurance plans with greater cost sharing -- a tax built
on the belief that one of the primary drivers of health care cost inflation was people taking advantage of their too-generous employers
and greedily consuming more health care than they needed. The tax never went into effect.
The individual mandate, similarly designed to force the healthiest
young invincibles to enter the market to bring down
costs, is equally dead. And a decade into the ACA, it has become more apparent than ever that the best way to reduce America's absurd
health care costs would simply be a single-payer program.
That is not to say that the ACA did not end up having the significant long-term political ramifications its drafters promised
it would. The primary non-Medicaid structure of the ACA, with its means-tested subsidies to purchase private insurance, had the predictable
effect of convincing some of its beneficiaries
that Obama and the Democratic Party had nothing to do with the government assistance they weren't sure they were getting. Then, as
costs rose and rose over the decade, that structure also
had the predictable effect of making people
who receive partially subsidized private care resentful of those poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.
Much of the decade we have just endured has shown how the Democratic addiction to dispensing benefits through the tax code in
complicated, indirect ways -- combined with the usual insufficiency of these benefits -- was nearly perfectly designed to foment
mass resentment of others, imagined or not, who might secretly be getting the Good Benefits.
The political scientist Suzanne Mettler coined the term "the submerged state" in 2010 to refer to the jungle of hidden government
"programs" designed not to call attention to themselves, often perpetuated not because they are still helping the neediest, but because
they are lucrative to the finance, insurance, and/or real estate industries.
One of her illustrations
of the effect of the submerged state is a graph showing how many people who used particular government programs admitted so only
after first telling researchers they'd received no assistance. That nearly 40 percent of people on Medicare claimed this is likely
attributable to ideology (and the fact that Medicare, like Social Security, was designed to make retirees feel like they had "paid
into it").
But when 60 percent of people who used tax-advantaged higher education savings accounts claim they received no government benefits,
as they did in Mettler's study, it's probably because tax-advantaged savings accounts are wholly inadequate to the problem of higher
education costs. Now combine this with a persistent belief (memorably
described by Ashley C. Ford a few years ago) that minorities -- black kids in particular -- get to go to college for free by
default, and stir in the rise of tuition costs and other expenses due to cutbacks in state investment in education. The result of
this cocktail of ignorant biases and inadequate solutions might look something like the year 2019.
And, the USA? I keep getting phone calls from god knows where masquerading as local calls.
And our $100 billion per year intelligence services can do nothing to protect Americans from
something as simple as unwanted phone calls. We know every single intelligence service will
use cyber warfare and we have no way to stop it despite colossal expenditures on war
munitions.
Well, it looks like we've somehow managed to survive another year of diabolical Putin-Nazi
attacks on democracy.
It was touch-and-go there for a while, especially coming down the home stretch, what with
Jeremy Corbyn's desperate attempt to overthrow the UK government, construct a
British version of Auschwitz , and start rounding up and mass-murdering the Jews.
That was certainly pretty scary... but then, the whole year was pretty scary.
While Resistance members were still wrapping their heads in anti-cricket aluminum foil,
Putin (i.e., Russian Hitler) ordered Trump (i.e., Russian-asset Hitler) to launch a coup in
Venezuela (i.e., Russian Hitler's South American ally), probably to distract us from "
Smirkboy Hitler "
and his acne-faced gang of MAGA cap-wearing Catholic high-school Hitler Youth, who were trying
to invade and Hitlerize the capital. Or maybe the coup was meant to distract us from the
un-American activities of Bernie Sanders, who had also been deemed a Russian asset, or a
devious " Kremlin-Trump operation ," or
was working with Tulsi Gabbard to
build an army of blood-drinking Hindu nationalists, genocidal Assadists, and American
fascists to help the Iranians (and the Russians, of course, and presumably also Jeremy
Corbyn) frontally assault the State of Israel and drive the Jews into the sea.
As if all that wasn't horrifying enough (and ridiculous and confusing enough), by early
Spring there was mounting evidence that Putin had
somehow gotten to Mueller, possibly with one of those FSB pee-tapes, and was sabotaging the
"Russiagate" coup the Intelligence Community, the Democratic Party, the corporate media, and
the rest of the Resistance had been methodically preparing since 2016. Liberals' anuses began
puckering and unpuckering as it gradually became clear that the "Mueller Report" was not going
to prove that Donald Trump had colluded with Putin and Julian Assange to steal the presidency
from Hillary Clinton and transform the United States of America into a genocidal Putin-Nazi
Reich.
Meanwhile, the anti-Semitism pandemic that
had mysteriously erupted in 2016 (i.e., right around the time Trump won the nomination) was
raging unchecked throughout the West. Jews in Great Britain were on the brink of panic because
approximately 0.08 percent of
Labour Party members were anti-Semitic , as opposed to the rest of the British public, who
have never shown any signs of anti-Semitism (or any other kind of racism or bigotry), and are
practically a nation of Shabbos goys. Clearly, Corbyn had turned the party into his personal
neo-Nazi death
cult and was planning to carry out a second Holocaust just as soon as he renationalized the
British railways!
And it wasn't just the United Kingdom. According to corporate media virologists, idiopathic
anti-Semitism was breaking out everywhere. In France, the "Yellow
Vests" were also anti-Semites . In the U.S.A., Jews were facing " a perfect
storm of anti-Semitism ," some of it stemming from the neo-fascist fringe (which has been a
part of the American landscape forever, but which the corporate media has elevated into an
international Nazi movement), but much of it whipped up by Ilhan Omar, who had apparently
entered into a "Red-Brown" pact with Richard Spencer, or Gavin McInnes, or some other formerly
insignificant idiot.
Things got very confusing for a while, as Republicans united with Democrats to denounce
Ilhan Omar as an anti-Semite (and possibly a full-fledged Islamic terrorist) and to condemn the
existence of "hate," or whatever. The corporate media, Facebook, and Twitter were suddenly
swarming with hordes of angry anti-Semites accusing other anti-Semites of anti-Semitism. Meghan
McCain couldn't take it anymore, and she broke down on the Joy Behar Show and
begged to be converted to Judaism, or Zionism, right there on the air. This unseemly display of
anti-anti-Semitism was
savagely skewered by Eli Valley , an "anti-Semitic" Jewish cartoonist, according to McCain
and other morons.
Then it happened ... perhaps the loudest popcorn fart in political history. The Mueller
Report was finally delivered. And just like that, Russiagate was over . After
three long years of manufactured mass hysteria, corporate media propaganda, books, T-shirts,
marches, etc., Robert Mueller had come up with squat. Zip. Zero. Nichts. Nada. No collusion. No
pee-tape. No secret servers. No Russian contacts. Nothing. Zilch.
Cognitive dissonance gripped the nation. There was beaucoup wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Resistance members doubled their anti-depressant dosages and went into mourning. Shell-shocked
liberals did their best to pretend they hadn't been duped, again, by authoritative sources like
The Washington Post , The New York Times , The Guardian , CNN, MSNBC, et al., which had
disseminated completely fabricated stories about
secret meetings which never took place ,
power grid hackings that never happened ,
Russian servers that never existed ,
imaginary Russian propaganda peddlers , and
the list goes on , and on, and on and hadn't otherwise behaved like a bunch of mindless,
shrieking neo-McCarthyites.
Except that Russiagate wasn't over. It immediately morphed into " Obstructiongate ." As the
corporate media spooks explained, Mueller's investigation of Trump was never about collusion
with Russia. No, it was always about Trump obstructing the investigation of the collusion with
Russia that the investigation was not about, and that
everyone knew had never happened . In other words, Mueller's investigation was launched in
order to investigate the obstruction of his investigation.
Or whatever...
It didn't really matter, because, by this time, Assange had been arrested for
treason, or for jumping bail, or for smearing poo all over the walls of the Ecuadorean embassy,
and
The New York Times was reporting that a veritable "constellation" of social media accounts
"linked to Russia and far-right groups" was disseminating extremist "disinformation," and Putin
had unleashed the
Russian spywhale , and " Jews were
not safe in Germany again ," because the Putin-Nazis had formed an alliance with the
Iranian Nazis and the Syrian Nazis, who were backing the Palestinian Nazis that Antifa was
fighting on behalf of Israel , and Jews were not safe in the UK either, because of Jeremy
Corbyn, who Donald Trump (who, let's all remember, is literally Hitler) was conspiring with a
group of "unnamed Jewish leaders" to prevent from becoming prime minister, and Iran was
conspiring with
Hezbollah and al Qaeda to amass an arsenal of WMDs to launch at Israel and Saudi Arabia,
and other peaceful Middle Eastern democracies, and Trump was finally going to go full-Hitler
and declare martial law on the Fourth of July, and he was operating literal "concentration
camps" where
immigrants were being forced to drink out of toilets , which looked almost exactly the same
as the "detention
facilities" Obama had operated , except for well, you know, the "fascism."
So who had time to worry about the corporate media colluding with an attempted Intelligence
Community coup?
This sudden outbreak of " Trump-inspired
terrorism " and the manufactured
"fascism" hysteria that followed got the Resistance through end of the Summer and into the
Autumn, which was always when the main event was scheduled to begin. See, these last three
years have basically been a warm-up for what is about to happen the impeachment, sure, but
that's only one part of it.
If you thought the global capitalist ruling classes and the corporate media's
methodical crushing of Jeremy Corbyn was depressing to watch well, prepare yourself for
2020.
The Year of Manufactured Mass Hysteria was not just the Intelligence Community and the
corporate media getting their kicks by whipping the public up into an endless series of
baseless panics over imaginary Russians and Nazis. It was the final phase of cementing the
official "Putin-Nazi" narrative in people's minds.
"... Since 2001, America has increasingly turned global economic and financial networks into weapons that can be used against adversaries. As we showed in earlier research, financial networks such as the "dollar clearing system" and the SWIFT messaging service, which provide foundations for the global financial system, have been used by the United States to gather intelligence and to isolate entire economies, such as Iran, from the global financial system. ..."
"... As we discuss in a new article in Foreign Affairs , other countries are beginning to think about how they can best respond: by threatening retaliation, by creating their own networks, or by insulating themselves from U.S. pressure. ..."
"America weaponized the global financial system. Now other states are fighting back." [
WaPo ].
" Since 2001, America has increasingly turned global economic and financial networks
into weapons that can be used against adversaries. As we showed in earlier research, financial
networks such as the "dollar clearing system" and the SWIFT messaging service, which provide
foundations for the global financial system, have been used by the United States to gather
intelligence and to isolate entire economies, such as Iran, from the global financial
system.
Control of these networks allows the United States to issue "secondary sanctions" against
countries, businesses or individuals that it wants to target, obliging non-U.S. actors to
adhere to the sanctions or risk substantial penalties.
Now, these tools are leading to backlash and reaction. As we discuss in a new
article in Foreign Affairs , other countries are beginning to think about how they can best
respond: by threatening retaliation, by creating their own networks, or by insulating
themselves from U.S. pressure.
After more than 17 years of the United States pouring blood and treasure into the effort
to build an Afghan army and government, why is it that the Kabul government continues to lose
ground against the Taliban? Further, why were we unsuccessful creating an Iraqi army that
could stand on its own against the Islamic State?
Before that, of course, came Vietnam.
Nor was that the start of the failure of American-backed armies. I was a teenager in 1949
when Chiang Kai-shek's American-backed Nationalist army lost to the Communist forces of Mao
Zedong in China. The American secretary of state, Dean Acheson, having conducted a study on
why our side lost, declared: "The Nationalist armies did not have to be defeated; they
disintegrated. History has proved again and again that a regime without faith in itself, and
an army without morale, cannot survive the test of battle."
Forty-four years ago, the American-trained and American-supplied army of South Vietnam
simply melted away before the less-well-equipped but better-motivated army of North Vietnam.
In 1975, I watched South Vietnamese soldiers taking off their uniforms and running away in
their underwear as the North Vietnamese closed in on Saigon.
Five years ago, the world watched another American-trained and American-equipped Iraqi
army bolt and run when the better motivated Islamic State forces overran Mosul in Northern
Iraq.
Why, over and over again, does the side America has backed in these civil wars end up
defeated? Four threads connect these lost wars of the last 70 years: corruption, patriotic
nationalism, a misplaced belief in American exceptionalism, and self-deception.
I saw corruption on a grand scale in Saigon. Generals and government officials were
funneling America's tax dollars into bank accounts abroad, fielding ghost armies in which
there were fewer soldiers on the ground than on the official payrolls. In Baghdad during the
American occupation, I learned that billions of American taxpayer dollars were bleeding out
to the Persian Gulf and Jordan, causing a laundered money real estate boom in the Jordanian
capital. In Afghanistan I learned that Afghan officers and soldiers routinely robbed the
villages they were sent to protect. Corruption sapped the people's belief in their US-backed
government in all four wars. Soldiers saw no reason to die for corrupt officials.
A second thread is that our side always appeared to be fighting on the side of foreigners,
while the Communists in China and Vietnam, as well as the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan,
always had a better grip on patriotic nationalism and resistance to foreigners. The
anti-colonial struggle was more important than the threat of Communism in most of the
post-World War II world, and the Islamist insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan knew how to
exploit the traditional resistance to foreign rule. The Taliban could appeal to patriotism
while trying to expel the infidel forces of the United States, just as their fathers,
grandfathers, and great grandfathers had resisted the Russians and the British before that in
the name of jihad.
A third thread is a curiously American trait of willfully ignoring other people's history
and cultures. I remember asking an American officer in Vietnam if he had read anything of the
French experience in Vietnam. His answer: "No, why should I? They lost, didn't they?" Robert
McNamara, defense secretary and an architect of our Vietnam War, said in later life that
Americans had never understood the Vietnamese. There were plenty of people who could have
helped him understand, but he wasn't interested. We were Americans -- exceptional, and
therefore not susceptible to the same forces that thwarted other efforts.
I met Americans in the Green Zone in Baghdad who knew nothing about the great schism
between Sunnis and Shia Muslims that was tearing the country apart. American-style democracy
was the answer to all ills, they felt. In Afghanistan I met Americans who thought purple ink
on the fingers of Afghans who had voted was the answer to a thousand years of tribal and
ethnic rivalries.
The fourth thread is self-deception. In Saigon, in Baghdad, and in Kabul I attended
briefings in which progress was always being made, the trend lines were always favorable, and
we were always winning wars we were actually losing. Wishful thinking is no substitute for
reality. Americans can train and assist the armies of those whom we want to support in the
civil wars of others, but we cannot supply the motivation and morale that is necessary to
survive the test of battle.
As we observe another anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack that shattered American
life 18 years ago, its full impact is still unfolding. Those who planned it succeeded beyond
their wildest dreams. The airborne assaults that took nearly 3,000 lives on that day may now
be seen as the most diabolically successful terror attack in history. That attack not only
wreaked carnage at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in rural Pennsylvania.
It wound up dragging the United States into an endless state of war that has drained our
treasury, poisoned our politics, created waves of new terrorism, and made us the enemy of
millions around the world.
The apparent chief perpetrator of the 9/11 attack, Osama bin Laden, presumably cackled
with joy when he heard news of his success on that stunning day. He lived for another 10
years, long enough to cackle with even greater glee at Washington's self-defeating response
to the attack. Using the 9/11 attack as a pretext, the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.
Bin Laden died knowing that he had lured us into the greatest foreign policy disaster in
American history.
It is a truism that our lives are shaped not by what happens to us, but by how we react to
what happens to us. The same applies to nations. Devastating as the death toll was on Sept.
11, 2001, it turned out to be only a taste of what was to come. The United States has been at
war ever since. Thousands of Americans have died. So have hundreds of thousands of civilians
in the Middle East and beyond. This nearly two-decade-long spasm of attacking, bombing, and
occupying countries has decisively shaped the United States and its image in the world. Every
day that our "forever war" continues is a triumph for bin Laden. So is every wounded veteran
who returns home, every newly minted terrorist infuriated by an American attack, every
citizen of the world who recoils at what US forces are being sent to do. We did not simply
fall into bin Laden's trap, we raced in at full speed. Even now, we show little will to
extricate ourselves.
America's determination to strike back with devastating force after 9/11 was
understandable given our shared sense of ravaged innocence. We might have launched a
concentrated strike against the gang of several hundred criminals whose leaders attacked the
United States, and then come home. Instead we have used the 9/11 attack to justify wars and
military deployments around the world.
On Sept. 14, 2001, Congress passed an "authorization for the use of military force"
against the perpetrators of that week's attack and against their "associated forces." Three
presidents have used that authorization to deploy troops across the Middle East and in
countries from Kenya to Georgia to the Philippines. Every call for US withdrawal from
Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria is met by warnings that ending wars could produce "another
9/11." This has become the paralyzing mantra that prevents us from halting the hydra-headed
military campaign we have been waging for 18 years. We also use it to justify atrocities at
prisons like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Bin Laden has succeeded even in colonizing our
minds.
Soon after passing its highly elastic authorization for military action against
"associated forces," Congress approved another, even more sweeping law: the Patriot Act. It
gave the government broad new power to monitor people and businesses, and has become a
foundation stone of our emerging "surveillance state." The 9/11 attack led us to distort not
only our approach to the world, but also the balance between freedom and security at
home.
Another pernicious aftereffect of the terror attack has been the deepening of our national
us-against-them narrative. This began with President George W. Bush's assertion that every
country in the world had to be "either with us or against us." Crusader rhetoric posits the
United States as the indispensable guardian of civilization, entitled to act as it chooses in
order to fend off a threatening tide of barbarism. Now this approach has leaked back into the
United States. Racist attacks that tear at our social fabric are the domestic reflection of
foreign policies that see the rest of the world as a hostile "other" bent on destroying our
way of life.
Last month it was announced that the five surviving alleged plotters of the 9/11 attack
will finally be brought to trial in 2021. If they are aware of what is happening in the
world, they will arrive in court with a deep sense of satisfaction. Their great triumph was
not the attack. It was the damage the United States has since inflicted upon itself.
Acheson is parroting Napoleon: "In war the moral is to the material as 3 is to 1."
He is wrong in the matter of "faith", unless the Chiang's army lost faith in Chiang's
moral poverty, what he stood for.
A better quote about Chiang losing is written by George C. Marshall, who went over and
came back sure Chiang was done for.
He said: "The US would not be dragged through the mud by those reactionaries". Meaning
Chiang was not the moral power in China.
Same for Vietnam US puppets were not and had no moral power/authority.
In Afghanistan same!
Iraq is split in moral authority, the areas populated by Shi'a are okay as long as the
central government does not pander to the Sunni 1/3 (Baathists were suppressing Shi'a).
I do not agree with quoting Acheson when there is plenty of professional soldier writings
that say it more clearly.
After Korea the professional soldiers were no longer expressive when it cme to propping
thugs, with no moral power in their own borders (granted many of the borders surround
fictional counties).
US has stood with thugs for most of its quagmire experience.......
This week US is looking for a way to start a new quagmire with Iran for royal murderers'
sharing their oil company!
Information from local sources said that US army helicopters have already transported the gold bullions under cover of darkness
on Sunday [February 24th], before transporting them to the United States.
The sources said that tens of tons that Daesh had been keeping in their last hotbed in al-Baghouz area in Deir Ezzor countryside
have been handed to the Americans, adding up to other tons of gold that Americans have found in other hideouts for Daesh, making
the total amount of gold taken by the Americans to the US around 50 tons, leaving only scraps for the SDF [Kurdish] militias that
serve them [the US operation].
Recently, sources said that the area where Daesh leaders and members have barricaded themselves in, contains around 40 tons
of gold and tens of millions of dollars.
Allegedly, "US occupation forces in the Syrian al-Jazeera area made a deal with Daesh terrorists, by which Washington gets tens
of tons of gold that the terror organization had stolen, in exchange for providing safe passage for the terrorists and their leaders
from the areas in Deir Ezzor where they are located."
ISIS was financing its operations largely by the theft of oil from the oil wells in the Deir Ezzor area, Syria's oil-producing
region, and they transported and sold this stolen oil via their allied forces, through Turkey, which was one of those US allies trying
to overthrow Syria's secular Government
and install a Sunni fundamentalist regime that would be ruled from Riyadh (i.e., controlled by the Saud family) . This gold is
the property of the Syrian Government, which owns all that oil and the oil wells, which ISIS had captured (stolen), and then sold.
Thus, this gold is from sale of that stolen black-market oil, which was Syria's property.
The US Government evidently thinks that the public are fools, idiots. America's allies seem to be constantly amazed at how successful
that approach turns out to be.
Jihadists were recruited from throughout the world to fight against Syria's secular Government. Whereas ISIS was funded mainly
by black-market sales of oil from conquered areas, the Al-Qaeda-led groups were mainly funded by the Sauds and other Arab royal families
and their retinues, the rest of their aristocracy. On 13 December 2013, BBC headlined
"Guide to the Syrian rebels" and opened "There are
believed to be as many as 1,000 armed opposition groups in Syria, commanding an estimated 100,000 fighters." Except in the Kurdish
areas in Syria's northeast, almost all of those fighters were being led by Al Qaeda's Syrian Branch, al-Nusra. Britain's Center on
Religion & Politics headlined on 21 December 2015,
"Ideology
and Objectives of the Syrian Rebellion" and reported: "If ISIS is defeated, there are at least 65,000 fighters belonging to other
Salafi-jihadi groups ready to take its place." Almost all of those 65,000 were trained and are led by Syria's Al Qaeda (Nusra), which
was protected by
the US
In September 2016 a UK official
"FINAL REPORT OF THE TASK
FORCE ON COMBATING TERRORIST AND FOREIGN FIGHTER TRAVEL" asserted that, "Over 25,000 foreign fighters have traveled to the battlefield
to enlist with Islamist terrorist groups, including at least 4,500 Westerners. More than 250 individuals from the United States have
also joined." Even just 25,000 (that official lowest estimate) was a sizable US proxy-army of religious fanatics to overthrow Syria's
Government.
On 26 November 2015, the first of Russia's videos of Russia's bombing ISIS oil trucks headed into Turkey was bannered at a US
military website
"Russia Airstrike on ISIS Oil Tankers" , and exactly a month later, on 26 December 2015, Britain's Daily Express headlined
"WATCH: Russian fighter jets smash ISIS oil tankers after spotting 12,000 at Turkish border" . This article, reporting around
twelve thousand ISIS oil-tanker trucks heading into Turkey, opened: "The latest video, released by the Russian defence ministry,
shows the tankers bunched together as they make their way along the road. They are then blasted by the fighter jet." The US military
had nothing comparable to offer to its 'news'-media. Britain's Financial Times headlined on 14 October 2015,
"Isis Inc: how oil fuels the jihadi terrorists" . Only America's allies were
involved in this commerce with ISIS -- no nation that supported Syria's Government was participating in this black market of stolen
Syrian goods. So, it's now clear that a lot of that stolen oil was sold for gold as Syria's enemy-nations' means of buying that oil
from ISIS. They'd purchase it from ISIS, but not from Syria's Government, the actual owner.
An estimated 20,000-40,000 barrels of oil are produced daily in ISIS controlled territory generating $1-1.5 million daily profit
for the terrorist organization. The oil is extracted from Dir A-Zur in Syria and two fields in Iraq and transported to the Kurdish
city of Zakhu in a triangle of land near the borders of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Israeli and Turkish mediators come to the city
and when prices are agreed, the oil is smuggled to the Turkish city of Silop marked as originating from Kurdish regions of Iraq
and sold for $15-18 per barrel (WTI and Brent Crude currently sell for $41 and $45 per barrel) to the Israeli mediator, a man
in his 50s with dual Greek-Israeli citizenship known as Dr. Farid. He transports the oil via several Turkish ports and then onto
other ports, with Israel among the main destinations.
The US had done the same thing when it took over Ukraine by
a brutal coup in February 2014
: It grabbed the gold. Iskra News in Russian
reported, on 7 March 2014 , that "At 2 a.m. this morning ... an unmarked transport plane was on the runway at Borosipol Airport"
near Kiev in the west, and that, "According to airport staff, before the plane came to the airport, four trucks and two Volkswagen
minibuses arrived, all the truck license plates missing." This was as translated by Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research headlining
on 14 March,
"Ukraine's Gold Reserves Secretly Flown Out and Confiscated by the New York Federal Reserve?" in which he noted that, when asked,
"A spokesman for the New York Fed said simply, 'Any inquiry regarding gold accounts should be directed to the account holder.'" The
load was said to be "more than 40 heavy boxes." Chossudovsky noted that, "The National Bank of Ukraine (Central Bank) estimated Ukraine's
gold reserves in February to be worth $1.8 billion dollars." It was allegedly 36 tons. The US, according to Victoria Nuland (
Obama's detail-person
overseeing the coup ) had invested around $5 billion in the coup. Was her installed Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk
cleaning out the nation's gold reserves in order to strip the nation so that the nation's steep indebtedness for Russian gas would
never be repaid to Russia's oligarchs? Or was he doing it as a payoff for Nuland's having installed him? Or both? In any case: Russia
was being squeezed by this fascist
Ukrainian-American ploy.
The Syria operation was about oil, gold, and guns. However, most of America's support was to Al-Qaeda-led jihadists, not to ISIS-jihadists.
As the great independent investigative journalist Dilyana
Gaytandzhieva reported on 2 July 2017 :
"In December of last year while reporting on the battle of Aleppo as a correspondent for Bulgarian media I found and filmed
9 underground warehouses full of heavy weapons with Bulgaria as their country of origin. They were used by Al Nusra Front (Al
Qaeda affiliate in Syria designated as a terrorist organization by the UN)."
Furthermore, On
8 March 2013, Richard Spenser of Britain's Telegraph reported that Croatia's Jutarnji List newspaper had reported that "3,000
tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via
Jordan since November. The airlift of dated but effective Yugoslav-made weapons meets key concerns of the West, and especially Turkey
and the United States, who want the rebels to be better armed to drive out the Assad regime."
Also, a September 2014 study by Conflict Armaments Research (CAR), titled
"Islamic State Weapons
in Iraq and Syria" , reported that not only east-European, but even US-made, weapons were being "captured from Islamic State
forces" by Kurds who were working for the Americans, and that this was very puzzling and disturbing to those Kurds, who were risking
their lives to fight against those jihadists.
In December 2017, CAR headlined
"Weapons of the Islamic State"
and reported that "this materiel was rapidly captured by IS forces, only to be deployed by the group against international coalition
forces." The assumption made there was that the transfer of weapons to ISIS was all unintentional.
That report ignored contrary evidence, which I summed up on 2 September 2017 headlining
"Russian TV
Reports US Secretly Backing ISIS in Syria" , and reporting there also from the Turkish Government an admission that the US was
working with Turkey to funnel surviving members of Iraq's ISIS into the Deir Ezzor part of Syria to help defeat Syria's Government
in that crucial oil-producing region. Moreover, at least one member of the 'rebels' that the US was training at Al Tanf on Syria's
Jordanian border had quit because his American trainers were secretly diverting some of their weapons to ISIS. Furthermore: why hadn't
the US bombed Syrian ISIS before Russia entered the Syrian war on 30 September 2015? America talked lots about its supposed effort
against ISIS, but why did US wait till 16 November 2015 before taking action,
"'Get Out Of Your Trucks And Run Away': US Gives ISIS 45 Minute Warning On Oil Tanker Strikes" ?
So, regardless of whether the US Government uses jihadists as its proxy-forces, or uses fascists as its proxy-forces, it grabs
the gold -- and grabs the oil, and takes whatever else it can.
This is today's form of imperialism.
Grab what you can, and run. And call it 'fighting for freedom and democracy and human rights and against corruption'. And the
imperial regime's allies watch in amazement, as they take their respective cuts of the loot. That's the deal, and they call it 'fighting
for freedom and democracy and human rights and against corruption around the world'. That's the way it works. International gangland.
That's the reality, while most of the public think it's instead really "fighting for freedom and democracy and human rights and against
corruption around the world." For example, as
RT reported on Sunday , March 3rd,
about John Bolton's effort at regime-change in Venezuela, Bolton said: "I'd like to see as broad a coalition as we can put together
to replace Maduro, to replace the whole corrupt regime,' Bolton told CNN's Jake Tapper." Trump's regime wants to bring clean and
democratic government to the poor Venezuelans, just like Bush's did to the Iraqis, and Obama's did to the Libyans and to the Syrians
and to the Ukrainians. And Trump, who pretends to oppose Obama's regime-change policies, alternately expands them and shrinks them.
Though he's slightly different from Obama on domestic policies, he never, as the US President, condemns any of his predecessors'
many coups and invasions, all of which were disasters for everybody except America's and allies' billionaires. They're all in on
the take.
The American public were suckered into destroying Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria in 2011-now, and so many other countries,
and still haven't learned anything, other than to keep trusting the allegations of this lying and psychopathically vicious and super-aggressive
Government and of its stenographic 'news'-media. When is enough finally enough ? Never? If not never, then when ? Or do most people
never learn? Or maybe they don't really care. Perhaps that's the problem.
Back on 21 December 2018, one of the US regime's top 'news'-media, the Washington Post, had headlined
"Retreating ISIS army smuggled a fortune in cash and gold out of Iraq and Syria" and reported that "the Islamic State is sitting
on a mountain of stolen cash and gold that its leaders stashed away to finance terrorist operations." So, it's not as if there hadn't
been prior reason to believe that some day some of the gold would be found after America's defeat in Syria. Maybe they just hadn't
expected this to happen quite so soon. But the regime will find ways to hoodwink its public, in the future, just as it has in the
past. Unless the public wises-up (if that's even possible).
"... The destruction of Syria and Libya created massive refugee flows which have proved that the European Union was totally unprepared to deal with such a major issue. On top of that, the latest years, we have witnessed a rapid rise of various terrorist attacks in Western soil, also as a result of the devastating wars in Syria and Libya. ..."
"... Whenever they wanted to blame someone for some serious terrorist attacks, they had a scapegoat ready for them, even if they had evidence that Libya was not behind these attacks. When Gaddafi falsely admitted that he had weapons of mass destruction in order to gain some relief from the Western sanctions, they presented him as a responsible leader who, was ready to cooperate. Of course, his last role was to play again the 'bad guy' who had to be removed. ..."
"... Despite the rise of Donald Trump in power, the neoliberal forces will push further for the expansion of the neoliberal doctrine in the rival field of the Sino-Russian alliance. ..."
"... We see, however, that the Western alliances are entering a period of severe crisis. The US has failed to control the situation in Middle East and Libya. The ruthless neo-colonialists will not hesitate to confront Russia and China directly, if they see that they continue to lose control in the global geopolitical arena. The accumulation of military presence of NATO next to the Russian borders, as well as, the accumulation of military presence of the US in Asia-Pacific, show that this is an undeniable fact. ..."
The start of current decade revealed the most ruthless face of a global neo-colonialism. From Syria and Libya to Europe and Latin
America, the old colonial powers of the West tried to rebound against an oncoming rival bloc led by Russia and China, which starts
to threaten their global domination.
Inside a multi-polar, complex terrain of geopolitical games, the big players start to abandon the old-fashioned, inefficient direct
wars. They use today other, various methods like
brutal proxy
wars , economic wars, financial and constitutional coups, provocative operations, 'color revolutions', etc. In this highly
complex and unstable situation, when even traditional allies turn against each other as the global balances change rapidly, the forces
unleashed are absolutely destructive. Inevitably, the results are more than evident.
Proxy Wars - Syria/Libya
After the US invasion in Iraq, the gates of hell had opened in the Middle East. Obama continued the Bush legacy of US endless
interventions, but he had to change tactics because a direct war would be inefficient, costly and extremely unpopular to the American
people and the rest of the world.
The result, however, appeared to be equally (if not more) devastating with the failed US invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US
had lost total control of the armed groups directly linked with the ISIS terrorists, failed to topple Assad, and, moreover, instead
of eliminating the Russian and Iranian influence in the region, actually managed to increase it. As a result, the US and its allies
failed to secure their geopolitical interests around the various pipeline games.
In addition, the US sees Turkey, one of its most important ally, changing direction dangerously, away from the Western bloc. Probably
the strongest indication for this, is that Turkey, Iran and Russia decided very recently to proceed in an agreement on Syria without
the presence of the US.
Yet, the list of US failures does not end here. The destruction of Syria and Libya created massive refugee flows which have
proved that the European Union was totally unprepared to deal with such a major issue. On top of that, the latest years, we have
witnessed a rapid rise of various terrorist attacks in Western soil, also as a result of the devastating wars in Syria and Libya.
Evidence from
WikiLeaks has shown that the old colonial powers have started a new round of ruthless competition on Libya's resources.
The usual story propagated by the Western media, about another tyrant who had to be removed, has now completely collapsed. They don't
care neither to topple an 'authoritarian' regime, nor to spread Democracy. All they care about is to secure each country's resources
for their big companies.
The Gaddafi case is quite interesting because it shows that
the Western
hypocrites were using him according to their interests .
Whenever they wanted to blame someone for some serious terrorist attacks, they had a scapegoat ready for them, even if they
had evidence that Libya was not behind these attacks. When Gaddafi falsely admitted that he had weapons of mass destruction in order
to gain some relief from the Western sanctions, they presented him as a responsible leader who, was ready to cooperate. Of course,
his last role was to play again the 'bad guy' who had to be removed.
Economic Wars, Financial Coups – Greece/Eurozone
It would be unthinkable for the neo-colonialists to conduct proxy wars inside European soil, especially against countries which
belong to Western institutions like NATO, EU, eurozone, etc. The wave of the US-made major economic crisis hit Greece and Europe
at the start of the decade, almost simultaneously with the eruption of the Arab Spring revolutionary wave and the subsequent disaster
in Middle East and Libya.
Greece was the easy victim for the global neoliberal dictatorship to impose catastrophic measures in favor of the plutocracy.
The Greek experiment enters its seventh year and the plan is to be used as a model for the whole eurozone. Greece has become also
the model for the looting of public property, as happened in the past with the East Germany and the
Treuhand Operation
after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
While Greece was the major victim of an economic war, Germany used its economic power and control of the European Central Bank
to impose unprecedented austerity, sado-monetarism and neoliberal destruction through silent financial coups in
Ireland ,
Italy and
Cyprus . The Greek political establishment collapsed with the rise of SYRIZA in power, and the ECB was forced to proceed
in an open financial coup against
Greece when the current PM, Alexis Tsipras, decided to conduct a referendum on the catastrophic measures imposed by the ECB, IMF
and the European Commission, through which the Greek people clearly rejected these measures, despite the propaganda of terror inside
and outside Greece. Due to the direct threat from Mario Draghi and the ECB, who actually threatened to cut liquidity sinking Greece
into a financial chaos, Tsipras finally forced to retreat, signing another catastrophic memorandum.
Through similar financial and political pressure, the Brussels bureaufascists and the German sado-monetarists along with the IMF
economic hitmen, imposed neoliberal disaster to other eurozone countries like Portugal, Spain etc. It is remarkable that even the
second eurozone economy, France,
rushed to
impose anti-labor measures midst terrorist attacks, succumbing to a - pre-designed by the elites - neo-Feudalism, under
the 'Socialist' François Hollande, despite the intense protests in many French cities.
Germany would never let the United States to lead the neo-colonization in Europe, as it tries (again) to become a major power
with its own sphere of influence, expanding throughout eurozone and beyond. As the situation in Europe becomes more and more critical
with the ongoing economic and refugee crisis and the rise of the Far-Right and the nationalists, the economic war mostly between
the US and the German big capital, creates an even more complicated situation.
The decline of the US-German relations has been exposed initially with the
NSA interceptions
scandal , yet, progressively, the big picture came on surface, revealing a
transatlantic
economic war between banking and corporate giants. In times of huge multilevel crises, the big capital always intensifies
its efforts to eliminate competitors too. As a consequence, the US has seen another key ally, Germany, trying to gain a certain degree
of independence in order to form its own agenda, separate from the US interests.
Note that, both Germany and Turkey are medium powers that, historically, always trying to expand and create their own spheres
of influence, seeking independence from the traditional big powers.
A wave of neoliberal onslaught shakes currently Latin America. While in Argentina, Mauricio Macri allegedly took the power normally,
the constitutional
coup against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, as well as, the
usual actions
of the Right opposition in Venezuela against Nicolás Maduro with the help of the US finger, are far more obvious.
The special weight of these three countries in Latin America is extremely important for the US imperialism to regain ground in the
global geopolitical arena. Especially the last ten to fifteen years, each of them developed increasingly autonomous policies away
from the US close custody, under Leftist governments, and this was something that alarmed the US imperialism components.
Brazil appears to be the most important among the three, not only due to its size, but also as a member of the BRICS, the team
of fast growing economies who threaten the US and generally the Western global dominance. The constitutional coup against Rousseff
was rather a sloppy action and reveals the anxiety of the US establishment to regain control through puppet regimes. This is a well-known
situation from the past through which the establishment attempts to secure absolute dominance in the US backyard.
The importance of Venezuela due to its oil reserves is also significant. When Maduro tried to approach Russia in order to strengthen
the economic cooperation between the two countries, he must had set the alarm for the neocons in the US. Venezuela could find an
alternative in Russia and BRICS, in order to breathe from the multiple economic war that was set off by the US. It is characteristic
that the economic war against Russia by the US and the Saudis, by keeping the oil prices in historically low levels, had significant
impact on the Venezuelan economy too. It is also known that the US organizations are funding the opposition since Chávez era, in
order to proceed in provocative operations that could overthrow the Leftist governments.
The case of Venezuela is really interesting. The US imperialists were fiercely trying to overthrow the Leftist governments since
Chávez administration. They found now a weaker president, Nicolás Maduro - who certainly does not have the strength and personality
of Hugo Chávez - to achieve their goal.
The Western media mouthpieces are doing their job, which is propaganda as usual. The recipe is known. You present the half truth,
with a big overdose of exaggeration.
The establishment
parrots are demonizing Socialism , but they won't ever tell you about the money that the US is spending, feeding the
Right-Wing groups and opposition to proceed in provocative operations, in order to create instability. They won't tell you about
the financial war conducted through the oil prices, manipulated by the Saudis, the close US ally.
Regarding Argentina, former president, Cristina Kirchner, had also made some important moves towards the stronger cooperation
with Russia, which was something unacceptable for Washington's hawks. Not only for geopolitical reasons, but also because Argentina
could escape from the vulture funds that sucking its blood since its default. This would give the country an alternative to the neoliberal
monopoly of destruction. The US big banks and corporations would never accept such a perspective because the debt-enslaved Argentina
is a golden opportunity for a new round of huge profits. It's
happening right
now in eurozone's debt colony, Greece.
'Color Revolutions' - Ukraine
The events in Ukraine have shown that, the big capital has no hesitation to ally even with the neo-nazis, in order to impose the
new world order. This is not something new of course. The connection of Hitler with the German economic oligarchs, but also with
other major Western companies, before and during the WWII, is well known.
The most terrifying of all however, is not that the West has silenced in front of the decrees of the new Ukrainian leadership,
through which is targeting the minorities, but the fact that the West allied with the neo-nazis, while according to some information
has also funded their actions as well as other extreme nationalist groups during the riots in Kiev.
Plenty of indications show that US organizations have 'put their finger' on Ukraine. A
video , for
example, concerning the situation in Ukraine has been directed by Ben Moses (creator of the movie "Good Morning, Vietnam"), who is
connected with American government executives and organizations like National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the US Congress.
This video shows a beautiful young female Ukrainian who characterizes the government of the country as "dictatorship" and praise
some protesters with the neo-nazi symbols of the fascist Ukranian party Svoboda on them.
The same organizations are behind 'color revolutions' elsewhere, as well as, provocative operations against Leftist governments
in Venezuela and other countries.
Ukraine is the perfect place to provoke Putin and tight the noose around Russia. Of course the huge hypocrisy of the West can
also be identified in the case of Crimea. While in other cases, the Western officials were 'screaming' for the right of self-determination
(like Kosovo, for example), after they destroyed Yugoslavia in a bloodbath, they can't recognize the will of the majority of Crimeans
to join Russia.
The war will become wilder
The Western neo-colonial powers are trying to counterattack against the geopolitical upgrade of Russia and the Chinese economic
expansionism.
Despite the rise of Donald Trump in power, the neoliberal forces will push further for the expansion of the neoliberal doctrine
in the rival field of the Sino-Russian alliance. Besides, Trump has already shown his hostile feelings against China, despite
his friendly approach to Russia and Putin.
We see, however, that the Western alliances are entering a period of severe crisis. The US has failed to control the situation
in Middle East and Libya. The ruthless neo-colonialists will not hesitate to confront Russia and China directly, if they see that
they continue to lose control in the global geopolitical arena. The accumulation of military presence of NATO next to the Russian
borders, as well as, the accumulation of military presence of the US in Asia-Pacific, show that this is an undeniable fact.
Last Thursday/Friday the Fed published a $500 billion dollar REPO backstop plan to
cover private bank positioning through the end of the year
according to Dmitry Orlov it's the x10 rate spike on these REPOS that signifies that the
final act is underway. So, for folks paying attention to the prediction market, perhaps now
is the last moment to take heed.
Looking at the numbers for October and November, the Fed monetized over half (50.7%) of
new US government debt. A straight-line projection is that if it took the Fed to go from 0%
to 50% in four months, then it will go from 50% to 100% in another four -- by April Fool's
2020. But who's to say that the increase will be linear rather than exponential? Whichever it
is, the trend is unmistakable: the market in US government debt -- once the deepest and most
liquid market in the world -- is dead. The only thing propping up the value of USTs is the
Fed's printing press. And the only thing propping up the value of the output of the Fed's
printing press is what is it, exactly? Exactly
"... The destruction of Syria and Libya created massive refugee flows which have proved that the European Union was totally unprepared to deal with such a major issue. On top of that, the latest years, we have witnessed a rapid rise of various terrorist attacks in Western soil, also as a result of the devastating wars in Syria and Libya. ..."
"... Whenever they wanted to blame someone for some serious terrorist attacks, they had a scapegoat ready for them, even if they had evidence that Libya was not behind these attacks. When Gaddafi falsely admitted that he had weapons of mass destruction in order to gain some relief from the Western sanctions, they presented him as a responsible leader who, was ready to cooperate. Of course, his last role was to play again the 'bad guy' who had to be removed. ..."
"... Despite the rise of Donald Trump in power, the neoliberal forces will push further for the expansion of the neoliberal doctrine in the rival field of the Sino-Russian alliance. ..."
"... We see, however, that the Western alliances are entering a period of severe crisis. The US has failed to control the situation in Middle East and Libya. The ruthless neo-colonialists will not hesitate to confront Russia and China directly, if they see that they continue to lose control in the global geopolitical arena. The accumulation of military presence of NATO next to the Russian borders, as well as, the accumulation of military presence of the US in Asia-Pacific, show that this is an undeniable fact. ..."
The start of current decade revealed the most ruthless face of a global neo-colonialism. From Syria and Libya to Europe and Latin
America, the old colonial powers of the West tried to rebound against an oncoming rival bloc led by Russia and China, which starts
to threaten their global domination.
Inside a multi-polar, complex terrain of geopolitical games, the big players start to abandon the old-fashioned, inefficient direct
wars. They use today other, various methods like
brutal proxy
wars , economic wars, financial and constitutional coups, provocative operations, 'color revolutions', etc. In this highly
complex and unstable situation, when even traditional allies turn against each other as the global balances change rapidly, the forces
unleashed are absolutely destructive. Inevitably, the results are more than evident.
Proxy Wars - Syria/Libya
After the US invasion in Iraq, the gates of hell had opened in the Middle East. Obama continued the Bush legacy of US endless
interventions, but he had to change tactics because a direct war would be inefficient, costly and extremely unpopular to the American
people and the rest of the world.
The result, however, appeared to be equally (if not more) devastating with the failed US invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US
had lost total control of the armed groups directly linked with the ISIS terrorists, failed to topple Assad, and, moreover, instead
of eliminating the Russian and Iranian influence in the region, actually managed to increase it. As a result, the US and its allies
failed to secure their geopolitical interests around the various pipeline games.
In addition, the US sees Turkey, one of its most important ally, changing direction dangerously, away from the Western bloc. Probably
the strongest indication for this, is that Turkey, Iran and Russia decided very recently to proceed in an agreement on Syria without
the presence of the US.
Yet, the list of US failures does not end here. The destruction of Syria and Libya created massive refugee flows which have
proved that the European Union was totally unprepared to deal with such a major issue. On top of that, the latest years, we have
witnessed a rapid rise of various terrorist attacks in Western soil, also as a result of the devastating wars in Syria and Libya.
Evidence from
WikiLeaks has shown that the old colonial powers have started a new round of ruthless competition on Libya's resources.
The usual story propagated by the Western media, about another tyrant who had to be removed, has now completely collapsed. They don't
care neither to topple an 'authoritarian' regime, nor to spread Democracy. All they care about is to secure each country's resources
for their big companies.
The Gaddafi case is quite interesting because it shows that
the Western
hypocrites were using him according to their interests .
Whenever they wanted to blame someone for some serious terrorist attacks, they had a scapegoat ready for them, even if they
had evidence that Libya was not behind these attacks. When Gaddafi falsely admitted that he had weapons of mass destruction in order
to gain some relief from the Western sanctions, they presented him as a responsible leader who, was ready to cooperate. Of course,
his last role was to play again the 'bad guy' who had to be removed.
Economic Wars, Financial Coups – Greece/Eurozone
It would be unthinkable for the neo-colonialists to conduct proxy wars inside European soil, especially against countries which
belong to Western institutions like NATO, EU, eurozone, etc. The wave of the US-made major economic crisis hit Greece and Europe
at the start of the decade, almost simultaneously with the eruption of the Arab Spring revolutionary wave and the subsequent disaster
in Middle East and Libya.
Greece was the easy victim for the global neoliberal dictatorship to impose catastrophic measures in favor of the plutocracy.
The Greek experiment enters its seventh year and the plan is to be used as a model for the whole eurozone. Greece has become also
the model for the looting of public property, as happened in the past with the East Germany and the
Treuhand Operation
after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
While Greece was the major victim of an economic war, Germany used its economic power and control of the European Central Bank
to impose unprecedented austerity, sado-monetarism and neoliberal destruction through silent financial coups in
Ireland ,
Italy and
Cyprus . The Greek political establishment collapsed with the rise of SYRIZA in power, and the ECB was forced to proceed
in an open financial coup against
Greece when the current PM, Alexis Tsipras, decided to conduct a referendum on the catastrophic measures imposed by the ECB, IMF
and the European Commission, through which the Greek people clearly rejected these measures, despite the propaganda of terror inside
and outside Greece. Due to the direct threat from Mario Draghi and the ECB, who actually threatened to cut liquidity sinking Greece
into a financial chaos, Tsipras finally forced to retreat, signing another catastrophic memorandum.
Through similar financial and political pressure, the Brussels bureaufascists and the German sado-monetarists along with the IMF
economic hitmen, imposed neoliberal disaster to other eurozone countries like Portugal, Spain etc. It is remarkable that even the
second eurozone economy, France,
rushed to
impose anti-labor measures midst terrorist attacks, succumbing to a - pre-designed by the elites - neo-Feudalism, under
the 'Socialist' François Hollande, despite the intense protests in many French cities.
Germany would never let the United States to lead the neo-colonization in Europe, as it tries (again) to become a major power
with its own sphere of influence, expanding throughout eurozone and beyond. As the situation in Europe becomes more and more critical
with the ongoing economic and refugee crisis and the rise of the Far-Right and the nationalists, the economic war mostly between
the US and the German big capital, creates an even more complicated situation.
The decline of the US-German relations has been exposed initially with the
NSA interceptions
scandal , yet, progressively, the big picture came on surface, revealing a
transatlantic
economic war between banking and corporate giants. In times of huge multilevel crises, the big capital always intensifies
its efforts to eliminate competitors too. As a consequence, the US has seen another key ally, Germany, trying to gain a certain degree
of independence in order to form its own agenda, separate from the US interests.
Note that, both Germany and Turkey are medium powers that, historically, always trying to expand and create their own spheres
of influence, seeking independence from the traditional big powers.
A wave of neoliberal onslaught shakes currently Latin America. While in Argentina, Mauricio Macri allegedly took the power normally,
the constitutional
coup against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, as well as, the
usual actions
of the Right opposition in Venezuela against Nicolás Maduro with the help of the US finger, are far more obvious.
The special weight of these three countries in Latin America is extremely important for the US imperialism to regain ground in the
global geopolitical arena. Especially the last ten to fifteen years, each of them developed increasingly autonomous policies away
from the US close custody, under Leftist governments, and this was something that alarmed the US imperialism components.
Brazil appears to be the most important among the three, not only due to its size, but also as a member of the BRICS, the team
of fast growing economies who threaten the US and generally the Western global dominance. The constitutional coup against Rousseff
was rather a sloppy action and reveals the anxiety of the US establishment to regain control through puppet regimes. This is a well-known
situation from the past through which the establishment attempts to secure absolute dominance in the US backyard.
The importance of Venezuela due to its oil reserves is also significant. When Maduro tried to approach Russia in order to strengthen
the economic cooperation between the two countries, he must had set the alarm for the neocons in the US. Venezuela could find an
alternative in Russia and BRICS, in order to breathe from the multiple economic war that was set off by the US. It is characteristic
that the economic war against Russia by the US and the Saudis, by keeping the oil prices in historically low levels, had significant
impact on the Venezuelan economy too. It is also known that the US organizations are funding the opposition since Chávez era, in
order to proceed in provocative operations that could overthrow the Leftist governments.
The case of Venezuela is really interesting. The US imperialists were fiercely trying to overthrow the Leftist governments since
Chávez administration. They found now a weaker president, Nicolás Maduro - who certainly does not have the strength and personality
of Hugo Chávez - to achieve their goal.
The Western media mouthpieces are doing their job, which is propaganda as usual. The recipe is known. You present the half truth,
with a big overdose of exaggeration.
The establishment
parrots are demonizing Socialism , but they won't ever tell you about the money that the US is spending, feeding the
Right-Wing groups and opposition to proceed in provocative operations, in order to create instability. They won't tell you about
the financial war conducted through the oil prices, manipulated by the Saudis, the close US ally.
Regarding Argentina, former president, Cristina Kirchner, had also made some important moves towards the stronger cooperation
with Russia, which was something unacceptable for Washington's hawks. Not only for geopolitical reasons, but also because Argentina
could escape from the vulture funds that sucking its blood since its default. This would give the country an alternative to the neoliberal
monopoly of destruction. The US big banks and corporations would never accept such a perspective because the debt-enslaved Argentina
is a golden opportunity for a new round of huge profits. It's
happening right
now in eurozone's debt colony, Greece.
'Color Revolutions' - Ukraine
The events in Ukraine have shown that, the big capital has no hesitation to ally even with the neo-nazis, in order to impose the
new world order. This is not something new of course. The connection of Hitler with the German economic oligarchs, but also with
other major Western companies, before and during the WWII, is well known.
The most terrifying of all however, is not that the West has silenced in front of the decrees of the new Ukrainian leadership,
through which is targeting the minorities, but the fact that the West allied with the neo-nazis, while according to some information
has also funded their actions as well as other extreme nationalist groups during the riots in Kiev.
Plenty of indications show that US organizations have 'put their finger' on Ukraine. A
video , for
example, concerning the situation in Ukraine has been directed by Ben Moses (creator of the movie "Good Morning, Vietnam"), who is
connected with American government executives and organizations like National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the US Congress.
This video shows a beautiful young female Ukrainian who characterizes the government of the country as "dictatorship" and praise
some protesters with the neo-nazi symbols of the fascist Ukranian party Svoboda on them.
The same organizations are behind 'color revolutions' elsewhere, as well as, provocative operations against Leftist governments
in Venezuela and other countries.
Ukraine is the perfect place to provoke Putin and tight the noose around Russia. Of course the huge hypocrisy of the West can
also be identified in the case of Crimea. While in other cases, the Western officials were 'screaming' for the right of self-determination
(like Kosovo, for example), after they destroyed Yugoslavia in a bloodbath, they can't recognize the will of the majority of Crimeans
to join Russia.
The war will become wilder
The Western neo-colonial powers are trying to counterattack against the geopolitical upgrade of Russia and the Chinese economic
expansionism.
Despite the rise of Donald Trump in power, the neoliberal forces will push further for the expansion of the neoliberal doctrine
in the rival field of the Sino-Russian alliance. Besides, Trump has already shown his hostile feelings against China, despite
his friendly approach to Russia and Putin.
We see, however, that the Western alliances are entering a period of severe crisis. The US has failed to control the situation
in Middle East and Libya. The ruthless neo-colonialists will not hesitate to confront Russia and China directly, if they see that
they continue to lose control in the global geopolitical arena. The accumulation of military presence of NATO next to the Russian
borders, as well as, the accumulation of military presence of the US in Asia-Pacific, show that this is an undeniable fact.
Jewish financists are no longer Jewish, much like a socialist who became minister is no
longer a socialist minister. Unregulated finance promotes a set of destructive behaviors which
has nothing to do with nationality or ethnicity.
Of course that Joyce is peddling his own obsessions, but I have to admit that Singer &
comp. are detestable. I know that what they're doing is not illegal, but it should be (in my
opinion), and those who are involved in such affairs are somehow odious. The same goes for Icahn,
Soros etc. Still Ethnic angle is evident, too: how come Singer works exclusively with his
co-ethnics in this multi-ethnic USA? Non-Jewish & most Jewish entrepreneurs don't behave that
way.
It was very gratifying to see Tucker Carlson's
recent attack on the activities of Paul Singer's vulture fund, Elliot Associates, a group I
first
profiled four years ago. In many respects, it is truly remarkable that vulture funds like
Singer's escaped major media attention prior to this, especially when one considers how
extraordinarily harmful and exploitative they are. Many countries are now in very significant
debt to groups like Elliot Associates and, as Tucker's segment very starkly illustrated, their
reach has now extended into the very heart of small-town America. Shining a spotlight on the
spread of this virus is definitely welcome. I strongly believe, however, that the problem
presented by these cabals of exploitative financiers will only be solved if their true nature
is fully discerned. Thus far, the descriptive terminology employed in discussing their
activities has revolved only around the scavenging and parasitic nature of their activities.
Elliot Associates have therefore been described as a quintessential example of a "vulture fund"
practicing "vulture capitalism." But these funds aren't run by carrion birds. They are operated
almost exclusively by Jews. In the following essay, I want us to examine the largest and most
influential "vulture funds," to assess their leadership, ethos, financial practices, and how
they disseminate their dubiously acquired wealth. I want us to set aside colorful metaphors. I
want us to strike through the mask.
It is commonly agreed that the most significant global vulture funds are Elliot Management,
Cerberus, FG Hemisphere, Autonomy Capital, Baupost Group, Canyon Capital Advisors, Monarch
Alternative Capital, GoldenTree Asset Management, Aurelius Capital Management, OakTree Capital,
Fundamental Advisors, and Tilden Park Investment Master Fund LP. The names of these groups are
very interesting, being either blankly nondescript or evoking vague inklings of Anglo-Saxon or
rural/pastoral origins (note the prevalence of oak, trees, parks, canyons, monarchs, or the use
of names like Aurelius and Elliot). This is the same tactic employed by the Jew Jordan Belfort,
the "Wolf of Wall Street," who operated multiple major frauds under the business name Stratton
Oakmont.
These names are masks. They are designed to cultivate trust and obscure the real background
of the various groupings of financiers. None of these groups have Anglo-Saxon or venerable
origins. None are based in rural idylls. All of the vulture funds named above were founded by,
and continue to be operated by, ethnocentric, globalist, urban-dwelling Jews. A quick review of
each of their websites reveals their founders and central figures to be:
Elliot Management
-- Paul Singer, Zion Shohet, Jesse Cohn, Stephen Taub, Elliot Greenberg and Richard Zabel
Cerberus -- Stephen Feinberg, Lee Millstein, Jeffrey Lomasky, Seth Plattus, Joshua Weintraub,
Daniel Wolf, David Teitelbaum FG Hemisphere -- Peter Grossman Autonomy Capital -- Derek Goodman
Baupost Group -- Seth Klarman, Jordan Baruch, Isaac Auerbach Canyon Capital Advisors -- Joshua
Friedman, Mitchell Julis Monarch Alternative Capital -- Andrew Herenstein, Michael Weinstock
GoldenTree Asset Management -- Steven Tananbaum, Steven Shapiro Aurelius Capital Management --
Mark Brodsky, Samuel Rubin, Eleazer Klein, Jason Kaplan OakTree Capital -- Howard Marks, Bruce
Karsh, Jay Wintrob, John Frank, Sheldon Stone Fundamental Advisors -- Laurence Gottlieb,
Jonathan Stern Tilden Park Investment Master Fund LP -- Josh Birnbaum, Sam Alcoff
The fact that all of these vulture funds, widely acknowledged as the most influential and
predatory, are owned and operated by Jews is remarkable in itself, especially in a contemporary
context in which we are constantly bombarded with the suggestion that Jews don't have a special
relationship with money or usury, and that any such idea is an example of ignorant prejudice.
Equally remarkable, however, is the fact that Jewish representation saturates the board level
of these companies also, suggesting that their beginnings and methods of internal promotion and
operation rely heavily on ethnic-communal origins, and religious and social cohesion more
generally. As such, these Jewish funds provide an excellent opportunity to examine their
financial and political activities as expressions of Jewishness, and can thus be placed in the
broader framework of the Jewish group evolutionary strategy and the long historical trajectory
of Jewish-European relations.
How They Feed
In May 2018, Puerto Rico declared a form of municipal bankruptcy after falling into more
than
$74.8 billion in debt, of which more than $34 billion is interest and fees. The debt was
owed to
all of the Jewish capitalists named above, with the exception of Stephen Feinberg's
Cerberus group. In order to commence payments, the government had instituted a policy of fiscal
austerity, closing schools and raising utility bills, but when Hurricane Maria hit the island
in September 2017, Puerto Rico was forced to stop transfers to their Jewish creditors. This
provoked an aggressive attempt by the Jewish funds to seize assets from an island suffering
from an 80% power outage, with the addition of further interest and fees. Protests broke out in
several US cities calling for the debt to be forgiven. After a quick stop in Puerto Rico in
late 2018, Donald Trump pandered to this sentiment when he told Fox News, "They owe a lot of
money to your friends on Wall Street, and we're going to have to wipe that out." But Trump's
statement, like all of Trump's statements, had no substance. The following day, the director of
the White House budget office, Mick Mulvaney, told reporters: "I think what you heard the
president say is that Puerto Rico is going to have to figure out a way to solve its debt
problem." In other words, Puerto Rico is going to have to figure out a way to pay its Jews.
Trump's reversal is hardly surprising, given that the President is considered extremely
friendly to Jewish financial power. When he referred to "your friends on Wall Street" he really
meant his friends on Wall Street. One of his closest allies is Stephen Feinberg, founder
and CEO of Cerberus, a war-profiteering vulture fund that has now accumulated
more than $1.5 billion in Irish debt , leaving the country prone to a "
wave of home repossessions " on a scale not seen since the Jewish mortgage traders behind
Quicken Loans (Daniel Gilbert) and Ameriquest (Roland Arnall)
made thousands of Americans homeless . Feinberg has also been associated with mass
evictions in Spain, causing a collective of Barcelona anarchists to
label him a "Jewish mega parasite" in charge of the "world's vilest vulture fund." In May
2018, Trump made Feinberg
chair of his Intelligence Advisory Board , and one of the reasons for Trump's sluggish
retreat from Afghanistan has been the fact Feinberg's DynCorp has enjoyed years of lucrative government
defense contracts training Afghan police and providing ancillary services to the military.
But Trump's association with Jewish vultures goes far beyond Feinberg. A recent piece
in the New York Post declared "Orthodox Jews are opening up their wallets for Trump in
2020." This is a predictable outcome of the period 2016 to 2020, an era that could be neatly
characterised as How Jews learned to stop worrying and love the Don. Jewish financiers
are opening their wallets for Trump because it is now clear he utterly failed to fulfil
promises on mass immigration to White America, while pledging his commitment to Zionism and to
socially destructive Jewish side projects like the promotion of homosexuality. These actions,
coupled with his commuting
of Hasidic meatpacking boss Sholom Rubashkin 's 27-year-sentence for bank fraud and money
laundering in 2017, have sent a message to Jewish finance that Trump is someone they can do
business with. Since these globalist exploiters are essentially politically amorphous, knowing
no loyalty but that to their own tribe and its interests, there is significant drift of Jewish
mega-money between the Democratic and Republican parties. The New York Post reports, for
example, that when Trump attended a $25,000-per-couple luncheon in November at a Midtown hotel,
where 400 moneyed Jews raised at least $4 million for the America First [!] SuperPAC, the
luncheon organiser Kelly Sadler, told reporters, "We screened all of the people in attendance,
and we were surprised to see how many have given before to Democrats, but never a Republican.
People were standing up on their chairs chanting eight more years." The reality, of course, is
that these people are not Democrats or Republicans, but Jews, willing to push their money in
whatever direction the wind of Jewish interests is blowing.
The collapse of Puerto Rico under Jewish debt and elite courting of Jewish financial
predators is certainly nothing new. Congo , Zambia , Liberia ,
Argentina , Peru ,
Panama , Ecuador ,
Vietnam , Poland , and
Ireland are just some of the countries that have slipped fatefully into the hands of the
Jews listed above, and these same people are now closely watching
Greece and
India . The methodology used to acquire such leverage is as simple as it is ruthless. On
its most basic level, "vulture capitalism" is really just a combination of the
continued intense relationship between Jews and usury and Jewish involvement in medieval
tax farming. On the older practice, Salo Baron writes in Economic History of the Jews
that Jewish speculators would pay a lump sum to the treasury before mercilessly turning on the
peasantry to obtain "considerable surpluses if need be, by ruthless methods." [1] S. Baron
(ed) Economic History of the Jews (New York, 1976), 46-7. The activities of the
Jewish vulture funds are essentially the same speculation in debt, except here the trade in
usury is carried out on a global scale with the feudal peasants of old now replaced with entire
nations. Wealthy Jews pool resources, purchase debts, add astronomical fees and interests, and
when the inevitable default occurs they engage in aggressive legal activity to seize assets,
bringing waves of jobs losses and home repossessions.
This type of predation is so pernicious and morally perverse that both the
Belgian and
UK governments have taken steps to ban these Jewish firms from using their court systems to
sue for distressed debt owed by poor nations. Tucker Carlson, commenting on Paul Singer's
predation and the ruin of the town of Sidney, Nebraska, has said:
It couldn't be uglier or more destructive. So why is it still allowed in the United
States? The short answer: Because people like Paul Singer have tremendous influence over our
political process. Singer himself was the second largest donor to the Republican Party in
2016. He's given millions to a super-PAC that supports Republican senators. You may never
have heard of Paul Singer -- which tells you a lot in itself -- but in Washington, he's
rock-star famous. And that is why he is almost certainly paying a lower effective tax rate
than your average fireman, just in case you were still wondering if our system is rigged. Oh
yeah, it is.
Aside from direct political donations, these Jewish financiers also escape scrutiny by
hiding behind a mask of simplistic anti-socialist rhetoric that is common in the American
Right, especially the older, Christian, and pro-Zionist demographic. Rod Dreher, in a
commentary on Carlson's
piece at the American Conservative , points out that Singer gave a speech in May
2019 attacking the "rising threat of socialism within the Democratic Party." Singer continued,
"They call it socialism, but it is more accurately described as left-wing statism lubricated by
showers of free stuff promised by politicians who believe that money comes from a printing
press rather than the productive efforts of businesspeople and workers." Dreher comments: "The
productive efforts of businesspeople and workers"? The gall of that man, after what he did to
the people of Sidney."
What Singer and the other Jewish vultures engage in is not productive, and isn't even any
recognisable form of work or business. It is greed-motivated parasitism carried out on a
perversely extravagant and highly nepotistic scale. In truth, it is Singer and his co-ethnics
who believe that money can be printed on the backs of productive workers, and who ultimately
believe they have a right to be "showered by free stuff promised by politicians." Singer places
himself in an infantile paradigm meant to entertain the goyim, that of Free Enterprise vs
Socialism, but, as Carlson points out, "this is not the free enterprise that we all learned
about." That's because it's Jewish enterprise -- exploitative, inorganic, and attached to
socio-political goals that have nothing to do with individual freedom and private property.
This might not be the free enterprise Carlson learned about, but it's clearly the free
enterprise Jews learn about -- as illustrated in their extraordinary
over-representation in all forms of financial exploitation and white collar crime. The
Talmud, whether actively studied or culturally absorbed, is their code of ethics and their
curriculum in regards to fraud, fraudulent bankruptcy, embezzlement, usury, and financial
exploitation. Vulture capitalism is Jewish capitalism.
Whom They Feed
Singer's duplicity is a perfect example of the way in which Jewish finance postures as
conservative while conserving nothing. Indeed, Jewish capitalism may be regarded as the root
cause of the rise of Conservative Inc., a form or shadow of right wing politics reduced solely
to fiscal concerns that are ultimately, in themselves, harmful to the interests of the majority
of those who stupidly support them. The spirit of Jewish capitalism, ultimately, can be
discerned not in insincere bleating about socialism and business, intended merely to entertain
semi-educated Zio-patriots, but in the manner in which the Jewish vulture funds disseminate the
proceeds of their parasitism. Real vultures are weak, so will gorge at a carcass and
regurgitate food to feed their young. So then, who sits in the nests of the vulture funds,
awaiting the regurgitated remains of troubled nations?
Boston-based Seth Klarman (net worth $1.5 billion), who like Paul Singer has
declared "free enterprise has been good for me," is a rapacious debt exploiter who was
integral to the financial collapse of Puerto Rico, where he hid much of activities behind a
series of shell companies. Investigative journalists eventually discovered that Klarman's
Baupost group was behind much of the aggressive legal action intended to squeeze the decimated
island for bond payments. It's clear that the Jews involved in these companies are very much
aware that what they are doing is wrong, and they are careful to avoid too much reputational
damage, whether to themselves individually or to their ethnic group. Puerto Rican journalists,
investigating the debt trail to Klarman, recall trying to follow one of the shell companies
(Decagon) to Baupost via a shell company lawyer (and yet another Jew) named Jeffrey Katz:
Returning to the Ropes & Gray thread, we identified several attorneys who had worked
with the Baupost Group, and one, Jeffrey Katz, who -- in addition to having worked directly
with Baupost -- seemed to describe a particularly close and longstanding relationship with a
firm fitting Baupost's profile on his experience page. I called
Katz and he picked up, to my surprise. I identified myself, as well as my affiliation with
the Public Accountability Initiative, and asked if he was the right person to talk to about
Decagon Holdings and Baupost. He paused, started to respond, and then evidently thought
better of it and said that he was actually in a meeting, and that I would need to call back
(apparently, this high-powered lawyer picks up calls from strange numbers when he is in
important meetings). As he was telling me to call back, I asked him again if he was the right
person to talk to about Decagon, and that I wouldn't call back if he wasn't, and he seemed to
get even more flustered. At that point he started talking too much, about how he was a lawyer
and has clients, how I must think I'm onto some kind of big scoop, and how there was a person
standing right in front of him -- literally, standing right in front of him -- while I rudely
insisted on keeping him on the line.
One of the reasons for such secrecy is the intensive Jewish philanthropy engaged in by
Klarman under his Klarman Family
Foundation . While Puerto Rican schools are being closed, and pensions and health
provisions slashed, Klarman is regurgitating the proceeds of massive debt speculation to his "
areas of
focus " which prominently includes " Supporting the global Jewish community
and Israel ." While plundering the treasuries of the crippled nations of the goyim, Klarman
and his co-ethnic associates have committed themselves to "improving the quality of life and
access to opportunities for all Israeli citizens so that they may benefit from the country's
prosperity." Among those in Klarman's nest, their beaks agape for Puerto Rican debt interest,
are the American Jewish Committee, Boston's Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Holocaust
Memorial Museum, the Honeymoon Israel Foundation, Israel-America Academic Exchange, and the
Israel Project. Klarman, like Singer, has also been an enthusiastic proponent of liberalising
attitudes to homosexuality, donating $1 million to a Republican super PAC aimed at supporting
pro-gay marriage GOP candidates in 2014 (Singer donated $1.75 million). Klarman, who also
contributes to candidates
who support immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants,
has said "The right to gay marriage is the largest remaining civil rights issue of our time. I
work one-on-one with individual Republicans to try to get them to realize they are being
Neanderthals on this issue."
Steven Tananbaum's GoldenTree Asset Management has also fed well on Puerto Rico, owning $2.5
billion of the island's debt. The Centre for Economic and Policy Research has
commented :
Steven Tananbaum, GoldenTree's chief investment officer, told a business conference in
September (after Hurricane Irma, but before Hurricane Maria) that he continued to view Puerto
Rican bonds as an attractive investment. GoldenTree is spearheading a group of COFINA
bondholders that collectively holds about $3.3 billion in bonds. But with Puerto Rico facing
an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and lacking enough funds to even begin to pay back its
massive debt load, these vulture funds are relying on their ability to convince politicians
and the courts to make them whole. The COFINA bondholder group has spent
$610,000 to lobby Congress over the last two years, while GoldenTree itself
made $64,000 in political contributions to federal candidates in the 2016 cycle. For
vulture funds like GoldenTree, the destruction of Puerto Rico is yet another opportunity for
exorbitant profits.
Whom does Tananbaum feed with these profits? A brief glance at the spending of the
Lisa and Steven Tananbaum Charitable Trust reveals a relatively short list of beneficiaries
including United Jewish Appeal Foundation, American Friends of Israel Museum, Jewish Community
Center, to be among the most generously funded, with sizeable donations also going to museums
specialising in the display of degenerate and demoralising art.
Following the collapse in Irish asset values in 2008, Jewish vulture funds including OakTree
Capital swooped on mortgagee debt to seize tens of thousands of Irish homes, shopping malls,
and utilities (Steve Feinberg's Cerberus took control of public waste disposal). In 2011,
Ireland emerged as a hotspot for distressed property assets, after its bad banks began selling
loans that had once been held by struggling financial institutions. These loans were quickly
purchased at knockdown prices by Jewish fund managers, who then aggressively sought the
eviction of residents in order to sell them for a fast profit. Michael Byrne, a researcher at
the School of Social Policy at University College Dublin, Ireland's largest university,
comments : "The
aggressive strategies used by vulture funds lead to human tragedies." One homeowner, Anna Flynn
recalls how her mortgage fell into the hands of Mars Capital, an affiliate of Oaktree Capital,
owned and operated by the Los Angeles-based Jews Howard Marks and Bruce Karsh. They were "very,
very difficult to deal with," said Flynn, a mother of four. "All [Mars] wanted was for me to
leave the house; they didn't want a solution [to ensure I could retain my home]."
When Bruce Karsh isn't making Irish people homeless, whom does he feed with his profits? A
brief glance at the spending of the
Karsh Family Foundation reveals millions of dollars of donations to the Jewish Federation,
Jewish Community Center, and the United Jewish Fund.
Paul Singer, his son Gordin, and their Elliot Associates colleagues Zion Shohet, Jesse Cohn,
Stephen Taub, Elliot Greenberg and Richard Zabel, have a foothold in almost every country, and
have a stake in every company you're likely to be familiar with, from book stores to dollar
stores. With the profits of exploitation, they
fund campaigns for homosexuality and mass migration , boost Zionist politics,
invest millions in security for Jews , and promote wars for Israel. Singer is a Republican,
and is on the Board of the Republican Jewish Coalition. He is a former board member of the
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, has funded neoconservative research groups like
the Middle East Media Research Institute and the Center for Security Policy, and is among the
largest funders of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He was also
connected to the pro-Iraq War advocacy group Freedom's Watch. Another key Singer project was
the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group that was founded in
2009 by several high-profile Jewish neoconservative figures to promote militaristic U.S.
policies in the Middle East on behalf of Israel and which received its seed money from
Singer.
Although Singer was initially anti-Trump, and although Trump once
attacked Singer for his pro-immigration politics ("Paul Singer represents amnesty and he
represents illegal immigration pouring into the country"), Trump is now essentially funded by
three Jews -- Singer, Bernard Marcus, and Sheldon Adelson, together accounting for over $250
million in pro-Trump political money . In return, they want war with Iran. Employees of
Elliott Management were one of the main sources of funding for the 2014 candidacy of the
Senate's most outspoken Iran hawk, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who urged Trump to conduct a
"retaliatory strike" against Iran for purportedly attacking two commercial tankers. These
exploitative Jewish financiers have been clear that they expect a war with Iran, and they are
lobbying hard and preparing to call in their pound of flesh. As one political commentator put
it, "These donors have made their policy preferences on Iran plainly known. They surely expect
a return on their investment in Trump's GOP."
The same pattern is witnessed again and again, illustrating the stark reality that the
prosperity and influence of Zionist globalism rests to an overwhelming degree on the predations
of the most successful and ruthless Jewish financial parasites. This is not conjecture,
exaggeration, or hyperbole. This is simply a matter of striking through the mask, looking at
the heads of the world's most predatory financial funds, and following the direction of
regurgitated profits.
Make no mistake, these cabals are everywhere and growing. They could be ignored when they
preyed on distant small nations, but their intention was always to come for you too. They are
now on your doorstep. The working people of Sidney, Nebraska probably had no idea what a
vulture fund was until their factories closed and their homes were taken. These funds will move
onto the next town. And the next. And another after that. They won't be stopped through blunt
support of "free enterprise," and they won't be stopped by simply calling them "vulture
capitalists."
Strike through the mask!
Notes
[1] S.
Baron (ed) Economic History of the Jews (New York, 1976), 46-7.
To what extent is Jewish success a product of Jewish intellect and industry versus being a
result of a willingness to use low, dirty, honorless and anti-social tactics which, while
maybe not in violation of the word of the law, certainly violate its spirit?
An application of "chutzpah" to business, if you will -- the gall to break social
conventions to get what you want, while making other people feel uncomfortable; to wheedle
your way in at the joints of social norms and conventions -- not illegal, but selfish and
rude.
Krav Maga applies the same concept to the martial arts: You're taught to go after the
things that every other martial art forbids you to target: the eyes, the testicles, etc. In
other sports this is considered "low" and "cheap." In Krav Maga, as perhaps a metaphor for
Jewish behavior in general, nothing is too low because it's all about winning .
There's a rather good article on the New Yorker discussing the Sacklers and the
Oxycontin epidemic. It focusses on the dichotomy between the family's ruthless promotion of
the drug and their lavish philanthropy. 'Leave the world a better place for your presence'
and similar pieties and Oxycontin.
The article lightly touches on the extent of their giving to Hebrew University of
Jerusalem -- but in general, treads lightly when it comes to their Judaism.
understandably. The New Yorker isn't exactly alt-right country, after all. But can
Joyce or anyone else provide a more exact breakdown on the Sacklers' giving? Are they genuine
philanthropists, or is it mostly for the Cause?
@anon'To what extent is Jewish success a product of Jewish intellect and industry versus being
a result of a willingness to use low, dirty, honorless and anti-social tactics which, while
maybe not in violation of the word of the law, certainly violate its spirit? '
It's important not to get carried away with this. Figures such as Andrew Carnegie, while
impeccably gentile, were hardly paragons of scrupulous ethics and disinterested virtue.
I won't defend high finance because I don't like it either. But this is a retarded and highly
uninformed attack on it.
1. The article bounces back and forth between two completely different fields: private
equity and distressed debt funds. The latter is completely defensible. A lot of bondholders,
probably the majority, cannot hold distressed or defaulted debt. Insurance companies often
can't by law. Bond mutual funds set out in their prospectuses they don't invest in anything
rated lower than A, AA, or whatever. Even those allowed to hold distressed debt don't want
the extra costs involved with doing so, such as carefully following bankruptcy proceedings
and dealing with delayed and irregular payments.
As a result, it is natural that normal investors sell off such debt at a discount to funds
that specialize in it.
2. Joyce defends large borrowers that default on their debt. Maybe the laws protecting
bankrupts and insolvents should be stronger. But you do that, and lenders become more
conservative, investment declines, and worthy businesses can't get investments. I think
myself the laws in the US are too favorable to lenders, but there's definitely a tradeoff,
and the question is where the happy middle ground is. In Florida a creditor can't force the
sale of a primary residence, even if it is worth $20 million. That's going too far in the
other direction.
3. " either blankly nondescript or evoking vague inklings of Anglo-Saxon or rural/pastoral
origins "
More retardation. Cerberus is a greek dog monster guarding the gates of hell. Aurelius is
from the Latin word for gold. "Hemisphere" isn't an Anglosaxon word nor does in invoke rural
origins.
Besides being retardedly wrong, the broader point is likewise retarded: when
English-speaking Jews name their businesses they shouldn't use English words. Naming a
company "Oaktree" should be limited to those of purely English blood! Jews must name their
companies "Cosmopolitan Capital" or RosenMoses Chutzpah Advisors."
4. The final and most general point: it's trivially easy to attack particular excesses of
capitalism. Fixing the excesses without creating bigger problem is the hard part. Two ideas I
favor are usury laws and Tobin taxes.
Jewishness aside, maximizing shareholder is the holy grail of all capitalist enterprises. The
capitalist rush to abandon the American working class when tariff barriers evaporated is just
another case of vulturism. Tax corporations based on the domestic content of their products
and ban usury and vulturism will evaporate.
Someone with the username kikz posted a link to this article in the occidental observer. I
read it and thought it was a great article. I'm glad it's featured here.
The article goes straight for the jugular and pulls no punches. It hits hard. I like
that:
1. It shines a light on the some of the scummiest of the scummiest Wall Street
players.
2. It names names. From the actual vulture funds to the rollcall of Jewish actors running
each. It's astounding how ethnically uniform it is.
3. It proves Trump's ties with the most successful Vulture kingpin, Singer.
4. It shows how money flows from the fund owners to Zionist and Jewish causes.
This thing reads like a court indictment. It puts real world examples to many of the
theories that are represents on this site. Excellent article.
Elliott Management is perhaps most notorious for its 15-year battle with the government
of Argentina, whose bonds were owned by the hedge fund. When Argentine president Cristina
Kirchner attempted to restructure the debt, Elliott -- unlike most of the bonds' owners --
refused to accept a large loss on its investment. It successfully sued in US courts, and in
pursuit of Argentine assets, convinced a court in Ghana to detain an Argentine naval
training vessel, then docked outside Accra with a crew of 22o. After a change of its
government, Argentina eventually settled and Singer's fund received $2.4 billion, almost
four times its initial investment. Kirchner, meanwhile, has been indicted for
corruption.
@Lot
You give partial information which seem misleading and use arguments which are also weak and
not enlightening.
1- Even if its natural that unsafe bonds are sold, this doesn't justify the practices and
methods of those vulture fonds which buy those fonds which are socially damaging. I'm not
certain of the details because it's an old case and people should seek more information. Very
broadly, in the case of Argentina most funds accepted to make an agreement with the country
and reduce their demands. Investors have to accept risks and losses. Paul Singer bought some
financial papers for nothing at that time and forced Argentina to pay the whole price. For
years Argentina refused to pay, but with the help of New York courts and the new Argentinian
president they were forced to pay Singer. This was not conservative capitalism but
imperialism. You can only act like Singer if you have the backing of courts, of a government
which you control and of an army like the US army. A fast internet search for titles of
articles: "Hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer's ruthless strategies include bullying CEOs,
suing governments and seizing their navy's ships". "How one hedge fund made $2 billion from
Argentina's economic colapse".
Andrew Sayer, professor in an English university, says in his book "Why we can't afford
the rich" that finances as they are practiced now may cost more than bring any value to a
society. It's a problem if some sectors of finances make outsized profits and use methods
which are more than questionable.
2- You say that if borrowers become more protected "lenders become more conservative,
investment declines, and worthy businesses can't get investments." I doubt this is true. In
the first place, risk investments by vulture fonds probably don't create any social value.
The original lenders who sold their bonds to such vulture fonds have anyway big or near total
losses in some cases and in spite of that they keep doing business. Why should we support
vulture fonds, what for? What positive function they play in society? In Germany, capitalism
was much more social in old days before a neoliberal wave forced Germany to change Rhine
capitalism. Local banks lended money to local business which they knew and which they had an
interest that they prosper. Larger banks lended money to big firms. Speculation like in
neoliberal capitalism wasn't needed.
3- The point which you didn't grasp is that there is a component of those business which
isn't publicly clear, the fact that they funcion along ethnic lines.
4- It would be easy to fix excesses of capitalism. The problem is that the people who
profit the most from the system also have the power to prevent any change.
@Robjil
This is an example of what I was saying. Less Euro whites in the world is not going to be a
good world for Big Js. Non-Euros believe in freedom of speech.
Jewish Bigwigs can't get control of businesses in East Asia. They have been trying. Paul
Singer tried and failed. In Argentina he got lots of "success". Why? Lots of descendants of
Europeans there went along with "decisions" laid out by New York Jews.
Little Paulie tried to get control of Samsung. No such luck for him in Korea. In Korea
there are many family monopolies, chaebols. A Korean chaebol stopped him. Jewish Daniel Loeb
tried to get a board seat on Sony. He was rebuffed.
I was moved to reflect on the universality of this theme recently when surveying media
coverage on Korean and Argentinian responses to the activities of Paul Singer and his
co-ethnic shareholders at Elliott Associates, an arm of Singer's Elliott Management hedge
fund. The Korean story has its origins in the efforts of Samsung's holding company, Cheil
Industries, to buy Samsung C&T, the engineering and construction arm of the wider
Samsung family of businesses. The move can be seen as part of an effort to reinforce
control of the conglomerate by the founding Lee family and its heir apparent, Lee Jae-yong.
Trouble emerged when Singer's company, which holds a 7.12% stake in Samsung C&T and is
itself attempting to expand its influence and control over Far East tech companies,
objected to the move. The story is fairly typical of Jewish difficulties in penetrating
business cultures in the Far East, where impenetrable family monopolies, known in Korea as
chaebols, are common. This new story reminded me very strongly of last year's efforts by
Jewish financier Daniel Loeb to obtain a board seat at Sony. Loeb was repeatedly rebuffed
by COO Kazuo Hirai, eventually selling his stake in Sony Corp. in frustration.
Here is how the Koreans fought off Paul Singer.
The predominantly Jewish-owned and operated Elliott Associates has a wealth of
self-interest in preventing the Lee family from consolidating its control over the Samsung
conglomerate. As racial outsiders, however, Singer's firm were forced into several tactical
measures in their 52-day attempt to thwart the merger. First came lawsuits. When those
failed, Singer and his associates then postured themselves as defending Korean interests,
starting a Korean-language website and arguing that their position was really just in aid
of helping domestic Korean shareholders. This variation on the familiar theme of Jewish
crypsis was quite unsuccessful. The Lee family went on the offensive immediately and,
unlike many Westerners, were not shy in drawing attention to the Jewish nature of Singer's
interference and the sordid and intensely parasitic nature of his fund's other
ventures.
Cartoons were drawn of Singer being a vulture.
Other cartoons appearing at the same time represented Elliott, literally, as humanoid
vultures, with captions referring to the well-known history of the fund. In the above
cartoon, the vulture offers assistance to a needy and destitute figure, but conceals an axe
with which to later bludgeon the unsuspecting pauper.
ADL got all worked about this. The Koreans did not care. It is reality. Freedom of speech
works on these vultures. The west should try some real freedom of speech.
After the cartoons appeared, Singer and other influential Jews, including Abraham
Foxman, cried anti-Semitism. This was despite the fact the cartoons contain no reference
whatsoever to Judaism – unless of course one defines savage economic predation as a
Jewish trait. Samsung denied the cartoons were anti-Semitic and took them off the website,
but the uproar over the cartoons only seemed to spur on even more discussion about Jewish
influence in South Korea than was previously the case. In a piece published a fortnight
ago, Media Pen columnist Kim Ji-ho claimed "Jewish money has long been known to be ruthless
and merciless." Last week, the former South Korean ambassador to Morocco, Park Jae-seon,
expressed his concern about the influence of Jews in finance when he said, "The scary thing
about Jews is they are grabbing the currency markets and financial investment companies.
Their network is tight-knit beyond one's imagination." The next day, cable news channel YTN
aired similar comments by local journalist Park Seong-ho, who stated on air that "it is a
fact that Jews use financial networks and have influence wherever they are born." It goes
without saying that comments like these are unambiguously similar to complaints about
Jewish economic practices in Europe over the course of centuries. The only common
denominator between the context of fourteenth-century France and the context of
twenty-first-century South Korea is, you guessed it, Jewish economic practices.
The Koreans won. Paulie lost. Good win for humanity. The Argentines were not so lucky.
They don't have freedom speech like the Koreans and East Asians have.
In the end, the Lee strategy, based on drawing attention to the alien and exploitative
nature of Elliott Associates, was overwhelmingly effective. Before a crucial shareholder
vote on the Lee's planned merger, Samsung Securities CEO Yoon Yong-am said: "We should
score a victory by a big margin in the first battle, in order to take the upper hand in a
looming war against Elliott, and keep other speculative hedge funds from taking short-term
gains in the domestic market." When the vote finally took place a few days ago, a
conclusive 69.5% of Samsung shareholders voted in favor of the Lee proposal, leaving
Elliott licking its wounds and complaining about the "patriotic marketing" of those behind
the merger.
What our Jewish friends have done to Argentina, through maneuvering the elections, killing
dissidents, and marking territory, is a cautionary tale to anybody woke enough to see with
their own eyes.
Zion had the opportunity to go to Uganda and Ugandans were willing, but NO Zion had to
have Palestine, and they got it through war, deception, and murder. It was funded by usury,
as stolen purchasing power from the Goyim.
The fake country of Israel, is not the biblical Israel, and it came into being by
maneuverings of satanic men determined to get their way no matter what, and is supported by
continuous deception. Even today's Hebrew is resurrected from a dead language, and is fake.
Many fake Jews (who have no blood lineage to Abraham), a fake country, and fake language.
These fakers, usurers, and thieves do indeed have their eyes set on Patagonia, what they call
the practical country.
@Anon
"If debts can simply be repudiated at will, capitalism cannot function."
Is this children's capitalist theory class time? throwing around some simple slogans for a
susceptible congregation of future believers?
Should be quite obvious that people, groups of people, if not whole nations , can be
forced and or seduced into depths by means of certain practices. There are a thousand ways of
such trickery and thievery, these are not in the theory books though. In these books things
all match and work out wonderfully rationally
Then capitalism cannot function? Unfortunately it has become already dysfunctional, if not
a big rotten cancer.
Lobelog ran some articles in Singer, Argentina, Iran Israel and the attorney from Argentina
who died mysteriously . Singer is a loan shark. Argentinian paid dearly .
Google search –
NYT's Argentina Op-Ed Fails to Disclose Authors – LobeLog
https://lobelog.com/tag/paul-singer/
Paul Singer NYT's Argentina Op-Ed Fails to Disclose Authors' Financial Conflict of Interest
by Eli Clifton On Tuesday, Mark Dubowitz and Toby Dershowitz, two executives at the hawkish
Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), took
The Right-Wing Americans Who Made a Doc About Argentina
https://lobelog.com/the-right-wing-americans-who-made-a-doc-about-argentina/
Oct 7, 2015 One might wonder why a movie about Argentina, in Spanish and . of Nisman's and
thought highly of the prosecutor's work, told LobeLog, FDD, for its part, has been an
outspoken critic of Kirchner but has From 2008 to 2011, Paul Singer was the group's
second-largest donor, contributing $3.6 million.
NYT Failed to Note Op-Ed Authors' Funder Has $2 Billion
What our Jewish friends have done to Argentina, through maneuvering the elections,
killing dissidents, and marking territory, is a cautionary tale to anybody woke enough to
see with their own eyes.
Impeachment is the Democrat version of the battle of Stalingrad. The Dem's are the
Germans, walking into a trap, refusing to withdraw and regroup as their fanatic Fuhrer, Frau
Nancy, claims Victory, only to be annihilated by her hubris.
"If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is
winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible."
US senator Harry S. Truman 1941
let me fify
"If we see that the Republicans are winning the war, we ought to help the Democrats; and
if that the Democrats are winning, we ought to help the Republicans, and in that way let them
kill as many as possible."
"... "Drain the swamp" is useful shorthand, too, that means Trump is shutting off the flow of billions of dollars in corrupt money to corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, and threatening to properly prosecute them for their crimes. The impeachment is really another crime waiting to be prosecuted, where the legislative branch has been hijacked to commit obstruction of justice on behalf of themselves. ..."
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native
American criminal class except Congress.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
"Trump definitely understands that the primary reason why they are trying to impeach
him is because they deeply hate him..."
"Hate" may be a useful shorthand here, but it really has nothing to do with what's going
on.
"Drain the swamp" is useful shorthand, too, that means Trump is shutting off the flow of
billions of dollars in corrupt money to corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, and threatening
to properly prosecute them for their crimes. The impeachment is really another crime waiting
to be prosecuted, where the legislative branch has been hijacked to commit obstruction of
justice on behalf of themselves.
The Washington Post , through
documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, has published a long
investigation into Afghanistan. Journalists have collected over 400 testimonies from American
diplomats, NATO generals and other NATO personnel, that show that reports about Afghanistan
were falsified to deceive the public about the real situation on the ground .
After the tampering with and falsification of the report of the Organization for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW) , we are witnessing another event that will certainly discomfit those
who have hitherto relied on the official reports of the Pentagon, the US State Department and
international organizations like the OPCW for the last word.
There are very deliberate reasons for such disinformation campaigns. In the case of the
OPCW, as I
wrote some time back, the aim was to paint the Syrian government as the fiend and the
al-Qaeda- and Daesh-linked "moderate rebels" as the innocent souls, thereby likely justifying a
responsibility-to-protect armed intervention by the likes of the US, the UK and France. In such
circumstances, the standing and status of the reporting organization (like the OPCW) is
commandeered to validate Western propaganda that is duly disseminated through the
corporate-controlled mainstream media.
In this particular case, various Western capitals colluded with the OPCW to lay the
groundwork for the removal of Assad and his replacement with the al-Nusra Front as well as the
very same al-Qaeda- and Daesh-linked armed opposition officially responsible for the 9/11
attacks.
As if the massaging of the OPCW reports were not enough in themselves to provoke
international outrage, this dossier serves to give aid and comfort to jihadi groups supported by the Pentagon
who are known to be responsible for the worst human-rights abuses, as seen in Syria and Iraq in
the last 6 years.
False or carefully manipulated reports paint a picture vastly different from the reality on
the ground. The United States has never really declared war on Islamic terrorism, its
proclamations of a "War on Terror" notwithstanding. In reality, it has simply used this
justification to occupy or destabilize strategically important areas of the world in the
interests of maintaining US hegemony, intending in so doing to hobble the energy policies and
national security of rival countries like China, Iran and the Russian Federation.
The Post investigation lays bare how the US strategy had failed since its inception, the
data doctored to represent a reality very different from that on the ground. The inability of
the United States to clean up Afghanistan is blamed by the Post on incorrect military planning
and incorrect political choices. While this could certainly be the case, the Post's real
purpose in its investigation is to harm Trump, even as it reveals the Pentagon's efforts to
continue its regional presence for grand geopolitical goals by hiding inconvenient truths.
The real issue lies in the built-in mendacity of the bureaucratic and military apparatus of
the United States. No general has ever gone on TV to say that the US presence in Iraq is needed
to support any war against Iran; or that Afghanistan is a great point of entry for the
destabilization of Eurasia, because this very heart of the Heartland is crucial to the
Sino-Russian transcontinental integration projects like the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and
the Belt and Road Initiative. In the same vein, the overthrow of the Syrian government would
have ensured Israel a greater capacity to expand its interests in the Middle East, as well as
to weaken Iran's main regional ally.
The Post investigation lays bare the hypocrisy of the military-industrial complex as well as
the prevailing political establishments of Europe and the United States. These parties are not
interested in human rights, the wellbeing of civilians or justice in general. Their only goal
is to try and maintain their global hegemony indefinitely by preventing any other powers from
being able to realize their potential and thereby pose a threat to Atlanticist preeminence.
The war in Iraq was launched to destabilize the Middle East, China's energy-supply basin
crucial to fueling her future growth. The war in Syria served the purpose of further
dismantling the Middle East to favor Saudi Arabia and Israel, the West's main strategic allies
in the Persian Gulf. The war in Afghanistan was to slow down the Eurasian integration of China
and Russia. And the war in Ukraine was for the purposes of generating chaos and destruction on
Russia's border, with the initial hope of wresting the very strategically area of Crimea from
Russia.
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and this has been on full display in
recent times. Almost all of Washington's recent strategic objectives have ended up producing
results worse than the status quo ante. In Iraq there is the type of strong cooperation between
Baghdad and Tehran reminiscent of the time prior to 1979. Through Hezbollah, Iran has
strengthened its position in Syria in defense of Damascus. Moscow has found itself playing the
role of crucial decider in the Middle East (and soon in North Africa), until only a few years
ago the sole prerogative of Washington. Turkey's problems with NATO, coupled with Tel Aviv's
open relation with Moscow are both a prime example of Washington's diminishing influence in the
region and Moscow's corresponding increase in influence.
The situation in Afghanistan is not very different, with a general recognition that peace is
the only option for the region being reflected in the talks between the Afghans, the Taliban,
the Russians, Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis. Beijing and Moscow have well known for over a
decade the real intent behind Washington's presence in the country, endeavoring to blunt its
impact.
The Post investigation only further increases the public's war weariness, the war in
Afghanistan now having lasted 18 years, the longest war in US history. Jeff Bezos, the owner of
the Post , is a bitter opponent of Trump and wants the president to come clean on the
Afghanistan debacle by admitting that the troops cannot be withdrawn. Needless to say,
admitting such would not help Trump's strategy for the 2020 election. Trump cannot afford to
humiliate the US military, given that it, along with the US dollar, is his main weapon of
"diplomacy". Were it to be revealed that some illiterate peasants holed up in caves and armed
with AK-47s some 40 years ago are responsible for successfully keeping the most powerful army
in history at bay, all of Washington's propaganda, disseminated by a compliant media, will
cease to be of any effect. Such a revelation would also humiliate military personnel, an
otherwise dependable demographic Trump cannot afford to alienate.
The Washington Post performed a service to the country by shedding light on the
disinformation used to sustain endless war. But the Post's intentions are also political,
seeking to undermine Trump's electoral chances by damaging Trump's military credentials as well
as his standing amongst military personnel. What Washington's elite and the Post do not know,
or perhaps prefer to ignore, is that such media investigations directed against political
opponents actually end up doing irreparable damage to the political and military prestige of
the United States.
In other words, when journalist do their job, the military industrial complex finds it
difficult to lie its way through wars and failures , but when a country relies on Hollywood to
sustain its make-believe world, as well as on journalists on the CIA payroll, on compliant
publishers and on censored news, then any such revelations of forbidden truths threaten to
bring the whole facade crashing down. Tags Politics
USSR, Yugoslavia, US, EU, and the Indian Union are predicated on the ideas of the
Enlightenment Tradition. So far, USSR and FRY have disintegrated. If EU fails, could US and
EU be too far behind. In US, we have the political ascendancy of foolish Protestantism, in
India that of Hindu masses.
Can any states, predicated on secularism of the Enlightenment Tradition survive the rise
of religious politics?
Nunes's frank letter might have a surprising effect. He has declared open season on
Schiff. It's like the child in the Emperor's New Clothes. Once the cat is out of the bag like
this and "what must not be spoken" gets spoken, it could send shock waves.
There are Democrats on the edge of flipping. When they see the letter, it could have the
effect of crystallizing their decision to leave the Democrat party. They certainly don't want
to be associated with Schiff, the pariah to their own reelection chances.
We are writing today to let you know that we are fed up with all the insanity and
stupidity coming from the democrat party. We have been loyal democrats all our lives, and we
are appalled at the lunacy of the impeachment trial. It's all an out right waste of time that
the democrat Adam Schiff is showing the nation. We did not even watch it because he is an in
your face liar.
What you better understand and know is, many like ourselves are sick and tired of the
unacceptable behavior of the democrat party. We are sick and tired of paying our tax dollars
to pay you and the democrat party that has not done a darn thing for us, the American
People.
We are here to tell you that if you vote for impeachment, you are saying to all us voters
that you are just as stupid and insane to back up with your vote, the highly unfair partisan
impeachment process based on nothing or any real evidence. We do not want anyone that is that
ignorant as our representative.
Do you understand that the leadership in the democrat party has made us all look like
stupid insane idiots and we have seen enough? You must know that if you vote for this fake
impeachment process, WE WILL VOTE YOU OUT! We will vote for any other democrat, or if we have
too, the republican candidate that is running against you.
Please do the right thing not for the democrat party, but for the American people who
voted for you. Get back to the business of America and the American People! This is the
bottom line, if you vote for impeachment, you are out of there. Do not discount our stead
fast position on this issue.
Thank you in advance for your consideration of our request.
There's nothing like wild volatility to destroy the integrity of those high-end bankers and
analysts who are brave enough to make oil price predictions year in and year out.
But the forecasting nightmare doesn't stop them, even at the worst of times.
In the final month of last year, banks and analysts were brave enough to divulge their
predictions for 2019.
At that time, the second year of the OPEC
agreement was coming to a close; the U.S. had
re-imposed sanctions on Iran four months earlier with waiver extensions; and the average
price of a Brent barrel for December was changing hands at $56.50, compared to the month
earlier average of $65.20. WTI averaged $49 in December 2018. OPEC had
agreed to cut production again for 2019.
So who should we look for when it's time to forecast what oil prices will do in 2020? That
depends on their track record the last time around.
Here are some of the best and worst oil price predictions of 2019:
The World Bank
For 2019,
the World Bank was one of the first on the scene to provide its outlook in late 2018.
The Bank said the most important factor for 2019 would be OPEC, specifically the lack of
spare production capacity among OPEC members. This lack of oil production capacity would
provide "limited buffers" should there be a sudden shortfall in the supply of oil "raising the
likelihood of oil price spikes in 2019."
While WB acknowledged that the world was currently in a state of oversupply, it could swing
the other way quickly. In the first month of 2019, the World Bank conservatively predicted that
Brent would average $67 per barrel for the year -- a $2 per barrel decrease from its June 2018
predictions for 2019. The WB was quick to add that the "uncertainty around this forecast is
high."
How did they do? Aside from needlessly worrying the market with OPEC's lack of capacity, it
turns out their prediction was a bit high. The average
price of the Brent barrel in Q1 2019 was $63.30; for Q2 it was $68.30, and Q3 at $61.90.
November's average was $62.70.
Citi
Citi's
forecast for 2019 , also made in December 2018, was more sober-minded, with the bank
predicting that Brent would average $60 for the year. It, too, predicted a volatile market for
the next year, largely because the U.S., Russia, and Saudi Arabia -- the top three oil
producers in the world--all had different views as to what that perfect oil price should be.
The bank also predicted that oil production in the United States would continue to offset much
of what OPEC would cut -- a prediction that turned out to be close to reality: US production
has increased 1.2 million bpd this year -- precisely what OPEC agreed to cut.
How did they do? Not terrible. Its primary range was for Brent to trade between $55 and $65
per barrel--a generous $10 price range. Even with that big range, oil sat above $65 for the
better part of February through May.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML)
Also in mid-December 2018, BAML took a stab at making Brent price
predictions , forecasting that oil would resume its path back up to $70 average in 2019,
with a potential for higher prices in Q2. Similar to Citi and World Bank, BAML said that oil
prices would be volatile.
How did they do? It's hard to argue with the fact that oil indeed appears to be trending
upward, which could be interpreted as "resuming its path back up to $70". And Q2 was in fact
higher, with oil prices actually surpassing $70 for a time in April and May.
However, BAML lost a bit of credibility in our book when it hedged its forecast by saying
that "the only certainty is uncertainty." BAML hedged further in April when it said oil prices
had a higher chance of hitting $100 than what the
market consensus was, due to OPEC supply cuts, a slowdown in US shale, and IMO 2020
regulations.
BAML further watered down its predictions in August when it said oil could
fall to $30 or $40 should China decide to import substantial amounts of oil from Iran,
despite the US sanctions.
The EIA
A month after Citi, WB, and BAML ponied up their predictions, the EIA came out with its own.
Its prediction
for 2019 , provided in its January 2019 Short Term Energy Outlook, was that Brent would
average $61 per barrel. Around this time, specifically at the start of the year, Brent was
trading at $53.80 and WTI was trading at $45.41 .
How did they do? Not half bad. Brent traded at an average of $61.90 for the 3rd quarter
2019, and November's average was $62.70 -- less than $2 off per barrel for a prediction made 11
months ago in a volatile market.
That's it for the predictions made at the start of the year. But other predictions along the
way, armed with a half a year or more of actual data, are noteworthy as well.
FX Empire: Using adaptive dynamic learning (ADL),
FX Empire predicted in July of this year that oil prices would rotate between $47 and $64
between July and October, before falling in November and December to a range between $45 and
$50. FX Empire said it could actually dip below $40 by the end of 2019, or in early 2020.
How did they do? FX Empire's ADL appears to be pretty far off the mark. This CL=F is today
trading at $59.42, nearly $20 higher than it's sub-$40 prediction for the end of the year.
Goldman Sachs' Jeff Currie : In October, Currie, head of Goldman's commodity research,
warned that oil prices could fall as low as $20
per barrel for WTI if oversupply were to result in full storage facilities. With nowhere to
put it, explains Currie, the price of oil would fall dramatically as production would have to
crash. However, crude oil inventories in the United States are not dramatically up, and are
almost even-steven with this time last year, down a total of
1.41 million barrels over the last 50 weeks. Global oil inventories are a different story,
though. In Currie's defense, he did say that there was a less than 50% chance of oil falling
below $20 barrel.
How did they do? By our math, that 50% hedge would have made Goldman correct either way.
IEA : Piggybacking off Goldman's October forecast for the oil-inventory-pocalypse, the IEA's
Fatih Birol said that these low prices would force the US to cut production, resulting in a
price hike once again. In July, the IEA predicted that slowing oil demand would cap oil prices,
and keep them from moving
too much higher. At the time, Brent was trading at $63.01, with WTI trading at
$56.18.
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.
Please
enter a valid email Thank you for subscribing!Something went wrong. Please refresh
and try again.
How did they do? With Brent trading on December 12 at $64.47, the $1.50 increase comfortably
falls within the not-too-much-higher range, so we'd say the IEA's prediction was spot on.
Analyst Poll : In August,
Reuters polled 51 economists and analysts, who thought Brent would average $65.02 in 2019.
At the time, Brent had averaged $65.08, so the $65.02 wasn't stepping out on a long limb.
How did they do? Wisely, the analysts cited the US-China trade dispute and risk of an
economic slowdown as the reason for its new forecast, which was down from $67.47 for the month
before. Still, the price prediction was a bit high.
RBC Capital Markets : RBC's Helima Croft in May suggested that Brent could top
$80 over the summer due to Iranian tensions.
How did they do? RBC got it partially right. Iran tensions did indeed escalate. Iran
repeatedly made threats to close Hormuz, drone strikes attacked Saudi Aramco's oil
infrastructure, and Iran seized a British oil tanker and held onto it for months. Still, prices
didn't get anywhere near $80. But this isn't your daddy's oil market. A year or two ago,
tensions in the Middle East -- especially ones that are more than just threats, would have sent
oil prices soaring. But the market is today permanently spooked with the trade war negotiations
with China and slow oil demand growth, meaning these geopolitical risks no longer pack the same
punch.
Iran : In June, a top military aide to Iran's Supreme Leader
issued a prediction which was really more of a warning: that the first bullet fired in the
Persian Gulf would push oil prices above $100 per barrel. At the time, oil was trading at
$61.67.
How did they do? Not well. Things did heat up in the Gulf, and bullets -- many of them --
have been fired over the last month after major fuel protests in Iran. There were also drone strikes over
Saudi Arabia that did significant damage to oil infrastructure, which took offline over 5
million bpd. Still, oil got nowhere near $100.
Eurasia Group : Henry Rome, a senior analyst at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group,
agreed that these same Iranian tensions could push prices above $100, and a major confrontation
with Iran "would likely" send prices above $150.
How did they do? Even worse than Khamenei's military aide.
WSJ Poll: At the end of April, a week or so after the US announced that it would not extend
the waivers to buyers of sanctioned Iranian oil, WSJ-polled analysts expected Brent to
average $70 per barrel in 2019 -- an increase of $2 per barrel from its previous poll a
month earlier.
How did they do? Oil was already trading at $70 at the time of their prediction, so it
wasn't really a huge leap of faith at the time. Still, prices failed to get any higher than
that for the remainder of the year, rendering their prediction in the far-too-high
category.
We have been good democrats all our lives. Voted for Clinton, and Obama twice. We all voted
for you in the last election, but after watching this idiocy in the fake impeachment trial, and
seeing the democrat party rapidly turning towards out right communism, which is actually
anti-American, we will no longer vote for any democrats.
Our family is fed up and sick and tired of you taking the taxes we pay and seeing you do
absolutely nothing for us, or our country. We quit! The undersigned do hereby declare that we
no longer choose to vote for you and the witch hunting party, the criminal democrat party of
which you belong. You are all alike. Liars and deceivers. No longer do we wish to be associated
or looked on as accomplices in the democrat criminal communist party that does not care about
the individual voter, their family, or the American People that voted for you.
We the American people that voted for you, are not you. You no longer represent We, the
People. We do not want to be known as criminals, or those who associate with, and empower you
reprobates. We no longer support the democrat party that wastes so much time and taxpayer money
doing nothing good for us. Making up lies to impeach a president is not good. It's
criminal!
The malfeasance of the democrat party, and out right lies and determination to focus only on
impeaching the president for no good justifiable reason is filthy, a farce, and very
embarrassing. We want no part of it anymore. All of you have become a bunch of despicable,
colluding criminals. Corrupt to the core, and you only have one thing on your mind. It is not
we, the voters. It is only the continued hateful idiocy of fake hearings, the impeachment hoax
like the Russia hoax was, and big fat lies to drag out the clock so the real criminals that
everybody knows are criminals get away with their crimes, corruptions, and their treasonous
acts against America and the People of Conscious.
We therefore declare that we will be voting for any republican running against you, because
you are an associate of the criminal democrats that are now communists. We and our families are
not criminals, communist, nor will we ever again be associated with what you and they do. We
now disavow the criminal democrat party of liars and deceivers that do nothing for we
Americans. We disavow you, congressman/woman!
They will gingerly exchange the regulated EU economy for the freewheeling American economy - and hasn't that economy worked
so well for American workers.
If so, that's a good thing, for the regulated EU economy has treated Britons and Europeans even worse. The EU regulations, treaties
and policies are overall highly destructive to workers, massive welfare for the rich. What remains of European Social Democracy and
welfare states obscure the fact that US workers are actually treated better by their nation's fundamental economic policies and structures.
Europe as a whole is MORE unequal, more of a class society than the USA, not less.
Brexit is a good thing, a leftist, progressive policy. It's jumping completely off the hot stove, not into the fire. The British,
who preferred Labour's other policies, felt that the merits of Brexit outweighed all the other negatives of the Tories. They might
be right.
The Democratic leaders in Congress really should have checked with Central Casting before
picking the stars of their passion play: "The Impeachment and Destruction of Donald Trump."
Former National Security Council staffer
Fiona Hill was supposed to appear as a principled and dignified heroine. Instead, her
virulent hate, ignorance and contempt for Russia were apparent to all. And she looked uncannily
identical to the late
Alan Rickman playing Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies.
Congressman Adam Schiff chaired the House Intelligence Committee hearing and was supposed to
be the wise, fearless and incorruptible chairman. Instead, the camera's cruel, unblinking eye
revealed him as a buffoon – and a sinister one at that.
Schiff's round bald dome was identical to Mussolini's and his
ridiculous bulging eyes are those of Christopher Lloyd's evil cartoon villain
Judge Doom in the Hollywood movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"
The supposedly heroic Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman of the National Security Council
was even worse – Presented as an all-American Patriot, instead he resembled the thick,
hulking brutal thug that Hollywood Central Casting always chooses to play endless Russian
intelligence service or criminal villains in thousands of bad primetime TV shows.
Kurt Volker was almost as bad. He was the quiet cool, calm, bespectacled villain –
always a CIA bureaucrat and usually played by Ronnie Cox – who wants to feed Matt Damon,
Brad Pitt, Steven Seagal or Bruce Willis to the villains.
And of course – the Real Hero could not appear at all. The Whistleblower's identity is
being jealously guarded – though as Senator Rand Paul has pointed out, everyone knows who
he is and – far from being a Disinterested Pure Hero, he was a CIA veteran and former
senior National Security Council official outspoken in his contempt for the President of the
United States: In other words, yet another anonymous Deep State manipulator and
apparatchik.
No doubt he will be revealed as the winner on the Fox Television Channel's popular show,
"The Masked Singer."
Or perhaps he will reveal himself in an exclusive interview with a fawning Rachel Maddow,
still masked and identified as "The Lone Ranger."
Now Rand Paul does have the looks, the bearing, the moral fervor and the dramatic character
to play the hero in this botched fiasco of a drama. But there is only one small problem. He is
on the other side. He has forcefully publicly defended President Donald Trump.
Gravity – Albert Einstein assures us – "bends" light (A dubious assertion at
best but at least Einstein, unlike Schiff and Company Looked the Part he always played –
Lovable, Child-Like Jewish Genius Who Never Gets a Hair Cut) And Trump Derangement Syndrome
(TDS) has bent the brains of movie directors Nancy Pelosi and Schiff.
Trump Derangement Syndrome: a fearful, incurable affliction more terrible and humiliating
than Alzheimer's: Better to forget who you are than remember you are a hate-crazed, foaming at
the mouth, credulous idiot who will believe anything.
Like all policy wonks of their aging generation of corrupt and complacent Baby Boomers,
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Schiff have salivated at the
thought of inflicting a "Watergate 2" impeachment drama comeuppance on Donald Trump.
But the Villain of Watergate, Richard Nixon, was indeed an inept and more than slightly
sinister creep (and lifelong liberal). He looked the part and he exuded pious bogus ineptitude
on camera his entire career. (Nixon's inspiration for how he projected himself on television
was clearly Jack Webb playing Sergeant Joe Friday in the wonderfully badly acted "Dragnet"
police series on US television in the 1950s.)
By contrast, Donald Trump channels John Wayne, the most popular and enduring movie star in
American history:
Trump is a physically big and fearless New York construction businessman turned immensely
successful popular entertainer. He, like Wayne is a natural athlete. It is a matter of public
record ignored by all fearful liberal wimps that Trump really was offered a contract after
college to be Major League Baseball player for the Phillies, but he turned it down to focus on
his business career.
Working class American Heartland men and women over 40 instinctively loved Wayne and
therefore they love Trump too. Aging American feminists like Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth
Warren – and the further they are over 50, the more rabid and rage crazed and insane they
become – hated Wayne and are traumatized by his resurrection as a defining national
culture hero nearly four decades after his physical death echoing in the figure of Trump.
It was Trump's genius at silent reaction shots that ridiculed 17 Republican Congress
members, Senators and Governors in the 2015-16 campaign before he even began to turn his wit
and video skills on Hillary Clinton – a creepy Richard Nixon clone if there was one.
Trump was crafted by Fate and his brilliant media career from The Apprentice to Worldwide
Wrestling Central Casting to be the Hero of Impeachment. Making him the villain reverses the
entire emotional dynamic of the drama. It is like casting James Stewart as Nixon. (At worst,
Trump is classic King Kong eternally plagued by those pesky biplanes: And everybody roots for
Kong)
Liberals who loved Watergate went into emotional frenzies over Nixon's imagined humiliation
at the hands of such ludicrous pompous and overpaid fools as Dan Rather of CBS.
Pelosi and her laughably misnamed "advisers" have learned nothing from all this. This week,
we are seeing yet more interminable biased show-trial hearings and the even more ludicrous
Jerrold Nadler has taken center stage. He looks like Frankenstein's dwarf –servant
Igor in Mel Brooks' classic 1973 comic horror movie "
Young Frankenstein ."
The bottom line on why Impeachment has failed so miserably to whip up a storm or convince
anyone beyond the already committed "Trump Must Go", babies-throwing-tantrums across Liberal
America lies in the childishness and elemental incompetence of its cast and directors. Being
repulsive and ridiculous human beings themselves, they have no clue how obvious it would be
that they would appear that way to everyone else.
In a truly bizarre and insane moment during the ongoing impeachment hearing, democrat
Congressman Hank Johnson asked fellow lawmakers to imagine the teenage daughter of Ukraine's
president tied up in Trump's basement. Apparently, he wanted to summon mental images of an
"imbalance of power" between the two world leaders.
"They're standing there, President Trump is holding court. And he says, 'Oh, by the way,
no pressure.' And you saw President Zelensky shaking his head as if his daughter was
downstairs in the basement, duct-taped," Johnson said, drawing laughter from the room.
If Sanders got nominated, he could do what you suggest. He ( or surrogates) . could also
coin the phrase The Cowardly Lyin' . . . Trump . . . with a picture of Trump's facial
features photoshopped into the center of the face of the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.
It would be a clever political pun and a memorable visual image. I give it away for free to
anyone who wants to use it.
But the CenDems don't want to see Sanders nominated. Or Warren or Gabbard. So they will do
all they can to prevent it. The only hope Sanders or Warren or Gabbard has for winning the
nomination is to win it on the First Ballot. The only way one of them can do that is if All
of their delegates uNANimously combine ALL their delegate votes behind ONE of those three
candidates. And ALL the combined delegates for those three candidates would have to ALL
uNANimously aGREE to do that . . . and which one to do it for. Because the First Ballot is
the one only single chance that the Decent Three have to prevent a Catfood Nominee by getting
one of themselves nominated. The CenDems actively and fervently prefer losing with C. Anof
Catfood than winning with Sanders or Warren or Gabbard.
As Yoda would say . . . " First Ballot or First Ballot Not! There is no Second
Ballot."
If the Decent Three cannot collectively co-win the nomination for one of themselves on
Ballot Number One, all they will have left is to obstruct every effort to stop the balloting
for a Brokered Convention. They have to make the ballotng go on and on and on . . . until
Balloting becomes such torture for the Catfood Delegates that the Catfood Conventioneers will
give in to whatever the Decent Three choose to extort from the Catfood Leadership to make the
pain stop.
"... I think the current period can be called the “collapse of neoliberalism” period. In any case the neoliberal elite who was in power (Blairists, Clintonists) lost the trust of people. This is true both for the US and labour in the UK. In this sense the anti-Semitic smear against Corbin is equivalent to neo-McCarthyism hysteria in the USA. Both reflect the same level of desperation and clinging to power of “soft neoliberals.” ..."
It’s time to stop pretending we’re still in the postwar period (the question is, are we in a pre-war one).
True. As “Full Spectrum Dominance” inevitably lead to “threat inflation” it is logically drives the USA into the major war.
I think the current period can be called the “collapse of neoliberalism” period. In any case the neoliberal elite who was
in power (Blairists, Clintonists) lost the trust of people. This is true both for the US and labour in the UK. In this sense the
anti-Semitic smear against Corbin is equivalent to neo-McCarthyism hysteria in the USA. Both reflect the same level of desperation
and clinging to power of “soft neoliberals.”
Unfortunately Corbin proved to be too weak to withstand the pressure and suppress Blairists. But Blairists in labour might
still be up to a great disappointment. The history train left the station and they are still standing on the neoliberal platform,
so to speak.
That’s why Brexit, as a form of protest against neoliberal globalization, has legs. It is a misguided, but still a protest
movement.
From now on, only the rich will have the luxury of any sense of historical continuity.
The rich are not uniform. Financial oligarchy wants to stay, while manufacturers probably would prefer Brexit.
Why did so many people – from government contractors and high-ranking military officers, to state department and National
Security Council officials – feel the need to lie about how the war in Afghanistan was going?
This is because it’s easy cash cow for the old boys club by sending working class kids to be killed in a far off land.
The pentagon with the full cooperation of MSM will sell it as we are defending our ways of life by fighting a country 10,000
kms away.
This show the poor literacy, poor analytical thinking of US population constantly brain washed by MSM, holy men, clergy,
other neo con organisations like National rifle club etc.
and
manoftheworld -> Redswordfish 10 Dec 2019 15:47
Perhaps the only thing Trump has got right .. and ever will get right.. is his dislike for war. He is right about Afghanistan.
The terrible US press and political reaction to his peace talks with the Taliban showed that the deep state still doesn’t
get it…
Mattis, Graham et al are insane liars… and so is Hilary Clinton and Petraeus… none of them has ever had the guts to tell
the truth…
the average American is way more indoctrinated than the average pupil at a madrasa. …we should boot these lying American
generals out of NATO.. they’re a threat to world peace…
In any case Brexit is a litmus test of what is the next stage for neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization.
Now that Brexit
is almost certainly going to happen, I'm reposting this piece from late 2016 ,
with some minor corrections, indicated by strike-outs. Feel free to have your say on any aspect
of Brexit.
Since the collapse of faith in neoliberalism following the Global Financial Crisis, the
political right has been increasingly dominated by tribalism Trumpism. But in most cases, including the US, this
has so far amounted to little more than Trilling's irritable mental gestures . To the extent
that there is any policy program, it is little more than crony capitalism. Of all the
tribalist Trumpist groups that have achieved
political power the only ones that have anything amounting to a political program are the
Brexiteers.
The sustainability of tribalism Trumpism as
a political force will depend, in large measure, on the perceived success or failure of Brexit.
So, what will the day after Brexit (presumably, sometime in March 2019) look like, and more
importantly, feel like? I'll rule out the so-called "soft Brexit" where Britain stays in the EU
for all practical purposes, gaining some minor concessions on immigration restrictions. It
seems unlikely and would be even more of an anti-climax than the case I want to think
about.
Hidari 12.14.19 at 9:14 am (no link)
Doubtless one of the attractions of Brexit at least to those who thought it up (Farrage etc.)
is that it is a completely token rebellion: it appears to change very much while in reality
changing very little.
Only one thing:
'On the contrary, it seems pretty clear that all EU citizens will get permanent residence,
even those who arrived after the Brexit vote.'
Are we completely sure about this?
'One thing that this post missed completely is that Brexit is an entirely English project,
imposed on the Scots and Irish. That's become more and more evident, and looks sure to
dominate the days after Brexit happens.'
I kept on putting this point forward in various CT threads, getting, for some reason,
massive pushback*, despite the fact that it is obviously true and always has been. Perhaps a
colour coded map of the 'new' UK (which shows, essentially, the entirety of England as blue,
with the exception of larger conurbations), the Welsh speaking ('outer') parts of Wales as
green, essentially the entirety of Scotland as yellow, and the majority of the North of
Ireland as being green, will make that point for me.
*I'm not sure why, but I think it's something to do with an unwillingness to see that in
all four sections of the 'United' Kingdom we are seeing an eruption of nationalism: the SNP
in Scotland, Sinn Fein in NI, Plaid in Wales and of course the Tories in England, with the
Tories now functioning as, so to speak, the political wing of UKIP, or, if you want, UKIP/the
Brexit Party with the 'rough edges' shaved off.
'Liberal' intellectuals have always had a blind spot for nationalism, and have always
tended to reason that because nationalism is 'irrationalism' or whatever, that no one could
'really' think that way and that, therefore, nationalism doesn't 'really' exist. It obviously
does, as a 1 second glance at the 'new' UK map will demonstrate.
likbez 12.14.19 at 4:57 pm (no link)
Everything Trump does is consistent with regular conservatism
I respectfully disagree. It is not. Paleoconservatives hate Trump. Neocons for some
strange reason also hate Trump, although it is not clear why -- he completely folded and
conduct their foreign policy. Which is as far from classic conservatism as one can get.
I view Trumpism as specific for the USA flavor of "national neoliberalism" -- domestic
neoliberalism without neoliberal globalization, or with globalization of a different type.
The one based on bilateral treaties where stronger state can twist hands of the weaker state
and dictate the conditions -- kind of neo-imperialism on steroids ( neoliberalism always was
neo-imperial in foreign policy toward weaker states) .
The irony of Corbin defeat is that he was/is a critic of the EU imperialism, which
by-and-large is Franco-German imperialism (EU role in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Ukraine, Libya,
Syria, Greece) . The EU is not the dominant superpower, so it can't bully the US or China, or
Russia. It can do it only when dealing with lesser powers. That's why it's difficult for
anyone living inside a major EU-member to actually notice such a behavior: the desire to
crush resistance of any lesser country and to force it to abide by its very own rules,
whether the other countries want it or not.
The Blairites euphoria that the left was defeated, and neoliberalism still reins supreme
is IMHO unwarranted. Neoliberalism as an ideology is dead and that means that Labour Party in
its current form is dead as well. The same is true about the US Dems. They can achieve some
tactical successes but they can't overturn their strategic defeat.
And Brexit means more close alliance with the USA (in a form of subservience) as alone GB
can't conduct previous imperialist policies. It was punching above her weight within the EU
(with Scripals false flag as the most recent example, see Tony Kevin take on the subject
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/08/a-determined-effort-to-undermine-russia
) , and this opportunity no longer exists.
When Liberal governments fail to provide answers for economic despair the road is paved for
strong-armed, bloviating fascists. And the more desperate things become fascism will only get
stronger if history is any indication.
ban nock on Fri,
12/13/2019 - 6:18am and the analogies with Sanders and the US only go so far.
Politics in the US, Britain, and Europe in general are being upended, I'd caution against
pigeon holing things into the old left/right, Dem/Repub, Tory/Labor, scenario.
Britain's Labor similar to America's Democratic Party has lost lots of it's legitimacy with
working people. Globalisation has decimated cities like Liverpool and Manchester. Labor didn't
support Brexit, the biggest issue in politics in Britain. Being a part of the EU allowed
workers from Eastern Europe to enter England and directly compete for low skilled jobs.
Labor in England also included upper middle class woke culture, which is very pro EU and
anti Brexit. It's impossible to imagine a pro Brexit leader in Labor just as much as it is
impossible to imagine working class people in England supporting the loss of their jobs via
Remain. People voted for their economic self interests, can you blame them? As in the US there
are more working class voters than there are upper middle class intellectuals.
Boris Johnson promised increased funding for the National Health Service, not tearing it
down as many seem to suggest. Whether he does so is yet to be seen, but I wouldn't read his win
as a rejection of the social safety net. Socialism is for many some kind of intellectual game,
the working class is much less interested in ideas, and much more interested in health care,
higher wages, and better conditions overall.
Ever since I watched Bernie Sanders' rise in the primaries in 16 I've felt he would be a
much stronger general election candidate than he is in the primaries. As contrary as Trump
might seem to hard core political junkies, Trump did steal many of Sander's memes and use them
in the general election. Most wage earners actually do feel powerless in the face of the
corporate overclass, they feel things getting worse not better.
To have even a snowball's chance in the pre primaries, the endless positioning and twitter
wars that have occurred for months prior to even our first primary, Sanders is now committed to
many of the same positions as the woke side of the Democratic Party. There might well be a big
enough drop off of Hispanics, African Americans, and Working Class Dems of all hues to lose
this thing again, even if Sanders wins the primary. The Democratic Party has lost working
people even as it has gained Country Club Republicans from the suburbs.
Last night as the results were obvious I watched the old DK, the NYT, and other web sites.
Stunned Silence. It's as if they didn't realize 2016 happened and were surprised all over
again.
The impeachment . The two articles of impeachment are so anemic as to invite ridicule.
1. "Abuse of power" by expressing concern over thievery by Ukrainians and Americans? This is
a charge? The Washington Post has been running a series of articles based on "leaked" US Afghan IG reports and interviews with people involved in that wretched place. These articles reveal
the massive scale of the thievery that lost America enormous amounts of money taken through
graft and bribery. Was it unreasonable for this president to solicit the Ukrainian president's
cooperation in trying to deal with a similar situation in that country. He mentioned Uncle Joe
Biden and his drug addled son? Well, why not? The younger of the two has IMO been used as the
family bag man for collecting protection money. Joe Biden himself looks to me to be a political
version of Jimmy Hoffa the mobbed up Teamsters boss of long ago, but, with less charm, "a
little for you, a lot for me," etc. He was potentially a rival for the 2020 election? He was
not then a candidate. Is every human or semi-human to be exempt from investigation and
prosecution because he MIGHT become a political rival? The Democrats know full well this would
be absurd.
2. "Obstructing congress" What we are seeing in the behavior of the Democratic majority in
the House and minority in the senate is an attempt to seize control of the federal government
using the constitutional powers to "advise and consent" on appointments and the ability to
impeach in the House.. They have not yet tried to impeach federal judges appointed by the other
party but IMO they will try that soon. In this article of impeachment they claim that the
president has obstructed their function by relying on the doctrine of Executive Privilege to
deny them access to his present and past staff. Trump did not invent this doctrine. It is a
well established feature of American law. Without it no president could conduct internal policy
discussions or confidential discussions with foreign leaders. The Democrats know full well that
the principal of Executive Privilege is often contested in the courts. That is what they should
have done this time, but instead they have chosen to charge the president for impeachment for
claiming Executive Privilege. They do not claim this is a violation of law. They merely stamp
their feet and scream that they are unhappy and want him gone.
This farce will end in a trial in the US Senate with the Chief Justice of SCOTUS presiding.
The Republicans control the senate and will not allow Trump to be deposed. The senate can
dismiss the charges by a simple majority vote and that is what Senator Lindsey Graham wants to
see happen. Trump does not want that. He wants to be tried for the purpose of turning the
tables on the Democrats.
I think he is correct in wanting that. If that occurs, witnesses must be subpoenaed and
examined in open court. The Bidens must be so called to demonstrate the reasonable nature of
Trump's concern over their behavior in Ukraine . pl
Just wondering. Suppose the Senate dismisses the Impeachment. Won't the Chief Justice have to
rule on the question of whether or not there is at least probable cause for the democrats'
determination that this is probable cause to Impeach?
Chief Justice could rule on a demurrer which would dismiss the case without a trial - failure
to present prima facie elements of the underlying charge. Therefore nothing of fact is
triable - case dismissed.
Which is probably why Democrats ditched the more specific treason, bribery and extortion
charges, leaving only the garbage can of "abuse of power" and "obstruction" behind. By what
standards of evidence are both those remaining elements - abuse of power and obstruction --
even tried, let alone judged?
Biden on camera bragging about a quid pro quo to fire a prosecutor examining corruption at
a company where Biden's son is on the board taking a fat paycheck with no experience or
expertise to have that position.
I agree that Trump should get his wish. He has endured a lot of false "reporting." And those
untruths need to be shown for what they are. I wonder if Mitch McConnell would be able to
arrange that despite Graham.
I know that Trump's personality attracts that sort of shocked response from some people.
Heck, I'm a Republican and was first also opposed to Trump because of his personality. But
I'm of the opinion that the Democrats and their fawning media characters have earned a lot of
the same sort negative responses and disgust on the part of the people because their
personalities are pretty off-putting also.
I'm still suffering from cognitive dissonance because Adam Schiff has somehow actually
remained in his elected position. I can't imagine a high school principal allowing someone
who does "parody" to continue as a student council candidate.
I do believe that Nancy Pelosi may be really sinking into dementia or alcoholism--just
on the basis of her inability to control her dentures. To have those two criticize the
character of Trump really seems strange. I feel that I'm watching a Dickens novel performed
on national news each day. I can't laugh, though, because this is happening in
reality.
Given the corruption on both sides of the Senate it is probable that no-one wants an in depth
trial during which unwanted facts might accidentally appear. Much better to whisk it through
without it touching the sides so to speak.
OK so Trump doesn't get the exoneration he wants but then nothing will explode in his
face. Its not a win win but then its not a lose either and it is unlikely to seriously affect
his chances next November. Plus as a quid pro quo he might have got his defence spending
increase and the trade bill through.
I'm trying to remember the site I read it on, maybe south front, where the point was made the
graft flows through these governments we give billions to, back through the various
institutes and global initiatives the US politicians set up. McCain and Clinton being the two
mentioned. So neither side wants it looked into too deeply.
A conversation between two heads of state is not and should not be conducted as though the
subject matter of the conversation is subject to the rules and assumptions of a court of
justice.
Graham has a vested interest in not having an extensive trial with many witnesses as it
may uncover his own culpability in the Ukraine corruption. And of course may drag in Saint
McCain too!
His and Mitch's argument to Trump likely would be, that with no trial they can guarantee
acquittal but with a trial they can't.
An article in the Duran indicates that and why Senate Republicans may buck Trump's wishes, as
they are as deep in Ukraine corruption as any of the Dems are. Lindsay, the late John M and
Sleep Joe are perhaps the most deeply planted ...
You mean that with the same investigative power the Obama administration had he has none
of the alleged evidence on senators you allude to? What a wonderful implication from a Cyprus
based media outlet founded in 2016 and run by the host of an RT political show. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-duran/
As of today Trump's approval rating is 43.9% and Congress's approval rating is 24%. I gather
that the House Democrats don't realize how unpopular they are and how many Americans support
"obstruction of Congress". Are they trying to turn Trump into a national hero?
In the legitimate focus on the impeachment, a stunning revelation in the Horowitz report has
been largely overlooked. In January 2017, the FBI conducted three interviews with the key
source to Christopher Steele for his dossier. He told interviewed on all three occasions that
the material he passed on to Steele was gossip and second and third-hand rumors with no
proof. He even said that the sexual allegations were actually a joke and he never meant for
them to be taken serious. The FBI in seeking the follow-on FISA warrant merely reported they
interviewed Steele's source and he was "cooperative and candid." No content reported.
In addition, Horowitz found email exchanges between FBI and CIA, in which the FBI inquired
if Carter Page was a CIA source. Three times the CIA responded "yes." But the FBI agent
preparing the affidavit for the FISA renewal lied and wrote "no" to the question of Page's
CIA work. That was the false statement Horowitz referred to.
These are serious crimes by FBI officials and they should not go unnoted in the MSM or
left to be ignored. I hope that Durham is carefully reading every word of the Horowitz report
for points of criminal misconduct to present to his Federal grand jury.
You can't fully discuss impeachment of Trump without going back to the first cause, and in
this case it was clearly criminal misconduct by Federal law enforcement.
that a bipartisan agreement exists that the Democrats can introduce the impeachment but
the majority Republicans will vote it out without trial.
An approach which seems plausible. But after nigh on four full years of a campaign against
initially a candidate and for the majority of the time the holder of the presidential office
involving lurid allegations might not a trial be helpful in restoring some public confidence
in the body politic? And in reducing the levels of vitriol.
Earlier today a person asked me what was going to happen in the impeachment trial, and I said
that the senate will decide that after the case gets to them. The rules of procedure and
rules of evidence (if any!) will be determined by the senate.
The U.S. Constitution says in Article 1, section 3 that--
"The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that
Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is
tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: and no Person shall be convicted without the
Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present.
"Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office,
and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, trust, or profit, under the
United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to
Indictment, Trial, Judgment, and Punishment, according to Law".
Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Repub. Kentucky) appeared on the Sean
Hannity television show on FoxNews and said in essence that how a trial will proceed is up in
the air, as he explains at the 1 minute mark until 2 minutes and 17 seconds into the
video--
McConnell, as usual, carefully maintains his position, and says that everything he does
about an impeachment trial, "I am coordinating with White House counsel". And, "There will be
no difference between the president's position and our position as to how to handle this to
the extent that we can".
What McConnell is obviously doing is protecting himself no matter what the political
effect of the content of the trial may be.
He says: "We all know how it's going to end. There is no chance the president is going to
be removed from office".
It is worse than that. Groups of current or former high level employees band together to
bid on large scale development contracts. They have local partners and the loot is
tremendous.
Warren's awkward attempts to portray herself as a woman of color, even if a etsy weeny
tiny bit, always seemed strange to me, ignoring the resume nonsense. It makes sense with the
realization that Women of Color, have become a new politically privileged class, in spite of
some of them being not very oppressed.
Indian (subcontinent) women come from a tradition of a caste based society of wealth and
privilege. The most succesful ones intuitively home in on and game American race-based
identity politics in spite of their advantages, such as being one of the wealthiest religious
groups in the nation,
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/11/how-income-varies-among-u-s-religious-groups/
No Bernie style economic class based socialism for them, no way. It's maintain privilege,
Silicon Valley corporate caste based salaries, Republican reductionism, Hillary hopium and
yet, they proudly proclaim their affiliation with real women of color, on whose backs they
surf, like last generation's black cleaning women, the grandparents of which might have
actually been slaves.
3 examples: Nimrata Nikki Randhawa, Neera Tanden and Kamala Harris.
Women-of-color in general are not a privileged class. The not-very-poor women of color are
perhaps a newly privileged class.
The Goldman Sachs women-of-color have become a new privileged class, in line with the
tenets of Goldman Sachs Feminism. " The arc of history is long, and it bends towards rainbow
gender-fluid oligarchy."
Spotlight on defense authorization bill: Saudi Arabia wins big with assist from
Kushner
The White House secured a major reprieve for Saudi Arabia this week by convincing
Congress to drop several provisions from its annual defense bill before the House passed it
on Wednesday. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill next week. Gone are sanctions on
key Saudi officials for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and restrictions on US
support for Riyadh's campaign in Yemen. The New York Times reports that President Donald
Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner – who reportedly maintains a
direct WhatsApp line with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – played a key role in the
negotiations.
The United Arab Emirates also came out ahead as the final bill removes language
taking aim at the $8 billion in emergency arms sales to Gulf countries that Trump
authorized in May citing the threat of Iran. The UAE had lobbied against these provisions
and also opposed calls for a report detailing the "military activities" of the UAE, Saudi
Arabia and other international actors in Libya. . The final bill no longer singles out
specific countries but still requires "a detailed description of the military activities of
external actors" in the country.
We always stick by our friends, through thick and thin and murder, and war crimes, and
terrorism, and well, all of it. After all, what are friends for?
As Dean Baker pointed out in his book Rigged, the neoliberal capitalism of America is
rigged to benefit the top 1%. After all, they were the architects. Most Americans appreciate
that. Nevertheless, the vast majority willingly wade into its rigged quicksand. All economies
are rigged in the sense that there is a structure to it all. Moreover, the architects of that
system will ensure there is something in it for themselves – rigged. Our school system
does not instruct Americans on how their own economic system works (is rigged), so most of us
become its victims rather than its beneficiaries.
Books by Liz Warren and her daughter offer remedial guidance on how to make the current US
economic system work for the average household. So, in a sense, Liz comes across as an
adherent to the system she is trying to help others master .
This seems to be a losing proposition for candidate Warren because most Americans want a
new system with new rigging; not a repaired system that has been screwing them for
generations.
A big part of why Labor and Corbyn lost so badly is the complete abdication of "the Left" on
Brexit. The left were supposed to be anti-globalists, in which case their task was to join
battle offering an egalitarian, left-populist version of Brexit which would have benefited
the people.
Instead, faced with a real decision and a real opportunity they punted and ran home to
globalist mama. This removed one of the main reasons to bother supporting them.
Thing is, this destroys the left in Britain. The right in Labour had been in control since
the early 1980s, and Corbyn's leadership victory was an accident which will not be given a
second chance. Now what will replace Corbyn will not be Blairism, it will be something well
to the right of Blairism, something much more like the DNC in the United States.
In other words, this is not a defeat of a party, it is a catastrophe for anyone seeking to
struggle against the triumph of neoliberal barbarism. Oh, and it makes the probability of the
end of the world through environmental catastrophe or nuclear war much higher. So apart from
the ideological catastrophe it's also a human calamity.
Corbyn destroyed hismelf. He performed quite well, unexpectedly so, in 2017 because he said
that he would honour the result of the 2016 referendum. Yesterday the electors punished him
for reneging on that and telling 17.4 million voters that they were wrong.
It was the less well off who voted to Leave, and it was the less well off who yesterday
deserted Labour in droves. They have had enough of being told that they are in the wrong by a
middle class elite who would be repelled if they ever actually met someone from the working
class.
I am no expert on UK politics, but it does look like Brexit was the issue that Boris won
on. Everybody is sick of it and wants if over with.
I am no expert on UK politics either, but from my point of view in Norway the main issue
to be resolved is dismantling the EU, and it looks like the Brexit vote and this election
confirms that many in the UK see it the same way. Whether it will happen is another
question.
I voted NO in the 1994 Norwegian referendum on the question of becoming member of
"European Community". One of the arguments in the debate at that time was that the "European
Community" was aiming to become a union and a superstate. Those who argued that way were
called lots of things, including conspiracy theorists. Today we are not members of the EU,
but all the "regulations" are forced upon us anyway. The EU is a non-democratic nightmare
that must be demolished.
I don't expect much good from the Tories, I don't exclude another betrayal of the Brexit
cause, but we shall see. Corbyn lost on his betrayal of Brexit, that is for sure. I
sympathize with Corbyn, but betraying the Brexit referendum is a no-no.
What the UK needs is real progressives that see the EU as the globalist project it is. It
also means that the "climate crisis" must be recognised as a political tool created by the
same forces. Corbyn failed on both accounts and therefore he lost.
Now that the official results are out, I'll comment on the British elections.
If Corbyn had won and taken us out of the EU we would have gone all Venezuela. If he'd won
and kept us in the EU we'd have gone all Greece. The result is the best of the bad options
available.
This comment on The Guardian encapsulates the average Conservative voter for these 2019
elections.
The UK is really at a crossroads: it is too tiny and poor in natural resources to
implement socialism, but it is declining as a capitalist power.
I don't think the average British really thinks Venezuela is socialist or that Corbyn's
policies would make them very poor, but I think they are afraid of the sanctions and
embargoes they would suffer from the USA if they dared to try to go back to
social-democracy.
This defeat may also be historic: this could go to History as the end of social-democracy.
Social-democracy was already dead as an effective political force after the oil crisis of
1974-5, but at least it was able to polarize with neoliberalism in the ideological field and
had some prestige that far outlived itself (to the point it was the main propaganda weapon
that ultimately convinced Gorbachev to destroy the USSR, and to the point it was able to
convince historians like Hobsbawn that it had actually "won the war" after 2008). Now it
isn't considered even credible by half of the population of one of the few countries it was
able to govern and fully influence in the post-war period.
In Rosa Luxemburg's last article (a few days before she was executed), she finally
admitted defeat to the Bolsheviks. "We must separate the essential from the non-essential",
she wrote. And the essential, she completed, was the fact that the Bolsheviks were right and
the German Social-Democrats were wrong. It happened again, almost 100 years later.
(Brexit anger is about wage inequality - like US Trump support. 35 years, GDP doubled,
median earnings up 10% in UK, 0% in US. If the media wrote about basic economics everyone
would know this. Instead the bottom 75% have plain unfocussed anger with Trump/Brexit being
lightening rods to direct it).
It might be wise to be careful here about assumptions used. First off, cognisance of
population changes will not automatically translate into employed working sector changes,
many factors intervene preventing a direct relationship. Secondly, having a accurate GDP
measure from beginning to end of the period observed is crucial (to avoid apples vs. oranges
comparisons) so that changes in productive sources (and their employed numbers) are accounted
for (law offices rarely employ as many as heavy industrial firms). The history of price/wage
inflation or loss of exchange value of currency will affect reported GDP statistics as well.
Thirdly is measuring the general education and skill level of those employed, as those
decrease so do earnings/salaries/wages. Fourthly, look at the change in social protections
provided to the population in question, these protections have a cost that must be met, their
absence has an even greater cost to income obtained but rarely appearing on the economic
balance sheets. Regulatory capture by monopoly, sovereign & trust-fund management removes
business restrictions and passes those costs to those employed. Try putting this on a
bumper-sticker for your car.
In the U.S. the population had increased in double digits from the census of 1950 (150.9
millions) to 2010 (308.7 millions). Working income had not significantly increased from
1970's, Purchasing Power Parity of 1970 dollar and 2019 dollar is unobtainable information.
GDP statistics are of the nature of apples vs. oranges, measuring unrelated economic
production; it can be done but isn't (for reasons political) [an income of US$400,000 in 1915
would translate into a 1980's income of about US$ 8.5 millions; the economies were still
roughly speaking nearly the same still and comparable, as wealth distributions were becoming
again].
By Anat R. Admati, the George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford University Graduate School of Business
(GSB), a Director of the GSB Corporations and Society Initiative, and a senior fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
Originally published at
ProMarket
Author's note: This essay is based on a speech I gave at the
Stigler Center 2019 Conference on Political Economy of Finance. Whereas the content refers to my experiences as an academic with
expertise in finance and economics, the key ideas apply to other areas in business schools and beyond. I hope colleagues will reflect
on the harm from silos and on our opportunities as academics to benefit society.
In the real world, it turned out, important economic outcomes are often the consequences of political forces. During 2010, people
within regulatory bodies told me privately that false and misleading claims were affecting key policy decisions. They urged me to
help clarify the issues and I felt compelled to become involved. Despite years of
research and advocacy , however, flawed
claims persist and still have an impact. (A recently
updated document lists and debunks 34 such claims.)
Many of my experiences in the last decade, which involved extensive interactions outside as well as within academia, were sobering.
I saw confusion, willful blindness , political
forces, various and sometimes subtle forms of corruption, and
moral disengagement
, first hand. The harm from economists ignoring political economy became increasingly evident. There was no way for me to return
to ignoring the issues.
It was also impossible to explain my experiences using economics alone. In writing an essay in 2016 for a book on Finance in
a Just Society edited by a philosopher, I went beyond economics and finance and drew from scholarship in political science, law,
sociology, and social psychology. My essay was entitled " It
Takes a Village to Maintain a Dangerous Financial System ."
Sadly, among the enablers of our inefficient and distorted financial system are economists and academics. Perhaps most shocking,
a fallacious claim about the impact and "cost" of more equity funding, which contradicts basic teachings in corporate finance, has
been included in many versions and editions of banking textbooks authored by prominent academic and former Federal Reserve governor
Frederic Mishkin. (See Section 3.3
here or Chapter 8 of The Bankers' New Clothes .)A risk manager
in one of the largest banks, whom I met in 2016 at a conference attended almost exclusively by practitioners and regulators and who
had dropped out of a top doctoral program in finance, quipped in an email after quoting from an academic paper: "with such friends
[as academics], who needs lobbyists?"
Lobbyists, who engage in "marketing" ideas to policymakers and to the public, are actually influential. They know how to work
the system and can dismiss, take out of context, misquote, misuse, or promote research as needed. If policymakers or the public are
unable or unwilling to evaluate the claims people make, lobbyists and others can create confusion and promote misleading narratives
if it benefits them. In the real political economy, good ideas and worthy research can fail to gain traction while bad ideas and
flawed research can succeed and have an impact.
Luigi Zingales highlighted political economy issues within our profession in a 2013 essay entitled "
Preventing
Economists' Capture " and in his 2015
AFA presidential address entitled "
Does Finance Benefit Society
?" Zingales notes and laments a pro-business and pro-finance bias within economics and finance and the pervasive blindness to
issues such as corporate fraud and political forces. "Awareness of the risk of [economists'] capture is the first line of defense,"
he writes in his 2013 essay. I agree that the issues are real yet often denied or ignored, and that recognizing problems is essential
for addressing them.
Governance and political economy challenges are pervasive beyond banking, where I encountered them so clearly. For example, corporate
governance research, including my own coauthored papers (in
1994 and
2009 ) on shareholder activism, has focused almost exclusively on conflicts between shareholders and managers, effectively assuming
that competitive markets, contracts, and laws protect everyone except for the narrowly-defined "shareholder" -- who is implicitly
assumed to own only one corporation's shares and to care only about the price of those shares.
Having observed governance and policy failures in banking, I realized that the focus on shareholder-manager conflicts is far too
narrow and often misses the most important problems. We must also worry about the governance of the institutions that create and
enforce the rules for all. How power structures and information asymmetries play out within and between institutions in the private
and public sectors is critical.
A 2017 Journal of Economic Perspectives Symposium on the modern corporation includes
an essay I wrote on the distortions that arise
as a result of the focus in corporate governance on financialized targets that purport to capture "shareholder value" when combined
with political economy forces that can lead to governments failing to set and enforce proper rules. The symposium also includes
an essay by Luigi Zingales on how political
and market power feed off each other. We both noted that more public awareness and understanding of these problems is essential for
addressing them.
Economists and academics have numerous opportunities to be helpful by looking more frequently out of their windows, expanding
their domain beyond "solved political problems," collaborating across disciplines, and bringing back a more holistic approach to
their work. Small changes in this direction are starting to happen, as the Stigler Center's conferences on the political economy
of finance show, but we can and should do much more.
Numerous research topics are ripe for more study by theorists and empiricists. Within the following long list of topics (still
a partial one) there are low-hanging fruits and more challenging problems that may require interdisciplinary reach and which tenured
academics are in a particularly privileged position to take on: whistleblower policies, the impact of consumers, employees, and politicians
on corporate actions, accounting rules for derivatives, the effectiveness of boards, audits and auditors regulation, the design of
bankruptcy laws, money laundering, corporate fraud, the organization and pricing of deposit insurance, debt subsidies, the role of
financial literacy and ideology in policy discussions, the structure and governance of regulatory agencies and central banks, lobbying
of multinational corporations, the governance of international bodies such as Financial Stability Board, Basel Committee, and IMF,
and the political economy of corporate enforcement.
Anat Admati. Photo by Nancy Rothstein
Engaging with policy issues in our research and teaching, and even engaging in
advocacy when appropriate and effectively lobbying on behalf
of the public (for example by writing
comment letters or
opinion pieces ) can be valuable and important. Policy
involvement, however, requires not only disclosing
potential conflicts of interest but, most importantly, scrutinizing research carefully to ensure it is adequate for guiding policy.
A problem I have become acutely aware of is that economists and others can be cavalier in claiming that research is relevant for
real-world application without such scrutiny.
As a theorist, I know models have unrealistic and sometimes stylized assumptions, yet models can bring important insights, and
theoretical and empirical papers that capture key features of the real world can be useful for policy. It takes a big leap of faith,
however, and can actually do more harm than good, to claim that models whose assumptions greatly distort the real world are adequate
for real-world applications. Specific examples are discussed in the
first paper I wrote with Peter DeMarzo,
Martin Hellwig, and Paul Pfleiderer (Sections 5-7), the
omitted chapter from the book I wrote with Martin Hellwig, Paul Pfleiderer's
paper on the misuse of models in finance
and economics (which starts with the old joke about the economist assuming a can opener on a deserted island and, among other things,
compares economics and physics) and a recent
presentation by Paul Pfleiderer that discusses the role of assumptions in theoretical and empirical research and which includes
great visuals.
The key takeaways if research is claimed to be relevant for the real world are:
Just because a model claims to "explain" something in the real world does not give it logical or actual validity . Even if
we may never have the data to be able to reject a model, there are ways to apply casual empiricism ("if this model was true, we would
observe x and we don't"), and we must be especially careful if a model contradicts other plausible explanations for what we see.
(Consider: "cigarette smoking improves people's health" as an "explanation" of why people smoke.) Just because a model can be
"calibrated" does not give it logical or actual validity .
Applying inadequate economic models to policy in the real world is akin to building bridges using flawed engineering models. Serious
harm may follow.
We can also enrich our teaching and connect more dots for our students by
developing interdisciplinary courses and by bringing out
the bigger picture, at least occasionally, in teaching standard courses. For example, basic corporate finance courses show how to
calculate the debt tax shield, and we should point out that there is no good reason for the tax code to subsidize debt relative to
equity and that this tax code can create distortions. We can also ask whether shareholders as individuals actually want a company
in which they hold shares to pursue "
positive Net Present Value
" projects that involve pollution or deceptive marketing of harmful products.
Many students are anxious to have such discussions. There is a broad sense today that standard business practices and dysfunctional
governments have exacerbated economic, social, and political problems. We must find ways to broaden the discussion beyond our narrow
lanes. Academic silos are part of the problem, and we should break them to be part of the solution.
Finally, we can and should engage in trying to ensure that governments and other institutions serve society. If only conflicted
experts engage in the process of creating rules, especially on important issues that appear technical and confusing such as accounting
standards or financial regulation, we get what Karthik Ramanna calls "
thin political markets " and
our assumptions about markets are more likely to be false. Academics may be in the best position to inform policy, expose flawed
or poorly enforced rules, and help hold power to account. We cannot assume others will be able or willing to do it without our help.
Governance and politics are key to outcomes everywhere. Related issues about power and control and about the respective roles
of governments and private sector institutions are playing out prominently today in the technology sector. A course I
taught recently about
the internet allowed me to compare and contrast the finance and internet sectors. The Stigler Center has laudably been informing
policy related to digital platforms .
In a recent Harvard
Business Review piece, I argue that business schools should practice and promote "civic-minded leadership" much more than
they currently do. (The text is also available
here .) I hope more academics and academic institutions recognize and embrace the great opportunities we have to try to make
the world a better place.
Does anyone know of a good book (or series of books) that discusses the history and evolution of economics. Ideally, I'm looking
for something that discusses particular political philosophers (e.g Adam Smith, Marx, Keynes, Mises, etc.) in sequence. What I'm
interested in is not only their ideas, but also their histories–what were the circumstances of their lives that lead to their
ideas and how did the political environment they found themselves in contribute. Also, how were the philosophies adopted or corrupted
by followers (e.g. Marx and Russian communism, Adam Smith and neoliberalism). I have yet to find a truly comprehensive book that
has this info. I would expect a title something like "History of Political Economy." Any suggestions from the NC commentariate?
So far I haven't found one book that covers it all. And most books I do find try to describe all economic thought in terms
of the author's particular belief system, which to me isn't all that helpful. So I read a lot of books on history, economics,
and archeology to try and piece together an accurate story. And I still have not read nearly enough to have a complete picture.
If I was much smarter I'd try to do it on my own. Sadly, I'm only mildly intelligent and a crappy writer. Somebody get Michael
Hudson on this so I can read it. I'll start the Kickstarter campaign.
It's much like religion in that introspection and study is generally confined to the walled-garden-containing-all-that-is-true-in-this-world
of choice.
This question intrigued me enough to explore what the Library of Congress catalog has to offer in response to it. The short
answer, based on a good deal of rather fancy searching, is not much -- in English. The subject heading, "Economics–History," is
the one that LC applies to the history of economics as a discipline. However, it retrieves so many citations as to be all but
useless, even when those results are sorted chronologically, because it has been applied to so many works that treat narrow rather
than broad sub-topics. LC has numerous books sharing the straightforward title, History of Economic Thought; they range in date
from 1911 on. The oldest is by Lewis F. Haney. The latest of them seems to be the 2nd "updated" edition of History of Economic
Thought, by E. K. Hunt (2002).
The Library of Congress has also established the subject heading "Political economy–history." However,
it is attached to only one title that covers the topic broadly: Histoire de la pensée économique : abrégé des analyses et
des théories économiques des origines au XXe siècle / Alain Redslob (2011). Despite characterizing itself as a 'summary' the
book comes in at a hefty 355 pages. LC classifies this work at HB75. A title search on "Political Economy" yields, to my eye,
only one somewhat recent work that seems to offer a general treatment: Political economy / Dan Usher (2003). Coming in at 427
pages, it is classified as "Economics" and classed at HB171.5. LC applies the heading 'Economics–Historiography" to eleven works
of which the most relevant here may be: History and historians of political economy / Werner Stark ; edited by Charles M.A. Clark
(1994). As a check of those results a bit of googling turned up a set of essays edited by Maxine Berg under the title, Political
Economy in the Twentieth Century (1990), which set out to represent thinking outside the 'mainstream' of neoclassical or Keynesian
traditions. LC classes it at HB87.
For books titled "History of Political Economy" it looks like one would have to go back into
the 19th century, to discover works bearing just such a title by John K. Ingram (1888; reprinted 2013 by Cambridge UP) and Gustav
Cohn (1894), thus apparently from the point where the Berg essays begin. I have read nothing by any of the authors I've mentioned
here; am just posting the outcome of my searching fwiw.
I have, but haven't yet finished, "An Economist's Guide to Economic History" by Blum and Colvin. If the text itself is insufficient,
the bibliography ought to be pretty comprehensive.
Yes Galbraith Sr was the last classical that pointed out the failings of the payed for PR merchants that some have called economists
and to rub salt in that wound claim dominate economics has no value based biases.
Richard Wolff (of Democracy at Work) has one but I'm not able to search for the title. Just google/qwant his name and a title
that you will recognize as what you are looking for will appear.
I've skimmed that book and it seemed accessible and neatly putting together timelines and major inflection points in the development
or economics.
"In the real world, it turned out, important economic outcomes are often the consequences of political forces."
Sorry to sound mean, but, duh.
"The key takeaways if research is claimed to be relevant for the real world are:
Just because a model claims to "explain" something in the real world does not give it logical or actual validity. Even if we
may never have the data to be able to reject a model, there are ways to apply casual empiricism ("if this model was true, we would
observe x and we don't"), and we must be especially careful if a model contradicts other plausible explanations for what we see.
(Consider: "cigarette smoking improves people's health" as an "explanation" of why people smoke.)"
Did the individuals she is addressing ever take a required undergraduate course in research methods?
Not understanding that is like believing that money does actually grow on trees. I don't understand how this could be
a revelation to supposedly intelligent people with advanced degrees.
You've got Evonomic's newsletter sign-up text box, copy-pasted in here, along with the article text. Guessing that wasn't intentional.
Mentioning it just in case.
This has "Academics may be in the best position to inform policy, expose flawed or poorly enforced rules, and help hold power
to account. We cannot assume others will be able or willing to do it without our help."
Given the funding method for much of academics (wealthy patrons, wealthy think tanks, wealthy companies and wealthy parents)
is it reasonable to expect that academics will truly speak truth to power?
In my view, the article implies a more vigilant economic profession COULD be important in influencing policy.
But I have doubts this could occur.
Economics and economists may be used in the same way that an insurance company executive told me that outside consultants were
sometimes chosen at his firm.
He suggested that consultants were sometimes selected because they were expected to agree with what management wanted to do.
One could suggest that similar dynamics exist for newspaper editorial writers.
If editorial writers were to go counter to their expected editorial content (right or left), they could well be expecting their
future paychecks would be at risk.
Western economics has evolved to serve TPTB, not the common good.
One can see that outside voices, such as Steve Keen and Michael Hudson, are relegated to outside the mainstream.
And on top of that, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb and others have regularly pointed out, achieving a high degree of efficiency
typically comes at the expense of safety.
An old Star Trek episode titled The Trouble With Tribbles is about Star Fleet and Klingons disputing ownership of a planet
which can grow vast amounts of food grains. In one short scene the Klingons claim ownership based on their more efficient exploitation
of resources (more efficient than the Federation) which, they claim, gives them 'rights' to own the planet. To which either McCoy
or Kirk say to themselves, "Oh yes, they're efficient all right. Ruthless, but efficient."
And on top of that, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb and others have regularly pointed out, achieving a high degree of efficiency
typically comes at the expense of safety.
No system ever operates at a greater efficiency than at the moment before its collapse.
Just something to think about, Capitalism rewarding efficiency rather than sustainability or robustness. Both of these require
the expenditure of resources, costs, which subtract from potential profits.
Yes, exactly. I liked this piece, long overdue for me. But what exactly is "efficiency"? I agree that there is no good reason
for the tax code to subsidize debt if, if, adequate financing is otherwise available. Hence the question: Why is there no alternative?
I dunno about small changes but I'm pretty sure we need to be able to downshift, as opposed to spinning out disastrously. There's
this too: finance itself (because financial time is much faster than ordinary time) is more desperate, even frantic, to maintain
its survival in a competitive "economy" so that as finance turns into financialization it achieves critical mass. And in order
just to hang on and not explode requires massive infusions of new money just so finance can stay on top of their own monster.
Some rodeo. The first good regulation for economic security might be to extend financial time – reducing the necessity for huge
turnover profits. But doing so in a way that preserves finance in a tame and domestic manner. Like preventing all the animals
in the barn from eating exponential volumes of alfalfa and producing mud slides of manure in order that the noble farmer doesn't
lose his tennies whilst mucking . Thereby reducing the risks inherent in equity finding – which for a sole proprietor (should
any still exist) is also known as crushing debt.
> The first good regulation for economic security might be to extend financial time – reducing the necessity for huge turnover
profits.
In ecology there is a tau function, the delay time. Predator population lags prey variation and can stabilize systems. And
Theo Compernelle gives details about delaying response time, as the productivity of a work session drops with the number of interruptions.
The Oct 28 Links included the article "Asynchronous Communication: The Real Reason Remote Workers Are More Productive", along
similar lines.
This seems to go against instant messaging, hi frequency trading, and OODA loops. But those seem to operate best in disregulated
situations. To extend financial time – what would that do to speculation?
Edit: Also, Taleb had something on taking data points too often leading to noisy results.
tau function seems to apply here. so as not to eat the seed corn. by extending financial time I meant slow it way down, in
my mind that means extending obligations over a much longer period. That might also mean many fewer financings, less opportunity
to speculate. tau is interesting; nice to know nature has this one figured out.
speculation is the "money" in financial markets. lenghten time=0 opportunity=0liquidity
on the other hand maybe another LTCM can be avoided.
pet theory, financial markets and all their attendend complexity exist to abosrb blasting high energy, innovation to assure survival,nutjob
i know
I'm thinking that one possibility would be money that expires after a set amount of time. Say one year. Money could not then
be used as an asset. It would have to be continuously and reliably spent. All assets would be physical. For one thing, we would
know what society really possessed, as opposed to the imaginary stuff/asset money is.
When I was a little boy, obsessing over Christmas presents, it seemed to me that politics was economics and that economics
was about the extraction of resources from the earth, and from human beings, with all kinds of shenanigans about timing.
No matter how much I learn, it seems that not much has changed.
Thank you for this post! Political economics is a much better name for this pseudo science. If aerospace engineers were wrong
as often as theses clowns airplanes would routinely fall out of the air.
And as Boeing so aptly demonstrates, putting the MBA PMC types in charge of the engineers, also results in airplanes falling
out of the air.
But huge props to Steve Keen for calling this out!
Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman took the "animal spirits" out of economics and turned it into a mathematical model. However,
the behavioral economics and psychological research has shown that people are hard-wired in ways that make the mathematical models
flawed and erroneous.
As a design engineer, we use lots of complex modeling but ultimately our design blueprints and specifications are not rigidly
based on these models because people and/or robots have to build and operate the things. So there is a fair amount of simplification
and clarification that has to happen to have something built without major errors and then operated without major errors, as well
as maintained with varying levels of attention and funding. These require a fair amount of understanding about how humans process
and execute things and/or the limitations on what can be programmed into robots and computers.
I point out to junior engineers that the people who will build and operate the systems did not necessarily graduate in the
top 25% of their high school class unlike the designers. However, many of them have different skill sets that the designers don't
have, such as how to operate heavy equipment and do physical trade activities. So we need to design systems to a common denominator
that work from design and operations viewpoints.
In economics, we are seeing the systems being biased by focusing on theoretical models that don't actually work in practice
because they don't account for what people actually do compared to what a "rational" model says they should do. Hence the crap
about "trickle-down" that never actually works in practice in tax cut plans for the wealthy. Similarly, complex private healthcare
systems in the US don't remotely follow a "perfect information" model that would allow the "invisible hand" to produce efficiency.
so we get massive bloat and rentiere models that prey on consumers. However, that has become a feature, not a bug, on K-street.
Thank you X 10. Samuelson and Friedman claimed they could take the "animal spirits", aka human nature however defined, out
of economics. The claim amounts to saying they could measure, quantify, model, and manipulate human responses to changing situations,
which amounts to a claim of god-like understanding of human mental capacities. How do they measure a human? Reason and logic and
measurable outputs are only a part – and how large a part is as yet undetermined – in human awareness and decision making. Logic
is a good servant but a bad master, as the saying goes. Samuelson and Friedman construct a 'rational man' without ever questioning
the epistemology of their construct. (Mary Shelly might recognize the conceit.)
Michael Hudson is perhaps the best place to start. (Bill Black is a close second. Author of "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is
to Own One.")
Really, if one's education includes a healthy dose of history, anthropology, sociology, politics, and social theory, it's tempting
to suggest that economics is a self-important and smug discipline. Wow, politics affects markets, property relations, and conflict
over economic surplus! Wow. Good to know. And someone just told me that human beings aren't as rational as economists assume.
Wow again. Thanks.
I get the question often, though one would think it's obvious - Who are these "globalists"
we refer to so much in the liberty movement? Sometimes the request comes from honest people who
only want to learn more. Sometimes it comes from disinformation agents attempting to mire
discussion on the issue with assertions that the globalists "don't exist". The answer to the
question can be simple and complex at the same time. In order to understand who the globalists
are, we first have to understand what they want.
We talk a lot about the "globalists" because frankly, their agenda has become more open than
ever in the past ten years. There was a time not long ago when the idea of the existence of
"globalists" was widely considered "conspiracy theory". There was a time when organizations
like the Bilderberg Group did not officially exist and the mainstream media rarely ever
reported on them. There was a time when the agenda for one world economy and a one world
government was highly secretive and mentioned only in whispers in the mainstream. And, anyone
who tried to expose this information to the public was called a "tinfoil hat wearing
lunatic".
Today, the mainstream media writes puff-pieces about the Bilderberg Group and even jokes
about their secrecy. When members of Donald Trump's cabinet, Mike Pompeo and Jared Kushner,
attended Bilderberg in 2019, the mainstream media was wallpapered with
the news .
When the World Government Summit meets each year in Dubai, attended by many of the same
people that attend Bilderberg as well as shady mainstream icons and gatekeepers like Elon Musk
and Neil deGrasse Tyson, they don't hide their discussions or their goals, they post them on
YouTube .
I remember when talking about the US dollar being dethroned and replaced with a new one
world currency system and a cashless society controlled
by the IMF was treated as bizarre theory. Now it's
openly called for by numerous leaders in
the financial industry and in
economic governance . The claim that these things are "conspiracy theory" no longer holds
up anymore. In reality, the people who made such accusations a few years ago now look like
idiots as the establishment floods the media with information and propaganda promoting
everything the liberty movement has been warning about.
The argument on whether or not a globalist agenda "exists" is OVER. The liberty movement and
the alternative media won that debate, and through our efforts we have even forced the
establishment into admitting the existence of some of their plans for a completely centralized
global system managed by them. Now, the argument has changed. The mainstream doesn't really
deny anymore that the globalists exist; they talk about whether or not the globalist agenda is
a good thing or a bad thing.
First , I would point out the sheer level of deception and disinformation used by the
globalists over the past several decades. This deceptions is designed to maneuver the public
towards accepting a one world economy and eventually one world governance . If you have to
lie consistently to people about your ideology in order to get them to support it, then there
must be something very wrong with your ideology.
Second , the establishment may be going public with their plans for globalization, but
they aren't being honest about the consequences for the average person. And, there are many
misconceptions out there, even in the liberty movement, about what exactly these people
want.
So, we need to construct a list of globalist desires vs globalist lies in order to define
who we are dealing with. These are the beliefs and arguments of your run-of-the-mill
globalist:
Centralization
A globalist believes everything must be centralized, from finance to money to social
access to production to government. They argue that centralization makes the system "more
fair" for everyone, but in reality they desire a system in which they have total control over
every aspect of life. Globalists, more than anything, want to dominate and micro-manage every
detail of civilization and socially engineer humanity in the image they prefer.
One
World Currency System And Cashless Society
As an extension of centralization, globalists want a single currency system for the world.
Not only this, but they want it digitized and easy to track. Meaning, a cashless society in
which every act of trade by every person can be watched and scrutinized. If trade is no
longer private, preparation for rebellion becomes rather difficult. When all resources can be
manged and restricted to a high degree at the local level, rebellion would become unthinkable
because the system becomes the parent and provider and the source of life. A one world
currency and cashless system would be the bedrock of one world governance. You cannot have
one without the other.
One World Government
Globalists want to erase all national borders and sovereignty and create a single elite
bureaucracy, a one world empire in which they are the "philosopher kings" as described in
Plato's Republic.
As Richard N. Gardner, former deputy assistant Secretary of State for International
Organizations under Kennedy and Johnson, and a member of the Trilateral Commission, wrote in
the April, 1974 issue of the Council on Foreign Relation's (CFR) journal Foreign Affairs (pg.
558) in an article titled
'The Hard Road To World Order' :
" In short, the 'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up rather
than from the top down. It will look like a great 'booming, buzzing confusion,' to use
William James' famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty,
eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal
assault."
This system would be highly inbred, though they may continue to give the masses the
illusion of public participation and "democracy" for a time. Ultimately, the globalists
desire a faceless and unaccountable round table government, a seat of power which acts as an
institution with limited liability, much like a corporation, and run in the same sociopathic
manner without legitimate public oversight. In the globalist world, there will be no redress
of grievances.
Sustainability As Religion
Globalists often use the word "sustainability" in their white papers and agendas, from
Agenda 21 to Agenda 2030. Environmentalism is the facade they employ to guilt the population
into supporting global governance, among other things. As I noted in my recent article
'Why Is The Elitist Establishment So Obsessed With Meat' , fake environmentalism and
fraudulent global warming "science" is being exploited by globalists to demand control over
everything from how much electricity you can use in your home, to how many children you can
have, to how much our society is allowed to manufacture or produce, to what you are allowed
to eat.
The so-called carbon pollution threat, perhaps the biggest scam in history, is a key
component of the globalist agenda. As the globalist organization The Club Of Rome, a
sub-institution attached to the United Nations, stated in their book 'The First Global
Revolution' :
" In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea
that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would
fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a
common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these
dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about,
namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in
natural processes. and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be
overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself."
In other words, by presenting human beings as a species as the great danger, the
globalists hope to convince humanity to sublimate itself before the mother earth goddess and
beg to be kept in line. And, as the self designated "guardians" of the Earth, the elites
become the high priests of the new religion of sustainability. They and they alone would
determine who is a loyal servant and who is a heretic. Carbon pollution becomes the new
"original sin"; everyone is a sinner against the Earth, for everyone breaths and uses
resources, and we must all do our part to appease the Earth by sacrificing as much as
possible, even ourselves.
The elites don't believe in this farce, they created it. The sustainability cult is merely
a weapon to be used to dominate mass psychology and make the populace more
malleable.
Population Control
Globalists come from an ideological background which worships eugenics – the belief
that genetics must be controlled and regulated, and those people they deem to be undesirables
must be sterilized or exterminated.
The modern eugenics movement was launched by
the Rockefeller Foundation in the early 1900's in America , and was treated a a
legitimate scientific endeavor for decades. Eugenics was taught in schools and even
celebrated at the World's Fair. States like California that adopted eugenics legislation
forcefully sterilized tens of thousands of people and denied thousands of marriage
certificates based on genetics. The system was transferred to Germany in the 1930's were it
gained world renown for its inherent brutality.
This ideology holds that
4% or less of the population is genetically worthy of leadership, and the elites
conveniently assert that they represent part of that genetic purity.
After WWII the public developed a distaste for the idea of eugenics and population
control, but under the guise of environmentalism the agenda is making a comeback, as
population reduction in the name of "saving the Earth" is in the
mainstream media once again . The Question then arises - Who gets to decide who lives and
who dies? Who gets to decide who is never born? And, how will they come to their decisions?
No doubt a modern form of eugenics will be presented as the "science" used to "fairly"
determine the content of the population if the elites get their way.
Narcissistic
Sociopathy
It is interesting that the globalists used to present the 4% leadership argument in their
eugenics publications, because 4% of the population is also consistent with the number of
people who have
inherent sociopathy or narcissistic sociopathy , either in latent or full-blown form,
with 1% of
people identified as full blown psychopaths and the rest as latent. Coincidence?
The behavior of the globalists is consistent with the common diagnosis of full-blown
narcopaths, a condition which is believed to be inborn and incurable. Narcopaths
(pyschopaths) are devoid of empathy and are often self obsessed. They suffer from delusions
of grandeur and see themselves as "gods" among men. They believe other lowly people are tools
to be used for their pleasure or to further their ascendance to godhood. They lie incessantly
as a survival mechanism and are good at determining what people want to hear. Narcopaths feel
no compassion towards those they harm or murder, yet crave attention and adoration from the
same people they see as inferior. More than anything, they seek the power to micro-manage the
lives of everyone around them and to feed off those people like a parasite feeds off a host
victim.
Luciferianism
It is often argued by skeptics that psychopaths cannot organize cohesively, because such
organizations would self destruct. These people simply don't know what they're talking about.
Psychopaths throughout history organize ALL THE TIME, from tyrannical governments to
organized crime and religious cults. The globalists have their own binding ideologies and
methods for organization. One method is to ensure benefits to those who serve the group (as
well as punishments for those who stray). Predators often work together as long as there is
ample prey. Another method is the use of religious or ideological superiority; making
adherents feel like they are part of an exclusive and chosen few destined for greatness.
This is a highly complicated issue which requires its own essay to examine in full. I
believe I did this effectively in my article
'Luciferians: A Secular Look At A Destructive Globalist Belief System' . Needless to say,
this agenda is NOT one that globalists are willing to admit to openly very often, but I have
outlined extensive evidence that luciferianism is indeed the underlying globalist cult
religion. It is essentially an ideology which promotes moral relativism, the worship of the
self and the attainment of godhood by any means necessary – which fits perfectly with
globalism and globalist behavior.
So, now that we know the various agendas and identifiers of globalists, we can now ask "Who
are the globalists?"
The answer is – ANYONE who promotes the above agendas, related arguments, or any
corporate or political leader who works directly with them. This
includes presidents that claim to be anti-globalist while also filling their cabinets with
people from globalist organizations.
To make a list of names is simple; merely study the membership rosters of globalists
organizations like the Bilderberg Group, the Council On Foreign Relations, the Trilateral
Commission, Tavistock Institute, the IMF, the BIS, World Bank, the UN, etc. You will find a
broad range of people from every nation and every ethnicity ALL sharing one goal – A
world in which the future for every other person is dictated by them for all time; a world in
which freedom is a memory and individual choice is a commodity only they have the right to
enjoy.
* * *
If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on
advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The
Wild Bunch Dispatch . Learn more about it
HERE .
The short story is that these stanks are stronger than ever in terms of their ability to
build support for what their funders task them to do, laundering the fingerprints on the rigged
outcome to make it all look like the honest work of unbiased academics.
Corporate media, even in the old days where they were not as bad, would not dig into the
stanks' shorts too deeply, as they had a symbiotic relationship. The media used them for
"expert" sourcing in getting their geopolitical articles done and looking classy.
There is no way to get rid of the stanks now, as they are too deeply entrenched. It would
take funding like they have to construct an "anti-stank" – a new batch of non-stanks that
were not in the tank Jim W. Dean ]
Jim's Editor's Notes are solely crowdfunded via PayPal
Jim's work includes research, field trips, Heritage TV Legacy archiving & more.
Thanks for helping. Click to
donate >>
For the longest time the so-called "think tanks" have been an indispensable element of the
American political system. These days there are well over two thousand such "analytical
centers" operating in the US, which exceeds the combined total in other major international
players such as India, China, Argentina, Germany, and the UK.
The first noticeable spike in the number of think tanks across America occurred in the
post-WWII years when such "analytical centers" assumed the duty of upholding the emerging
unipolar world order within which Washington reigned above all other nations.
In fact, most of them were created primarily by the military, interested in developing a
strategy for accumulating large volumes of politically relevant information, which would have
been impossible without the employment of civilian specialists possessing diverse skill sets
that allowed them to become proficient at geostrategic analysis.
Thus, in 1956, the US Secretary of Defense headed by Charles Erwin Wilson demanded that a
total of America's five largest universities join their efforts in establishing a non-profit
research organization called the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA). In less than a decade,
this entity grew into a massive scientific institution employing well over 600 people.
In the 1960s, there were over 200 think tanks operating simultaneously all across America.
The most famous and influential among them were the so-called "government-funded centers",
among them the RAND Corporation, the Institute for Defense Analysis, the Institute for Naval
Analysis, and the Aerospace Corporation, all of which were directly supported by the US
Congress, which would allocate up to 300 million dollars annually to support their
operations.
However, in addition to
those thinks tanks funded by the state, there was a rapidly growing number of privately-owned
analytical centers that were funded by special interests who decided to use these entities to
advance their own agendas, thus indirectly influencing American domestic and foreign policies
by launching various campaigns.
There where various charitable foundations that came in handy, providing gifts and public
donations and allowing their analysts to profit from various publications. During the period
from 1957 to 1964, when the very term "think tanks" was coined, the total turnout of those
entities increased to 15 billion dollars annually.
At the peak of the think tank craze in the United States -- from 1960 to 1970 -- more than
150 billion dollars were spent on their operations. Today, the budget of the RAND Corporation
alone exceeds the threshold of 12 billion dollars a year.
Initially, this American think tank empire was used to overcome crises and develop long-term
strategies, with custom-tailored recipes provided to American politicians for approaching
various regions of the world. In the 1960s, they were tasked with finding solutions to the
problems associated with the Vietnam War, the declining role of the US dollar in global
financial markets and the internal instability of the United States.
That's when globalist projects were born, which were designed in such a way that they would
divert the attention of the general public from the most acute social problems at home.
Thus, by the end of the previous century, American think tanks turned themselves into an
active decision-making tool in the US, as they were not just using "external financing" to
advance the agendas of their benefactor s , but were also capable of putting forward respected
analysts supporting their cause, with the controlled mass media promoting their narrative.
The close interconnection of the large think tanks and the US government structures is
confirmed by American politicians and businessmen changing high-profile positions within the
government with positions in these entities.
From the point of view of political rotation, those think tanks serve as a training ground
for future high-ranking officials of upcoming administrations, where the establishment
handpicks and approves these figures who will eventually get elected. And while one party is in
power, the other sends its front-liners back to the think tanks.
A vivid example of this phenomenon is the track record of Donald Trump's former advisor on
matters of national security, John Bolton, who at different periods of his political career was
employed by three different think tanks – the Jewish Institute for National Security of
America (JINSA), the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) and the
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Besides this, as you may know, he was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and
International Security Affairs under George W. Bush, a member of the New American Century
(PNAC), and in 2007 joined the American Enterprise Institute (AE), that is also an NGO.
Upon receiving specific tasks from behind the scenes interests, elites and various
departments, these think tanks began developing various foreign policy concepts, training
experts and representatives while preparing public opinion for certain developments through the
media, like the advancement of "color revolutions" or the reemergence of some "evil powers"
attempting to compete with Washington.
Aside from the well-publicized example of the RAND Corporation, you can look at StrategEast,
which is described as the strategic center for political and diplomatic decisions. The main
stated objective of StrategEast is the development of programs for specific states on the basis
of their susceptibility to various Western (American) values.
Behind this idyllic concept hides the following: StrategEast analysts collect information on
the possibility of creating a pro-American society within targeted territories that are of
interest to the United States.
For instance, from the mid-80s onwards, Washington was interested in the Soviet Union, and
its republics, which resulted in the Baltic states, and then Georgia and Ukraine joining the
list of US allies due to the programs developed by StrategEast. Today, they are busy
researching the Central Asian states, so it doesn't take much imagination to predict what will
happen next.
In the initial stages, StrategEast programs provide a recipe to drive a country away from
its traditional cultural values, so that it can be turned into an anti-Russian stronghold (as
was done in the Baltic countries, Georgia, and Ukraine) or into their anti-Chinese equivalent
(like is happening now with the countries of Central and Southeast Asia).
In Central Asia, for example, American "experts" have begun to impose the idea of
translating the national alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin under a very strange pretext that it
would then make life easier for local Internet users (while failing to explain why the
incredibly complex Japanese and Chinese characters do not impede the ability of users in Japan
and China to use the Internet).
In parallel with linguistic and cultural Westernization, the local public is being prepared
for the possibility of massive protests so that it won't object to "color revolutions" that
engineered to follow.
As we're witnessing the new Cold War going into full swing, there must be an objective
assessment of the activities of US think tanks, as their "concepts" and "projects" should be
approached with a clear understanding of the fact that they advance certain interests that do
not necessarily correspond with the national interests of other countries.
Valery Kulikov, expert politicologist, exclusively for the online magazine 'New Eastern Outlook'
Jewish hedge fund manager Henry Laufer keeps a low profile.
Laufer and his business partner Jim Simons burned
$14 million on Hillary Clinton in 2016. He is currently spending $2.8 million on figures
like Nancy Pelosi and disgraced, corrupt Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz's re-election
campaign.
The Laufers are also generous patrons of Media Matters for America, the anti-free speech
organization that has made multiple attempts to get Tucker Carlson off the air.
Paul Singer [***] (GOP)
If you're wondering why so many prominent conservative figures are **** stars and
homosexuals, it's all downstream from international *** Paul Singer.
Singer, who puts the
"vulture" in "vulture capitalist," is one of the country's top funders of homosexual
activism and the
reason the Republican party did not fight against gay marriage. He was instrumental in
paying to
obtain the infamous "Steele Dossier," which falsely claimed Donald Trump was being
blackmailed by Vladimir Putin with video of prostitutes urinating on him in Russia. He has a
wide array of politicians, journalists and other influential people in his pocket, largely
dedicated to pushing hawkish Israel policies, homosexuality and
discrediting critics of capitalism .
Going into 2020, the hedge fund oligarch is pouring $3.4 million dollars into Lindsey
Graham's PAC , the WFW Fund (dedicated to financing female conservatives) and the American
Unity PAC (a group dedicated to advancing homosexual activists inside the Republican
party).
While the JEWS that run and own google decide your fate, their *** buddies are doing this
to your U.S. political system:
'Zionist Money Already Corrupting the 2020 Elections'
by Eric Striker
"WATCHING THE last Democratic debate, you would think the candidates were vying for an
electorate that is 90% Black and illegal alien.
Issues like jobs, infrastructure, even foreign policy were largely ignored.
The [***] parasites in the shadows making a mockery out of representative democracy have
good reason to be confident: they are already starting to corrupt the 2020 elections.
Open
Secrets analyzed the most recent donor data for the top 10 political donors going into
next year's first quarter.
Unsurprisingly, 8 out of 10 of these fat cats are Jews.
Henry and Marsha Laufer [JEWS] (Democrat)
Jewish hedge fund manager Henry Laufer keeps a low profile.
Laufer and his business partner Jim Simons burned
$14 million on Hillary Clinton in 2016.
He is currently spending $2.8 million on figures like Nancy Pelosi and disgraced, corrupt
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz's re-election campaign.
The Laufers are also generous patrons of Media Matters for America, the anti-free speech
organization that has made multiple attempts to get Tucker Carlson off the air.
Karla Jurvetson [***] (Democrat)
Jurvetson, whose real surname is Tinklenberg, is a physician who recently divorced
billionaire Steve Jurvetson.
Her ex-husband is a big player in Silicon Valley, known for hosting
drug-fueled orgies where mentally disturbed tech CEOs dress up like bunny rabbits.
Paul Singer [***] (GOP)
If you're wondering why so many prominent conservative figures are **** stars and
homosexuals, it's all downstream from international *** Paul Singer.
Singer, who puts the
"vulture" in "vulture capitalist," is one of the country's top funders of homosexual
activism and the
reason the Republican party did not fight against gay marriage. He was instrumental in
paying to
obtain the infamous "Steele Dossier," which falsely claimed Donald Trump was being
blackmailed by Vladimir Putin with video of prostitutes urinating on him in Russia. He has a
wide array of politicians, journalists and other influential people in his pocket, largely
dedicated to pushing hawkish Israel policies, homosexuality and
discrediting critics of capitalism .
Going into 2020, the hedge fund oligarch is pouring $3.4 million dollars into Lindsey
Graham's PAC , the WFW Fund (dedicated to financing female conservatives) and the American
Unity PAC (a group dedicated to advancing homosexual activists inside the Republican
party).
Deborah Simon [***] (Democrat)
The *** Simon inherited her money from her property development father, Melvin Simon, of
Simon Property Group. The elder Simon was the subject of multiple lawsuits when he
ripped off his shareholders and paid himself a $120 million dollar bonus.
Deborah has so far spent $3.5 million dollars on various Democratic PACs, including $1
million dedicated to bankrolling David Brock's operations.
Bernard Marcus [***] (GOP)
Bernard Marcus, the Jewish emigre who founded Home Depot, was one of the a handful of
billionaires to give Donald Trump big donations during his 2016 presidential run.
Now, Zionist activist Marcus has set aside $4.6 million dollars to keep Senate Majority
leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, both up for re-election in
2020, in his pocket.
George Soros [***] (Democrat)
Soros is one of many Jewish finance-capitalists corrupting our politics. He spent $20
million during the 2016 election.
Today, Soros looks to be the big fish in small bowls by targeting prosecutorial races.
This is dangerous, as few people pay much attention to District Attorney races, even though
these figures have the power to put innocent people in prison and let guilty people go
free.
The $5.1 million he's utilizing this quarter have all gone to his new "Democracy PAC,"
which played a
major role in getting extremist prosecutors elected in Virginia. Soros also famously
provided $1.7
million dollars to fellow *** Larry Krasner, who ran for prosecutor in Philadelphia as a
literal supporter of Black Lives Matter.
Superficially these elections are low stakes, so even a few hundred thousands dollars can
guarantee a landslide victory for the most absurd and extreme candidates. Soros' money going
into 2020 promise to accelerate the US judicial system's decline into anarcho-tyranny .
Tom Steyer [***] (Democrat)
Steyer is yet another Jewish hedgefund manager with a penchant for lavish political
spending.
Steyer funds countless neo-liberal think-tanks and Democratic party causes. Now, he is
planning to blow
$100 million on his highly unpopular presidential run.
This billionaire who made much of his money in the coal industry is now primarily pushing
climate change , which is really
just austerity through the backdoor . This quarter, he has spent $6.5 million on his own
Super PAC, NextGen Climate Action.
Donald Sussman [***] (Democrat)
This hedgefund *** leads in donations during this period.
Sussman is Paul Singer's former business partner and played a major role in the
billionaire cabal that tried to win the Democrats the whole Congress in 2018.
He is giving $7.5 million to various Democratic party PACs, and has a special interest in
Cory Booker's flagging campaign -- currently polling at 3%.
Please think about it, folks. These companies thrive on H1B Visas and foreign talent. With
the social power invested in these companies, the foreign-born employees create yet another
conduit of foreign election influence.
The H-1Bs have ruined the industry. So much American talent is underemployed or unemployed
simply because they can't get noticed amidst the oceans of foreign nationals.
The so-called "Anti-Defamation League," like every Jewish interest group, doesn't
practice what it preaches. In fact, the ADL under CEO Johnathan Greenblatt is one of the
main organizations working to defame its political enemies and to censor free speech
online. Their cause? As usual, securing Jewish ethnic interests.
This is what it all boils down to in the end. All the censorship is at the behest of the
ADL and crony CEOs (mostly Jewish) working in tandem to attack free speech on the
internet...
..all i mostly see is the needed collapse and waiting for that to happen..
someone around here said recently that it should be smooth sailing for the USA for at
least another 150 to 200 years, so indeed to make a prediction it's enough you have vocal
cords.
interestingly though, Dmitry Orlov, who has invested much of his overall thesis in the
process of collapse (of the US empire) recently
predicted its happening in his lifetime At this point, I am tempted to go out on a limb
and predict that if all goes well (for me) I will still be alive when this collapse actually
transpires
BOTH the AG and federal prosecutor Durham REJECT the findings. Durham has the ability to
conduct a criminal investigation that Horowitz did not. Given this, the IG found evidence to
criminally refer FBI officials and campaign spies.
Remember: the Durham probe became a CRIMINAL investigation as soon as he left Rome with
information on Mifsud. IG said he wasn't working for the FBI. Leaves only one other option:
CIA, and why Brennan and his team have all lawyered up. Bye bye, Brennan.
"... Ms. Rion spoke with Ukrainian former Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko who outlines how former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch perjured herself before Congress . ..."
"... What is outlined in this interview is a problem for all DC politicians across both parties. The obviously corrupt influence efforts by U.S. Ambassador Yovanovitch as outlined by Lutsenko were not done independently. ..."
"... Senators from both parties participated in the influence process and part of those influence priorities was exploiting the financial opportunities within Ukraine while simultaneously protecting Joe Biden and his family. This is where Senator John McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham were working with Marie Yovanovitch. ..."
In a fantastic display of true investigative journalism, One America News journalist Chanel
Rion tracked down Ukrainian witnesses as part of an exclusive OAN investigative series. The
evidence being discovered dismantles the baseless Adam Schiff impeachment hoax and highlights
many corrupt motives for U.S. politicians.
Ms. Rion spoke with Ukrainian former Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko who outlines how
former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch perjured herself before Congress .
What is outlined in this interview is a problem for all DC politicians across both parties.
The obviously corrupt influence efforts by U.S. Ambassador Yovanovitch as outlined by Lutsenko
were not done independently.
Senators from both parties participated in the influence process and part of those influence
priorities was exploiting the financial opportunities within Ukraine while simultaneously
protecting Joe Biden and his family. This is where Senator John McCain and Senator Lindsey
Graham were working with Marie Yovanovitch.
Imagine what would happen if all of the background information was to reach the general
public? Thus the motive for Lindsey Graham currently working to bury it.
You might remember George Kent and Bill Taylor testified together.
It was evident months ago that U.S. chargé d'affaires to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, was
one of the current participants in the coup effort against President Trump. It was Taylor who
engaged in carefully planned
text messages with EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland to set-up a narrative helpful to Adam
Schiff's political coup effort.
Bill Taylor was formerly U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine ('06-'09) and later helped the Obama
administration to design the laundry operation providing taxpayer financing to Ukraine in
exchange for back-channel payments to U.S. politicians and their families.
In November Rudy Giuliani released a letter he sent to Senator
Lindsey Graham outlining how Bill Taylor blocked VISA's for Ukrainian 'whistle-blowers' who are
willing to testify to the corrupt financial scheme.
Unfortunately, as we are now witnessing, Senator Lindsey Graham, along with dozens of U.S.
Senators currently serving, may very well have been recipients for money through the
aforementioned laundry process. The VISA's are unlikely to get approval for congressional
testimony, or Senate impeachment trial witness testimony.
U.S. senators write foreign aid policy, rules and regulations thereby creating the financing
mechanisms to transmit U.S. funds. Those same senators then received a portion of the laundered
funds back through their various "institutes" and business connections to the foreign
government offices; in this example Ukraine. [ex. Burisma to Biden]
The U.S. State Dept. serves as a distribution network for the authorization of the money
laundering by granting conflict waivers , approvals for financing (think Clinton Global
Initiative), and permission slips for the payment of foreign money. The officials within the
State Dept. take a cut of the overall payments through a system of "indulgence fees", junkets,
gifts and expense payments to those with political oversight.
If anyone gets too close to revealing the process, writ large, they become a target of the
entire apparatus. President Trump was considered an existential threat to this entire process.
Hence our current political status with the ongoing coup.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out , because, well, in reality all of the U.S.
Senators (both parties) are participating in the process for receiving taxpayer money and
contributions from foreign governments.
A "Codel" is a congressional delegation that takes trips to work out the payments
terms/conditions of any changes in graft financing. This is why Senators spend $20 million on a
campaign to earn a job paying $350k/year. The "institutes" is where the real foreign money
comes in; billions paid by governments like China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Ukraine, etc.
etc. There are trillions at stake.
[SIDEBAR: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell holds the power over these members (and the
members of the Senate Intel Committee), because McConnell decides who sits on what committee.
As soon as a Senator starts taking the bribes lobbying funds, McConnell then has
full control over that Senator. This is how the system works.]
The McCain Institute is one of the obvious examples of the financing network. And that is
the primary reason why Cindy McCain is such an outspoken critic of President Trump. In essence
President Trump is standing between her and her next diamond necklace; a dangerous place to
be.
So when we think about a Senate Impeachment Trial; and we consider which senators will vote
to impeach President Trump, it's not just a matter of Democrats -vs- Republican. We need to
look at the game of leverage, and the stand-off between those bribed Senators who would prefer
President Trump did not interfere in their process.
McConnell has been advising President Trump which Senators are most likely to need their
sensibilities eased. As an example President Trump met with Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski in
November. Senator Murkowski rakes in millions from the multinational Oil and Gas industry; and
she ain't about to allow horrible Trump to lessen her bank account any more than Cindy McCain
will give up her frequent shopper discounts at Tiffanys.
Senator Lindsey Graham
announcing today that he will not request or facilitate any impeachment testimony that
touches on the DC laundry system for personal financial benefit (ie. Ukraine example), is
specifically motivated by the need for all DC politicians to keep prying eyes away from the
swamps' financial endeavors. WATCH:
This open-secret system of "Affluence and Influence" is how the intelligence apparatus gains
such power. All of the DC participants are essentially beholden to the various U.S.
intelligence services who are well aware of their endeavors.
There's a ton of exposure here (blackmail/leverage) which allows the unelected officials
within the CIA, FBI and DOJ to hold power over the DC politicians. Hold this type of leverage
long enough and the Intelligence Community then absorbs that power to enhance their self-belief
of being more important than the system.
Perhaps this corrupt sense of grandiosity is what we are seeing play out in how the
intelligence apparatus views President Donald J Trump as a risk to their importance.
Everyone loves money. I like money. The only question is how to earn them. Neither I, nor
you, nor many of us will cross a certain moral and ethical line (border), but there are
people without morality, without ethical standards, without conscience. We all look the same
outwardly, but we are all completely different inside.
Ukraine is Obama's **** , this is not Trump's ****. Trump's stupidity was only one - he
got into this ****. I wrote, but I repeat - USA acted as the best friend in relation to
Russia, having taken off a leech from Russia and hanging it on itself. Do you know such an
estate of Rothschilds - called Israel and its role in the life of USA?
So, Ukraine was for the Russians the same Israel in terms of meaningless spending. Look at
Vlad, in 2014 he looked like a fox who was eating a chicken, and on January 1, 2020 he will
look like a fox who eating a whole brood of chickens. I think he has portraits of Obama and
Trump in his bedroom.
Yes, indeed. Lindsey will bury the story, he is on the take. Your tax dollars at work. By
the way, the Fed picked up all of the Ukies gold for safekeeping at 33 Liberty St. NY, with
Yats permission, of course.... https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-18/ukraine-admits-its-gold-gone
A glimpse into how elected officials accumulate millions, retire wealthy, pampered and
privileged....and I'm not talking pensions I'm talking corruption. Obama, Biden, Hillary,
Kerry, Holder, Rice and ALL the senior Obama Administration officials knew of each other's
corrupt sinecures.
Well, it is based on a OAN story. Believe it or not, they actually sent a reporter to
Ukraine to talk to people with knowledge of the matter and look what they came up with. Kind
of makes you wonder why other well funded news organizations never thought to do something
like that.
I don't know that we deserve this. We are all working people, with families to raise,
taxes to pay and the Dems and Commies have been working against us 24/7. And most of them get
paid to do so from government jobs that pay them 8 hours a day when many work 1 hour a day,
all the while scheming against us.
If Trump wins a second term, he is gonna **** these people up good.
Now that I've read the article, I'm both shocked and appalled at learning that Ukraine is
a money laundering operation for the politically connected. (They provide many other 'perks'
as well.)
I've warned about light in the loafers Lindsey as well as McConnell before and more than
once. Sessions should also be denied a re-admission into the swamp. There are others.
In her usual succinct and clarifying manner, The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel
took to Twitter overnight to summarize the farcical findings within the Horowitz Report (and
Barr and Durham's responses).
In
sixteen short tweets , Strassel destroyed the spin while elucidating the key findings of
the Horowitz report (emphasis ours):
Yup, IG said FBI hit threshold for opening an investigation. But also goes out of its way to
note what a "low threshold" this is.
Durham's statement made clear he will provide more info for Americans to make a judgment on
reasonableness.
The report is triumph for former House Intel Chair Devin Nunes, who first blew the whistle
on FISA abuse. The report confirms all the elements of the February 2018 Nunes memo, which said
dossier was as an "essential" part of applications, and FBI withheld info from FISA court
Conversely, the report is an excoriation of Adam Schiff and his "memo" of Feb 2018.
That doc stated that "FBI and DOJ officials did NOT abuse the [FISA] process" or "omit
material information."
Also claimed FBI didn't much rely on dossier.
In fact, IG report says dossier played "central and essential role" in getting FISA
warrants.
Schiff had access to same documents as Nunes, yet chose to misinform the public. This is
the guy who just ran impeachment proceedings.
The Report is a devastating indictment of Steele, Fusion GPS and the "dossier."
Report finds that about the only thing FBI ever corroborated in that doc were publicly
available times, places, title names. Ouch.
IG finds 17 separate problems with FISA court submissions, including FBI's overstatement of
Steele's credentials. Also the failure to provide court with exculpatory evidence and issues
with Steele's sources and additional info it got about Steele's credibility.
Every one of these "issues" is a story all on its own.
Example: The FBI had tapes of Page and Papadopoulos making statements that were
inconsistent with FBI's own collusion theories. They did not provide these to the FISA
court.
Another example: FBI later got info from professional contacts with Steele who said he
suffered from "lack of self awareness, poor judgement" and "pursued people" with "no
intelligence value." FBI also did not tell the court about these credibility concerns.
And this: FBI failed to tell Court that Page was approved as an "operational contact" for
another U.S. agency, and "candidly" reported his interactions with a Russian intel officer.
FBI instead used that Russian interaction against Page, with no exculpatory detail.
Overall, IG was so concerned by these "extensive compliance failures" that is has now
initiated additional "oversight" to assess how FBI in general complies with "policies that seek
to protect the civil liberties of U.S. persons."
The Report also expressed concerns about FBI's failure to present any of these issues to DOJ
higher ups; its ongoing contacts with Steele after he was fired for talking to media; and its
use of spies against the campaign without any DOJ input.
Remember Comey telling us it was no big deal who paid for dossier?
Turns out it was a big deal in FBI/DOJ, where one lawyer (Stuart Evans) expressed
"concerns" it had been funded by Clinton/DNC. Because of his "consistent inquiries" we go
that convoluted footnote.
IG also slaps FBI for using what was supposed to be a baseline briefing for the Trump
campaign of foreign intelligence threats as a surreptitious opportunity to investigate Flynn
.
Strassel's last point is perhaps the most important for those on the left claiming
"vindication"...
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.
Please
enter a valid email Thank you for subscribing!Something went wrong. Please refresh
and try again.
When IG says he found no "documentary" evidence of bias, he means just that: He didn't
find smoking gun email that says "let's take out Trump."
And it isn't his job to guess at the motivations of FBI employees.
Instead... He straightforwardly lays out facts.
Those facts produce a pattern of FBI playing the FISA Court--overstating some info,
omitting other info, cherrypicking details.
Americans can look at totality and make their own judgment as to "why" FBI behaved in such a
manner.
Finally, intriguing just how many people at the FBI don't remember anything about anything.
Highly convenient.
The congress decline is now visible. Other institutions will follow.
Much depends on how long "plato oil" will hold and Seneca cliff arrives.
Notable quotes:
"... First the institutions will decline. Second, the State will decline. Third, the economy will decline and only after this "phase 3" that we'll be able to se the real desintegration of the USA. ..."
"... More probable would be the gradual secession of some States after the economy has degraded enough. I wouldn't consider the loss of one peripheral State as the formal end of the USA, but if it goes to the stage of it losing more or less the Southern States or the Midwest States, then I think some historians would use these as a useful event to mark the formal end of the USA. ..."
"... the USA will remain a very influent regional superpower for the foreseeable future. It would have to take the entire capitalist structure to fall for the USA to really enter its disintegration phase. I've talked with some Marxists, and the most optimistic of them believe the USA still has some 150-200 years of tranquil existence. Of course, we're not psychics, so they are all wild guesses. ..."
@ Posted by: Passer by | Dec 9 2019 16:39 utc | 102
Well, the only USA that matters to the rest of the world is the
USA-as-the-world's-sole-superpower. If that version of the USA disappears, then we would be
talking about a completely different geopolitical architecture ("multipolar").
The USA itself doesn't need to collapse or disintegrate for that to happen.
My opinion is that the USA is losing its "sole superpower" status, albeit at a very slow
pace. It couldn't be another way, since the USA is a nuclear superpower, so its competitors
must deactivate its hegemony slowly and gently.
I also believe the USA will disappear some day, but in a different way than the USSR.
Since the USA is a capitalist economy, it will desintegrate rather than collapse, and this
disintegration will happen more a la Roman Empire (Crisis of the Third Century and beyond)
rather than a la USSR. Capitalism has an anarchic way of producing and distributing its
wealth, resulting in a decentralized web of institutions. First the institutions will
decline. Second, the State will decline. Third, the economy will decline and only after this
"phase 3" that we'll be able to se the real desintegration of the USA.
I don't believe the USA will fall by conquest, mostly because it has MAD, second because
its geographic location favors a defensive war of its territory. More probable would be
the gradual secession of some States after the economy has degraded enough. I wouldn't
consider the loss of one peripheral State as the formal end of the USA, but if it goes to the
stage of it losing more or less the Southern States or the Midwest States, then I think some
historians would use these as a useful event to mark the formal end of the USA.
But before that, I believe the USA will remain a very influent regional superpower for
the foreseeable future. It would have to take the entire capitalist structure to fall for the
USA to really enter its disintegration phase. I've talked with some Marxists, and the most
optimistic of them believe the USA still has some 150-200 years of tranquil existence. Of
course, we're not psychics, so they are all wild guesses.
Wow, even fake news NBC is pooping themselves over FISA mishandling. I predict whiplash
with how fast the fake news, drive-by media throws Comey, Clapper and Brennan under the bus
to protect Hillary and Obongo.
"The report concludes that despite nearly everybody investigating President Trump hating
him - and that evidence was fabricated by at least one FBI attorney, and that they
misrepresented Christopher Steele's credentials, none of their bias 'tainted' the
investigation , and the underlying process was sound."
Who investigating major criminal acts actually likes the perp? It was such a juvenile
argument from day 1.
I bet the truth is stretched a bit in just about every subpoena issued, not just FISA
ones. It is the nature of things, since you are trying to obtain evidence of crimes that are
currently unproven but suspected. As such all subpoena's are issued based on the perception
of guilt and not any actual proof of that guilt. This was a non-starter from the
beginning.
Steele said he had visited Ivanka Trump at Trump Tower and had been "friendly" with her
for "some years". He described their relationship as "personal". The former British
government spy had even given her a "family tartan from Scotland" as a present, the report
quoted him as saying.
It all comes down to the Barr/Durham investigation and indictments that follow.
Will they indict the top dogs (Comey, Clapper, Clinton, Brennan, Rosenstein, Obama,
Strokz, Page, Ohr, McCabe, Yates, Priestap, etc.) and make the long-needed changes to Fed
Gov't or indict just a bunch of low-level "Fall Guys" in the alphabet agencies to try to make
the public release some steam and then drop it all like a hot potato and keep the Deep State
intact.???
If REAL justice isn't served up at that point gov't as we know it will collapse as America
descends into anarchy and lawlessness.
The political class and mainstream media needs to be purged and the U.S. Constitution
fully restored.
As I stated not that long ago. You cannot have a corrupt FBI without a corrupt DOJ. And
you cannot have a corrupt agency without a corrupt IG. Period. Remember the IRS IG clearing
Lois Lerner? Hmmm?
The only crimes committed were by the Trump campaign and administration. Try to pay
attention. Do you need a list of Trump associates who are either in jail or have been
convicted and are on their way to jail?
Meanwhile, Hillary's laughing it up with Howard Stern.
Wow, even fake news NBC is pooping themselves over FISA mishandling. I predict whiplash
with how fast the fake news, drive-by media throws Comey, Clapper and Brennan under the bus
to protect Hillary and Obongo.
"... Significantly Wallerstein, arguing from history that the intervals between these brief periods of hegemony are periods in which several states compete for the 'succession'-France and the UK in the period after the Dutch moment had passed; Germany and the United States after 1850- suggested that the European Community would be competing with the East Asian bloc for hegemony. ..."
"... Also of interest is the fact that Russia, which didn't feature among the contestants for future hegemony in 1980, has now re-emerged in its ancient role as the 'eastern' version of expanding America, a mirror image with even more natural resources, a larger landmass and a natural affinity with China and the formerly Soviet states of central Asia. ..."
"... It might be argued that it is because the hubristic United States cannot bring itself to treat the potentially enormously powerful states of Europe as anything more than contemptible slaves that it is never going to re-establish its global position. On the other hand a case can be made that the current thrust of the United States is to re-establish its ownership of the rest of the hemisphere. It treats Canada as a sort of Puerto Rico with snow and oil. Only recently was Mexico was threatened on the improbable-in historical terms- that it allows the CIA to run its drug trade and supervise its Death Squads. ..."
"... US interference and arrogance is as evident as it has ever been. What is less evident is whether, for all its military and financial power, US policy against Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and their increasingly rebellious neighbours has any chance of succeeding. ..."
There is a sense in which everything on this blog comes back to international relations and
neo-con attempts to build "A New American Century." Which is to say hegemony and
globalisation.
Immanuel Wallerstein, who recently died and will be greatly missed, had some interesting
things to say about hegemonic powers.
He identified the Dutch Republic, for a brief period after emerging victorious from the
Thirty Years war in 1648, the United Kingdom, after Waterloo and up until the Crimean War and
the United States, from 1945 to 1973 as true hegemons with networks of alliances and
designated enemies.
He also makes the point that, long after states have ceased to be hegemonic, they remain
dominant in the areas of finance and culture.
So far as the United States is concerned it is hanging on in both those areas in which,
long after the paper in its Thuggerish foreign policy has been exposed, it retains enormous
influence though its media/entertainment businesses and Wall Street's command in finance. (It
is interesting here that The City, long after the UK has become a US puppet, still has
enormous power in the world of finance.)
Wallerstein prophesied (and this was in 1980) that the next contender for the position of
hegemon was likely to be an East Asian alliance of Japan, Korea and China.
Not a bad guess but one, like the end of US hegemony, made premature by the implosion of the
Soviet Union which provided the US with a new dawn and another chance-quickly blown- to
re-establish its hegemony. Which it did if not in fact then in its own mind in the shape of
the hubristic unipolar moment and Brother Fukuyama's End of History celebration.
Significantly Wallerstein, arguing from history that the intervals between these brief
periods of hegemony are periods in which several states compete for the 'succession'-France
and the UK in the period after the Dutch moment had passed; Germany and the United States
after 1850- suggested that the European Community would be competing with the East Asian bloc
for hegemony.
It is that prophecy which looks lame currently with the European countries probably more
under the domination of the United States than at any time in the past. Wallerstein was
writing at a period when it looked as if the the EEC strengthened by the accession of, inter
alia, the UK would be capable of throwing off the domination of the US and taking an
independent course of its own.
This is a dream, rather like that of the 'Social Europe' in which full employment, welfare
states, free education and regional development defy the spread of neo-liberal values and
strategies, which still leads a ghost like existence in the minds of Europhiles who don't get
out much and have never heard of Greece and the PIIGs.
Also of interest is the fact that Russia, which didn't feature among the contestants for
future hegemony in 1980, has now re-emerged in its ancient role as the 'eastern' version of
expanding America, a mirror image with even more natural resources, a larger landmass and a
natural affinity with China and the formerly Soviet states of central Asia.
It might be argued that it is because the hubristic United States cannot bring itself to
treat the potentially enormously powerful states of Europe as anything more than contemptible
slaves that it is never going to re-establish its global position. On the other hand a case
can be made that the current thrust of the United States is to re-establish its ownership of
the rest of the hemisphere. It treats Canada as a sort of Puerto Rico with snow and oil. Only
recently was Mexico was threatened on the improbable-in historical terms- that it allows the
CIA to run its drug trade and supervise its Death Squads.
As to the rest of central America and the southern continent: US interference and
arrogance is as evident as it has ever been. What is less evident is whether, for all its
military and financial power, US policy against Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and their
increasingly rebellious neighbours has any chance of succeeding.
It wrote in 2001 that the War on Terror was destined to end with Latin American militias,
wearing red armbands, patrolling the streets of Cleveland. Perhaps it will.
"... Remember when Russia bombed Belgrade back to the middle ages, invaded and occupied Iraq, started an eighteen-year long quagmire in Afghanistan, created anarchy in Libya, funded and armed al-Qaeda in Syria, and expanded its bases right up to US borders? Neither do we. ..."
An alarmist headline out of US state-funded media arm Voice
of America : "Pentagon Concerned Russia Cultivating Sympathy Among US Troops". The story
begins as follows:
Russian efforts to weaken the West through a relentless campaign of information warfare
may be starting to pay off, cracking a key bastion of the U.S. line of defense: the military.
While most Americans still see Moscow as a key U.S. adversary, new polling suggests that view
is changing, most notably among the households of military members .
Remember when Russia bombed Belgrade back to the middle ages, invaded and occupied Iraq,
started an eighteen-year long quagmire in Afghanistan, created anarchy in Libya, funded and
armed al-Qaeda in Syria, and expanded its bases right up to US borders? Neither do we.
Nadler also said he would reject witnesses requested by the GOP, calling them "not relevant"
to the allegations.
For example, he said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whom
the Republicans have requested as a witness, did not witness any of the actions and
therefore is not relevant to call as a witness.
In Uncle Sam Land, "freedom" has two meanings. Rich people are free to do as they like. The
rest of us are free to live under a bridge and starve.
We do have one right: The Right To Obey.
The whole society is organized around obedience, and the purpose of public education is to
make sure every one obeys. Modern schools are more accurately called "day prisons", with all
the cameras, metal detectors, armed police, isolation rooms, etc. I wonder how many people
realize that "lockdown" is straight out of the criminal prison system, and is now a regular
occurrence for little kids.
'Free World'? What exactly does that mean? What does 'Freedom' mean? I 'freely' admit I
simply have no idea what people mean when they urgently bleat words like that at me.
To me, freedom applies to an action. You are free to do this, or you are free to do that.
Which is, of course, actions that are constrained or allowed by various laws passed by local,
state, federal and/or international entities. I would suppose that the amount of freedom you
have depends on haw many laws have been passed in your own country to criminalize various
activities.
Has anyone done such an analysis, to define which countries have limited their citizens
behaviour? Simplistically, which countries have written the most laws?
I'll be willing to bet they are the 'democracies' that are most bellicose about protecting
'freedoms'. Let's face facts, politicians just love to keep passing laws, otherwise they have
no reason to exist. I unreasonably think there should be another superior law, that any
government should only be able to have so many laws. If they want to have yet another one,
take some other law away. Otherwise 'freedoms' are just being chipped away at,
constantly.
'Freedom', as a thing unto and onto itself, seems a completely meaningless concept. I keep
wondering why politicians aren't asked what they are talking about when they roar about
'freedom' as a general term.
Even Economists' seem to agree that the decline of labor power, the decimation of Unionism in
the US, has had a devastating effect on the existing quality of life, the opportunity for
economic mobility, and even longevity in the US. The society has been wringing it's hands
over how to bring back the salad days of the strong middle class afforded by representative
labor in the 50's and 60's.
Bernie Sanders platform represents all that was lost. There really is no difference
between Sanders proposals and the union contracts of yore. The election of Sanders along with
a unified Congress to enact his labor friendly proposals will restore the American middle
class.
The Trojan horse of neo-liberal economics, and the defenestration of an independent press
into an oligopoly of lies, was able sell labor arbitrage as beneficial. Underselling American
production by Capitalists employing a Communist monopoly supplier of labor, at substandard
income, health, safety, and environmental conditions, against American workers, was sold as
benefit.
Forty years later, America is unrecognizable. Reduced to platitudes, paying homage to a
long lost civilization.
Yep, but before we could get there we first had to believe that corporate mergers were
necessary and good to achieve economies of scale rather than merely to bestow unbridled
monopoly power, monopsony power, and political power upon the biggest sharks in the tank.
Mergers were about owning Boardwalk and Park Place and globalization was about collecting
rents. Mergers crippled unions and globalization put them out of their misery with a final
death blow.
Vero Beach is awesome, as is most of the FL coasts when there are no hurricanes in town. I
checked Google Map and you are halfway between Daytona Beach and Ft Lauderdale and well away
from that Miami place. If I lived there then I would be fishing for tuna, cobia, wahoo, and
king mackerel every day.
2020 Democratic Candidates Wage Escalating Fight
(on the Merits of Fighting) https://nyti.ms/2Ds4OIC
NYT - Mark Leibovich - Nov. 30
For all the emphasis placed on the various divides
among the candidates, the question of "to fight or
not to fight" might represent the most meaningful contrast.
WALPOLE, N.H. -- Pete Buttigieg has a nifty politician's knack for coming off as a
soothing, healing figure who projects high-mindedness -- even while he's plainly kicking his
opponents in the teeth.
"There is a lot to be angry about," he was saying, cheerfully. Mr. Buttigieg, the
37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., was seated aboard his campaign bus outside a New
Hampshire middle school before a recent Sunday afternoon rally. He was sipping a canned
espresso beverage and his eyes bulged as he spoke, as if he was trying to pass off as
revelatory something he had in fact said countless times before.
"But fighting is not enough and it's a problem if fighting is all you have," he said. "We
fight when we need to fight. But we're never going to say fighting is the point."
In fact, these were fighting words: barely disguised and directed at certain Democratic
rivals. As Mr. Buttigieg enjoys a polling surge in Iowa and New Hampshire, he is trying to
prevent a rebound by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has leveled off in the polls after a
strong summer, and contain Senator Bernie Sanders, whose support has proved durable.
Both are explicit fighters, while Mr. Buttigieg, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
and some others warn that Democrats risk scaring off voters by relying too heavily on
pugnacious oratory, and by emphasizing the need to transform America rather than focusing
simply on ending the Trump presidency and restoring the country to some semblance of
normalcy.
As Mr. Buttigieg has sharpened this critique, however, he has adopted a more aggressive
tone himself -- a sly bit of needle-threading that has coincided with his rise. Mr. Biden,
too, has combined cantankerous language about beating Mr. Trump "like a drum" with more
uplifting rhetoric about "restoring the soul of America."
As Mr. Buttigieg spoke, Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders were holding rallies in which they
could scarcely utter two sentences without dropping in some formulation of the word "fight."
They spoke of the various "fights" they had led and the powerful moneyed interests they had
"fought" and how they would "keep fighting" all the way to the White House.
Mr. Sanders touted himself as the candidate who would "fight to raise wages" and was
"leading the fight to guarantee health care" and "fight against corporate greed." Ms. Warren
(fighting a cold) explained "why I got into this fight, will stay in this fight and why I am
asking others to join the fight."
Every politician wants to be known as a "fighter," even the placid young mayor who has
promised to "change the channel" on Mr. Trump's reality show presidency and all the rancor
that has accompanied it. But Mr. Buttigieg is also fighting against what he sees as the
political trope of fighting per se. He is presenting himself as an antidote to the
politics-as-brawl predilection that has become so central to the messaging of both parties
and, he believes, has sapped the electorate of any hope for an alternative. "The whole
country is exhausted by everyone being at each other's throats," Mr. Buttigieg said.
At a basic level, this is a debate over word choice. Candidates have been selling
themselves as "fighters" for centuries, ostensibly on behalf of the proverbial "you." It goes
back at least to 1828, when Andrew Jackson bludgeoned John Quincy Adams, his erudite
opponent, with the slogan "Adams can write but Jackson can fight." Populists of various
stripes have been claiming for decades to "fight for you," "fight the power," "fight the good
fight" and whatnot, all in the name of framing their enterprises as some cause that
transcends their mere career advancement.
In a broader sense, though, it goes to a stylistic divide that has been playing out for
nearly a year in the battle for the Democratic nomination. The split is most acute among the
top four polling candidates: you could classify Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders as the pugilists
in the field, whereas Mr. Buttigieg, he of the earnest manner and Midwestern zest for
consensus, fashions himself a peacemaker. Mr. Biden would also sit in the latter camp, with
his constant promises to "unite the country" and continued insistence -- oft-derided -- that
his old Republican friends would be so chastened by Mr. Trump's defeat that they would
suddenly want to work in sweet bipartisan harmony with President Joe.
For all the emphasis placed on the identity and generational partitions between the
candidates, the question of "to fight or not to fight" might represent a more meaningful
contrast. "This has been a longstanding intramural debate," said David Axelrod, the
Democratic media and message strategist, who served as a top campaign and White House aide to
former President Barack Obama. "It's what Elizabeth Warren would call 'big structural change'
versus what critics would call 'incremental change.'"
He believes the energy and size of the former camp has been exaggerated by the attention
it receives. "I think sometimes the populist left is overrepresented in places where
reporters sometimes spend a lot of time," Mr. Axelrod said. "Like on Twitter." ...
Apparently what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire stays in Iowa and New Hampshire. Here in
VA, which does not primary for the Democratic Party until Super Tuesday (March 3, 2020) the
only message coming through from Dems is Dump Trump. Since VA went for Hillary in 2016, then
it is unlikely that voters here will hold for Trump now, but not for lack of trying among
staunch Republican Party financial backers.
Fortunately enough for me though is that my happy life does not hinge on national
politics. VA will be a better place to live now that Republicans no longer control the
state's legislature nor executive branches. Sorry about the country, but it must live with
its own unique history of bad choices.
Here in MA, we pay particular attention to
our cranky neighbor NH because we know how
votes will go here at home, but not there.
NH is endlessly fascinating, and remote-ish.
With four electoral votes, it has one-third
more than Vermont. That's why it's important-ish.
Overall, the six New England states have an extra
twelve electoral votes, disproportionate to our
total population. Lately all Dem, except for a
stubborn pocket in Maine.
MA is also joined at the hip with NY,
sharing about a hundred miles of border,
and much political sensibility. It wasn't
always this way (except for the border part.)
I was growing up in western NY when Robert Kennedy
was foisted upon us as a Senator, mainly from NYC.
He with considerable NYC roots, but that god-awful
'Bahston' accent. In those days, western NY was
a GOP bastion, and still is to a lesser extent.
None the less, we are still joined at the hip.
Just not over the Yankees & the Red Sox.
Thanks. My wife is from CT. Is CT even more true blue than MA. A quandary for me as she was
raised devout Republican although her mother was a public school teacher.
All of New England is blue these days, except
for a portion of Maine. Only one GOPerson in
Congress these days, that being Susan Collins
of Maine, soon to be up for re-election.
'Sen. Susan Collins faces a potentially
difficult reelection campaign in 2020. ... J
Although (she does not yet have a primary challenger), Collins could be especially
vulnerable if she breaks with Trump -- she's the most moderate Republican in the Senate and
has had lukewarm intraparty support in the past, though it improved markedly after she voted
to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court last year.' ...
Primary Challenges Might Keep These Republican Senators
From Voting To Remove Trump https://53eig.ht/36mLHgu
New Housing and household durables
In as much as they increase
The labor productivity
of
Domestic production...
Are a worthy investment
Best financed with credit
The combo of productivity increases
and substitution of market products combined cut domestic labor time dramatically
Last century
He is protecting this text book, it is in the parenthesis (if you must).
His text book is a fraud, it explains very little about what is happening, contains
nothing about irregular gains to scale, nothing about value added network effect, assumes the
senate is a proportional democracy, never considers the regularity of generation default. The
text should be shunned, it is ten years behind the mathematicians.
Tax the Rich? Here's How to Do
It (Sensibly) https://nyti.ms/2NsILFP
NYT - Andrew Ross Sorkin - Feb. 25, 2019
Everyone, it seems, has ideas about new tax strategies, some more realistic than others.
The list of tax revolutionaries is long. ...
Whatever your politics, there is a bipartisan acknowledgment that the tax system is
broken. Whether you believe the system should be fixed to generate more revenue or employed
as a tool to limit inequality -- and let's be honest for a moment, those ideas are not always
consistent -- there is a justifiable sense the public doesn't trust the tax system to be
fair.
In truth, how could it when a wealthy person like Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the
president, reportedly paid almost no federal taxes for years? Or when Gary Cohn, the former
president of Goldman Sachs who once led President Trump's National Economic Council, says
aloud what most wealthy people already know: "Only morons pay the estate tax."
If you pay taxes, it's hard not to feel like a patsy.
A New York Times poll found that support for higher taxes on the rich cuts across party
lines, and Democratic presidential hopefuls are offering plans to do it. But the current
occupant of the Oval Office signed a $1.5 trillion tax cut into law, so the political hurdles
are high.
Over the past month, I've consulted with tax accountants, lawyers, executives, political
leaders and yes, billionaires, and specific ideas have come up about plugging the gaps in the
tax code, without blowing it apart. ...
Patch the estate tax
None of the suggestions in this column -- or anywhere else -- can work unless the estate
tax is rid of the loopholes that allow wealthy Americans to blatantly (and legally) skirt
taxes.
Without addressing whether the $11.2 million exemption is too high -- and it is -- the
estate tax is riddled with problems. Chief among them: Wealthy Americans can pass much of
their riches to their heirs without paying taxes on capital gains -- ever. According to the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, unrealized capital gains account for "as much as
about 55 percent for estates worth more than $100 million." ...
The Congressional Budget Office estimates simply closing this loophole would raise more
than $650 billion over a decade.
As central as this idea is to the other suggestions, it is not an easy sell. Three
Republican senators introduced a plan this year to repeal the estate tax.
But this and other changes -- eliminating the hodgepodge of generation-skipping trusts
that also bypass estate taxes -- are obvious fixes that would introduce a basic fairness to
the system and curb the vast inequality that arises from dynastic wealth.
Increase capital gains rates for the wealthy
Our income tax rates are progressive, but taxes on capital gains are less so. There are
only two brackets, and they top out at 20 percent.
By contrast, someone making $40,000 a year by working 40 hours a week is in the 22 percent
bracket. That's why Warren Buffett says his secretary pays a higher tax rate.
So why not increase capital gains rates on the wealthiest among us?
One chief argument for low capital gains rates is to incentivize investment. But if we
embraced two additional brackets -- say, a marginal 30 percent bracket for earners over $5
million and a 35 percent bracket for earners over $15 million -- it is hard to see how it
would fundamentally change investment plans. ...
['Incentivizing investment'
leads to more income inequality.]
End the perverse real estate loopholes
One reason there are so many real estate billionaires is the law allows the industry to
perpetually defer capital gains on properties by trading one for another. In tax parlance, it
is known as a 1031 exchange.
In addition, real estate industry executives can depreciate the value of their investment
for tax purposes even when the actual value of the property appreciates. (This partly
explains Mr. Kushner's low tax bill.)
These are glaring loopholes that are illogical unless you are a beneficiary of them.
Several real estate veterans I spoke to privately acknowledged the tax breaks are
unconscionable.
Fix carried interest
This is far and away the most obvious loophole that goes to Americans' basic sense of
fairness.
For reasons that remain inexplicable -- unless you count lobbying money -- the private
equity, venture capital, real estate and hedge fund industries have kept this one intact.
Current tax law allows executives in those industries to have the bonuses they earn investing
for clients taxed as capital gains, not ordinary income.
Even President Trump opposed the loophole. In a 2015 interview, he said hedge fund
managers were "getting away with murder."
This idea and the others would not swell the government's coffers to overflowing, but they
would help restore a sense of fairness to a system that feels so easily gamed by the
wealthiest among us.
There are a couple of other things worth considering.
Let's talk about philanthropy
Nobody wants to dissuade charitable giving. But average taxpayers are often subsidizing
wealthy philanthropists whose charitable deductions significantly reduce their bills.
These people deserve credit for giving money to noble causes (though some nonprofits are
lobbying organizations masquerading as do-gooders) but their wealth, in many cases, isn't
paying for the basics of health care, defense, education and everything else that taxes pay
for.
Philanthropic giving is laudable, but it can also be a tax-avoidance strategy. Is there a
point at which charitable giving should be taxed?
I'm not sure what the right answer is. But consider this question posed by several
philanthropic billionaires: Should the rich be able to gift stock or other assets to charity
before paying capital gains taxes? ...
Finally, fund the Internal Revenue Service
The agency is so underfunded that the chance an individual gets audited is minuscule --
one person in 161 was audited in 2017, according to the I.R.S. And individuals with more than
$1 million in income, the people with the most complicated tax situations, were audited just
4.4 percent of the time. It was more than 12 percent in 2011, the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities reported.
The laws in place hardly matter: Those willing to take a chance can gamble that they won't
get caught. That wouldn't be the case if the agency weren't having its budget cut and losing
personnel. ...
'If you pay taxes, it's hard not to feel like a patsy.'
[I heartily disagree.]
'In 1927 in the court case of Compañía General de
Tabacos de Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue
a dissenting opinion was written by Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr. that included the following phrase ... :
One can at least imagine that,
back in the day (long ago?),
wealth would have been taxed,
but then with the rise of the
middle-class, taxes were extended
to those who had *income* if not
much wealth. Perhaps just as the
wealthy were hiring lawyers and
accountants, and making generous
political 'contributions' to
avoid taxes generally.
It really comes down to priorities. Are we a democracy, or not. Health care, education, etc.
for the citizens, or corporate welfare for the aristocracy.
This New York Times article on rising mortality had me thinking about regional
disparities. It's true that rising mortality is widespread, but the article also acknowledges
that mortality in coastal metros has improved 1/
It's Not Just Poor White People Driving a Decline in Life Expectancy
A new study shows that death rates increased for middle-aged people of all racial and ethnic
groups.
The State of US Health, 1990-2016
Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Among US States
What we see is another red-blue divide. Compare population-weighted averages for states
that supported Clinton and Trump in 2016, and you see very different trends 3/
This is NOT simply a matter of declining regions voting for Trump. Look at the 4 biggest
states: in 1990 FL and TX both had higher life expectancy than NY, now they're well behind
4/
I'm not sure what lies behind this. Medicaid expansion probably plays a role in the past
few years, and general harshness of social policies in red states may matter more over time.
Divergence in education levels may also play a role 5/
What's clear, however, is that the US life-expectancy problem is pretty much a red-state
problem. In terms of mortality, blue states look like the rest of the advanced world 6/
I was struck by one line in this article: "Life expectancy in the coastal metro areas --
both east and west -- has improved at roughly the same rate as in Canada." Indeed, the
American death trip has been driven by only part of the country 1/
It's Not Just Poor White People Driving a Decline in Life Expectancy
A new study shows that death rates increased for middle-aged people of all racial and ethnic
groups.
7:58 AM - 27 Nov 2019
And while the divergence is surely linked to growing regional economic disparities,
there's a pretty clear red-blue divide reflecting state policies. Consider NY v. TX 2/
In 1990 Texas actually had higher life expectancy, but now NY is far ahead. Surely this
has something to do with expanding health coverage, maybe also to do with environmental
policies. 3/
In general, progressive US states have experienced falling mortality along with the rest
of the advanced world. Red America is where things are different 4/
The NYT article has a graphical map
'Falling Life Expectancy' - that shows
death rate (age 25-64) declines in only
two states (CA & WY) with small increases
in 11 other states (OR, WA, AR, UT, TX, OK,
SC, GA, FL, IL & NY). Increases in all other
states. Hence, shorter life expectancies
in most states, regardless of region.
How does "death rate 25-64" relate to life expectancy?
[ Similarly, by dramatically improving the care of young children China dramatically
improved life expectancy. This was and remains a failing for India, even though India had a
far higher per capita GDP level than China before 1980. Amartya Sen has written about
this:
Anne is correct. Death rate 25-64 is throwing out the disease susceptible childhood years,
the suicides and automobile accidents of early adulthood, and also access to medical care for
the increased disease risks of advanced ages. What is left tells a story of alcoholism,
smoking, and fentanyl mostly along with healthcare access. Employment security matters in
both healthcare access and incidence of depression including adult suicide and drug use along
with a tendency to engage in risky activities just to pay the bills.
JAMA (& others who have done similar studies)
are just looking at data. Draw your own
conclusions? The media will draw theirs.
Fair to say, these are people dying NOT of old-age.
Americans' Life Expectancy Drops For Third Year In Row, Signaling There's 'Something
Terribly Wrong' Going On https://khn.org/MTAyNTQ4Mw via @khnews (Kaiser Health
News)
Americans' Life Expectancy Drops For Third Year In Row, Signaling There's 'Something
Terribly Wrong' Going On
Researchers say the grim new reality isn't just limited to rural deaths of despair, but
rather the numbers reflect that many different people living in all areas of the U.S. are
struggling. "We need to look at root causes," said Dr. Steven Woolf, the author's lead study.
"Something changed in the 1980s, which is when the growth in our life expectancy began to
slow down compared to other wealthy nations."
The New York Times: It's Not Just Poor White People Driving A Decline In Life
Expectancy
As the life expectancy of Americans has declined over a period of three years -- a drop
driven by higher death rates among people in the prime of life -- the focus has been on the
plight of white Americans in rural areas who were dying from so-called deaths of despair:
drug overdoses, alcoholism and suicide. But a new analysis of more than a half-century of
federal mortality data, published on Tuesday in JAMA, found that the increased death rates
among people in midlife extended to all racial and ethnic groups, and to suburbs and cities.
(Kolata and Tavernise, 11/26)
The Washington Post: U.S. Life Expectancy: Americans Are Dying Young At Alarming Rates
Despite spending more on health care than any other country, the United States has seen
increasing mortality and falling life expectancy for people age 25 to 64, who should be in
the prime of their lives. In contrast, other wealthy nations have generally experienced
continued progress in extending longevity. Although earlier research emphasized rising
mortality among non-Hispanic whites in the United States, the broad trend detailed in this
study cuts across gender, racial and ethnic lines. By age group, the highest relative jump in
death rates from 2010 to 2017 -- 29 percent -- has been among people age 25 to 34.
(Achenbach, 11/26)
Los Angeles Times: Suicides, Overdoses, Other 'Deaths Of Despair' Fuel Drop In U.S. Life
Expectancy
In an editorial accompanying the new report, a trio of public health leaders said the study's
insight into years of cumulative threats to the nation's health "represents a call to
action." If medical professionals and public health experts fail to forge partnerships with
social, political, religious and economic leaders to reverse the current trends, "the nation
risks life expectancy continuing downward in future years to become a troubling new norm,"
wrote Harvard public health professors Dr. Howard K. Koh, John J. Park and Dr. Anand K.
Parekh of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C. (Healy, 11/26)
---
Changes in midlife death rates across racial and ethnic
groups in the United States: systematic analysis of vital statistics https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3096
British Medical Journal - August 15, 2018
'Men 65 years and older today have an average
life expectancy of 84.3 years. Life expectancy
outcomes get even better among younger men and
women according to the CDC's data. For instance,
one in 20 women who are 40 today will live to
celebrate their 100th birthday.'
American Academy of Family Physicians - December 10, 2018
"The latest CDC data show that the U.S. life expectancy has declined over the past few
years," said CDC Director Robert Redfield, M.D., in a Nov. 29 statement. "Tragically, this
troubling trend is largely driven by deaths from drug overdose and suicide.
Three new reports from the CDC indicate that the average life expectancy in the United
States has declined for the second time in three years.
Deaths from drug overdose and suicide were responsible for much of the decline, with more
than 70,000 drug overdose deaths reported in 2017.
As a result of overall increases in mortality rates, average life expectancy decreased
from 78.9 years in 2014 to 78.6 years in 2017.
"Life expectancy gives us a snapshot of the nation's overall health, and these sobering
statistics are a wake-up call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often,
to conditions that are preventable." ...
More than 2.8 million deaths occurred in the United States in 2017, an increase of about
70,000 from the previous year. Death rates rose significantly in three age groups during that
period (i.e., in those 25-34, 35-44, and 85 and older) and dropped in 45- to 54-year-olds,
yielding an overall age-adjusted increase of 0.4 percent. That percentage represents a rise
from 728.8 deaths per 100,000 standard population to 731.9 per 100,000.
The 10 leading causes of death remained the same from 2016 to 2017: heart disease, cancer,
unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer's disease,
diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease, and suicide. Age-adjusted death rates
increased significantly for seven of the 10 causes, led by influenza and pneumonia (5.9
percent), unintentional injuries (4.2 percent) and suicide (3.7 percent). Death rates for
cancer actually decreased by 2.1 percent, while heart disease and kidney disease rates did
not change significantly. ...
Drug overdose death rates increased across all age groups, with the highest rate occurring
in adults ages 35-44 (39 per 100,000) and the lowest in adults 65 and older (6.9 per
100,000). ...
Free Market Drugs: A Key Part of Elizabeth Warren's Transition to Medicare for All
By Dean Baker
Earlier this month, Senator Warren put out a set of steps that she would put forward as
president as part of a transition to Medicare for All. The items that got the most attention
were including everyone over age 50 and under age 18 in Medicare, and providing people of all
ages with the option to buy into the program. This buy-in would include large subsidies, and
people with incomes of less than 200 percent of the poverty level would be able to enter the
Medicare program at no cost.
These measures would be enormous steps toward Medicare for All, bringing tens of millions
of people into the program, including most of those (people over age 50) with serious medical
issues. It would certainly be more than halfway to a universal Medicare program.
While these measures captured most of the attention given to Warren's transition plan,
another part of the plan is probably at least as important. Warren proposed to use the
government's authority to compel the licensing of drug patents so that multiple companies can
produce a patented drug, in effect allowing them to be sold at generic prices.
The government can do this both because it has general authority to compel licensing of
patents (with reasonable compensation) and because it has explicit authority under the 1980
Bayh-Dole Act to require licensing of any drug developed in part with government-funded
research. The overwhelming majority of drugs required some amount of government-supported
research in their development, so there would be few drugs that would be exempted if Warren
decided to use this mechanism.
These measures are noteworthy because they can be done on the president's own authority.
While the pharmaceutical industry will surely contest in court a president's use of the
government's authority to weaken their patent rights, these actions would not require
Congressional approval.
The other reason that these steps would be so important is that there is a huge amount of
money involved. The United States is projected to spend over $6.6 trillion on prescription
drugs over the next decade, more than 2.5 percent of GDP. This comes to almost $20,000 per
person over the next decade.
This is an enormous amount of money. We spend more than twice as much per person on drugs
as people in other wealthy countries.
This is not an accident. The grant of a patent monopoly allows drug companies to charge as
much as they want for drugs that are necessary for people's health or even their life,
without having to worry about a competitor undercutting them.
Other countries also grant patent monopolies, but they limit the ability of drug companies
to exploit these monopolies with negotiations or price controls. This is why prices in these
countries are so much lower than in the United States.
But even these negotiated prices are far above what drug prices would be in a free market.
The price of drugs in a free market, without patent monopolies or related protections, will
typically be less than 10 percent of the US price and in some cases, less than one
percent.
This is because drugs are almost invariably cheap to manufacture and distribute. They are
expensive because government-granted patent monopolies make them expensive. We have this
perverse situation where the government deliberately makes drugs expensive, then we struggle
with how to pay for them.
The rationale for patent monopolies is to give companies an incentive to research and
develop drugs. This process is expensive, and if newly developed drugs were sold in a free
market, companies would not be able to recover these expenses.
To make up for the loss of research funding supported by patent monopolies, Warren
proposes an increase in public funding for research. This would be an important move towards
an increased reliance on publicly funded biomedical research.
There are enormous advantages to publicly-funded research over patent monopoly-supported
research. First, if the government is funding the research it can require that all results be
fully public as soon as possible so that all researchers can quickly benefit from them.
By contrast, under the patent system, drug companies have an incentive to keep results
secret. They have no desire to share results that could benefit competitors.
In most other contexts we quite explicitly value the benefits of open research. Science is
inherently a collaborative process where researchers build upon the successes and failures of
their peers. For some reason, this obvious truth is largely absent from discussions of
biomedical research where the merits of patent financing go largely unquestioned.
In addition to allowing research results to be spread more quickly, public funding would
also radically reduce the incentive to develop copycat drugs. Under the current system, drug
companies will often devote substantial sums to developing drugs that are intended to
duplicate the function of drugs already on the market. This allows them to get a share of an
innovator drug's patent rents. While there is generally an advantage to having more options
to treat a specific condition, most often research dollars would be better spent trying to
develop drugs for conditions where no effective treatment currently exists.
Under the patent system, a company that has invested a substantial sum in developing a
drug, where a superior alternative already exists, may decide to invest an additional amount
to carry it through the final phases of testing and the FDA approval process. From their
vantage point, if they hope that a successful marketing effort will allow them to recover its
additional investment costs, they would come out ahead.
On the other hand, in a system without patent monopolies, it would be difficult for a
company to justify additional spending after it was already clear that the drug it was
developing offered few health benefits. This could save a considerable amount of money on
what would be largely pointless tests.
Also, as some researchers have noted, the number of potential test subjects (people with
specific conditions) is also a limiting factor in research. It would be best if these people
were available for testing genuinely innovative drugs rather than ones with little or no
incremental value.
Ending patent monopoly pricing would also take away the incentive for drug companies to
conceal evidence that their drugs may not be as safe or effective as claimed. Patent
monopolies give drug companies an incentive to push their drugs as widely as possible.
That is literally the point of patent monopoly pricing. If a drug company can sell a drug
for $30,000 that costs them $300 to manufacture and distribute, then they have a huge
incentive to market it as widely as possible. If this means being somewhat misleading about
the safety and effectiveness of their drug, that is what many drug companies will do.
The opioid crisis provides a dramatic example of the dangers of this system. Opioid
manufacturers would not have had the same incentive to push their drugs, concealing evidence
of their addictive properties, if they were not making huge profits on them.
Unfortunately, this is far from the only case where drug companies have not accurately
presented their research findings when marketing their drugs. The mismarketing of the
arthritis drug Vioxx, which increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes, is another
famous example.
We can try to have the FDA police marketing, but where there is so much money at stake in
putting out wrong information, we can hardly expect it to be 100 percent successful in
overcoming the incentives from the large profits available. There is little reason to think
that the FDA will be better able to combat the mismarketing of drugs, than law enforcement
agencies have been in stopping the sale of heroin, cocaine, and other illegal drugs. Where
you have large potential profits, and willing buyers, government enforcement is at a serious
disadvantage.
It is also worth mentioning that the whole story of medical care is radically altered if
we end patent monopolies on drugs and medical equipment, an area that also involves trillions
of dollars over the next decade. We face tough choices on allocating medical care when these
items are selling at patent protected prices, whether under the current system of private
insurance or a Medicare for All system.
Doctors and other health care professionals have to decide whether the marginal benefits
of a new drug or higher quality scan is worth the additional price. But if the new drug costs
roughly the same price as the old drug and the highest quality scan costs just a few hundred
dollars (the cost of the electricity and the time of the professionals operating the machine
and reading the scan), then there is little reason not to prescribe the best available
treatment. Patent monopoly pricing in these areas creates large and needless problems.
In short, Senator Warren's plans on drugs are a really huge deal. How far and how quickly
she will be able to get to Medicare for All will depend on what she can get through Congress.
But her proposal for prescription drugs is something she would be able to do as president,
and it will make an enormous difference in both the cost and the quality of our health
care.
NAFTA Was About Redistributing Upward
By Dean Baker
The Washington Post gave readers the official story about the North American Free Trade
Agreement, diverging seriously from reality, in a piece * on the status of negotiations on
the new NAFTA. The piece tells readers:
"NAFTA was meant to expand trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico by removing
tariffs and other barriers on products as they were shipped between countries. The pact did
open up trade, but it also proved disruptive in terms of creating new manufacturing supply
chains and relocating businesses and jobs."
This implies that the disruption in terms of shifting jobs to Mexico to take advantage of
low wage labor was an accidental outcome. In fact, this was a main point of the deal, as was
widely noted by economists at the time. Proponents of the deal argued that it was necessary
for U.S. manufacturers to have access to low cost labor in Mexico to remain competitive
internationally. No one who followed the debate at the time should have been in the last
surprised by the loss of high paying union manufacturing jobs to Mexico, that is exactly the
result that NAFTA was designed for.
NAFTA also did nothing to facilitate trade in highly paid professional services, such as
those provided by doctors and dentists. This is because doctors and dentists are far more
powerful politically than autoworkers.
It is also wrong to say that NAFTA was about expanding trade by removing barriers. A major
feature of NAFTA was the requirement that Mexico strengthen and lengthen its patent and
copyright protections. These barriers are 180 degrees at odds with expanding trade and
removing barriers.
It is noteworthy that the new deal expands these barriers further. The Trump
administration likely intends these provisions to be a model for other trade pacts, just as
the rules on patents and copyrights were later put into other trade deals.
The new NAFTA will also make it more difficult for the member countries to regulate
Facebook and other Internet giants. This is likely to make it easier for Mark Zuckerberg to
spread fake news.
We have no public industrial policy
Because we have a private corporate industrial policy that wants full reign
Even toy block models like
ole pro grass liberal brandishes
Warn what heppens to trade good producing wage rates when
Proximate borders open
to potential products
Built with zero rent earning
raw fingered foreign wage slaves
"... "There's a whole neoliberal agenda," she said, referencing the received free-market wisdom that cutting public budgets spurs economic growth. "And then the way that traditional theory has fomented it or not contested it -- there's been kind of a strange symbiosis between mainstream economic thinking and stupid policies." ..."
"... Dr. Mazzucato takes issue with many of the tenets of the neoclassical economic theory taught in most academic departments: its assumption that the forces of supply and demand lead to market equilibrium, its equation of price with value and -- perhaps most of all -- its relegation of the state to the investor of last resort, tasked with fixing market failure. She has originated and popularized the description of the state as an "investor of first resort," envisioning new markets and providing long-term, or "patient," capital at early stages of development. ..."
"... Emphasizing to policymakers not only the importance of investment, but also the direction of that investment -- "What are we investing in?" she often asks -- Dr. Mazzucato has influenced the way American politicians speak about the state's potential as an economic engine. In her vision, governments would do what so many traditional economists have long told them to avoid: create and shape new markets, embrace uncertainty and take big risks. ..."
Meet the Leftish Economist With a New Story About Capitalism
Mariana Mazzucato wants liberals to talk less about the redistribution of wealth and more
about its creation. Politicians around the world are listening.
By Katy Lederer
Mariana Mazzucato was freezing. Outside, it was a humid late-September day in Manhattan,
but inside -- in a Columbia University conference space full of scientists, academics and
businesspeople advising the United Nations on sustainability -- the air conditioning was on
full blast.
For a room full of experts discussing the world's most urgent social and environmental
problems, this was not just uncomfortable but off-message. Whatever their dress -- suit,
sari, head scarf -- people looked huddled and hunkered down. At a break, Dr. Mazzucato
dispatched an assistant to get the A.C. turned off. How will we change anything, she wondered
aloud, "if we don't rebel in the everyday?"
Dr. Mazzucato, an economist based at University College London, is trying to change
something fundamental: the way society thinks about economic value. While many of her
colleagues have been scolding capitalism lately, she has been reimagining its basic premises.
Where does growth come from? What is the source of innovation? How can the state and private
sector work together to create the dynamic economies we want? She asks questions about
capitalism we long ago stopped asking. Her answers might rise to the most difficult
challenges of our time.
In two books of modern political economic theory -- "The Entrepreneurial State" (2013) and
"The Value of Everything" (2018) -- Dr. Mazzucato argues against the long-accepted binary of
an agile private sector and a lumbering, inefficient state. Citing markets and technologies
like the internet, the iPhone and clean energy -- all of which were funded at crucial stages
by public dollars -- she says the state has been an underappreciated driver of growth and
innovation. "Personally, I think the left is losing around the world," she said in an
interview, "because they focus too much on redistribution and not enough on the creation of
wealth."
Her message has appealed to an array of American politicians. Senator Elizabeth Warren,
Democrat of Massachusetts and a presidential contender, has incorporated Dr. Mazzucato's
thinking into several policy rollouts, including one that would use "federal R & D to
create domestic jobs and sustainable investments in the future" and another that would
authorize the government to receive a return on its investments in the pharmaceutical
industry. Dr. Mazzucato has also consulted with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
Democrat of New York, and her team on the ways a more active industrial policy might catalyze
a Green New Deal.
Even Republicans have found something to like. In May, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida
credited Dr. Mazzucato's work several times in "American Investment in the 21st Century," his
proposal to jump-start economic growth. "We need to build an economy that can see past the
pressure to understand value-creation in narrow and short-run financial terms," he wrote in
the introduction, "and instead envision a future worth investing in for the long-term."
Formally, the United Nations event in September was a meeting of the leadership council of
the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, or S.D.S.N. It's a body of about 90 experts
who advise on topics like gender equality, poverty and global warming. Most of the attendees
had specific technical expertise -- Dr. Mazzucato greeted a contact at one point with,
"You're the ocean guy!" -- but she offers something both broad and scarce: a compelling new
story about how to create a desirable future.
'Investor of first resort'
Originally from Italy -- her family left when she was 5 -- Dr. Mazzucato is the daughter
of a Princeton nuclear physicist and a stay-at-home mother who couldn't speak English when
she moved to the United States. She got her Ph.D. in 1999 from the New School for Social
Research and began working on "The Entrepreneurial State" after the 2008 financial crisis.
Governments across Europe began to institute austerity policies in the name of fostering
innovation -- a rationale she found not only dubious but economically destructive.
"There's a whole neoliberal agenda," she said, referencing the received free-market
wisdom that cutting public budgets spurs economic growth. "And then the way that traditional
theory has fomented it or not contested it -- there's been kind of a strange symbiosis
between mainstream economic thinking and stupid policies."
Dr. Mazzucato takes issue with many of the tenets of the neoclassical economic theory
taught in most academic departments: its assumption that the forces of supply and demand lead
to market equilibrium, its equation of price with value and -- perhaps most of all -- its
relegation of the state to the investor of last resort, tasked with fixing market failure.
She has originated and popularized the description of the state as an "investor of first
resort," envisioning new markets and providing long-term, or "patient," capital at early
stages of development.
In important ways, Dr. Mazzucato's work resembles that of a literary critic or rhetorician
as much as an economist. She has written of waging what the historian Tony Judt called a
"discursive battle," and scrutinizes descriptive terms -- words like "fix" or "spend" as
opposed to "create" and "invest" -- that have been used to undermine the state's appeal as a
dynamic economic actor. "If we continue to depict the state as only a facilitator and
administrator, and tell it to stop dreaming," she writes, "in the end that is what we
get."
As a charismatic figure in a contentious field that does not generate many stars -- she
was recently profiled in Wired magazine's United Kingdom edition -- Dr. Mazzucato has her
critics. She is a regular guest on nightly news shows in Britain, where she is pitted against
proponents of Brexit or skeptics of a market-savvy state.
Alberto Mingardi, an adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute and director
general of Istituto Bruno Leoni, a free-market think tank, has repeatedly criticized Dr.
Mazzucato for, in his view, cherry-picking her case studies, underestimating economic
trade-offs and defining industrial policy too broadly. In January, in an academic piece
written with one of his Cato colleagues, Terence Kealey, he called her "the world's greatest
exponent today of public prodigality."
Her ideas, though, are finding a receptive audience around the world. In the United
Kingdom, Dr. Mazzucato's work has influenced Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, and
Theresa May, a former Prime Minister, and she has counseled the Scottish leader Nicola
Sturgeon on designing and putting in place a national investment bank. She also advises
government entities in Germany, South Africa and elsewhere. "In getting my hands dirty," she
said, "I learn and I bring it back to the theory."
The 'Mission Muse'
During a break at the United Nations gathering, Dr. Mazzucato escaped the air conditioning
to confer with two colleagues in Italian on a patio. Tall, with a muscular physique, she wore
a brightly colored glass necklace that has become something of a trademark on the economics
circuit. Having traveled to five countries in eight days, she was fighting off a cough.
"In theory, I'm the 'Mission Muse,'" she joked, lapsing into English. Her signature
reference is to the original mission to the moon -- a state-spurred technological revolution
consisting of hundreds of individual feeder projects, many of them collaborations between the
public and private sectors. Some were successes, some failures, but the sum of them
contributed to economic growth and explosive innovation.
Dr. Mazzucato's platform is more complex -- and for some, controversial -- than simply
encouraging government investment, however. She has written that governments and state-backed
investment entities should "socialize both the risks and rewards." She has suggested the
state obtain a return on public investments through royalties or equity stakes, or by
including conditions on reinvestment -- for example, a mandate to limit share buybacks.
Emphasizing to policymakers not only the importance of investment, but also the
direction of that investment -- "What are we investing in?" she often asks -- Dr. Mazzucato
has influenced the way American politicians speak about the state's potential as an economic
engine. In her vision, governments would do what so many traditional economists have long
told them to avoid: create and shape new markets, embrace uncertainty and take big
risks.
... ... ...
Earlier in the day, she pointed at an announcement on her laptop. She had been nominated
for the first Not the Nobel Prize, a commendation intended to promote "fresh economic
thinking." "Governments have woken up to the fact the mainstream way of thinking isn't
helping them," she said, explaining her appeal to politicians and policymakers. A few days
later, she won.
Then she would advocate free banking, like Selgin. Better more efficient banking is a huge
and profitable investment for government.
So before the leftwards jump on her idea of investment, start here and explain why
suddenly, making finance more efficient for everyone is a bad idea.
Or ask our knee jerkers, before they jump on her ideas with all their delusions, why not
invest in dumping the primary dealer system? That is obviously inefficient and generates the
ATM costs we pay. Why not remove that with a sound investment f some sort?
Everything is through the eye of the beholder, for lelftwards it is the wonder of central
planning, for the libertariaturds it is about efficiency via decentralization.
Then comes meetup, and waddya know, each side brings a 200 page insurance contract they
want guaranteed before any efficiency changes are made. The meeting selects business as
normal. We will select business as normal, our economists will approve.
I am thrilled / s at the feeling of fulfillment I, well, feel, that an academic deems the
obvious. It definitely, indicates that we are approaching, wokeness !
Economists are beginning to evolve, again, almost, but not quite capturing the curl of the
real time world.
" There's a whole neoliberal agenda," she said, referencing the received free-market wisdom
that cutting public budgets spurs economic growth. "And then the way that traditional theory
has fomented it or not contested it -- there's been kind of a strange symbiosis between
mainstream economic thinking and stupid policies."
That is a deep vision that needs to be unpacked. My impression of traditional theory is
that it discourages the neoliberal, market deism.
In last night's leaders' debate, the audience laughed when Jeremy Corbyn said that
productivity gains could pay for a four-day week. This is an example of what I said recently
* – that we cannot have nice things because voters have resigned themselves to the
inadequacy of British capitalism.
And inadequate it is. The Office for National Statistics estimates that UK productivity is
one-fifth lower than that of the US, Germany or France and one-tenth lower than Italy's.
Closing some of this gap would allow for a cut in the working week with no loss of pay.
In this context, Labour's plans to reform corporate governance, including putting workers
on boards, are crucial. John McDonnell is bang right to say that giving workers a stake in
companies raises productivity: there is a ton of evidence for this. (Which of course is
wholly consistent with the likelihood that there are many other possible ways in which a
government might increase productivity.)
But how can this be? One answer lies in a classic article written 30 years ago by Michael
Jensen. Stock market-listed firms, he said, contain "widespread waste and inefficiency"
because an of "absence of effective monitoring" of bosses by shareholders. Giving workers
greater say can reduce this agency failure. This is partly because workers know the ground
truth of how the company is performing better than do external shareholders. But it's also
because many workers have more skin in the game than do fund managers; whereas workers lose
their jobs if the firm does badly, fund managers face less severe penalties.
At this stage, righties like to claim that the market can solve this problem.
There's a grain of truth in this: since Jensen's classic article, the number of stock
market-quoted firms has fallen and private ownership has risen. The market cannot, however,
so easily transfer companies into worker ownership in part because workers are
credit-constrained.
What's more, we know for sure that product market competition does not eliminate the
inefficiencies caused by agency failures. Nick Bloom and John Van Reenen show that there is
"a long tail of extremely badly managed firms." And Andy Haldane has said that "there is a
striking and widening divergence" between the most productive firms and the rest. This would
not be the case if market forces quickly drove inefficient firms out of the market.
As for what explains such differences, Haldane echoes Jensen:
"(A lack of) management quality is a plausible candidate explanation for the UK's long
tail of companies It is possible that current UK corporate governance practices may act as a
brake on innovative companies."
Fans of David Graeber's book Bull---- Jobs (of whom I am one) know one way in which bad
management manifests itself. "Managerial feudalism" means that intermediate bosses prefer to
create hierarchies of flunkeys rather than maximize profits. And inadequate oversight and
imperfect competition allow them to get away with this. Graeber's is a colourful way of
expressing what economists and equity investors have known for a long time – that
companies often grow at the expense of profits.
Now, in saying all this I'm not entirely endorsing Labour's position. My point is that
companies have not been effectively pursuing shareholder value, perhaps because, as John Kay
has said, such value can only be achieved obliquely. (I'm also unsure whether short-termism
is a problem.)
What I am saying, though, is that the notion that changing ownership might increase
productivity is far from risible. There's tons of evidence that it can do so, and mainstream
economists agree that there are failures of management and ownership: Jensen, Haldane and
Bloom are not Marxists.
The fact that an audience can laugh at Corbyn's claim to raise productivity, therefore,
tells us nothing about Labour policy. But it speaks volumes – and damning volumes at
that – about a political discourse that has become so debased as to put discussions
about productivity outside of mainstream politics.
In 2012, when economist Thomas Philippon was looking into some data, something odd caught
his attention.
His homeland, France, was undergoing another revolution, although a much different one: a
revolution in the country's telecommunication market. A new mobile operator, Free, had
entered the market and disrupted it almost overnight. The new operator slashed prices,
offering plans that hadn't been seen before in France.
France's three legacy mobile operators were forced to react and drop their own prices. It
didn't help. In only three months, Free's market share reached 4 percent. At the end of the
following year, its market share tripled. Today, Free controls 15 to 16 percent of the
market, making it France's third largest mobile operator. (If you add the six virtual
operators to the mix -- meaning companies who lease broadband space -- you'll get a total of
10 different mobile operators in a country with a population one-fifth the size of the United
States.)
"Digging deeper into that crystallized everything for me," says Philippon. "It was an
oligopoly based on three legacy carriers that lobbied very hard to prevent anybody from
getting a fourth (mobile) license. For 10 years they were successful. But then, in 2011, the
regulator changed and gave a license [to] Free. It wasn't a technological change or a change
in consumers' taste. It was purely a regulatory decision."
For French consumers, this one decision changed everything. Instead of paying $55 for a
1-gigabyte plan, the new prices for much better plans cost half that. And prices continued to
drop. Today, a Free 60-gigabyte plan costs only $12.
But Philippon wasn't just interested in what the new competition in the French telecom
industry said about French markets. Having lived in the United States since 1999, he compared
the French telecom revolution to the American market. The numbers blew his mind. While in
France the number of mobile operators was rising, in the US the number was getting smaller
(and that number might even decline further, if the planned Sprint-T-Mobile merger goes
through).
The result was a huge price gap between the two countries.
"France went from being much more expensive to much cheaper in two years," he says. "The
change in price was drastic -- a relative price move of 50 percent. In such a big market with
gigantic firms, that's a big change. And it was not driven by technology, it was driven by
pro-competition regulation." He immediately adds, just to emphasize the irony: "It happened
in France of all places, a country that historically had a political system that made sure
there wasn't too much competition. This is not the place where we expected this kind of
outcome."
The opposite was very surprising too: The level of competition in the United States, the
role model of free-market democracy, was declining.
Philippon, an acclaimed professor of finance at the New York University Stern School of
Business, kept pulling that thread. He gathered an overwhelming amount of data on various
markets, took a few steps back to look at the big picture, and then identified a pattern. The
result is "The Great Reversal," his recent book, in which he explores and explains when, why,
and how, as his subtitle puts it, "America Gave Up on Free Markets."
The telecom story is just one of many examples Philippon provides throughout the book of
non-competitive US markets, in which most or all of the power is concentrated in the hands of
a few big companies. It's a situation that makes it almost impossible for new competitors to
enter and lower prices for consumers. The airline market is another example, as is the
pharmaceutical industry, the banking system, and the big tech companies such as Google and
Facebook, who have no real competition in the markets they operate in.
The book's main argument has a refreshing mix of both right- and left-leaning economic
thinking. It goes like this: During the last 20 years, while the European Union has become
much more competitive, the United States has become a paradise for monopolies and oligopolies
-- with a few players holding most of the market share. As US companies grew bigger, they
became politically powerful. They then used their influence over politicians and regulators,
and their vast resources, to skew regulation in their favor.
The fight over net neutrality, to name one example, demonstrates it well.
"Guess who lobbied for that? It's a simple guess -- the people who benefited from it, the
ISP's [internet service providers]. And they are already charging outrageous prices, twice as
high [as] any other developed country," Philippon says.
This growing concentration of power in the hands of a few has affected everything and
everyone. It has inflated prices because consumers have fewer options. Wages are stagnant
because less competition means firms don't have to fight over workers. Financial investment
in new machinery and technology has plummeted because when companies have fewer competitors
they lose the incentive to invest and improve. It has driven CEO compensation up, and
workers' compensation down. It has caused a spike in inequality, which in turn has ignited
social unrest.
If all of this is too much to wrap your head around, Philippon puts a price tag on it:
$5,000 per year. That's the price the median American household pays every year for the lost
competition. That's the cost of the United States becoming a Monopoly Land.
How did this happen? According to Philippon, it's a story with two threads. The European
side of this story happened almost by mistake. The American side, on the contrary, was no
coincidence.
When the European Union was formed in the early 1990s, there was a lot of suspicion
between the member states, namely France and Germany. (Two World Wars tend to have that
effect.) This mistrust birthed pan-European regulators who enjoyed an unprecedented amount of
freedom, more powerful than any of the member countries' governments.
"We did that mostly because we didn't really trust each other very much," he says. Now, 20
years later, "it turns out that this system we created is just a lot more resilient towards
lobbying and bad influences than we thought."
At the same time in the United States, the exact opposite was happening. Adopting a
free-market approach, regulators and legislators chose not to intervene. They didn't block
mergers and acquisitions, and let big companies get bigger.
This created a positive feedback loop: As companies grew stronger, the regulators got
weaker, and more dependent on the companies they are supposed to regulate. Tens of millions
of dollars were channeled into lobbying. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision gave
corporate money even more political influence.
At some point, big companies started using regulation itself to prevent new competitors
from entering the market.
The result wasn't free markets, but "the opposite -- market capture," says Philippon,
referring to a situation in which the regulator is so weak it depends completely on the
companies it regulates to design regulation.
Philippon is not the only one who's making these claims. A group of economists from the
University of Chicago Booth School of Business holds a similar view. They are called
Neo-Brandeisian, after the late Justice Louis Brandeis, who, a century ago, fought to broaden
antitrust laws. They believe the big tech companies, for example, managed to rig the system,
and fly under current antitrust regulation. They think it is time to break them apart.
But not everyone agrees with Philippon's narrative or his conclusions. Economists like
Edward Conard, author of "The Upside of Inequality," thinks Philippon's claim that big
companies are evidence of less competition is upside down. According to his criticism, it's
exactly the opposite: These companies became big and powerful because they innovate and give
a lot of value to consumers. He also argues that the conclusion that Europe is more
competitive and innovative than the United States is preposterous, given that the biggest
tech companies are American, not European.
Philippon addresses this counterclaim in his book. The United States is one giant market
of English speakers. Theoretically, if you have a good idea for a new product and you can
finance it, you have more than 300 million potential users on day one. In the EU, on the
other hand, there are 28 countries, with residents who speak 24 different languages. It's not
as simple.
Philippon, who by the age of 40 was named one of the top 25 promising economists by the
International Monetary Fund, also differentiates himself from the Chicago school of thought
in one important way: He's not dogmatic, he's pragmatic. Instead of a one-size-fits-all
solution to the problem, he suggests a more nuanced approach. This is exactly what makes his
case both unique and somewhat tricky to grasp. His approach is neither right nor left.
"The idea that free markets and government intervention are opposites, that's bogus. So
half of me agrees with the Chicago School and half disagrees," he says.
"But if you think that you can get to a free market without any scrutiny by the
government, that's crazy. That's simply untrue empirically. We need to make entry easier to
increase competition, that's the objective," he says. "And the way to do so sometimes means
more government intervention."
OK, but how do you do that? According to Philippon, each case is different.
"In some cases it will be by more intervention. Like maybe force Facebook to break from
WhatsApp. And sometimes it will be by less intervention. Kill a bunch of regulations and
requirements for small companies," he says.
The first idea, at least, has caught a lot of public attention during the last year, and
has been a talking point of the presidential campaigns of Senators Bernie Sanders and
Elizabeth Warren. Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg was recorded saying that if Warren wins, it
will "suck for us." Warren's plan for the big tech companies, for example, includes
"reversing mergers," which means uncoupling WhatsApp and Instagram from Facebook. Her plan
would also forbid Amazon being both a marketplace and a vendor at the same time.
But can any of these interventions actually happen? And if so, what would they mean for
American consumers? Those are more complicated questions.
If big tech companies were broken up, Philippon estimates that the average American
consumer won't be affected financially.
"Since people don't pay these companies directly, it won't change the bottom line for the
middle class, it won't have a big impact on people's disposable income," he says.
What would have a tremendous impact on Americans' lives and income is to keep on going
beyond the big tech companies. "We should go after the big ticket items -- telecom,
transport, energy, and healthcare. That's where you want action, but there is much less
bipartisan support for that," he says.
Something similar to the French telecom revolution is still far from happening in the
United States, but the fact that the 2020 campaign is already pushing competition-promoting
ideas back into the public discourse is a reason for cautious optimism, according to
Philippon. Nevertheless, he warns, we should not let this mild optimism mislead us.
"Free markets are like a public good: It is in nobody's interest to protect them.
Consumers are too dispersed and businesses love monopolies," he says. "So to take free
markets for granted, that's just stupid."
(Shaul Amsterdamski is senior economics editor
for Kan, Israel's public broadcasting corporation.)
(Hmmm. Our largest monthly bill is for 'telecom',
from Comcast, for TV, phone & internet service.
There's no competitive offering in our town.)
"...Our largest monthly bill is for 'telecom',
from Comcast, for TV, phone & internet service..."
[I got the same information from the service tech doing the annual clean and test on my
propane fireplace insert yesterday, in reference to his parents though. They were on Verizon
Fios for cable. He thought they should dump cable for a web-TV solution and just use cell
phones. Their bill was over $400/month. Mine is a little over $200/month for the same
service, which in both cases includes land line. In my zip code Verizon does not bundle Fios
with mobile. The only difference that I know is that we have neither any premium channels nor
DVR boxes and I assume that his parents must have both to run up a bill that high. When we
pony up for Fios Gb, then at least for three years our bill will fall below $100/month, then
return to a higher monthly yet if we do not take another new contract after that upgrade
contract ends. Verizon only makes new contracts when new services are added or upgraded.
Customers get next to no benefit for loyalty/retention. We have both Verizon and Comcast
available in our area. I have had both in my present home at different times, but hate
Comcast for failures on their part to provide tall vehicle clearance to pass down my driveway
until forced to do so by the power company whose poles they must use and for a duplicate
billing error where they billed me for two separate addresses and put me into collections for
the one that I never resided at since I never saw that bill or knew of it prior to the first
collections call.]
Bernie Sanders unveils plan to boost broadband
access, break up internet and cable titans https://cnb.cx/34TzaQw
CNBC - Jacob Pramuk - Dec 6
Bernie Sanders unveiled a plan Friday to expand broadband internet access as part of a
push to boost the economy and reduce corporate power over Americans.
In his sprawling "High-Speed Internet for All" proposal, the Vermont senator and
Democratic presidential candidate calls to treat internet like a public utility. His campaign
argues that the internet should not be a "price gouging profit machine" for companies such as
Comcast, AT&T and Verizon.
Sanders' plan would create $150 billion in grants and aid for local and state governments
to build publicly owned broadband networks as part of the Green New Deal infrastructure
initiative. The total would mark a massive increase over current funding for broadband
development initiatives. The proposal would also break up what the campaign calls "internet
service provider and cable monopolies," stop service providers from offering content and end
what it calls "anticompetitive mergers."
Sanders and his rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination have pushed to
boost high-speed internet access for rural and low-income Americans, saying it has become a
necessity to succeed in school and business. The self-proclaimed democratic socialist has
unveiled numerous plans to root out corporate influence as he runs near the top of a jammed
primary field. ...
Aa excellent article that brings no new ideas to the debate but updates the debate to today.
One thing economist Thomas Philippon did not mention is that voters must turn out the
elected and get new ones who will vote to create more and vigorous competition instead of
oligopoly.
"... Writing in the 1830s, as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace, Honoré de Balzac anticipated the broader social concern: "The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime that has been forgotten, because it was properly carried out." Or, in the more popular paraphrase: behind every great fortune lies a great crime. ..."
"... In recent decades, this corporate lobbying has had two main effects. First, by erecting entry barriers to existing sectors, it protects incumbents and lowers their effective tax rates. This is a deadweight loss – a pure drag on economic growth that limits opportunities for everyone who is not already an oligarch. ..."
"... As U.S. public finances are eroded by oligarchy, so is the ability to fund essential infrastructure, improvements in education, and the kind of breakthrough science that brought America to this point. ..."
Our billionaire problem is getting worse. Any market-oriented economy creates
opportunities for new fortunes to be built, including through innovation. More innovation is
likely to take place where fewer rules encumber entrepreneurial creativity. Some of this
creativity may lead to processes and products that are actually detrimental to public
welfare.
Unfortunately, by the time the need for legislation or regulation becomes apparent, the
innovators have their billions – and they can use that money to protect their
interests.
This billionaire problem is not new. Every epoch, dating at least from Roman times,
produces versions of it whenever some shift in market structure or geopolitics creates an
opportunity for fortunes to be built quickly.
Writing in the 1830s, as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace, Honoré de
Balzac anticipated the broader social concern: "The secret of great fortunes without apparent
cause is a crime that has been forgotten, because it was properly carried out." Or, in the
more popular paraphrase: behind every great fortune lies a great crime.
Prominent historical examples include the British East India Company, the Europeans who
built vast fortunes based on African slave labor in the West Indies, and coal mine
owners.
All became rich fast, and then used their political clout to get what they wanted,
including impunity for horrendous abuses. At their peak in the nineteenth century, railway
interests held sway over many or perhaps even most members of the British parliament.
The United States has long exhibited a particularly potent strain of the billionaire
problem. This is partly because America's founders, in their pre-industrial innocence, could
not imagine that money would capture politics to the extent that it has (or that was fully
apparent just a few decades later). Moreover, U.S. leaders were long willing to let private
enterprise take on new projects that elsewhere fell into the hands of the state.
The German post office, for example, built one of the most extensive and efficient
telegraph systems in the world. Samuel Morse urged Congress to do the same (or better). But
U.S. telegraph communication was instead developed privately – as was the telephone
system that followed, all of iron and steel, the entire railroad network, and just about
every other component of the early industrial economy.
When the U.S. government did become involved in economic activity, it was mostly to open
up new frontiers – creating more opportunity for individuals and private business.
In the aftermath of World War II, Vannevar Bush – a Republican who was also a top
adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt – cleverly argued that science represented
the next frontier, and hence constructed a winning political argument for the government to
act as a catalyst.
As Jonathan Gruber and I have argued recently in our book Jump-Starting America, the
post-war federal government's strategic investments in basic science spurred remarkable
private-sector innovation – including productivity gains and widely shared increases in
wages. Vast new fortunes were created.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. /VCG
Photo
The political consequences of America's post-war private-sector boom were felt within a
generation, and they were not always positive. From the 1960s, the U.S. experienced growing
anti-tax sentiment, strong pressure for deregulation (including for the financial sector),
and a lot more corporate money pouring into politics through every possible avenue.
In recent decades, this corporate lobbying has had two main effects. First, by
erecting entry barriers to existing sectors, it protects incumbents and lowers their
effective tax rates. This is a deadweight loss – a pure drag on economic growth that
limits opportunities for everyone who is not already an oligarch.
As U.S. public finances are eroded by oligarchy, so is the ability to fund essential
infrastructure, improvements in education, and the kind of breakthrough science that brought
America to this point.
Some of America's billionaires earn kudos for their philanthropy. At the same time, most
of them adopt a dog-in-the-manger attitude throughout their business operations –
digging deeper moats to protect profits or simply destroying smaller business at every
opportunity.
There is a second effect, which is more nuanced. In some entirely new sectors,
particularly in the digital domain, entry was possible at least during an early phase.
The entrepreneurs who built the first Internet companies were not able to put up effective
entry barriers – hence the runaway success (and greater billions) of more recent
companies such as Facebook, Amazon, and Uber.
But now the controlling shareholders of these new behemoths operate pretty much in the
same way as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and the original J.P. Morgan once did. They
use their money to buy influence and resist any kind of reasonable restraint on their
anti-competitive and anti-worker behavior – even if it undermines democratic
institutions.
We will always have billionaires. Ex post regulation and higher rates of taxation are
appealing today but, looking forward, will they prove sufficient in a political system that
allows individuals to spend as much as they like to get whatever they want (and repeal
whatever they hate)? It's time for a new approach, as Gruber and I propose.
Big profits follow from big new ideas. That's why federal science funding should be
designed to include upside participation in the enterprises that will be created. The public
deserves much more direct participation in those profits. And the billionaires should have to
make do with fewer billions.
"The United States has long exhibited a particularly potent strain of the billionaire
problem. This is partly because America's founders, in their pre-industrial innocence, could
not imagine that money would capture politics to the extent that it has (or that was fully
apparent just a few decades later). "
A romanticization of the founders? I seem to recall their motivation was to counter revolt
against the galloping egalitarianism of the States, and incidentally, the guys in the room
were basically the billionaires of the day.
His subsequent complaints seem right on though, and pointing out the telegraph situation,
which rightly should have been a Post Office operation, is especially appreciated.
A romanticization of the founders? I seem to recall their motivation was to counter revolt
against the galloping egalitarianism of the States, and incidentally, the guys in the room
were basically the billionaires of the day.
[Simon Johnson's] subsequent complaints seem right on though, and pointing out the
telegraph situation, which rightly should have been a Post Office operation, is especially
appreciated.
POTUS races can be effectively
Operated with
Little people funded campaigns
Bernie proved that
And Liz
Yes spreading too thin
fielding 435 house races at once
or 34 Senate races etc
Big bucks will prevail over all
But winn8ng evening enough
It requires sustainable
Solid majorities
And protracted continuity
like the new deal maintained
Why ?
The bigger problem is the pre existing
State system
Progressives might get elected
to change The show
But
Deep Sam will resist mightily
Capitalism is a system
.of organized social production
That produces and reproduces
Along with itself
Typical human consequences
Among those typical human consequences
"Second, reports suggest that Trump's new demands are not based on any clear U.S. military
need. This leads us to the question of how Trump arrived at the new sum being sought from
South Korea."
"Polling shows that while Americans are increasingly skeptical of the U.S. intervention
into Afghanistan and Iraq, Americans do support the United States' current engagement in the
world and its commitments to allies."
"Polling" in the current militarized liberal media is questionable as is putting one's
finger on "clear U.S. military need".
It seems the source of "clear US military need" in Japan and Korea (Germany, France, EU
part of NATO, Libya, Somalia...) is media selling the meme that the US cannot "trust" them to
maintain the US" "rules based world order".
"Trust" an excuse to shoulder the "white man's burden".
Besides there are a lot of Lockheed coupons to be clipped.
In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled "The
White Man's Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands." In this poem, Kipling
urged the U.S. to take up the "burden" of empire, as had Britain and other European nations.
Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClure's Magazine, the poem coincided with the
beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that
placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. Theodore
Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied the poem and sent it to
his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was "rather poor poetry, but good
sense from the expansion point of view." Not everyone was as favorably impressed as
Roosevelt. The racialized notion of the "White Man's burden" became a euphemism for
imperialism, and many anti-imperialists couched their opposition in reaction to the
phrase.
Take up the White Man's burden --
Send forth the best ye breed --
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild --
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
Take up the White Man's burden
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain
Take up the White Man's burden --
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard --
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah slowly) to the light:
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
"Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden-
Have done with childish days-
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
Source: Rudyard Kipling, "The White Man's Burden: The United States & The Philippine
Islands, 1899." Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Definitive Edition (Garden City, New York:
Doubleday, 1929).
"Russia is an Oligarchy. Putin is the richest man in the world."
Russia is an oligarchy. Like the USA and all Western countries. Oligarchy is the "rule of
the few", the rule of elite. We know that this is where any state (or mass party) lands due
to the "Iron law of oligarchy". So what's new ?
FYI the USA is a neoliberal plutocracy, which is pretty bad, degraded form of oligarchy.
And it is currently experiences its deep crisis as neoliberal ideology is dead, and economics
entered the phase of a secular stagnation.
This created the situation in which neoliberal elite can't rule "as usual" and
"deplorable" do not want to live "as usual".
Such a situation is called a Classic Marxism a "revolutionary situation" and there is
something in this definition. That's why we got Trump. So he is just a sign of the deep
crisis of the USA neoliberal plutocracy.
In any case this is adeep political crisis. In this sense "impeachment Kabuki theatre" is
just a tip of the iceberg and manifests the same problem
Presence on the political stage of people with noticeable senility problem like Biden and
increased age of politicians in general is yet another sign of the same (can probably be
called "Soviet Politburo syndrome").
But only completely brainwashed by neoliberal propaganda person can claim the Putin is "the
richest man in the world"
Putin is way too clever to get into such a trap, when a person became Western powers
marionette (like corrupt Yanukovich became ) because they can pull the strings and confiscate
the ill gotten wealth anytime. BTW it was Biden, who threatened Yanukovich that if he uses
force against protesters, his Western banks stored wealth is gone. We know what happened next
with the help of Victoria Nuland.
Like Kissinger aptly said, neoliberal oligarchs are always pro-Western oligarch, because
they have nowhere to go to store their wealth.
That means that Putin is "the richest man in the world" level of thinking can be viewed as
typical for a person with severe senility problem due to his/her age.
This statement actually does not even deserve a comment, because person with such level of
mental degradation can't understand argument of the other side.
"The story that has emerged in the impeachment hearings is one of extortion and bribery."
Ralph Nader and conservative constitutional scholar Bruce Fein have put together a
succinct series of audio topics on these and other good articles of impeachment, some which
are probably much more serious but would have also applied to most other recent
presidents.
It comes to mind that since most of Ralph and Bruce's articles equally apply to previous
Democratic presidents, and expose institutional disfunction among all the branches, that
Leadership may be pursuing this rather narrow inquiry to avoid some kind of self
incrimination unpleasantness.
Yes, the reason Democrats haven't gone after Trump for his more obvious forms of criminality
is most likely that they are guilty of the same forms of corruption.
Has anyone checked out what O'Bomber has been up to lately. It turns out that he's been
cashing out (no quid pro quo there!) And he's been hobnobbing with the wealthy folks who own
the Democratic Party and in his spare time he's been criticizing the Left!
"Equipped with fame, wealth, and a vast reservoir of residual goodwill Obama now has more
power to do good in an hour than most of us do in a lifetime. The demands of etiquette and
propriety notwithstanding, he no longer has intransigent Blue Dog senators to appease, donors
to placate, or personal electoral considerations to keep him up at night. When he speaks or
acts, we can be reasonably certain he does so out of sincere choice and that the substance of
his words and actions reflect the real Barack Obama and how he honestly sees the world.
It therefore tells us a great deal that, given the latitude, resources, and moral authority
with which to influence events, Obama has spent his post-presidency cozying up to the global
elite and delivering vapid speeches to corporate interests in exchange for unthinkable sums
of money.
Though often remaining out of the spotlight, he has periodically appeared next to various
CEOs at events whose descriptions might be read as cutting satire targeting the hollowness of
business culture if they weren't all-too real. As the world teeters on the brink of
ecological disaster, he recently cited an increase in America's output of oil under his
administration as a laudable achievement.
When Obama has spoken about or intervened in politics, it's most often been to bolster the
neoliberal center-right or attack and undermine the Left." https://jacobinmag.com/2019/11/obama-socialism
But to EMichael and his ilk, it was all Republicans' fault that O'bombers didn't get much
done O'Bomber's eye on his personal prize--his post-presidential earning potential--never
figured in!!!
Complacency certainly allowed Obama to do virtually nothing during his final seven years.
Fortunately the complacency got reduced due to the 2016 election, else Obama would have
pushed through TPP.
During the Obama years the mantra was, "Don't worry, be happy." And the elites were happy.
The rest of us, not so much, which is why we got Trump.
"... The existence of the bubble and the fact that it was driving the economy could both be easily determined from regularly published government data, yet the vast majority of economists were surprised when the bubble burst and it gave us the Great Recession. This history should lead us to ask what other simple things economists are missing. ..."
Simple Economics that Most Economists Don't Know
By Dean Baker
Economists are continually developing new statistical techniques, at least some of which
are useful for analyzing data in ways that allow us to learn new things about the world.
While developing these new techniques can often be complicated, there are many simple things
about the world that economists tend to overlook.
The most important example here is the housing bubble in the last decade. It didn't
require any complicated statistical techniques to recognize that house prices had sharply
diverged from their long-term pattern, with no plausible explanation in the fundamentals of
the housing market.
It also didn't require sophisticated statistical analysis to see the housing market was
driving the economy. At its peak in 2005 residential construction accounted for 6.8 percent
of GDP. This compares to a long-run average that is close to 4.0 percent. Consumption was
also booming, as people spent based on the bubble generated equity in their homes, pushing
the savings rate to a record low.
The existence of the bubble and the fact that it was driving the economy could both be
easily determined from regularly published government data, yet the vast majority of
economists were surprised when the bubble burst and it gave us the Great Recession. This
history should lead us to ask what other simple things economists are missing.
For this holiday season, I will give three big items that are apparently too simple for
economists to understand.
1) Profit shares have not increased much -- While there has been some redistribution in
before-tax income shares from labor to capital, it at most explains a small portion of the
upward redistribution of the last four decades. Furthermore, shares have been shifting back
towards labor in the last four years.
2) Returns to shareholders have been low by historical standards -- It is often asserted
that is an era of shareholder capitalism in which companies are being run to maximize returns
to shareholders. In fact, returns to shareholders have been considerably lower on average
than they were in the long Golden Age from 1947 to 1973.
3) Patent and copyright rents are equivalent to government debt as a future burden –
The burden that we are placing on our children through the debt of the government is a
frequent theme in economic reporting. However, we impose a far larger burden with
government-granted patent and copyright monopolies, although this literally never gets any
attention in the media.
To be clear, none of these points are contestable. All three can all be shown with widely
available data and/or basic economic logic. The fact that they are not widely recognized by
people in policy debates reflects the laziness of economists and people who write about
economic policy.
Profit Shares
It is common to see discussions where it is assumed that there has been a large shift from
wages to profits, and then a lot of head-scratching about why this occurred. In fact, the
shift from wages to profits has been relatively modest and all of it occurred after 2000,
after the bulk of the upward redistribution of income had already taken place.
If we just compare end points, the labor share of net domestic product was 64.0 percent in
2019, a reduction of 1.6 percentage points from its 65.6 percent share in 1979, before the
upward redistribution began. If, as a counter-factual, we assume that the labor share was
still at its 1979 level it would mean that wages would be 2.5 percent higher than they are
now. That is not a trivial effect, but it only explains a relatively small portion of the
upward redistribution over the last four decades.
It is also worth noting the timing of this shift in shares. There was no change in shares
from 1979 to 2000, the point at which most of the upward redistribution to the richest one
percent had already taken place. The shift begins in the recovery from the 2001
recession.
This was the period of the housing bubble. The reason why this matters is that banks and
other financial institutions were recording large profits on the issuance of mortgages that
subsequently went bad, leading to large losses in the years 2008-09. This means that a
substantial portion of the profits that were being booked in the years prior to the Great
Recession were not real profits.
It would be as though companies reported profits based on huge sales to a country that
didn't exist. Such reporting would make profits look good when the sales were being booked,
but then would produce large losses when the payments for the sales did not materialize,
since the buyer did not exist. It's not clear that when the financial industry books phony
profits it means there was a redistribution from labor to capital.[1]
There clearly was a redistribution from labor to capital in the weak labor market
following the Great Recession. Workers did not have enough bargaining power to capture any of
the gains from productivity growth in those years. That has been partially reversed in the
last four years as the labor share of net domestic income has risen by 2.4 percentage
points.[2] This still leaves some room for further increases to make up for the drop in labor
share from the Great Recession, but it does look as though the labor market is operating as
we would expect.
Returns to Shareholders Lag in the Period of Shareholder Capitalism
It is common for people writing on economics, including economists, to say that companies
have been focused on returns to shareholders in the last four decades in a way that was not
previously true. The biggest problem with this story is that returns to shareholders have
actually been relatively low in the last two decades.
If we take the average real rate of return over the last two decades, it has been 3.9
percent. That compares to rates of more than 8.0 percent in the fifties and sixties. Even
this 3.9 percent return required a big helping hand from the government in the form a
reduction in the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.
The figure for the last two decades is somewhat distorted by the fact that we were
reaching the peak of the stock bubble in the late 1990s, but the story is little changed if
we adjust for this fact. If we take the average real return from July of 1997, when the price
to earnings ratio was roughly the same as it is now, it is still just 5.7 percent, well below
the Golden Age average when companies were supposedly not being run to maximize shareholder
value.
It is striking that this drop in stock returns is so little noticed and basically does not
feature at all in discussions of the economy. Back in the late 1990s, it was nearly
universally accepted in public debates that stocks would provide a 7.0 percent real return on
average in public debates.
This was most evident in debates on Social Security, where both conservatives and liberals
assumed that the stock market would provide 7.0 percent real returns. Conservatives, like
Martin Feldstein, made this assumption as part of their privatization plans. Liberal
economists made the same assumption in plans put forward by the Clinton administration and
others to shore up the Social Security trust fund by putting a portion of it in the stock
market. The Congressional Budget Office even adopted the 7.0 percent real stock returns
assumption in its analysis of various Social Security reform proposals that called for
putting funds in the stock market.
Given the past history on stock returns and the widely held view that returns would
continue to average close to 7.0 percent over the long-term, the actual performance of stock
returns over the last two decades looks pretty disappointing from shareholders' perspective.
It certainly does not look like corporations are being run for their benefit, or if so, top
executives are doing a poor job.
One of the obvious factors depressing returns has been the extraordinary run up in price
to earnings ratios. A high price to earnings ratio (PE) effectively means that shareholders
have to pay a lot of money for a dollar in corporate profits. When PEs were lower, in the
1950s and 1960s, dividends yields were in the range of 3.0 -5.0 percent. In the recent years
they have been hovering near 2.0 percent. When the PE is over 30, as is now the case, paying
out a dividend of even 3.0 percent would essentially mean paying out all the company's
profits as dividends. Clearly that cannot happen, or at least not on a sustained basis.
While shareholders have not done well by historical standards in recent decades, CEO pay
has soared, with the ratio of the pay of CEOs to ordinary workers going from 20 or 30 to 1 in
the 1960s and 1970s, to 200 or 300 to 1 at present. There is a story that could reconcile
soaring CEO pay with historically low stock returns.
Corporations have increasingly turned to share buybacks as an alternative to dividends for
paying out money to shareholders. The process of buying back shares would drive up share
prices. Part of this is almost definitional, with fewer shares outstanding, the price per
share should go up. If buybacks push up share prices enough to raise the price to earnings
ratio, then in principle other investors should sell stock to bring the PE back to its prior
level. But if this doesn't happen, then buybacks could increase PEs.
That would of course imply huge irrationality in the stock market, but anyone who lived
through the 1990s stock bubble and the housing bubble in the last decade knows that large
investors can be exceedingly irrational for long periods of time. Anyhow, if share buybacks
do raise PEs there would be a clear story whereby CEOs could drive up their own pay, which
typically is largely in stock options, to the detriment of future shareholders, which would
explain both soaring CEO pay and declining returns to shareholders.
Whether this story of share buybacks raising PE is accurate would require some serious
research (I'd welcome references, if anyone has them), but what is beyond dispute is that the
last two decades have provided shareholders with relatively low returns. That seems hard to
reconcile with the often repeated story about this being a period of shareholder
capitalism.
Patents and Copyright Monopolies Are Implicit Government Debt
There is a whole industry dedicated to highlighting the size and growth of the government
debt, largely funded by the late private equity billionaire Peter Peterson. The leading news
outlets feel a need to regularly turn to the Peterson funded outfits to give us updates on
the size of the debt.
When presenting the horror story of a $20 trillion debt and the burden it will impose on
our children, there is never any mention of the burden created by patent and copyright
monopolies. This is an inexcusable inconsistency.
Patent and copyright monopolies are mechanisms that the government uses to pay for
services that are alternatives to direct spending. For example, instead of granting drug
companies patent monopolies and software developers copyright monopolies, the government
could just pay directly for the research and creative work that was the basis for these
monopolies. There are arguments as to why these monopolies might be better mechanisms than
direct funding, but these arguments don't change the fact they are mechanisms the government
uses for paying for services.
While we keep careful accounting of the direct spending, we pretend the implicit spending
by granting patent and copyright monopolies does not exist. This makes zero sense, especially
given the size of the rents being created by these monopolies.
In the case of prescription drugs alone, we will spend close to $400 billion (1.8 percent
of GDP) this year above the free market price, due to patent protections and other monopolies
granted by the federal government. This is considerably more than the $330 billion in
interest that the Congressional Budget Office projected we would spend on the $16.6 trillion
in publicly held debt in 2019.[3]
And this figure is just a fraction of the total rents from patent and copyright
monopolies, which would include most of the payments for medical equipment, computer software
and hardware, and recorded music and video material. Since these payments dwarf the size of
interest payments on the debt, it is difficult to understand how anyone concerned about the
burdens the government was creating could ignore patents and copyrights, while harping on
interest on the debt.
As I have often argued there are good reasons, especially in the case of prescription
drugs, for thinking that direct funding would be a more efficient mechanism than patent
monopolies. In the case of prescription drugs, direct funding would mean that all findings
would be immediately available to all researchers worldwide. If drugs were sold at free
market prices, it would no longer be a struggle to find ways to pay for them. And, we would
take away the incentive to push drugs in contexts where they are not appropriate, as happened
with the opioid crisis. (See "Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy
Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer," for a fuller discussion - it's free. * )
While the relative merits of patent/copyright monopolies and direct funding can be
debated, the logical point, that these monopolies are an implicit form of government debt,
cannot be. It shows the incredibly low quality of economic debate that this fact is not
widely recognized.
The Prospect for Simple Facts and Logic Entering Economic Debate in the Next Decade
The three issues noted here are already pretty huge in terms of our understanding of the
economy. The people who write in a wide range of areas should be aware of them, but with few
exceptions, they are not.
Unfortunately, that situation is not likely to change any time soon for a simple economic
reason, there is no incentive for people who write on economic issues to give these points
serious attention. They can continue to draw paychecks and get grants for doing what they are
doing. Why should they spend time addressing facts and logic that require they think
differently about the world?
As has been noted many times, there is no real consequence to economists and people
writing about the economy for being wrong. A custodian who doesn't clean the toilet gets
fired, but an economist who missed the housing bubble whose collapse led to the Great
Recession gets the "who could have known?" amnesty.
Given this structure of incentives, we should assume that economists and others who write
on economics will continue to ignore some of the most basic facts about the economy. That is
what economics tells us.
[1] Since income is supposed to be matched by output in the GDP accounts, the
corresponding phony entry on the output side would be the loans that subsequently went bad.
These loans were counted as a service when they were issued. Arguably, this was not accurate
accounting.
[2] This rise in labor share appears in the net domestic income calculation, but not in
the net domestic product figure. The reason is that there has been a sharp drop in the size
of the statistical discrepancy over the last four years, as output side GDP now exceeds the
income side measure. It is common to assume that the true figure lies somewhere in the
middle, which would mean the increase in labor share is likely less the 2.4 percentage points
calculated on the income side.
[3] This subtracts out the $50 billion in interest payments remitted from the Federal
Reserve Board.
This simple conception generalized deans
Bean hunt for rents
How might one do this
Well first make up a rate of interest
And take a system wide wage snap shot
From mines oceans forests and fields
Thru factories warehouses ultilities
boats and trains
To barber shops malt shops and convenience stores
Mark up the wage cells of your matrix
By your invented rate of interest
Now compare this vector to the 've tor of actual prices
You get a vector of rents aka profits of enterprise and residuals
Col. Lang wrote an excellent post on
'Who "debunked" the Biden conspiracy theories?' . I would like to suggest a companion post on
'Who defines "the national interests of the United States" '.
Fiona Hill appears to be part of the Borg, not really sure which part she's affiliated.
Some have called her a 'sleeper agent', but a sleeper for whom? British Intelligence agent of
influence? Or an Israeli agent of influence, or maybe a Daniel Pipes trained NEOCON agent of
influence? Any way one spins it, Fiona Hill has been undermining POTUS Trump while she was
part of his NSC and his advisory team. Why her intense hatred of Putin? Does he happen to
know through his nation's intelligence exactly who she is and whom she may be working on
behalf of? The Skripal incident showed just how much that the British Government and Crown
hate Russia. But why the intense British hatred of Russia, why?
Questions, so many questions regarding Ms. Hill and who she really works for.
"This was a debate over policy. Trump's critics may not have liked the policy he was
pushing. But as former Defense Intelligence Agency official Pat Lang noted on his blog last
week,
the statute in question applies only to "intelligence activities" but "does not include
differences of opinions concerning public policy matters."
That's what this fight is about, said Lang . Speaker after speaker at the hearings asserted
that Trump's views did not comport with official national policy. But the president sets that
policy, Lang said, not the diplomats.
"They think they are the people who set national policy and the president is this figurehead
who is guided by all these people around him who agree on everything," he said. "The president
doesn't need to use the State Department at all to conduct foreign policy." ' Paul Mulshine
-------------
Actually, I was too minimal in speaking of "diplomats." Vindman is not a diplomat and there
are many other actors in this drama of Borgist angst (foreign policy establishment ) who are
not diplomats.
For one thing a large percentage of the Drones at the State Department are civil service
employees rather than Foreign Service Officers, and although they do not play well together
they agree on the ultimate authority of the Supremacy Clause (non-existent) in the US
Constitution that gives the State Department dominion over all the Lord created. A career
ambassador's wife once lectured me that the US Army should change the cap badge that officers
wear because it looks too much like the Great Seal of the United States which in the State
Department can only be displayed by Ambassadors. I told her that she should petition the
Secretary of the Army in this matter.
Various departments of government, media, academia, thinktankeries, etc., all have heavy
infestations of folks who went to graduate school together in poly sci in all its branches, or
who wish to be thought worthy of such attendance. They specialize in group think, conformity,
and conformism, even to the solemn dress they affect. The four in hand tie knot is pretty much
mandatory for serious consideration for inclusion in the Borg. It indicates a certain preppy
insouciance and faux disregard for details of dress.
Trump's casual disregard for all that enrages the Borg who thought they had "won it all"
long ago and that they would have a Borgist neocon to deal with in Hillary.
Hillary's Foundation has lost millions recently, which has Hillary pursing her lips like
she's been using a lemon for her lipstick. I mean, worse than fish-lips, Hillary's pursing
expression.
Too bad that we can't form some cement shoes for the Borg and toss them into the east
river AKA the Atlantic, or send them back to hell from where they originated!
OT:
This afternoon my wife and I turned on the TV to watch football. We were flipping through
channels and came upon some local ABC affiliate (WMUR) which had on a documentary which
mentioned the Medal of Honor and a Catholic chaplain in Vietnam. Needless to say we stayed on
that channel. Long story short, it was one of the most powerful things we've ever watched. We
were both in tears by the end (nb: I don't cry easily) and we were changed from having
watched it. We immediately went online to purchase copies for family members. It was recently
released.
As the Borg like to say "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our
own." They have done this with the four in hand tie knot which was previously worn by giants
like George Kennon and Chip Bohlen. Yet now, the midgetry prevails.
Colonel...This is another Reason why I appreciate your levels of Experience and knowledge
with SST..Thank you for doing that...I always come away with New Insight..and Understanding
of Real Dynamics..what has Progressively Developed inside the State.Department.with its
Influence On so Much POLICY...and .is as You say...The BORG..and Their Own Culture.your
Article put that all into a Big Picture for Me..(Connecting the Data..) .It.as you aptly
Described. is a Universal.Sect..and...At The National Level...They are Cyber Borgs..Shciff
Shapers..and that Whole Colony has Been Exposed.,,, Bad Products and All....
Fiona Hill appears to be part of the Borg, not really sure which part she's affiliated.
Some have called her a 'sleeper agent', but a sleeper for whom? British Intelligence agent of
influence? Or an Israeli agent of influence, or maybe a Daniel Pipes trained NEOCON agent of
influence? Any way one spins it, Fiona Hill has been undermining POTUS Trump while she was
part of his NSC and his advisory team. Why her intense hatred of Putin? Does he happen to
know through his nation's intelligence exactly who she is and whom she may be working on
behalf of? The Skripal incident showed just how much that the British Government and Crown
hate Russia. But why the intense British hatred of Russia, why?
Questions, so many questions regarding Ms. Hill and who she really works for.
First, Trump was going to destroy democracy. That didn't persuade voters. Now it's he'll
destroy civilization itself...and the planet. When that doesn't work where will they go next?
He'll destroy to Solar System? The Universe? How do such people get into power in the first
place? Oh yeah, San Francisco.
Translation: The Pelosi Crime Family will be out of business if DJT is re elected. The
days of foreign aid kickbacks and influence peddling will come to an end. Who does this
******* Trump think he is putting country before personal gain.
Bread and circus. The swamp is full and Clinton is not in jail. The southern border is
wide open. We're sending more troops to the Middle East. The status quo is completely intact.
If it weren't for the hysterics you'd think Obama was still president. The only thing that's
changed is Trump's wife doesn't have a ****.
Federal authorities have indicted two Russian cybercriminals who allegedly lead a
shadowy organization called "Evil Corp" that has stolen more than $100 million using a
powerful malware that has spread to more than 40 countries.
now... how come the FBI, (NOT to mention, CIA, and the rest of the alphabet soup agencies)
are not spending their efforts and monies to pursue this ENRON, (LOGO LOOK-A-LIKE) company,
instead of initiating an illegal coup d'etat against the president of USA?
-----
Members of Evil Corp are living a lavish lifestyle, funded by the life savings of their
victims.
If Maksim Yakubets, who used the online identity of 'Aqua', ever leaves the safety of
Russia he will be arrested and extradited to the US.
Well duh.... lol !
Why would he....????
Wouldn't it make sense to make a deal with... "lord Putin" to cease this shield of
protection ?.... hmmm I wonder why...
Ask some Biden guy...
Oh wait... the US Gov. and alphabet agencies are supposed to be doing so, yes ?
Hmm ever wonder why google changed its name to "alphabet"... suspicious minds want to know
... -lol
St. Nancy the hypocrite a reporter asked Pelosi yesterday if she acts from hatred of Trump.
She responded that having been raised as a Catholic she does not hate anyone because we are
taught to hate the sin and love the sinner. Well, pilgrims, Catholics are expected to practice
their religion through both faith and deeds and to accept the teaching of the Church...
SOFTWARE. A law has passed requiring electronic gadgets to have Russia software in them. The
BBC idiotically
says : "Others have raised concerns that the Russian-made software could be used to spy on
users". "Idiotically" because one of the reasons for the law is
that US-made software
is
spying on users .
I think Warren is running for treasury secretary in a Biden administration. The theory
being that that will be her reward for stopping Sanders. Everybody has an angle. Except
Bernie. Can someone show me his angle?
-two, how does Warren look in the light of Sanders and a few newer types like AOC or Omar?
If there is no Sanders, she is the nominal left, a former Republican which shows how right
wing Team Blue is. Zebras don't change their stripes, but I think what is and isn't
acceptable does change. The three I mentioned moved the perceptions of enough people who
otherwise would support Warren. Warren is a day late and a dollar short in 2019. Okay, she's
$0.02, but she is still short of where she would need to be to take her advantages over
Sanders to next level.
-Misinterpreting popularity. One of the more detailed ratings of Warren a few years
indicated she wasn't wildly popular in Taxachusetts, but she was very popular with a narrow
subset of women around the country. In a sense, she is trying to grow from this group instead
of understanding a big tent is the only way forward if you aren't an effective incumbent or
VP. Its similar to Clinton's 90's worship of "soccer moms" (surburban white women), basically
the only group that outpaced or met expectations in support for Bill and company. Instead of
recognizing problems with the generic Democratic coalition, they worked to make their friends
really like them.
-not recognizing, the importance of sitting out in 2016. She didn't win friends. She
relied on msm punditry instead of recognizing politicians and elections are about pushing,
not waiting for David Brooks to weigh in. She failed a basic leadership test because she was
afraid of offending Hillary Clinton who was going to collapse over the finish line and then
have been on the defense before she was even inaugurated.
Clinton apparently has super-special powers for sniffing out Russian mischief-makers that
mere mortals like us cannot comprehend.
Also, she says that she refuses to go away because "that is what her adversaries want". I
knew that Hillary was a narcissist, but this takes being a sore loser to a whole other level.
Somebody like this as president would be just as bad as Trump, and Hillary would have the
entire DNC leadership apparatus to carry out her royal decrees.
It has long required the support of the wealthy -- and a certain level of personal wealth --
to run for president of the United States. In 2016, billions of
dollars were raised by Donald Trump's and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns. But the
rich control much
of this cash flow . In 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the
top .01 percent of all income earners in the United States accounted for 29 percent of all
political committee fundraising.
There are many reasons why this is a dangerous thing. But a big one is accountability.
"My party's not known for worrying about the deficit or the debt too much but it's time
for us to start getting into that," Mayor Pete says in NH town hall in response to voter
anxious about debt. Says everything his campaign has proposed is paid for.
Mayor Pete expanded on this in the gaggle: "I believe every Presidency of my lifetime
has been an example of deficits growing under Republican government and shrinking under
Democratic government, but my party's got to get more comfortable talking about this
issue"
"And we shouldn't be afraid to demonstrate that we have the revenue to cover every cost
that we incur in the investments that we're proposing."
Looks like MMT is not a McKinsey-approved management tool.
Buttigieg (D)(2): "The trips to war zones that Pete Buttigieg rarely talks about" [ABC].
Missed this at the time: "But what the 37-year-old South Bend mayor didn't mention, and
virtually never discusses in his run for the nation's highest office, were other trips to
Afghanistan and Iraq years prior to his military deployment, when he was a 20-something
civilian contractor for the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company . Buttigieg worked
for McKinsey from 2007 to 2010, after completing post-graduate studies at Oxford. In his
memoir, 'Shortest Way Home,' he mentions his involvement in domestic projects for the firm like
doing energy efficiency research in the U.S., and goes into particular detail about one that
involved analyzing North American grocery prices. But when it comes to his work abroad with
McKinsey, he only drops hints about working on 'war zone economic development to help grow
private sector employment' in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also refers to a 'safe house' in
Baghdad. The book doesn't say exactly when or how long Buttigieg was in either country." •
So Mayo Pete was (?) a spook? No reporting on this; the story just disappeared.
"... "Fifty years of shareholder primacy," wrote the Financial Times, "has fostered short-termism and created an environment of popular distrust of big business." ..."
"... The rise of stock options to compensate corporate managers entrenched shareholder value by aligning the interests of managers and shareholders. Companies began sacrificing productive investments, environmental protections, and worker security to ensure shareholder returns were maximised. The fear of stock market verdicts on quarterly reports left them no choice. ..."
"... This account fits a widespread belief that financiers and rentiers mangled the postwar golden era of capitalism. More importantly, it suggests a simple solution: liberate companies from the demands of shareholders. Freed from the short-term pursuit of delivering shareholder returns, companies could then return to long-term plans, productive investments, and higher wages. ..."
"... In the 1960s, a group of firms called the conglomerates were pioneering many of the practices that later became associated with the shareholder revolution: aggressive mergers, divestitures, Leverage buy-outs (LBOs), and stock repurchasing. ..."
"... These firms, such as Litton Industries, Teledyne and LTV revolutionised corporate strategy by developing new techniques to systematically raise money from financial markets. They wheeled and dealed their divisions and used them to tap financial markets to finance further predatory acquisitions. Instead of relying on profits from productive operations, they chased speculative transactions on financial markets to grow. ..."
"... With fortunes to be made and lost, no manager could ignore the stock market. They became increasingly concerned with their position on financial markets. It was in this context that corporate capitalism first spoke of the desire to 'maximise shareholder value'. While sections of the corporate establishment were put on the defensive, the main reason for this was not that shareholders imposed their preferences on management. Instead, it was competitor managers using the shareholder discourse as a resource to expand and gain control over other firms. Capital markets became the foundation of a new form of financialised managerial power. ..."
"... Third, the notion of shareholder primacy helped to offload managerial responsibility. An amorphous and often anonymous 'shareholder pressure' became the explanation for all manner of managerial malpractice. Managers lamented the fact they had no choice but to disregard workers and other stakeholders because of shareholder power. Rhetorically, shareholders were deemed responsible for corporate problems. Yet in practice, managers, more often than not, enrolled shareholders into their own projects, using the newly-formed alliance with shareholders to pocket huge returns for themselves. ..."
"... Amorphous? Anonymous? Anybody who faced one of Milken's raiders, or paid Icahn's Greenmail, would disagree. Nelson Putz, er, Peltz just forced P&G to start eating into the foundation of the business to feed his greed. There's nothing amorphous or anonymous about activist shareholders, especially when they take over a company and start carving it up like a Thanksgiving turkey. ..."
"... Corporations are artificial creations of the state. They exist in their current form under a complex series of laws and regulations, but with certain privileges, such as Limited Liability Corporations. It is assumed that these creatures will enhance economic activity if they are given these privileges, but there is no natural law, such as gravity, that says these laws and regulations need to exist in their current form. They can be changed at will be legislatures. ..."
"... The semantics of "shareholder primacy" are problematic. The word "shareholder" in this formula echoes the kind problems that whirl around a label like "farmer". ..."
"... I believe "shareholder primacy" is just one of many rhetorical tools used to argue for the mechanisms our Elites constructed so they could loot Corporate wealth. There is no misunderstanding involved. ..."
"... This fits within a Marxist analysis as the material conditions spurred the ideological justifications of the conditions, not the ideology spurring the conditions. ..."
"... I think about stock markets as separate from companies and I'm wrong. Each of the stock exchanges I have heard of started off when 4-5 local companies invested a few thousand each in renting a building and a manager to run an exchange hoping it would attract investment, promote their shares and pay for itself. ..."
By Sahil Jai Dutta, a lecturer in political economy at the University of Goldsmiths, London and Samuel Knafo, a Senior Lecturer
in the Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex. Originally published at the
PERC blog
In the late 1960s, a young banker named Joel Stern was working on a project to transform corporate management. Stern's hunch was
that the stock market could help managers work out how their strategies were performing. Simply, if management was effective, demand
for the firm's stock would be high. A low price would imply bad management.
What sounds obvious now was revolutionary at the time. Until then profits were the key barometer of success. But profits were
a crude measure and easy to manipulate. Financial markets, Stern felt, could provide a more precise measure of the value of management
because they were based on more 'objective' processes, beyond the firm's direct control. The value of shares, he believed, represented
the market's exact validation of management. Because of this, financial markets could help managers determine what was working and
what was not.
In doing this, Stern laid the foundation for a 'shareholder value' management that put financial markets at the core of managerial
strategy.
Stern would probably never have imagined that these ideas would 50 years later be castigated as a fundamental threat to the future
of liberal capitalism. In recent times everyone from the
Business Roundtable group of global
corporations, to the Financial Times
, to the British Labour Party has lined
up to condemn the shareholder ideology.
"Fifty years of shareholder primacy," wrote the Financial Times, "has fostered short-termism and created an environment
of popular distrust of big business."
It is not the first time Stern's creation has come under fire. A decade ago Jack Welsh, former CEO of General Electric declared
shareholder value " probably the dumbest
idea in the world ". And 15 years before then, British political commentator Will Hutton, among others, found paperback fame
with his book The State We're In preaching much the same message.
To critics, the rise of shareholder value is a
straightforward story , that has been told
over and over again.
Following a general crisis of postwar profitability in the late 1970s, corporate managers came under fire from disappointed shareholders
complaining about declining returns. Shareholder revolts forced managers to put market capitalisation first. The rise of stock
options to compensate corporate managers entrenched shareholder value by aligning the interests of managers and shareholders. Companies
began sacrificing productive investments, environmental protections, and worker security to ensure shareholder returns were maximised.
The fear of stock market verdicts on quarterly reports left them no choice.
This account fits a widespread belief that financiers and
rentiers mangled the postwar golden era of capitalism. More importantly, it suggests a simple solution: liberate companies from
the demands of shareholders. Freed from the short-term pursuit of delivering shareholder returns, companies could then return to
long-term plans, productive investments, and higher wages.
In two recent
articles , we have argued that this
critique of shareholder value has always been based on a misunderstanding. Stern and the shareholder value consultants did not aim
to put shareholders first. They worked to empower management. Seen in this light, the history of the shareholder value ideology appears
differently. And it calls for alternative political responses.
To better understand Stern's ideas, it is important to grasp the broader context in which he was writing. In the 1960s, a
group of firms called the conglomerates were pioneering many of the practices that later became associated with the shareholder revolution:
aggressive mergers, divestitures, Leverage buy-outs (LBOs), and stock repurchasing.
These firms, such as Litton Industries, Teledyne and LTV revolutionised corporate strategy by developing new techniques to
systematically raise money from financial markets. They wheeled and dealed their divisions and used them to tap financial markets
to finance further predatory acquisitions. Instead of relying on profits from productive operations, they chased speculative transactions
on financial markets to grow.
These same tactics were later borrowed by the 1980s corporate raiders, many of which were in fact old conglomerators from the
1960s. The growing efficiency with which these raiders captured undervalued firms on the stock market and ruthlessly sold off their
assets to finance further acquisitions put corporate America on alert.
With fortunes to be made and lost, no manager could ignore the stock market. They became increasingly concerned with their
position on financial markets. It was in this context that corporate capitalism first spoke of the desire to 'maximise shareholder
value'. While sections of the corporate establishment were put on the defensive, the main reason for this was not that shareholders
imposed their preferences on management. Instead, it was competitor managers using the shareholder discourse as a resource to expand
and gain control over other firms. Capital markets became the foundation of a new form of financialised managerial power.
These changes made the approach of management consultants championing shareholder value attractive. The firm founded by Stern
and his business partner Bennett Stewart III took advantage of the situation. They sold widely their ideas about financial markets
as a guideline for corporate strategy to firms looking to thrive in this new environment.
As the discourse and tools of shareholder value took hold, they served three distinct purposes. First, they provided accounting
templates for managerial strategies and a means to manage a firm's standings on financial markets. The first and most famous metric
for assessing just how much value was being created for shareholders was one Stern himself helped develop, Economic Value Added (EVA).
Second, they became a powerful justification for the idea that managers should be offered share options. This was in fact an old
idea floated in the 1950s by management consultants such as Arch Patton of McKinsey as a means to top-up relatively stagnant managerial
pay. Yet it was relaunched in this new context as part of the promise to 'align the interests of managers with shareholders.' Stock
options helped managerial pay skyrocket in the 1990s, a curious fact for those who believe that managers were 'disciplined' by shareholders.
Third, the notion of shareholder primacy helped to offload managerial responsibility. An amorphous and often anonymous 'shareholder
pressure' became the explanation for all manner of managerial malpractice. Managers lamented the fact they had no choice but to disregard
workers and other stakeholders because of shareholder power. Rhetorically, shareholders were deemed responsible for corporate problems.
Yet in practice, managers, more often than not, enrolled shareholders into their own projects, using the newly-formed alliance with
shareholders to pocket huge returns for themselves.
Though shareholder demands are now depicted as the problem to be solved, the same reformist voices have in the past championed
shareholders as the solution to corporate excesses. This was the basis for the hope around the '
shareholder spring ' in 2012, or the
recent championing of activist shareholders as '
labour's last weapon' .
By challenging the conventional narrative, we have emphasised how it is instead the financialisation of
managerialism,
or the way in which corporations have leveraged their operations on financial markets, that has characterised the shareholder value
shift. Politically this matters.
If shareholder demands are understood to be the major problem in corporate life, then the solution is to grant executives more
space. Yet the history of shareholder value tells us that managers have been leading the way in corporate governance. They do not
need shielding from shareholders or anyone else and instead need to be made accountable for their decisions. Critiques of shareholder
primacy risk muddying the responsibility of managers who have long put their own interests first. Perhaps the reason why executives
are now so ready to abandon shareholder primacy, is because it never really existed.
Imagine if all corporations were equally owned by the entire population? Then shareholder primacy would just be representative
democracy, no?
But, of course, corporations are not even close to being equally owned by the entire population and part of the blame must
lie with government privileges for private credit creation whereby the need to share wealth and power with the entire population
is bypassed – in the name of "efficiency", one might suppose.
But what good is the "efficient" creation of wealth if it engenders unjust and therefore dangerous inequality and levies noxious
externalities?
"An amorphous and often anonymous 'shareholder pressure' became the explanation for all manner of managerial malpractice."
Amorphous? Anonymous? Anybody who faced one of Milken's raiders, or paid Icahn's Greenmail, would disagree. Nelson Putz,
er, Peltz just forced P&G to start eating into the foundation of the business to feed his greed. There's nothing amorphous or
anonymous about activist shareholders, especially when they take over a company and start carving it up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Shareholder primacy or Creditor Primacy? Creditors, or bond holders, appear to be the more powerful. Shareholders have no legal
recourse to protect their "ownership." Bondholders do have legal recourse. Either way, many corporations more serve up their than
serve their customers and the general public. There is this belief that if a corporation is profitable, that's good but does not
include a public interest (for example Monsanto and Roundup.)
Managers used to fear the creditors more than shareholders, that's very much true.
But that has gone out of the window recently, as debt investors just chase return, so it's seller's world, and few of them
(debt investors) want to take losses as they are much harder to recoup than before. So extend and pretend is well and alive.
In other words, one of the byproducts of QE is that the company management fears no-one, and is more than happy to do whatever
they want.
The problem is the agency. If we assume that we want publicly traded companies (which IMO is not a given), the current incentives
are skewed towards management paying themselves.
The problem with things like supervisory boards, even if they have high worker representation, is that those are few individuals,
and often can be (directly or indirectly) corrupted by the management.
The "shares" incentive is just dumb, at least in the way it's currently structured. It literally gives only upside, and often
even realisable in short/medium term.
Corporations are artificial creations of the state. They exist in their current form under a complex series of laws and
regulations, but with certain privileges, such as Limited Liability Corporations. It is assumed that these creatures will enhance
economic activity if they are given these privileges, but there is no natural law, such as gravity, that says these laws and regulations
need to exist in their current form. They can be changed at will be legislatures.
This is why I despise the Citizens United decision which effectively gives these artificial creations the same rights as people.
I don't believe that Thomas Jefferson would have found that to be "a self-evident truth." I think that Citizens United will be
regarded as something akin to the Dred Scott decision a century from now.
Shareholder primacy is an assumption that hasn't been challenged over the past couple of decades, but can be controlled by
society if it so desires.
The semantics of "shareholder primacy" are problematic. The word "shareholder" in this formula echoes the kind problems
that whirl around a label like "farmer".
A shareholder is often characterized in economics texts as an individual who invests money hoping to receive back dividends
and capital gains in the value and valuation of a company as it earns income and grows over time. Among other changes -- changes
to the US tax laws undermined these quaint notions of investment, and shareholder.
The coincident moves for adding stock options to management's pay packet [threats of firing are supposed to encourage the efforts
of other employees -- why do managers needs some kind of special encouragement?], legalizing share buybacks, and other 'financial
innovations' -- worked in tandem to make investment synonymous with speculation and shareholders synonymous with speculators,
Corporate raiders, and the self-serving Corporate looters replacing Corporate management.
This post follows a twisting road to argue previous "critique of shareholder value has always been based on a misunderstanding"
and arrives at a new critique of shareholder value "challenging the conventional narrative." This post begins by sketching Stern's
foundation for 'shareholder value' with the assertion imputed to him: "if management was effective, demand for the firm's stock
would be high. A low price would imply bad management." The post then claims "What sounds obvious now was revolutionary at the
time." But that assertion does not sound at all obvious to me. In terms of the usual framing of the all-knowing Market the assertion
sounds like a tautology, built on a shaky ground of Neolilberal economic religious beliefs.
I believe "shareholder primacy" is just one of many rhetorical tools used to argue for the mechanisms our Elites constructed
so they could loot Corporate wealth. There is no misunderstanding involved.
"But that assertion does not sound at all obvious to me."
I think you're severely understating this. I'd call it total [family blogging family blog]. As you go on to imply, it takes
an act of pure faith, akin to religious faith in Dawkins' sense of belief in the face of evidence to the contrary, to assume or
assert this nonsense, except insofar as it's tautological – if the purpose of management is to have a high share price, then obviously
the latter reflects the effectiveness of the former.
Well, we're all stakeholders now. There probably isn't much value to merely being a shareholder at this point. First let's
ask for a viable definition of "value" because it's pretty hard to financialize an undefined "value" and nobody can financialize
an empty isolated thing like the word "management". Things go haywire.
What we can do with this seed of an idea is finance the preservation and protection of some defined value. And we can, in fact,
leverage a healthy planet until hell freezes over. No problem.
This fits within a Marxist analysis as the material conditions spurred the ideological justifications of the conditions,
not the ideology spurring the conditions.
Easy to bust this open by legislating against limited liability. Corporates were not always limited liability, but it was promoted
as a means to encourage formation of risky businesses that would otherwise never develop due to risk averse owners or managers.
This was promoted as a social compact, delivering employment and growth that would otherwise be unattainable. Like everything
in life, human greed overcomes social benefits.
Governments world wide would and should step up and regulate to regain control, rather than fiddling at the margins with corporate
governance regulation. They won't, because powerful vested interests will put in place those politicians who will do their bidding.
Another nail in the democracy coffin. The only solution will be a cataclysmic event that unites humanity.
I think about stock markets as separate from companies and I'm wrong. Each of the stock exchanges I have heard of started
off when 4-5 local companies invested a few thousand each in renting a building and a manager to run an exchange hoping it would
attract investment, promote their shares and pay for itself.
I remember when one of the major components of the Hong Kong Exchange, Hutchison, had a bad year and really needed some
black magic to satisfy the shareholders, the Deputy Chairman abandoned his daytime job and spent trading hours buying and selling
for a fortnight to contribute something respectable for the annual accounts. Somebody paid and never knew it.
This was at the start of creative accounting and the 'anything goes' version of capitalism that the article connects with Litton
Industries, Teledyne and LTV but was infecting the entire inner circle of the money.
It has long required the support of the wealthy -- and a certain level of personal wealth --
to run for president of the United States. In 2016, billions of
dollars were raised by Donald Trump's and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns. But the
rich control much
of this cash flow . In 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the
top .01 percent of all income earners in the United States accounted for 29 percent of all
political committee fundraising.
There are many reasons why this is a dangerous thing. But a big one is accountability.
I think Warren is running for treasury secretary in a Biden administration. The theory
being that that will be her reward for stopping Sanders. Everybody has an angle. Except
Bernie. Can someone show me his angle?
-two, how does Warren look in the light of Sanders and a few newer types like AOC or Omar?
If there is no Sanders, she is the nominal left, a former Republican which shows how right
wing Team Blue is. Zebras don't change their stripes, but I think what is and isn't
acceptable does change. The three I mentioned moved the perceptions of enough people who
otherwise would support Warren. Warren is a day late and a dollar short in 2019. Okay, she's
$0.02, but she is still short of where she would need to be to take her advantages over
Sanders to next level.
-Misinterpreting popularity. One of the more detailed ratings of Warren a few years
indicated she wasn't wildly popular in Taxachusetts, but she was very popular with a narrow
subset of women around the country. In a sense, she is trying to grow from this group instead
of understanding a big tent is the only way forward if you aren't an effective incumbent or
VP. Its similar to Clinton's 90's worship of "soccer moms" (surburban white women), basically
the only group that outpaced or met expectations in support for Bill and company. Instead of
recognizing problems with the generic Democratic coalition, they worked to make their friends
really like them.
-not recognizing, the importance of sitting out in 2016. She didn't win friends. She
relied on msm punditry instead of recognizing politicians and elections are about pushing,
not waiting for David Brooks to weigh in. She failed a basic leadership test because she was
afraid of offending Hillary Clinton who was going to collapse over the finish line and then
have been on the defense before she was even inaugurated.
Clinton apparently has super-special powers for sniffing out Russian mischief-makers that
mere mortals like us cannot comprehend.
Also, she says that she refuses to go away because "that is what her adversaries want". I
knew that Hillary was a narcissist, but this takes being a sore loser to a whole other level.
Somebody like this as president would be just as bad as Trump, and Hillary would have the
entire DNC leadership apparatus to carry out her royal decrees.
I have long thought that paul singer is representative of the worst people in the world
(argentina wtf)
and I'm glad carlson put his face up there so many times for his victims to see, in case he
ever ventures out of mordor undisguised. For all the money he has, a truly worthless pos, as
the closing comment made so clear. Good for Carlson, though, almost seems like actual
journalism. Kudos.
Glad to see someone in the MSM point out the obvious .Carlson called out Singer, but in
doing so he also called out the Republican Party, specifically Sen. Ben Sasse from Nebraska.
It will be interesting to see if Sasse is reelected.
Nebraskans – R and D both – should toss Sasse to the curb. He's angered
regular bat-poo crazy Republicans by his "never Trump" blather, then angered Nebraska
Democrats (both of us) by voting Trump/GOP well over 90 percent of the time.
Add to this his folksy BS appearances in the media and his execrable books, and he's a
classic empty suit. Closer to a straight Republican Mayor Pete than any thing else –
over-credentialed, over-ambitious and under performing.
Our Nebraska Democratic Party problem is two-fold: incredibly thin bench for decent
candidates and preponderance of Clinton/Obama/HRC leftovers running the state party. Will be
knocking on doors for Bernie come 2020 but state races are iffy at best.
Tucker has good sense. Perhaps Paul Singer is probably retiring from vultury. He's old and
it's a nasty fight. Singer is at the end of a 30 year stint of dispossessing other people.
Being vicious really isn't enough to keep the federal government at bay. Nor are his bribes.
There has been an unspoken policy of dispossessing poor and middle class people. Why? Is the
United States actually looking at a specific future? That wouldn't align with the free market
– tsk tsk. Or would it? Live free, die free. Somebody needs to define the word "free".
Did TPTB decide to deindustrialize this country that long ago? That's when they attacked the
unions. And the consensus might have been, "Go for it; get it while you can." So Paul Singer
did just that, along with other creepy people like Mitt Romney. Because once the country has
been hosed out by these guys we won't be pushing the old capitalist economy at all. We will
be pushing a globally connected, sustainable economy. Paul Singer is just a dung beetle. And
our government didn't want to discuss it because they would have had to create a safety net.
If we despise Singer, we must also despise Congress.
If we despise Singer, we must also despise Congress. -Susan the Other
Agreed. I think you can argue Congress (and the Executive Branch) have done more to help
the Chinese middle class than the American middle class over the last 30 years. Co-locating
our industrial base with the CCP on communist soil should be looked upon as the most radical
policy in our history but is not. Imagine if at the height of the Cold War we had told
Kruschev hey..how about you make all the stuff we need and we'll pay you $20 or $30T in trade
surplus over a number of years in hard currency which you can then parlay into geopolitical
power in Africa, South America, the ME and else where. What would the America of the fifties
think of this policy?
>Because once the country has been hosed out by these guys we won't be pushing the old
capitalist economy at all. We will be pushing a globally connected, sustainable economy.
Tucker Carlson Tears into Vulture Capitalist Paul Singer for Strip Mining American Towns
Posted on
December 5, 2019
by
Yves Smith
In a bit of synchronicity, Lambert gave a mini-speech tonight that dovetails with an important Tucker
Carlson segment about how hedge funds are destroying flyover. As UserFriendly lamented, "It is beyond sad
that Tucker Carlson is doing better journalism than just about anywhere else." That goes double given that
Carlson has only short segments and TV isn't well suited to complicated arguments.
Lambert fondly recalled the America he grew up in in Indiana, before his parents moved to Maine, where
most people were comfortable or at least not in perilous shape, where blue collar labor, like working in a
factory or repairing cars, was viewed with respect, and where cities and towns were economic and social
communities, with their own businesses and local notables, and national chain operations were few. Yes,
there was an underbelly to this era of broadly shared economic prosperity, such as gays needing to be
closeted and women having to get married if they wanted a decent lifestyle.
I'm not doing his remarks justice, but among other things, the greater sense of stability contributed to
more people being able to be legitimately optimistic. If you found a decent job, you weren't exposed to
MBA-induced downsizings or merger-induced closures. Even in the transitional 1970s, Lambert got his first
job in a mill! He liked his work and was able to support himself, rent an apartment, and enjoy some modest
luxuries. Contrast that with the economic status of a Walmart clerk or an Amazon warehouse worker. And even
now, the small towns that remain cling to activities that bring people together, as Lambert highlighted in
Water Cooler earlier this week:
Please watch this clip in full. Carlson begins with an unvarnished description of the wreckage that
America's heartlands have become as financial predators have sucked local businesses dry, leaving shrunken
communities, poverty and drug addiction in their wake.
Readers may wonder why Carlson singles out hedge funds rather than private equity, but he has
courageously singled out one of the biggest political forces in DC, the notorious vulture capitalist Paul
Singer, best known for his pitched battles with Peru and Argentina after he bought their debt at
knocked-down prices. Carlson describes some US examples from his
rapacious
playbook, zeroing on Delphi, where Singer got crisis bailout money and then shuttered most US
operation, and Cabela's, where a Singer-pressured takeover wrecked one of the few remaining prosperous
American small towns, Sidney, Nebraska. Not only are former employees still afraid of Singer, but even
Carlson was warned against taking on the famously vindictive Singer.
Kev said; "It will also slit your throat tomorrow."
This, aggressive mergers and acquisitions, has been going on for a very long time and everybody
always says that but I have yet to see any wealthy person suffer more than a small loss of a point or
2.
The fact is thats where we are at with capitalism. Money MUST become more money. There are no
outside considerations not even human life.
We all talk about robots going rogue and killing off humanity. Well money is already doing that.
Sound of the Suburbs, your comment suggests that this is the way things are and that there is nothing
to do about it, but that is wrong. It's not inherent to markets or to nature. In fact, "it's not even
hard" because we have agreed to it as part of the social contract, and created policies that enable it.
We can reverse the calculation by changing the tax rules, accounting rules, and legal liability rules and
this calculation reverses. TLDR; vote Bernie.
Which "we" are you talking about? You assume an entity with agency, when there is no such thing.
How do YOU suggest "WE" rewrite the non-existent "social contract?" Or change the tax rules, the
accounting rules, the Delaware corporations law, the Federal Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure,
the current contents of the Code of Federal Regulations, the United States Code and all the other
trappings of legitimacy that give "us" the looting we suffer and remove any access to 'agency" to
re-fix things? I hope Bernie wins/is allowed to win, but he would need the skills of a Machiavelli and
Richelieu and Bismarck to "drain the swamp" of all the horrible creatures and muck that swirls there.
Not to say it's not worth trying "our" mope-level damndest to make it happen.
That said – it doesn't seem to me that Cabelas was 'forced' to sell. Singer owned less than 12% of the
stock. Is he to blame for either managerial greed, or lack of cojones? I'm not praising Singer, just saying
ISTM that he had couldn't have succeeded there without the greed or cowardice of management. I could be
wrong.
Carlson said this behavior is banned in the UK, how does that work?
Tthis is standard operating procedure for takeovers and greenmail in the US. First, 11% is going to be
way way above average trading volumes. Second, unless management owns a lot of shares or has large blocks
in the hands of loyal friends, many investors will follow the money and align with a greenmailer.
When a hostile player is forced to announce that he has a stake >5% by the SEC's 13-D filing
requirement, managements start sweating bullets. "Activist" hedge funds regularly make tons of trouble
with 10% to 15% stakes. CalPERS was a very effective activist investor in its glory years (not even
hostile but pushing hard for governance changes) with much smaller stakes.
The New York Post, which is very strong on covering hedge funds, confirms Carlson's take. From a 2016
article:
Hedgie Paul Singer hit another bull's-eye with his Cabela's investment.
Singer's Elliott Management bought an 11 percent stake in the hunting supply chain last October and
pressed the Springfield, Mo., chain to pursue strategic alternatives -- including a sale.
On Monday, his suggestion was heeded as the 55-year-old company said it agreed to a $5.5 billion,
$65.50-per-share takeover offer from rival Bass Pro Shops.
For Singer, who purchased much of his Cabela's stake at between $36 and $40 a share, Monday's news
means that the fund gained roughly 72 percent on its investment.
The same story depicts Singer as able to exert pressure with even smaller interests:
The hedge fund had an 8.8 percent stake in the company and was expected to net $58 million in
profits, The Post reported.
Elliott, which in June announced a 4.7 stake in PulteGroup, named three board members to the
Atlanta-based homebuilding company.
Last Thursday, it readied a new target, taking an 8.1 percent stake in Mentor Graphics, a
Wilsonville, Ore.-based developer of electronic design automation software.
Since then, shares of the company have risen 6 percent, to $26.24.
Mentor represents a "classic" Elliott investment, a source close to the matter told The Post,
adding that it is a "perfect time" for the company to sell itself.
You have a gift for explaining these things to people with a lot of education but not in finance. I
was confused by this, too, until I read your comment.
"CalPERS was a very effective activist investor in its glory years (not even hostile but pushing
hard for governance changes) with much smaller stakes."
Does that mean they pulled the same parasitical stripping of companies to raise money to help pay
pensions?
But, since it represents public employees and their paymasters, the taxpayers, couldn't CALPERS be
forced to only effect deals that create the most employment, ideally in California, rather than
destroy it? i.e. a ban on job destroying deals.
That would be a long term investment in California, rather than a short term means to raise cash,
no?
Tucker Carlson has taken remarkably courageous positions on a number of issues, including Syria,
Ukraine, Russia, etc.
Matt Stoller tweets praise of Carlson's report on Singer:
"There is a real debate on the right.
@TuckerCarlson just guts billionaire Paul Singer over the destruction of a Nebraska town through
financial predation. And Carlson is merciless towards Senator @BenSasse for taking $$$ and remaining
silent."
I have noticed a considerable uptick in comments across a whole range of sites about things "going to
get biblical".
When the next downturn happens there seems to be every indication that it's going to be on an
unprecedented scale.
Traditionally that's always seem to be time to have a good war, you can get the country to focus on an
external common enemy, you can ramp up industrial production providing full employment and you can use
national security to clamp down on dissent. Nuclear weapons seems to have put paid to that idea unless
our leaders convince themselves that they can survive and flourish in their bunkers (while simultaneously
relieving themselves of a large surplus of global population)
The populations willing embrace of the security state through all our electronic devices will be a large
hurdle for revolutionary elements as well as the crushing of dissent via institutions like the FBI and
the mainstream media.
The French and the Russians succeeded in the past. I doubt if I will either live long enough to see it
(being old) or even less likely to live through it.
Biblical in the OT sense. In the NT going biblical was a sacrifice.
I'm not fond of the phrase as it is a euphemism for violence or war. Under that definition, the US,
through declared and undeclared wars, has been going biblical for most of my life.
In the Jimmy Dore show this is almost a running joke now: He shows a clip with Tucker Carlson, where
Tucker is doing what you would expect the "liberal" media to do, like going against the deep state,
criticizing regime change wars (a few times with Tusi as his guest), or something like this great piece
against Singer and the hedge funds. Jimmy Dore then, each time, shakes his head in disbelief and asks, "Why
the hell is Tucker Carlson the only one who is allowed to say things like this? Its a mystery! I dont get
it!"
-- indeed: Why, and why on Fox News?
Because it sells. Can't let RT steal all the money with anti-war voices, Watching the Hawks, Jesse
Ventura, On Contact with Chris Hedges, these shows have viewership, and the Fox news owners know it.
Perhaps they'll have to make Tucker Carlson FOX, the TCFOX news channel. An anti-establishment,
pro-capitalism libertarianesque program experience, where they can decry all the pro-war democrats, and
RINO's, while making a case that capitalism isn't working cause of "big government".
Of course "private property" requiires state enforcement, which, when you remind libertarians that
they are "statists", they don't like that too much
It sells, but also doesn't pose a real threat to the powers that be. He creates very accurate,
specific, personally moving, well-produced, diagnoses of problems (he even names names!)
Then he and his ilk imply that the only solution is to magically create a government free white
Christian ethnostate where the good non-corrupt capitalists (like, as he states in this video, the
rockefellers and carnegies apparently were) will bring us back to the good ol days.
I strongly recommend sitting down for a good long policy discussion with a Tucker Carlson fan. In
my experience they will, without exception, go to great lengths to convince you that a vote for Bernie
will, undoubtedly, make all the problems Tucker describes worse, cuz gubmint bad and racist dog
whistles.
I suspect absent Carlson and his ilk, Bernie would actually have an easier time making inroads into
the republican base.
I heard no Carlson mention of "magically create a government free white Christian ethnostate
where the good non-corrupt capitalists (like, as he states in this video, the rockefellers and
carnegies apparently were) will bring us back to the good ol days."
Carlson seemed to suggest that prior US capitalists "felt some obligation" while, to me,
implying that current US capitalist versions do not feel this obligation.
Bernie could show he will listen to good ideas from all sides, even when the ideas surface on
Fox.
Carlson did mention some "countries have banned this kind of behavior, including the United
Kingdom" which suggests legislative changes are possible.
If Bernie were to pitch a legislative fix, he might pick up some Tucker Carlson fans.
Maybe Bernie might get mentioned favorably by Carlson.
Carnegie built hundreds of public libraries, Rockefeller donated thousands of acres of land,
Sears founder
Julius Rosenwald funded the beginnings of the NAACP.
Well, we can agree to disagree on whether or not Carlson's regularly invoked vision of
deserving Americans is racist or ethnocentric, and I'll admit his view of the role of
government can seem a bit schizophrenic at times – as far as I can tell he has strongly
libertarian sensibilities but in recent years figured out that "free" markets do, in fact,
require government regulations.
But I do strongly recommend reading a few social/economic histories of the US from the
industrial revolution through the beginning of the great depression.
I promise those fellows you mention were not quite so swell as Tucker makes out, and that
the relationship between philanthropy and capital hasn't changed as much as you seem to
think.
I'll just say this, if I were playing for the other team so to speak, and I were a GOP strategist
trying to secure a future for the party, the easy move would be to adopt a degree of populist rhetoric
and at least make some gestures towards easing the pain of towns which have been rendered post-industrial
wastelands by people like Singer and acknowledge what's been done. It would be almost comically easy to
paint the Democrats as the political party of globalized capitalism (because they are), even more so
because most of the places that are key liberal constituencies are also centers of the financial industry
(Manhattan and San Fransisco, for example). It wouldn't take much to graft the loathing of "urban elites"
in these communities onto PE and hedge funds. This, combined with toning down the nationalist rhetoric,
cutting back on the racism and homophobia (hell, even just keeping your mouth shut about it) would pretty
much build an unstoppable electoral majority.
Back in the days when I was more optimistic about the Democrats, I always tried to warn people that if
the Democrats (and other center left parties) waited too long and let the GOP be the first ones to the
lifeboats when neoliberalism started to sink, they'd get stuck holding the bag even if the GOP had more
to do with those policies historically. But pursuing this strategy would imply that the GOP is somehow
less beholden to its donors than the Democrats, which it isn't, but maybe Tucker Carlson is the canary in
the coal mine. Even people on the right realize the jig is up, and that they better start trying to cut
some kind of deal with the rising populist currents in US politics if they want to stay in power.
Tucker Carlson on Fox is making sense, while MSNBC and CNN peddle nonsense. What better reason to cancel
your cable and say adios to the fakery and programming.
In other unrelated news, Paul Singer has announced that he is providing funding to the Manhattan
Institute for Policy Research to try and understand why so many "flyover" Americans give their votes to
Trump. "It's a mystery. I have no idea why they would not vote for a good Republican candidate instead –
like my boy Mitt Romney" he stated. "Why would they do that? Maybe I should run for President like my buddy
Mike. Then they could all vote for me. Or else!"
Reading his Wikipedia page, I notice that he only donates money to things that effect him personally. He
went to Harvard so he gives to Harvard. He lives in New York so he gives money to the Food bank and the
Police – which both serve to keep the place calm. He is Jewish so he gives a ton to money to pro-Israel
causes. He votes Republican so he helps fund Republicans that will defend wealthy people like him. One son
comes out as gay so he gives to same-sex marriage & LGBTQ causes. He provides money to organizations that
fight taxes being imposed on wealthy people like himself. It is a very narrow circle of concerns that he
has. And the vast bulk of Americans are outside this circle I note.
But of all people to call him on his part in destroying the real economy of the United States. That which
actually makes stuff and does stuff instead of financial bs. Of all the people to do so it is
Tucker-goddamnn-Carlson. And on Fox News to boot. The same person that "liberal" protesters were
demonstrating outside his home with his family inside because they did not like his beliefs. It is kinda
funny when you think about it. A right wing commentator is attacking the Left. But from their left.
It is kinda funny when you think about it. A right wing commentator is attacking the Left. But from
their left.
What better proof that there is no Left left in the Left any more? Today's Left is to the right of
what used to be the Centre, Liberals are what used to be Conservative and Conservatives have moved into
"here there be dragons" territory. .
This is nonsense, the DSA for example is to the right of what used to be the Center? They aren't
left enough for some, including some of their members I suspect but .. But the left period has little
actual power is the thing. And it's all about taking power.
Like I've mentioned previously – politically .. our society has gone through a phase-shift. Mr.
Carlson is but just one example. So are those of us who held our noses, after seeing how transparently
conniving the DNC et al were, and voted for the Julius de Orange !
"the crushing of dissent via institutions like the FBI and the mainstream media"
This will be unnecessary. Recent research indicates that when people feel like they are being
watched, they self-censor.
The growing number of activist special interest groups with a myriad of hot topics and disparate
worldviews and interests just about guarantees that anything you say other than parroting the current
majority opinion will offend someone.
Couple that with murky legal powers, the unpredictability of the Twitter/Instagram mob, doxing, and
the expansion, both in extent and number of players, of ubiquitous surveillance, and significant
dissent becomes more and more a thing of the past.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the growing unreliability of political polls?
There is a populist Left. Its figurehead is Bernie but there are growing local/state organizations
like the DSA that may become relevant nationally in the not-too-distant future. AOC is a
current/future leader for this faction.
There is a populist Right. Its figurehead is Trump. From what I can tell, they're primarily online
but are also gaining strength in traditional conservative institutions like churches, community orgs,
etc.. Tucker appeals to this group. Josh Hawley is a Senator from MO with presidential ambitions who I
expect will lead this faction after Trump is gone. He is the slick-but-folksy and deadly serious
neo-Fascist type many on this board worry/warn about taking power if a real Left does not arise to
counter it/him.
Then there is the establishment elites (or ruling class, or deep state, whatever), which are
primarily Neoliberal (domestic policy) and Neoconservative (foreign policy). There have long been
these types in both parties, differing only by degree, but Trump has forced most of the "liberal"
Republicans into the D party. This group controls the money and most of the key institutions,
particularly the major media, tech, energy, and financial corporations, but their grip is slipping and
the mask is falling off. Some will side with the populist Left, but most will welcome the new Fascism,
i.e. the DNC apparatchiks who would rather lose to Trump than win with Bernie.
Mitt Romney, Bain Capital, another species of parasite, sucking some of the last marrow out of the
bones of America. Beware of billionaires who demonstrate that they are aliens to our society.
I read Tucker Carlsons book "ship of fools". It is all in there: criticism of the war fare state, Wall
Street, TBTF bail outs a.s.o. He spares neither Republicans nor Democrats. Kinda crazy but he voices more or
less exactly what Sanders is saying as well. Except he doesn´t get "Medicare for all" and he is social
conservative. Still you might think that there is enough common ground to work together. Instead we get
crazy idendity politics. I more and more believe that it is indeed so that the people on top have realised
that "identity politics" is the best thing that ever happened to them: divice et impera. Divide and rule as
already the Romans knew
And the biggest threat from Tucker Carlson is that the lower orders will believe that
Carlson-cum-Trump are as much their friend as Sanders. One of the longest-standing Idpol divisions in
US history has been unions vs. scabs. Over the past half-century, the Democratic Party has realigned
its public image in favor of the scabs. The union leadership stayed with the Dems, but the
rank-and-file long ago moved over to the Repubs. Old wine, new bottle.
Unions were weakened and made easier to destroy using IdPol. First by encouraging banning,
sometimes expelling, blacks from the various unions and secondly getting rid of first the
communists, then the socialists, and finally those deemed too liberal (not conservative enough).
Although the efforts by business interests, often helped by government at all levels, to
segregate unions was mainly in the 19th century and the "Better Dead Than Red" campaign was in the
20th especially after 1947, the use of racism and anti-leftism was done in both centuries.
You can see similar successful splintering of the Civil Rights Movements. First separating the
Suffragettes from from the anti-racism efforts. Then later the efforts to unite the Women's Rights
Movement with the successful efforts against racism was the 1960s were thwarted.
Let us just say that reform movement of the past two centuries has been splintered. The earlier
women's rights and the abolitionists, blacks and whites throughout the unions, suffragettes and the
anti lynching efforts, communists from everyone else, anti poverty from equal rights ( MLK did get
lead poisoning when he tried) and so.
So when I see the latest efforts to use IdPol to split poor people from everyone else or blacks
from whites, and see people falling for the same tactics I just lose my mind. Obviously.
You might think but you'd be wrong. St Clair in Counterpunch calls hims Tuckkker Carlson–apparently
because Carlson agrees with Trump on things like immigration. I read Carlson's book too and would say
only about half of it was material I would agree with. But the notion that anyone who doesn't stand up to
IDPol standards is a villain is crushing the left. They obsess over Trump while the wealthy of both
parties wreck the country.
I'd go along sooner with Tucker Carlson than Mr. St Clair, whose CP smeared both Caitlin Johnstone
and CJ Hopkins. St Clair and CP are controlled "oppo", IMO.
The commenter you were replying to had it right: divide et impera is the order of the day;
sometimes from unexpected sources, like the one mentioned above.
Great post! TC has strode out of the Fox News subset of the Overton window a number of times in recent
years.
PS: Yves, some introductory text to the part about Lambert's speech apparently didn't make it into the
post. It would fit between the 1st and 2nd paragraphs.
In my opinion, Tucker Carlson represents a very real and very active right-libertarian view that has been
consistently present within the Republican Party for decades. Anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-big
business/pro-small business, and of course, anti-big union. Robert Taft comes to mind. I don't share their
"ideologies" but as a self-described socialist, I am deeply attracted to their criticisms. And criticisms
ARE important and necessary, even if the solutions are left wanting. I dearly hope that his popularity is a
sign of the realignment of politics, where issues of class and war become commonplace and issues of "to
impeach or not to impeach" fall by the wayside. I recognize that my hopes may not turn to realities.
But for an employee it makes no difference if they work for a big or small business (only big business
on average is LESS exploitative if anything – if for no other reason but they can afford to be – some of
the worst exploitation out there is employees working for small business owners).
Exactly,
right
libertarian. Within the libertarian spectrum there are real and then
royal libertarians, Tucker is of the latter.
http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html
What are his immigration views? Are people motivated to come here because this global vulture octopus
thing has ruined their home market?
I have long thought that paul singer is representative of the worst people in the world (argentina wtf)
and I'm glad carlson put his face up there so many times for his victims to see, in case he ever ventures
out of mordor undisguised. For all the money he has, a truly worthless pos, as the closing comment made so
clear. Good for Carlson, though, almost seems like actual journalism. Kudos.
If we assume that good mergers achieve cost savings which ultimately benefit the consumer (they very
often do, assuming a good merger), is it better that a relatively large number of people save money on
goods, or that a relatively smaller number of people keep duplicate, unnecessary jobs?
Can you name such a good merger? Mergers by definition must reduce competition, and by classical
Liberal theory competition is what reduces prices for consumers.
In Neoliberal theory monopoly is the just reward for beating the competition. Sorry consumers! Bad
luck workers!
By what criteria do you deem a job unnecessary? Neoliberal criteria.
Here are some ways a merger can be bad for the US consumer.
If a merger results in employee pensions being transferred to the Pension Benefit Guarantee
Corporation (US government funded) then employee pension costs are being transferred to the US
taxpayer/consumer.
Or consider that a merger might create a monopoly that can raise consumer prices.
How does one determine that a proposed merger will be a good one that will "ultimately benefit the
consumer."?
Good morning Yves.
Tucker Carlson invoke Paul Singer noted ultra vulture as vehicle to transport Yves, others to Fox News
Commentary!
Seems the Good Night and Good Luck segue from Edward R Murro via Keith Olbermann to Tucker Carlson is
complete.
Thank you for this. It is a story that has been repeated countless times across the country, including
the midwestern town where I was born and raised.
As for Carlson being the only source of occasional light in the MSM -- the clarification continues. It has
truly become Bizarro World.
I wonder if the powers at be at Fox News allow Tucker to go on these rants because they know two things:
1.) 99% of bought and paid for Republican politicians will never do anything about this except perhaps some
lip service here and there.
2.) The fact that it's on Fox News will cause the Vichy left to not believe it's real or perhaps a Russian
phy op against American capitalism. Thus outside of the Sanders camp there will be no push/support for any
change.
Glad to see someone in the MSM point out the obvious .Carlson called out Singer, but in doing so he also
called out the Republican Party, specifically Sen. Ben Sasse from Nebraska. It will be interesting to see if
Sasse is reelected.
Nebraskans – R and D both – should toss Sasse to the curb. He's angered regular bat-poo crazy
Republicans by his "never Trump" blather, then angered Nebraska Democrats (both of us) by voting
Trump/GOP well over 90 percent of the time.
Add to this his folksy BS appearances in the media and his execrable books, and he's a classic empty
suit. Closer to a straight Republican Mayor Pete than any thing else – over-credentialed, over-ambitious
and under performing.
Our Nebraska Democratic Party problem is two-fold: incredibly thin bench for decent candidates and
preponderance of Clinton/Obama/HRC leftovers running the state party. Will be knocking on doors for
Bernie come 2020 but state races are iffy at best.
In a wacky pre apocalyptic world, truth and justice is pined for by many. Conservation is a critical
requirement. I now look at what is true and what is not, I know, very subjective. Those folks that tell us
to do things that harm us are transparent. We follow them at our peril.
I consider Sanders the most conservative option we have for the nation. He intends to 'conserve' our nation
and the people first. Something we have not had for decades, or ever, perhaps. Giving the people with the
most to lose a voice in how things move forward is a critical point of distinction from the rest of the
field.
so vote conservative. Protect that which makes us whole. Stop the looting and take back what has been stolen
to benefit all instead of a small clique of criminals.
But I'm an optimist.
Tucker has good sense. Perhaps Paul Singer is probably retiring from vultury. He's old and it's a nasty
fight. Singer is at the end of a 30 year stint of dispossessing other people. Being vicious really isn't
enough to keep the federal government at bay. Nor are his bribes. There has been an unspoken policy of
dispossessing poor and middle class people. Why? Is the United States actually looking at a specific future?
That wouldn't align with the free market – tsk tsk. Or would it? Live free, die free. Somebody needs to
define the word "free". Did TPTB decide to deindustrialize this country that long ago? That's when they
attacked the unions. And the consensus might have been, "Go for it; get it while you can." So Paul Singer
did just that, along with other creepy people like Mitt Romney. Because once the country has been hosed out
by these guys we won't be pushing the old capitalist economy at all. We will be pushing a globally
connected, sustainable economy. Paul Singer is just a dung beetle. And our government didn't want to discuss
it because they would have had to create a safety net. If we despise Singer, we must also despise Congress.
If we despise Singer, we must also despise Congress.
-Susan the Other
Agreed. I think you can argue Congress (and the Executive Branch) have done more to help the Chinese
middle class than the American middle class over the last 30 years. Co-locating our industrial base with
the CCP on communist soil should be looked upon as the most radical policy in our history but is not.
Imagine if at the height of the Cold War we had told Kruschev hey..how about you make all the stuff we
need and we'll pay you $20 or $30T in trade surplus over a number of years in hard currency which you can
then parlay into geopolitical power in Africa, South America, the ME and else where. What would the
America of the fifties think of this policy?
>Because once the country has been hosed out by these guys we won't be pushing the old capitalist
economy at all. We will be pushing a globally connected, sustainable economy.
Tucker Carlson has been making comments like this for a long time. And he's not a libertarian. He
believes in regulated capitalism.
What we might be seeing is a the beginning of the two parties flipping from left to right on economic
issues. The social issues just obscure it, as they were designed to do.
the only question then is to what extent social issues DERAIL the economic issues then. If social
issues mean paid family leave must be opposed for example because women oughta be barefoot and pregnant,
then that's derailing of real concrete material benefits period. Of course progressive socially is where
demographics trend.
But of course using the example of paid family leave, we're starting from a country with almost no
safety net to begin with, and there are bigger problems with the labor market as well (people having gig
jobs with NO benefits, they aren't going to be helped by policy changes to job provided benefits period).
Medicare for All is the issue that most incisively cuts through this ruling-class kayfabe. Both the
top-dog Dems and the top-dog Repubs get their jollies having their boots licked by workers in abject fear
for the health and life of their families. It is a neon testosterone line that neither Carlson nor Trump
will cross.
I find a good explanation for many behaviors is the human practice of favoring people in their circle of
acquaintances, friends and families, and showing some degree of contempt to others.
Some phrases
He (She) is not one of us! (Typically in an upper class UK accent)
The Others (Typically in a string ulster accent)
Not on our team (US)
He's a Catholic
He's a peasant
The attitude of "them and us" coupled with Greed, appears to drive many bad Human behaviors.
Indeed! My libertarian friend* is all about helping friends and family, I have seen him do it many
times. I totally agree with him, but I have concluded that his definition of "friends and family" is just
somewhat more restrictive than mine.
* True convo: "What about if listeria in the bologna at the nursing home kills your granny?" "Ah, a
whacking great lawsuit!"
Paul Singer is leading the hedge fund group that is trying to take over PG&E from the existing
stockholders/hedge funds through the bankruptcy process. He even offered more money to PG&E fire victims
($2.5B), that PG&E almost met (they want to pay part of the funds in stock).
Does anyone have an idea how he plans to make money by taking over PG&E? While the stock is very low, its
chance of going back to where it was is very low. Besides, PG&E is under pressure to actually maintain and
fire proof the distribution/transmission system and that won't be cheap.
Here's Jon Stewart roasting Tucker Carlson back in 2006 when he was just a clown with a bow-tie. A rare
and well deserved confrontation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE
Since then Tucker has ditched his bow-tie and developed a conscience.
We used to call this "being Dutch uncle."
Tucker has CHANGED his views on lots of things. Like I have. To be able to admit you were wrong is a big
deal. He supported the Iraq War. I didn't. In retrospect, he realized he did this because of group think
cool kids thing. Then he realized that he had been conned, He doesn't like being conned. I thought Obama's
speech was the opposite of John Edwards "2 Americas". Obama was delivering a "con" I.e. "We are all One
America". So now Tucker and I, from different sides, are more skeptical. I started questioning my groupthink
Democratic viewpoint in 2004. Slowly I realized that I too had been conned. So some of those on the "right"
and Some of those on the "left" have sought other ports to dock in as we figure this all out. Naked
Capitalism is one of those docks. So soon we should introduce Tucker to Yves.
As I have frequently pointed out to my once-upon-a-time "liberal" friends, Tucker Carlson is often these
days a worthwhile antidote to the collective yelpings & bleatings of the brain-snatched amen corner on MSNBC
& CNN. In this instance (and others) his observations are rational and clearly articulated. He makes sense!
And he is on the correct (not far right) side of the topic. The continuing Iraq/Syria catastrophe, PutinGate
and the hedge fund hooligan Paul Singer are just three recent examples. His arguments (and his snark) are
well played. Alas, following these sensible segments, he is still a Fox guy and is obliged to revert to Fox
boilerplate for most of the rest of the night. But in our present crackbrained media environment, be
thankful for small mercies such as Tucker's moments.
Thanks for the post. I probably would have missed this without you.
There are a couple things that are interesting to me. First, why does Tucker Carlson call out Ben Sasse
for accepting a maxed out campaign contribution from Paul Singer? The Governor of Nebraska then and now is
Pete Ricketts. His father (Joe – TD Ameritrade, Chicago Cubs) is a "very good friend" of Paul Singer.
Everyone believes Pete Ricketts wants to run for US Senate and the nearest opportunity is Ben Sasse's seat.
More than meets the eye?
Two, a longtime director of Cabela's is Mike McCarthy of McCarthy Capital. [Former Secretary of Defense
Chuck Hagel worked for McCarthy.] ES&S (electronic voting machines) is owned by McCarthy Group, LLC.
"... It's likely that Trudeau is referring to his joint press conference with President Trump, where the president veered wildly off-topic and answered questions about the burgeoning impeachment inquiry while lashing out at his democratic rivals. ..."
"... The draft showed that leaders made "burden sharing" - Trump's top priority re: Nato - the centerpiece of the communique. ..."
The world leaders were joined by Princess Anne, the Queen's daughter, who naturally was
invited to the Buckingham Palace reception where the footage was taken. Dutch Prime Minister
Mark Rutte also appears to be in the scrum. At one point, Rutte can be heard laughing while
saying "fake news media".
Though Trump's name isn't heard spoken, the subject of their gossipy little pow-wow is
pretty clear. At one point, Trudeau can be heard telling his pals about how a certain leader's
team members' jaws dropped when he launched into a rambling tangent during a press
conference.
A loosened up Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, seen sipping from a glass of beer, could barely
contain himself, gesturing wildly and shouting "You just watched his team's jaws drop to the
floor!"
It's likely that Trudeau is referring to his joint press conference with President Trump,
where the president veered wildly off-topic and answered questions about the burgeoning
impeachment inquiry while lashing out at his democratic rivals.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, leaders wrapped up the two-day summit with a draft communique that
made on thing clear: The rest of Nato wants to keep Trump happy, and is much more concerned
about what Trump wants than what the president of France wants right now,
BBG reports.
The draft showed that leaders made "burden sharing" - Trump's top priority re: Nato -
the centerpiece of the communique.
I have seen other versions of that same story with other characters. For example, several
decades ago, Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute illustrated "revenge culture" with the story
of the Greek and the Turk.
God HimSelf appeared to the Greek Peasant hoping to teach the Greek Peasant something
about charity and kindness to others. So God said to the Greek Peasant . . . " I will grant
you one wish, any wish at all. And whatever you wish for, I will give your Turkish neighbor
twice as much of it."
It's been months since I posted! I've
migrated to twitter . (The flesh is
weak – but feel free to follow me!)
I'm going to try to start doing the sane thing. Long posts at CT, like God's infinite mind
intended. Short thoughts on Twitter, like humanity's mayfly attention span tolerates.
Today I propose a new term in political theory. Vavilovian philosophical mimicry!
It denotes a type of relation between ideal and non-ideal theories. It posits that the
former evolves as protective concealment for the latter. [UPDATE: Sometimes. The claim that
this is the ONLY possible relation between ideal and non-ideal theories is not plausible.]
To get where the term comes from, read the Wikipedia article . Weeds evolve,
under selective pressure, to resemble crops. If you didn't know that happens, you might deduce
it, back of the envelope. (But now you know its name – you're welcome.)
You might also think: congrats, Holbo, you've invented a new, longer word for ideology!
Maybe, but maybe there's more. To fix ideas, an example. The famous Southern Strategy – Atwater's infamous
statement . Let's be blunt: you are a racist neo-Confederate. You can't sell that, as such.
But you can emphasize parts of it that sound kinda sorta more libertarian.
Under Vavilovian pressure, white supremacy evolves, rhetorically, to outwardly resemble
libertarianism – a philosophical crop plant – to 'pass' in environments in which
outright expression of white supremacy would be weeded ruthlessly.
You may even get into a situation in which most outward expressions of libertarianism are,
as it were, mere mimics. (Because the real deal is a delicate, seminar room varietal. Whereas
Vavilovian fake strains are heartland rugged.)
So what thought does 'Vavilovian' allow me to express, about relations between ideal and
non-ideal political philosophies, that I couldn't get at with 'propaganda' or 'bullshit' or
'spin' or any of that? (Hell, if I like Russian, what's wrong with 'Potemkin'?)
Let me reference
an old post , in which I tried (as always!) to defend our Corey from his mistaken
critics.
Basically, the perennial knock on Robin on the reactionary mind is that his account is not
'ideal' enough. He is thus guilty of uncharity towards conservatives. But the proper defense,
as I explain in that post, is that Robin's theory is not just (moderately) realistic, as
opposed to idealistic. But also more unified . Theoretical unity is, after all, an
'ideal' value. So Robin is doing 'ideal theory' but of a different sort.
We have all these philosophical things we may call politically 'conservative', at least in
certain lights. Why call them all that, from Ayn Rand to Zarathustra, from Friedman's
"Free To Choose" to Scalia's Catholicism? Burke, Kirk, Oakeshott, Nozick, Maistre? If you
construct the 'best' each can be (most ingenious, most seminar room coherent, most intensely
true to their 'better' angels, most tightly wound around their axiomatic mainsprings) they fly
apart. The best version of Nietzsche won't have anything to do with the best version of Antonin
Scalia. But actual Nietzsche and actual Scalia? Those two have a bit more in common. There are
plenty of possible Nietzsches and possible Scalias who have interesting things in common.
So, while it is fine to do 'ideal' theory by being as charitable as you can to Nietzsche,
then Scalia, individually – retail; there is a different sort of 'ideal' theory, equally
valid, that aims at outlining, as it were, the-best-Nietzsche-that-is-also-related-to-Scalia.
The best coherent philosophical conservatism in the wholesale aggregate.
What Robin suggests to fit the bill is, basically, this (I quote this in the other post as
well):
Conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate
classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders
should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to
govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, and agency the prerogative
of the elite. Though it is often claimed that the left stands for equality while the right
stands for freedom, this notion misstates the actual disagreement between right and left.
Historically, the conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for
the lower orders. What the conservative sees and dislikes in equality, in other words, is not
a threat to freedom but its extension. For in that extension, he sees a loss of his own
freedom. (pp. 7-8)
I think this is basically right. If you read all the things we may call 'conservative', in a
political philosophy sense, you see something of the sort in ALL of them. And there isn't
anything else we see in ALL of them. Hence this 'theoretical voice' is the unifying
undertone. Ergo conservatism's 'ideal' voice, in a sense.
To this I am adding: let's posit, on top, more superficial, Vavilovian harmonics as
well.
In a liberal democratic society – one based on egalitarian principles – animus
against that is attacked as a kind of alien weed. So expressions of such animus will survive
and thrive better if they mimic something that looks consistent with liberal democracy. So: the
logic of philosophical conservatism is as follows. A variety of distinct, basically
anti-liberal impulses come to resemble each other, philosophically – but superficially!
– due to a selection process through which they individually learn to express themselves
so as to 'pass' as liberal.
UPDATE : It occurs to me I sort of skipped a step here. This is ideal theory-related because
– well, let's take the white supremacy-libertarianism case again. You are proposing doing
something that would keep African-Americans down. Why are you doing that? Because that's what
you want. But you can't say that. But: you can plausibly pretend it's a (merely temporarily
uncomfortable) stage on the way to some sort of ideal libertarian night watchman end-state. The
advantage of ideal theory is that it's – well, not real. Yet. So it's low commitment, in
practical terms. Nominal commitment to some distant, ideally liberal end-state covers a variety
of present, anti-liberal sins.
So philosophical conservatism should be theorized in terms of the following four
factors:
1) an element of aristocratic anti-liberalism (animus against the agency of the subordinate
classes.) Cf. Robin.
2) an element of Vavilovian, pseudo-liberal mimicry. Anti-liberalisms that survive in a
liberal environment will tend to look like each other because they are all, as it were, trying
to look enough like liberalism to not get weeded out as too anti-liberal. But these
resemblances, because they are protective mimicry, are actually misleading. At least
superficial.
3) considerable liberal democratic DNA . It's rare to run into a real, dyed-in-the-wool
Joseph de Maistre-type.
4) 2 may result in 3, over time, via 'fake it until you make it', if you see what I
mean.
I would say more – about Trump – but I promised myself: keep it under 1000
words.
God I wish you guys (like ALL you blog-era guys from all the websites, but you specifically
Holbo) would not do the getting sucked into twitter thing. Blogs-plus-RSS is all anyone ever
asked for and you (all) personally are ruining everything.
I think Robin is correct in looking at the function of conservatism rather than its
self-serving self description (in multiple guises). Conservatives differ on who exactly is
part of the Elect and who is relegated to the Preterite but are unified in knowing they
themselves are the Elect. Rules, like taxes, are for other people and other people's pain is
easy to bear.
Trump may be viewed as an experiment in reducing the strength of Vavilovian selection; no
need to adopt protective mimicry, the wild type strain can flourish in its undiluted
form.
It works outside political philosophy and practice, as well. Just think of all those Nurse
Ratcheds inhabiting corporate HR departments who use the rhetoric of academic lefties a
generation ago. Or for that matter, PR specialists.
"Trump may be viewed as an experiment in reducing the strength of Vavilovian selection; no
need to adopt protective mimicry, the wild type strain can flourish in its undiluted form."
Yep. I was going to say, more like: once the fake strains come to predominate over the
real crops, the whole thing just goes to the weeds more and more.
"It works outside political philosophy and practice, as well."
Yep. Absolutely. It's a dynamic that is known under various names. It's also known as
'teaching to the test', for example. Whatever benchmark of acceptability you set,
unacceptable things will try to disguise themselves as things that pass it. In general,
conservative rage against PC is a symptom of the struggle here.
The Monarch is a fluttering-about orange creature whose actual poisonous nature is quite
well-identifiable in its outrageous coloration; the Viceroy gets by only having evolved a
mimicry scheme despite being non-poisonous. You not only have Trump and Pence there, but
Pence seems particularly to have lots of party offspring.
My condolences on Twitter-addiction; our bits of time is the only real bitcoin that
matters.
Nominal commitment to some distant, ideally liberal end-state covers a variety of present,
anti-liberal sins
John, this cuts in all directions and is hence useless as an analytical tool. Pretty much
anytime someone makes a tradeoff between liberty and equality in actual circumstances
violates what looks to detractors like core liberal commitments. Consider minimum wage laws.
The minimum wage is something that infringes people's liberty. Certain contracts and
agreements are taken off the table. People no longer have the option to take those contracts
if they choose to. This is of course done to ultimately serve equality (I'll grant for the
sake of argument that it actually does enhance equality). We can describe it, on the one
hand, as some tradeoff that liberal societies might choose to make. Or, we might describe it
as one of the anti-liberal sins of people who have some distant liberal goal.
Your point 4 cuts against Robin's thesis that conservatism is basically just people who
covertly or overtly want to oppress their social inferiors. Insofar as 2 becomes 3 over time,
conservatives who are more 3 are a) conservative and b) espousing an ideology which has
considerable liberal democratic DNA and are therefore not just covertly people who want to
oppress their social inferiors.
To assert that people who are 3 count in favour of Corey's thesis seems to commit
something like the genetic fallacy. The ugliness or pristine-ness of the origins of an
ideology is irrelevant to whether it is currently good or bad.
It feels like this analogy – while tempting because it's a very appealing analogy in
rhetorical terms – does not work on as a descriptive model unless we add so many
degrees of abstraction on top of it so as to render it unwieldy or even useless. The
fundamental problem is that it's top-down rather than bottom-up – it's framed as though
ideologies have agency, and people who adopt them choose abstract but real things to believe.
It's not the case that non-egalitarian ideologies "living" in a liberal democracy will take
on aspects of liberal democracy; it's that the ideology's adherents will accept some but not
all of the ideology's precepts, as well as some but not all of liberal democracy's precepts
– but unless we're strictly talking about a coarse-grained analogy to convey a broad
understanding of what's happening, the contradictions between the two types of ideology are
better understood as cognitive dissonance within the minds of however many agents adhere to
the intersected ideals than as ideologies engaging in Vavilovian mimicry.
I suppose my question is whether you're presenting this idea strictly as a neat analogy,
or extending the analogy to model that can yield insights or offer some degree of predictive
power WRT how such overlapping and/or contradictory ideologies will interact and behave.
"Whatever benchmark of acceptability you set, unacceptable things will try to disguise
themselves as things that pass it."
Which also offers an interesting perspective on left-wing claims (in happier times) to
have shifted the political discourse as right-wingers now have to argue on their turf; no,
you've just produced much hardier cockroaches.
I'm also struggling with the Twitter temptation. A snarky dialogue like this gets 1000 likes
and 200 retweets, whereas a longform blog analysis is lucky to get 20 comments before the
thread derails.
I like this idea. Indeed I think it goes back a long way. Imagine you're an 18th-century
Englisher. You like the fact that African slaves are bought and sold because it makes you
rich. But you can't say you approve of slavery as such, since being a moneymaking
18th-century Englisher requires a certain commitment to freedom (of trade, and therefore of
person). And since the Somersett v Stewart lawsuit of 1772 (where the Judge, Lord Mansfield
is supposed to have said 'the air of England is too pure for any slave to breathe', although
my understanding is that the story is apochryphal) there are no slavery in Britain. But the
triangular trade continues: slaves from Africa to the West Indes and America, tobacco, cotton
and sugar from these plantations to Europe, rum and various goods from Europe to Africa.
You're getting richer. But, watch out, here comes William Wilberforce proposing parliamentary
legislation to abolish the international slave trade. Now you don't want to support this
(what with the British political climate being so nervy about the French Revolution,
increasing radicalism at home and slave revolts in the French West Indies, plus the thing you
can't say aloud, that slavery is making you richer) and the bill languishes unpassed despite
several attempts to get it through the House. But then in 1792 Home Secretary Lord Melville
proposes an amendment to the bill: 'gradual abolition' over an unspecified number of years.
With this the bill is passed, and with a stonking majority (230 to 85 votes); but the
point of the compromise is to ensure that actual abolition would be delayed indefinitely.
You've passed a bill protecting the slave trade that looks, in Vavilovian style, like a bill
abolishing slavery. Well done you.
I suppose the question is: does this always run one way? Is this weeds imitating crops,
which is to say the loony right imitating moderate conservatism? Is there a left wing
equivalent?
Ehhh, this seems reductionist past even the point of caricature. Belief that you are part of
an elect group that needs to rule society applies to various Marxists(Lenin and beyond for
instance). While certainly Nietzsche and Scalia might agree on some things are those really
the factors that define either? Would either of them actually agree that those were their
core ideas?
The most that could be said about Nietzsche was that he was split-personality: on the one
hand rejecting societal values to the point of nihilism while also celebrating Great Men
– though never quite defining what made them Great. Historical impact invariably
implies a whole bunch of people paid attention to you and changed their actions because of
you. That has too much of a crown from the gutter feel to it for Nietzsche to address it
honestly.
If you ignore Nietzsche's revolutionary nihilism do you even get a reactionary? He wasn't
pro-religion. He wasn't pro prussian constitutionalism or pro absolutism. He hated the rich.
His one consistent thought was that the future needs to be different from the present.
Is Burke a good example of a modern conservative? His strongest argument can be summed up
as basically: don't break contracts. If he lived today he'd be defending welfare states
against neoliberal fiscal reactionaries – after all society has grown up around the
welfare state for generations.
That being said I like the idea that taboos influence discourse. All societies have
certain dogmas that may not be denied and (most) public intellectuals seem to contort
themselves around those.
Similar effects: eastern bloc intellectuals paying lip service to various soviet
doctrines, enlightenment era thinkers finding a way to fluff up their royal patrons, modern
public intellectuals making sure to point out that capitalism and liberal democracy are the
best systems possible despite whatever horrible imperfections their work points out.
Me @13,
But when I look more closely the difference is that he is counting likes (not even possible
here) and not responses which I come to the blog. I want to interact with the professor, not
worship him.
Murali @ 9:
There is no tradeoff between liberty and equality because every liberty is a tradeoff with
other liberties. The classic conflict would be between my liberty to swing my fist into your
nose, and your liberty to keep your nose intact. The exercise of one liberty conflicts with
the other. Liberty tradeoffs are unavoidable before introducing the idea of equality. A
number of scholars have noted that interpersonal liberties are zero sum.
If we prefer some liberties because we value them more highly (say keeping your nose
intact or in favor of equality), we are simply choosing one side of a liberty tradeoff: there
is no objective way to say we have more or less liberty. Only that we value these liberties
more.
I don't buy it. I think you got yourself seduced by Vavilov but forgot about Müller.
Under Vavilovian pressure, white supremacy evolves, rhetorically, to outwardly resemble
libertarianism [ ] to 'pass' in environments in which outright expression of white supremacy
would be weeded ruthlessly. You may even get into a situation in which most
outward expressions of libertarianism are, as it were, mere mimics.
The first sentence presupposes that there is strong selective pressure against white
supremacy (the weed), though it tellingly never identifies who supposedly carries this strong
pressure. The second sentence is incompatible with this hypothesis. If your garden is full of
weeds that are undistinguishable from crops and there are reasons to suspect that a majority
of them are weeds, you get rid of everything and change crop. If you notice that an awful
number of libertarian are also racists, if you have reasons to suspect that a possible
majority of them are racist, and if you dislike racism, then you reject
libertarianism. Conversely, it is only because there are many voters who are actually
in favor of white supremacy that the Southern strategy makes sense. White supremacy can pass
as libertarianism only because white supremacy is in fact not rejected by everyone (in
the US) and is actually a viable political strategy, albeit a rather fringe one, just like
libertarianism is a viable political strategy, so that there is some advantage for both
movements to appear more like each other (racist will have a closer look at libertarian
arguments, and vice versa).
This means that the situation you describe is actually much closer not to Vavilovian
mimicry, but to good old Müllerian mimicry. Müllerian mimicry, named after Fritz
Müller, the Prussian biologist who never obtained his doctorate because he refused to
pledge his allegiance to a deity, is the selective pressure towards convergence of warning
signs between toxic species living in the same habitat. Read about it on Wikipedia if you
want.
The analysis appears to me to hold much better: two groups which are subjected to a common
interaction with the environment (signaling toxicity to their common predators in biology,
attracting voters within a common pool in the analogy) have both an interest in resembling
each other. In particular, the Müllerian analogy, by its very logic, introduces the
strongest conclusion that it is only when a political ideology may appeal to a
common pool of voters that mimicry ensues. Only in that case is there a selective
advantage. This, for instance, explains why racist parties in France and the US have an
opposite relations to libertarian and social justice arguments (in France, they imitate the
latter and reject the former; in the US vice-versa): historical and social contingencies have
united the pool of libertarian-curious and racist-curious voters in the US, disjointed them
in France (and vice-versa for social justice). It also suggests that the reason why Bernie's
or AOC's style of socialism is emphatically not trying to pass as usual Democratic
center-left liberalism is that it does not appeal at all to the same pool of voters. Perhaps
that is a truism. On the other hand, I don't believe that the fact it is a truth, let alone a
truism, is recognized in common media discourse.
One of Müller most striking findings, perhaps only accessible through a rigorous
mathematical analysis of which I believe Müller's original paper is the first example in
evolutionary biology, is that in the situation where two species ressemble themselves, the
rarest species profit significantly more than the most common one (in inverse proportions of
the square of their respective frequency, in Müller's original model).
Whether this holds in the case under discussion and subsequent implications on current
American politics can be left as an exercise to the interested reader (a back of the envelope
calculation which I carried on the literal back of an actual envelope suggests potential
electoral growth for the most unpopular party linear in the ratio of the most popular party
over the least popular one).
JH: you quote the eloquent Corey Robin as saying "Conservatism is the theoretical voice of
this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent
and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their
independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves or the polity".
In which there is a fair amount of truth; but surely, this animus is not restricted to
people who would ever classify themselves as conservatives, or could reasonably be regarded
as being so. If you follow the interminable argument about Brexit in the webpages of the
Guardian, you will find no end of declarations by Remainers that most or all of those who
voted Leave are stupid, ignorant, uneducated, and are therefore not fit to be trusted with a
vote; so the result of the referendum should be disregarded. There is an echo of this in
Hillary Clinton's dismissal of those who did not support he as "a basket of deplorables". And
of course, there was Lenin's theory of the Communist Party as the vanguard who knew what was
best for the unenlightened peasants and proletarians, better than they knew themselves.
I can see how one might make an argument that HC is a conservative, though I prefer to
think of her as a convinced, utterly committed Hillarist. Polly Toynbee and Lenin, though,
surely not.
The question seems to be whether thought and self-government are intrinsically related or
not. If they are, then conservative use of reason seemingly has to be a theft from
liberalism. If conservatism or aristocracy incorporated reason into itself but refused to act
on it, or refused to allow non-aristocrats to act on it, or otherwise neutralized reason in
some way, liberalism is just the determination to unite them.
The best defense of conservatism/reaction at the present time seems to be the demand that
a liberal challenger must master the details that separate Scalia and Nietzsche before she
may be allowed to proceed. A machine for turning reason into Vavilovian weeds, combined with
a defense like that, can probably stand a long time, and entertain a good number of people
contemplating the variety of weeds. Robin's book seems to me to shift the discussion out of
that entertaining infinite loop.
Regarding your point #3, if you are a visible non-white-Christian-male on the Internet,
and possibly even in more mundane locations, you will certainly encounter individuals who are
willing to refuse to deny being Joseph de Maistre types, however ironically.
Twitter is bad, but it is not totally bad. It is useful as a sewer. If you're old enough to
remember back to Usenet days (if not, it was and is a kind of universal worldwide blog or
forum) you will recall the numerous people whose aim in life was to get off stunning
one-liners, usually of a hostile or trollish nature. Consult the lower realms of television
as its cultural matrix. These messages would infest every discursive space on the Net if it
were not for Twitter, which attracts the kind of people who like that kind of thing to a
place where they can interact with each other endlessly, thus leaving other venues, thank
Dog, alone. Of course, small-form texts don't have to be bad, but in the case of
Twitter, the mobbing effect seems to drive everything good out, except maybe cute cat
pictures. I recommend avoiding it if possible.
Less than 24 hours after I first read the Atwater quote (from a link on Talk Left, not
Twitt'r), Holbo refers to it on CT. I think Holbo's explanation covers how the dog-whistle
terms evolve into something that has plausible deniability. Until yesterday, I did not
understand that even "tax cuts" had become a dog-whistle term 38 years ago .
Yesterday, I read Atwater's
explanation , including:
You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these
things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that]
blacks get hurt worse than whites.
I do not see any arguments that Atwater's admission does not apply. It appears to me that
Holbo's detractors are attacking the analogy or bathing in bothsiderism.
Let's not let the analysis of the analogy lead us to suggest selective herbicides,
please.
I've always taken HC at her word (in 2016), "I feel like my political beliefs are rooted
in the conservatism that I was raised with."
For me, the moment when Corey's analysis best fits her is here stint on the WalMart Board,
where, according to the accounts I've read, she advocated for the presence of more women in
the executive suites, but said nothing or next to nothing about the union busting.
In any case, nobody's any one thing all the time. I know professors, for example, who
identify as very left wing who run their classrooms as if they were the sole authority and
final arbiter. This is especially true when the commitment or opposition to the current
hierarchy becomes reflexive.
That's an excellent observation. If we include Reddit in our plumbing, I'd argue that
we've channeled all of the most noxious forms of what once comprised Usenet trolling into
designated pools. The downside of this is, ofc, that like sewers, when these spaces flood out
from their confines, the areas that formerly knew how to clean up far less concentrated and
distilled versions of their awfulness will no longer be in practice at doing so.
"If you notice that an awful number of libertarian are also racists, if you have reasons to
suspect that a possible majority of them are racist, and if you dislike racism, then you
reject libertarianism."
This has actually happened, to the annoyance (and semi-incomprehension) of the
libertarians, who felt like they were just getting popular!
Overall, some thoughtful push-back here, thanks for that. The biggest problem with the
analogy is, as some of you say (and I trust all of you see): ideas are not, literally,
philosophical DNA. The way DNA works is highly particular and you want to be careful
analogizing that. For example, a weed that looks like wheat is never going to 'grow into'
wheat. But a racist like Atwater, selling it as economics, might actually grow into a
libertarian. He might actually cease to be a racist. It's not just possible, it's surely
happened.
The thing my hypothesis answers, which supplements Robin, I think: why do all these things
seem similar? Why do we call them all 'conservatism'? The answer is 1) they are all
anti-liberal in a hierarchical sense. That's Robin. 2) they are making their way in a broadly
liberal environment. The more liberal strains are surviving. Also, the strains that, although
they are not liberal, can (falsely) seem liberal, are surviving.
If derailing of threads after 20 comments is the problem, aren't there some obvious
solutions? (Speaking here as a guilty participant in the derailing of Henry's recent thread
on AI )
– Update the comments policy to state that all comments should refer back to the top
post. Enforce the rule.
– Start new top posts more frequently. Accept requests. Include open threads on
topics relevant to CT's core themes but about which none of the CT crew feel qualified or
energetic enough to write a long-form post about. (We might have enjoyed better quality
discussion on the HK protests on an open thread initiated by one of the CT crew, rather than
arising incidentally in the comment section.)
– Alternatively, implement threading in the comments. Allow the derailers to go off
on tracks of their own without clogging up the main line.
"Barr rejects key finding in report on Russia probe: report" [
The Hill ].
"People familiar with the matter told The Post that Barr said he does not agree with the
report's finding that the FBI had enough intelligence to initiate an investigation into the
Trump campaign in July 2016.
The long-awaited report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is
expected to be made public in a week. But a draft is being discussed behind the scenes, and
the attorney general reportedly is not persuaded that the FBI investigation was
justified.
The draft report is now being finalized and shown to the witnesses and offices
investigated by Horowitz.
People familiar with the matter told the newspaper that Barr believes information from
other agencies such as the CIA could change Horowitz's finding that the investigation was
warranted."
A video from Tucker Carlson. Every once in a while he's allowed to say things the
mainstream media isn't allowed to say.
The video is about Paul Singer (Elliott Management) and his hedge fund buying into
Cabela's which was headquartered in Sydney, Nebraska. Cabela's was merged with Bass Pro Shops
and the town lost 2000 jobs and was hard hit by Singer and his fund but Elliott Management
and Singer made a nice profit.
It shows the people and town left behind after the jobs leave. Watching this was
depressing.
While Obama organized 2014 coup data that smashed contitutional oder in Ukraine and installed far-right nationalists in power (Nulandgate) Obamam did not suppled arms toUkrains; Trump did
In his foreign policy Trump looks
like a Republican Obama, save Nobel Peace Price. If Obama was/is a CIA-democrat, this guy is a Deep State controlled republican. Why
is the Deep State is attacking him is completely unclear. May be they just do not like unpredictable, impulsive politicians
Despite his surrender "Neocon crazies from the basement" still attack his exactly the same way as they attacked him for
pretty mundane meeting with Putin and other fake "misdeeds" like Ukrainegate
And that means that he lost a considerable part of his electorate: the anti-war republicans
and former Sanders supporters, who voted for him in 2016 to block Hillary election.
And in no way he is an economic nationalist. He is
"national neoliberal" which rejects parts of neoliberal globalization based on treaties and
prefer to bully nations to compliance that favor the US interests instead of treaties. And his "fight" with the Deep state resemble so closely to complete and unconditional
surrender, that you might have difficulties to distinguish between the two. Most of his appointees are rabid neocons. Just look at Pompeo, Bolton, Fiona Hill. That that extends far beyond
those obvious crazies.
Washington
Post stating that he "has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details" of his
discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin - telling Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in a
phone interview that he would be willing to release the details of a private conversation in
Helsinki last summer.
"I would. I don't care," Trump told Pirro, adding: "I'm not keeping anything under wraps. I
couldn't care less."
"I mean, it's so ridiculous, these people making up," Trump said of the WaPo report.
The president referred to his roughly two-hour dialogue with Putin in Helsinki -- at which
only the leaders and their translators were present -- as "a great conversation" that
included discussions about "securing Israel and lots of other things."
"I had a conversation like every president does," Trump said Saturday. "You sit with the
president of various countries. I do it with all countries." -
Politico
In July an attempt by House Democrats to subpoena Trump's Helsinki interpreter was quashed
by Republicans. "The Washington Post is almost as bad, or probably as bad, as the New York Times," Trump
said. When Pirro asked Trump about a Friday night New York Times report that the FBI had opened an
inquiry into whether he was working for Putin, Pirro asked Trump "Are you now or have you ever
worked for Russia, Mr. President?" "I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked," Trump responded. "I think it's
the most insulting article I've ever had written."
Trump went on an
epic tweetstorm Saturday following the Times article, defending his 2017 firing of former
FBI Director James Comey, and tweeting that he has been "FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush
or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often
said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday
we will have good relations with Russia again!"
"... As part of the scam, parents would "donate" money to a fake charity run by Singer. The funds would then be laundered to either pay off an SAT or ACT administrator to take the exams or bribe an employee in college athletics to name the rich, non-athlete children as recruits. Virtually every scenario relied on multiple layers of corruption, all of which eventually allowed wealthy students to masquerade as "deserving" of the merit-based college slots they paid up to half a million dollars to "qualify" for. ..."
"... When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it. ..."
"... The conclusion of the study? We live in an oligarchy: ..."
The college bribery scandal reveals an ugly truth: our society is unjust, dominated by a small elite. Actress Lori
Loughlin, who has been implicated in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal. Credit:
Featureflash Photo Agency/Shutterstock The most destructive
and pervasive myth in America today is that we live in a meritocracy. Our elites, so the myth goes, earned their places at Yale and
Harvard, on Wall Street and in Washington -- not because of the accident of their birth, but because they are better, stronger, and
smarter than the rest of us. Therefore, they think, they've "earned" their places in the halls of power and "deserve" to lead.
The fervor with which so many believe this enables elites to lord over those worse off than they are. On we slumber, believing
that we live in a country that values justice, instead of working towards a more equitable and authentically meritocratic society.
Take the Operation Varsity Blues scandal. On Tuesday, the FBI and federal prosecutors announced that 50 people had been charged in,
as Sports Illustrated put it , "a nationwide college admissions scheme that used bribes to help potential students cheat
on college entrance exams or to pose as potential athletic recruits to get admitted to high-profile universities." Thirty-three parents,
nine collegiate coaches, two SAT/ACT exam administrators, an exam proctor,
and a college athletics administrator were among those charged. The man who allegedly ran the scheme, William Rick Singer, pled
guilty to four charges of racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and obstruction of
justice.
As part of the scam, parents would "donate" money to a fake charity run by Singer. The funds would then be laundered to either
pay off an SAT or ACT administrator to take the exams or bribe an employee in college athletics to name the rich, non-athlete children
as recruits. Virtually every scenario relied on multiple layers of corruption, all of which eventually allowed wealthy students to
masquerade as "deserving" of the merit-based college slots they paid up to half a million dollars to "qualify" for.
Cheating. Bribery. Lying. The wealthy and privileged buying what was reserved for the deserving. It's all there on vivid display.
Modern American society has
become increasingly and
banally corrupt , both in the ways in which "justice" is meted out and in who is allowed to access elite education and the power
that comes with it.
The average American citizen has very little power, as a 2014
study by Princeton University found. The research reviewed 1,779 public policy questions asked between 1981 and 2002 and the
responses by different income levels and interest groups; then calculated the likelihood that certain policies would be adopted.
A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favor) is adopted only about
18 percent of the time, while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favor) is adopted about 45% of the time.
That's in stark contrast with policies favored by average Americans:
When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover,
because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor
policy change, they generally do not get it.
The conclusion of the study? We live in an oligarchy:
our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government
adopts. [T]he preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact
upon public policy.
The belief in the myth of merit hurts the smart kid with great grades who aced his SATs but was still rejected from Yale and Harvard.
It hurts talented athletes who have worked their tails off for so many years. It hurts parents who have committed hundreds of school
nights and weekends to their children. It hurts HR departments that believe degrees from Ivy League schools mean that graduates are
qualified. It hurts all of us who buy into the great myth that America is a democratic meritocracy and that we can achieve whatever
we want if only we're willing to expend blood, toil, sweat, and tears.
At least in an outright class system like the British Houses of Lords and Commons, there is not this farcical playacting of equal
opportunity. The elites, with their privilege and titles, know the reason they are there and feel some sense of obligation to those
less well off than they are. At the very least, they do not engage in the ritual pretense of "deserving" what they "earned" -- quite
unlike those who descend on Washington, D.C. believing that they really are better than their compatriots in flyover country.
All societies engage in myth-making about themselves. But the myth of meritocracy may be our most pervasive and destructive belief
-- and it mirrors the myth that anything like "justice" is served up in our courts.
Despite all this evidence, most Americans embrace a version of the Calvinist beliefs promulgated by their forebears, believing
that the elect deserve their status. We remain confident that when our children apply to college or are
questioned by police , they will receive just and fair outcomes. If our neighbors' and friends' kids do not, then we assure ourselves
that it is they who are at fault, not the system.
The result has been a gaping chasm through our society. Lives are destroyed because, rather than working for real merit-based
systems and justice, we worship at the altar of false promises offered by our institutions. Instead we should be rolling up our sleeves
and seeing Operation Varsity Blues for what it is: a call to action.
Barbara Boland is the former weekend editor of the Washington Examiner . Her work has been featured on Fox News, the
Drudge Report, HotAir.com, RealClearDefense, RealClearPolitics, and elsewhere. She's the author of Patton Uncovered , a book
about General Patton in World War II. Follow her on Twitter@BBatDC.
If conservatives are going to dance the graves of Aunt Beckie, the backlash is going to be big. Sure this is a 'scandal' but it
seems these parents weren't rich enough to bribe their kids in college the right way, like Trumps and Kushner, and probably slightly
duped into going along with this scheme. (It appears the government got the ring leader to call all defendants to get evidence
they participated in a crime.)
Just wait until the mug shot of Aunt Beckie is on the internet and Olivia Jade does 60 minutes doing teary eyed interview of
how much she loves her mother. And how many parents are stress that their kids will struggle in the global competitive economy.
I fully recall the days of getting government computing contracts. Once a certain threshold was reached, you discovered you had to
hire a "lobbyist," and give him a significant amount of money to dole out to various gatekeepers in the bureaucracy for your contracts
to be approved. That was the end of our government contracts, and the end was hastened by the reaction to trying to complain about
it.
Thank you, Barbara Boland, for "The Myth of American Meritocracy" and for linking ("Related Articles" box) to the 2012 "The Myth
of American Meritocracy" by Ron Unz, then publisher of the American Conservative.
The 26,000-word Ron Unz research masterpiece was the opening salvo in the nation-wide discussion that ultimately led to the federal
court case nearing resolution in Boston.
"The Myth of American Meritocracy -- How corrupt are Ivy League admissions?" by Ron Unz, The American Conservative, Nov 28, 2012:
Barbara Boland "While black people make up only 13 percent of the population, they make up 42 percent of death row and 35 percent
of those who are executed."
Ms. Boland: According to the US Department of Justice, African Americans [13 per cent of the population] accounted for 52.5% of
all homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008.
I agree with prodigalson. This is the type of article that TAC should uphold as a 'gold standard'. One reason I read, and comment
on, TAC is that it offers thought provoking, and sometimes contrarian, articles (although the constant harping on transgender BS
gets annoying).
America has always been somewhat corrupt. But, to borrow a phrase, wealth corrupts, and uber wealth corrupts absolutely.
As Warren Buffet says "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning".
I have said it before, and I will say it again. During the next severe financial recession, if the rich are protected and coddled
and everybody else is left to fend for themselves the ARs will come out of the closets when the sheriff comes to take the house or
the pickup truck. My sense is that average Americans have had enough.
Imagine if the digital transfer of money was abolished. Imagine if everybody had to have their money in a local bank instead of
on an account in one of the major banks. Imagine if Americans saw, day after day, armored vehicles showing up at local banks to offload
sacks of currency that went to only a few individual accounts.
Instead, the elites get their financial statements showing an ever increasing pile of cash at their disposal. They see it, but
nobody else does. But, if everybody physically saw the river of wealth flowing to the elites, I believe things would change. Fast.
Right now this transfer of wealth is all digital, hidden from the view of 99.99% of Americans. And the elites, the banking industry,
and the wealth management cabal prefer it that way.
I am amazed by the media coverage of this scandal. Was anyone actually under the impression that college admissions were on the
level before these Hollywood bozos were caught red handed?
No, the meritocracy is not dead; it's not even dying. It is, in fact, alive and well and the absolute best alternative to any
other method used to separate wheat from chaff, cream from milk, diamonds from rust.
What else is there that is even half as good?
Are merit-based systems perfect? Heck, no. They've never been perfect; they will never be perfect. They are administered by people
and people are flawed. Not just flawed in the way Singer, and Huffman are flawed (and those individuals are not simply flawed, they're
corrupt) but flawed in the everyday kind of sense. Yes, we all have tendencies, biases, preferences that will -- inevitably -- leak
into our selection process, no matter how objectively strict the process may be structured, no matter how rigorously fair we try
to be.
So the fact that -- as with most things -- we can find a trace of corruption here that fact is meaningless. We can find evidence
of human corruption, venality, greed, sloth, lust, envy (all of the 7 Deadly Sins) pretty much everywhere. But if we look at the
20M students enrolled in college, the vast majority are successfully & fairly admitted through merit-based filtering systems (which
are more or less rigorous) which have been in place forever.
Ms. Boland tells us (with a straight face, no less) that "The U.S. is now a country where corruption is rampant and money buys
both access and outcomes." But what does that even mean?
Certainly money can buy access and certainly money can buy outcomes. But that's what money does. She might as well assert that
money can buy goods and services, and lions and tigers and bears -- oh my! Of course it can. Equally networks can 'buy' access and
outcomes (if my best friend is working as the manager for Adele, I'm betting he could probably arrange my meeting Adele). Equally
success & fame can buy access and outcomes. I'm betting Adele can probably arrange a meeting with Gwen Stefani .and both can arrange
a meeting with Tom Brady. So what? Does the fact that money can be used to purchase goods & services mean money or the use of money
is corrupt or morally degenerate? No, of course not. In truth, we all leverage what we have (whatever that may be) to get what we
want. That's how life works. But the fact that we all do that does not mean we are all corrupt.
But yes, corruption does exist and can usually be found, in trace amounts -- as I said -- pretty much everywhere.
So is it rampant? Can I buy my way into the NBA or the NFL? If I go to Clark Hunt and give him $20M and tell him I want to play
QB for the Chiefs, will he let me? Can I buy my way into the CEO's position at General Electric, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Sprint,
Verizon, General Motors, Toyota or any of the Fortune 500? Heck, can I even buy my way into the Governor's mansion? To become the
Mayor of Chicago? Or the Police Commissioner? No -- these things are not possible. But what I can buy is my presence on the media
stage.
What happens after cannot be purchased.
So no, by any measure, corruption is not rampant. And though many things are, in fact, for sale -- not everything is. And no matter
how much money I give anyone, I'm never gonna QB the Chiefs or play for the Lakers.
She tells us, "we are dominated by a rich and powerful elite." No, we're not. Most of us live our lives making the choices we
want to make, given the means that each of us has, without any interference from any so-called "elite". The "elite" didn't tell me
where to go to school, or where to get a job, or how to do my job, or when to have kids, or what loaf of bread to buy, or what brand
of beer tastes best, or where to go on the family vacation. No one did. The elite obviously did not tell us who to vote for in the
last presidential election.
Of course one of the problems with the "it's the fault of the elite" is the weight given institutions by people like Ms.Boland.
"Oh, lordy, the Elite used their dominating power to get a brainless twit of a daughter into USC". Now if my kid were cheated out
of a position at USC because the Twit got in, I'd be upset but beyond that who really cares if a Twit gets an undergraduate degree
from USC or Yale .or Harvard .or wherever. Some of the brightest people I've known earned their degrees at Easter PolyTechnic U (some
don't even have college degrees -- oh, the horror!); some of the stupidest have Ivy League credentials. So what?
Only if you care about the exclusivity of such a relatively meaningless thing as a degree from USC, does gaming the exclusivity
matter.
She ends with the exhortation: "The result has been a gaping chasm through our society. Lives are destroyed because, rather than
working for real merit-based systems and justice, we worship at the altar of false promises offered by our institutions. Instead
we should be rolling up our sleeves and seeing Operation Varsity Blues for what it is: a call to action."
To do what, exactly?
Toss the baby and the bathwater? Substitute lottery selection for merit? Flip a coin? What?
Again the very best method is and always will be merit-based. That is the incentive which drives all of us: the hope that if we work
hard enough and do well enough, that we will succeed. Anything else is just a lie.
Yes, we can root out this piece of corruption. Yes, we can build better and more rigorously fair systems. But in the end, merit
is the only game in town. Far better to roll-up our sleeves and simply buckle down, Winsocki. There isn't anything better.
"While black people make up only 13 percent of the population, they make up 42 percent of death row and 35 percent of those who are
executed. There are big racial disparities in charging, sentencing, plea bargaining, and executions, Department of Justice reviews
have concluded, and black and brown people are disproportionately found to be innocent after landing on death row. The poor and disadvantaged
thereby become grist for a system that cares nothing for them."
So to what degree are these "disparities" "disproportionate" in light of actual criminal behavior? To be "proportionate," would
we expect criminal behavior to correlate exactly to racial, ethnic, sex, and age demographics of society as a whole?
Put another way, if you are a victim of a violent crime in America, what are the odds your assailant is, say, an elderly, Asian
female? Approximately zero.
Conversely, what are the odds your assailant is a young, black male? Rather high, and if you yourself are a young, black male,
approaching 100 percent.
Mostly thumbs up to this article. But why you gotta pick on Calvinism at the end? Anyway, your understanding of Calvinism is entirely
upside down. Calvinists believe they are elect by divine grace, and salvation is something given by God through Jesus, which means
you can't earn it and you most assuredly don't deserve it. Calvinism also teaches that all people are made in the image of God and
worthy of respect, regardless of class or status. There's no "version" of Calvinism that teaches what you claim.
"... No. My point was it's very misleading. Misleading to set the parameters of discussion on U.S. posture toward Russia in such a way as to assume that Putin's actions against a purported Russian "democracy" have anything at all to do with USian antagonism of Russia. I'm sure you'll note current U.S. military cooperation with that boisterous hotbed of democratic activity, Saudi Arabia, in Yemen. Our allies in the house of Saud require help in defending their democratic way of life against the totalitarianism of Yemeni tribes, you see. The U.S. opposes anti-democratic forces whenever and where ever it can, especially in the Middle East. I guess that explains USian antipathy to Russia. ..."
Yes, it was late and I was tired, or I wouldn't have said something so foolish. Still, the
point is that after centuries of constant war, Europe went 70 years without territorial conquest.
That strikes me as a significant achievement, and one whose breach should not be taken lightly.
phenomenal cat @64
So democratic structures have to be robust and transparent before we care about them? I'd give
a pretty high value to an independent press and contested elections. Those have been slowly crushed
in Russia. The results for transparency have not been great. Personally, I don't believe that
Ukraine is governed by fascists, or that Ukraine shot down that jetliner, but I'm sure a lot of
Russians do.
Russian leaders have always complained about "encirclement," but we don't have to believe them.
Do you really believe Russia's afraid of an attack from Estonia? Clearly what Putin wants is to
restore as much of the old Soviet empire as possible. Do you think the independence of the Baltic
states would be more secure or less secure if they weren't members of NATO? (Hint: compare to
Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova.)
"So
democratic structures have to be robust and transparent before we care about them?"
No. My point was it's very misleading. Misleading to set the parameters of discussion on
U.S. posture toward Russia in such a way as to assume that Putin's actions against a purported
Russian "democracy" have anything at all to do with USian antagonism of Russia. I'm sure you'll
note current U.S. military cooperation with that boisterous hotbed of democratic activity, Saudi
Arabia, in Yemen. Our allies in the house of Saud require help in defending their democratic way
of life against the totalitarianism of Yemeni tribes, you see. The U.S. opposes anti-democratic
forces whenever and where ever it can, especially in the Middle East. I guess that explains USian
antipathy to Russia.
"I'd give a pretty high value to an independent press and contested elections."
Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what the U.S. looked like with those dynamics in place.
"Those have been slowly crushed in Russia. The results for transparency have not been
great."
If you say so. For now I'll leave any decisions or actions taken on these outcomes to Russian
citizens. I would, however, kindly tell Victoria Nuland and her ilk to fuck off with their senile
Cold War fantasies, morally bankrupt, third-rate Great Game machinations, and total spectrum dominance
sociopathy.
"Personally, I don't believe that Ukraine is governed by fascists, or that Ukraine shot
down that jetliner, but I'm sure a lot of Russians do."
There's definitely some of 'em hanging about, but yeah it mostly seems to be a motley assortment
of oligarchs, gangsters, and grifters tied into international neoliberal capital and money flows.
No doubt Russian believe a lot things. I find Americans tend to believe a lot things as well.
"... Pretty consistent, I agree. IMHO Sanjait might belong to the category that some people call the "Vichy left" – essentially people who are ready to sacrifice all principles to ensure their 'own' prosperity and support the candidate who intends to protect it, everybody else be damned. ..."
"... Very neoliberal approach if you ask me. Ann Rand would probably be proud for this representative of "creative class". ..."
"... Essentially the behavior that we've had for the last 8 years with the king of "bait and switch". ..."
Some paranoid claptrap to go along with your usual anti intellectualism.
Interestingly, with your completely unrelated non sequitur, you've actually illustrated something that does relate to Krugmans
post. Namely that there are wingnuts among us. They've taken over the Republican Party, but the left has some too. Fortunately
though the Democratic Party hasn't been taken over by them yet, and is still mostly run by grown ups.
"I am confident that what you say here is consistent with your methods and motivations."
Pretty consistent, I agree. IMHO Sanjait might belong to the category that some people call the "Vichy left" – essentially
people who are ready to sacrifice all principles to ensure their 'own' prosperity and support the candidate who intends to protect
it, everybody else be damned.
Very neoliberal approach if you ask me. Ann Rand would probably be proud for this representative of "creative class".
Essentially the behavior that we've had for the last 8 years with the king of "bait and switch".
"... As the Gramscian theorists Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau observed, our political identities are not a 'given' – something that emerges directly from the objective facts of our situation. We all occupy a series of overlapping identities in our day-to-day lives – as workers or bosses, renters or home-owners, debtors or creditors. Which of these define our politics depends on political struggles for meaning and power. ..."
"... The architects of neoliberalism understood this process of identity creation. By treating people as selfish, rational utility maximisers, they actively encouraged them to become selfish, rational utility maximisers. As the opening article points out, this is not a side effect of neoliberal policy, but a central part of its intention. As Michael Sandel pointed out in his 2012 book 'What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets' , it squeezes out competing values that previously governed non-market spheres of life, such as ethics of public service in the public sector, or mutual care within local communities. But these values remain latent: neoliberalism does not have the power to erase them completely. This is where the hope for the left lies, the crack of light through the doorway that needs to be prised open. ..."
"... More generally, there is some evidence that neoliberalism didn't really succeed in making us see ourselves as selfish rational maximisers – just in making us believe that everybody else was . For example, a 2016 survey found that UK citizens are on average more oriented towards compassionate values than selfish values, but that they perceive others to be significantly more selfish (both than themselves and the actual UK average). Strikingly, those with a high 'self-society gap' were found to be less likely to vote and engage in civic activity, and highly likely to experience feelings of cultural estrangement. ..."
"... Perhaps a rational system is one that accepts selfishness but keeps it within limits. Movements like the Chicago school that pretend to reinvent the wheel with new thinking are by this view a scam. As J.K. Galbraith said: "the problem with their ideas is that they have been tried." ..."
"... They tried running an economy on debt in the 1920s. The 1920s roared with debt based consumption and speculation until it all tipped over into the debt deflation of the Great Depression. No one realised the problems that were building up in the economy as they used an economics that doesn't look at private debt, neoclassical economics. ..."
"... Keynes looked at the problems of the debt based economy and came up with redistribution through taxation to keep the system running in a sustainable way and he dealt with the inherent inequality capitalism produced. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, which has influenced so much of the conventional thinking about money, is adamant that the public sector must not create ('print') money, and so public expenditure must be limited to what the market can 'afford.' Money, in this view, is a limited resource that the market ensures will be used efficiently. Is public money, then, a pipe dream? No, for the financial crisis and the response to it undermined this neoliberal dogma. ..."
"... The financial sector mismanaged its role as a source of money so badly that the state had to step in and provide unlimited monetary backing to rescue it. The creation of money out of thin air by public authorities revealed the inherently political nature of money. But why, then, was the power to create money ceded to the private sector in the first place -- and with so little public accountability? ..."
Lambert here: Not sure the soul is an identity, but authors don't write the headlines. Read
on!
By Christine Berry, a freelance researcher and writer and was previously Director of
Policy and Government for the New Economics Foundation. She has also worked at ShareAction and
in the House of Commons.
Originally published at Open Democracy .
"Economics is the method: the object is to change the soul." Understanding why Thatcher said
this is central to understanding the neoliberal project, and how we might move beyond it.
Carys Hughes and Jim Cranshaw's opening article poses a crucial challenge to the left in
this respect. It is too easy to tell ourselves a story about the long reign of neoliberalism
that is peopled solely with all-powerful elites imposing their will on the oppressed masses. It
is much harder to confront seriously the ways in which neoliberalism has manufactured popular
consent for its policies.
The left needs to acknowledge that aspects of the neoliberal agenda have been overwhelmingly
popular: it has successfully tapped into people's instincts about the kind of life they want to
lead, and wrapped these instincts up in a compelling narrative about how we should see
ourselves and other people. We need a coherent strategy for replacing this narrative with one
that actively reconstructs our collective self-image – turning us into empowered citizens
participating in communities of mutual care, rather than selfish property-owning individuals
competing in markets.
As the Gramscian theorists Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau observed, our political
identities are not a 'given' – something that emerges directly from the objective facts
of our situation. We all occupy a series of overlapping identities in our day-to-day lives
– as workers or bosses, renters or home-owners, debtors or creditors. Which of these
define our politics depends on political struggles for meaning and power.
Part of the job of politics – whether within political parties or social movements
– is to show how our individual problems are rooted in systemic issues that can be
confronted collectively if we organise around these identities. Thus, debt becomes not a source
of shame but an injustice that debtors can organise against. Struggles with childcare are not a
source of individual parental guilt but a shared societal problem that we have a shared
responsibility to tackle. Podemos were deeply influenced by this thinking when they sought to
redefine Spanish politics as 'La Casta' ('the elite') versus the people, cutting across many of
the traditional boundaries between right and left.
The architects of neoliberalism understood this process of identity creation. By treating
people as selfish, rational utility maximisers, they actively encouraged them to become
selfish, rational utility maximisers. As the opening article points out, this is not a side
effect of neoliberal policy, but a central part of its intention. As Michael Sandel pointed out
in his 2012 book 'What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets' , it squeezes out
competing values that previously governed non-market spheres of life, such as ethics of public
service in the public sector, or mutual care within local communities. But these values remain
latent: neoliberalism does not have the power to erase them completely. This is where the hope
for the left lies, the crack of light through the doorway that needs to be prised open.
The Limits of Neoliberal Consciousness
In thinking about how we do this, it's instructive to look at the ways in which neoliberal
attempts to reshape our identities have succeeded – and the ways they have failed. While
Right to Buy might have been successful in identifying people as home-owners and stigmatising
social housing, this has not bled through into wider support for private ownership. Although
public ownership did become taboo among the political classes for a generation – far
outside the political 'common sense' – polls consistently showed that this was not
matched by a fall in public support for the idea. On some level – perhaps because of the
poor performance of privatised entities – people continued to identify as citizens with a
right to public services, rather than as consumers of privatised services. The continued
overwhelming attachment to a public NHS is the epitome of this tendency. This is partly what
made it possible for Corbyn's Labour to rehabilitate the concept of public ownership, as the
2017 Labour manifesto's proposals for public ownership of railways and water – dismissed
as ludicrous by the political establishment – proved overwhelmingly popular.
More generally, there is some evidence that neoliberalism didn't really succeed in making us
see ourselves as selfish rational maximisers – just in making us believe that
everybody else was . For example, a 2016 survey found that UK citizens
are on average more oriented towards compassionate values than selfish values, but that they
perceive others to be significantly more selfish (both than themselves and the actual UK
average). Strikingly, those with a high 'self-society gap' were found to be less likely to vote
and engage in civic activity, and highly likely to experience feelings of cultural
estrangement.
This finding points towards both the great conjuring trick of neoliberal subjectivity and
its Achilles heel: it has successfully popularised an idea of what human beings are like that
most of us don't actually identify with ourselves. This research suggests that our political
crisis is caused not only by people's material conditions of disempowerment, but by four
decades of being told that we can't trust our fellow citizens. But it also suggests that deep
down, we know this pessimistic account of human nature just isn't who we really are – or
who we aspire to be.
An example of how this plays out can be seen in academic studies showing that, in game
scenarios presenting the opportunity to free-ride on the efforts of others, only economics
students behaved as economic models predicted: all other groups were much more likely to pool
their resources. Having been trained to believe that others are likely to be selfish,
economists believe that their best course of action is to be selfish as well. The rest of us
still have the instinct to cooperate. Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising: after all, as
George Monbiot argues in 'Out of the Wreckage' , cooperation is our species' main
survival strategy.
What's Our 'Right to Buy?'
The challenge for the left is to find policies and stories that tap into this latent sense
of what makes us human – what Gramsci called 'good sense' – and use it to overturn
the neoliberal 'common sense'. In doing so, we must be aware that we are competing not only
with a neoliberal identity but also with a new far-right that seeks to promote a white British
ethno-nationalist group identity, conflating 'elites' with outsiders. How we compete with this
is the million dollar question, and it's one we have not yet answered.
Thatcher's use of flagship policies like the Right to Buy was a masterclass in this respect.
Deceptively simple, tangible and easy to grasp, the Right to Buy also communicated a much
deeper story about the kind of nation we wanted to be – one of private, property-owning
individuals – cementing home-ownership as a cultural symbol of aspiration (the right to
paint your own front door) whilst giving millions an immediate financial stake in her new
order. So what might be the equivalent flagship policies for the left today?
Perhaps one of the strongest efforts to date has been the proposal for ' Inclusive Ownership
Funds ', first developed by Mathew Lawrence in a report for the New Economics Foundation,
and announced as
Labour policy by John McDonnell in 2018. This would require companies to transfer shares
into a fund giving their workers a collective stake that rises over time and pays out employee
dividends. Like the Right to Buy, as well as shifting the material distribution of wealth and
power, this aims to build our identity as part of a community of workers taking more collective
control over our working lives.
But this idea only takes us so far. While it may tap into people's desire for more security
and empowerment at work, more of a stake in what they do, it offers a fairly abstract benefit
that only cashes out over time, as workers acquire enough of a stake to have a meaningful say
over company strategy. It may not mean much to those at the sharpest end of our oppressive and
precarious labour market, at least not unless we also tackle the more pressing concerns they
face – such as the exploitative practices of behemoths like Amazon or the stress caused
by zero-hours contracts. We have not yet hit on an idea that can compete with the
transformative change to people's lives offered by the Right to Buy.
So what else is on the table? Perhaps, when it comes to the cutting edge of new left
thinking on these issues, the workplace isn't really where the action is – at least not
directly. Perhaps we need to be tapping into people's desire to escape the 'rat race'
altogether and have more freedom to pursue the things that really make us happy – time
with our families, access to nature, the space to look after ourselves, connection with our
communities. The four day working week (crucially with no loss of pay) has real potential as a
flagship policy in this respect. The Conservatives and the right-wing press may be laughing it
down with jokes about Labour being lazy and feckless, but perhaps this is because they are
rattled. Ultimately, they can't escape the fact that most people would like to spend less time
at work.
Skilfully communicated, this has the potential to be a profoundly anti-neoliberal policy
that conveys a new story about what we aspire to, individually and as a society. Where
neoliberalism tapped into people's desire for more personal freedom and hooked this to the
acquisition of wealth, property and consumer choice, we can refocus on the freedom to live the
lives we truly want. Instead of offering freedom through the market, we can offer
freedom from the market.
Proponents of Universal Basic Income often argue that it fulfils a similar function of
liberating people from work and detaching our ability to provide for ourselves from the
marketplace for labour. But in material terms, it's unlikely that a UBI could be set at a level
that would genuinely offer people this freedom, at least in the short term. And in narrative
terms, UBI is actually a highly malleable policy that is equally susceptible to being co-opted
by a libertarian agenda. Even at its best, it is really a policy about redistribution of
already existing wealth (albeit on a bigger scale than the welfare state as it stands). To
truly overturn neoliberalism, we need to go beyond this and talk about collective
ownership and creation of wealth.
Policies that focus on collective control of assets may do a better job of replacing
a narrative about individual property ownership with one that highlights the actual
concentration of property wealth in the hands of elites – and the need to reclaim these
assets for the common good. As well as Inclusive Ownership Funds, another way of doing this is
through Citizens' Wealth Funds, which socialise profitable assets (be it natural resources or
intangible ones such as data) and use the proceeds to pay dividends to individuals or
communities. Universal Basic Services – for instance, policies such as free publicly
owned buses – may be another.
Finally, I'd like to make a plea for care work as a critical area that merits further
attention to develop convincing flagship policies – be it on universal childcare, elderly
care or support for unpaid carers. The instinctive attachment that many of us feel to a public
NHS needs to be widened to promote a broader right to care and be cared for, whilst firmly
resisting the marketisation of care. Although care is often marginalised in political debate,
as a new mum, I'm acutely aware that it is fundamental to millions of people's ability to live
the lives they want. In an ageing population, most people now have lived experience of the
pressures of caring for someone – whether a parent or a child. By talking about these
issues, we move the terrain of political contestation away from the work valued by the market
and onto the work we all know really matters; away from the competition for scarce resources
and onto our ability to look after each other. And surely, that's exactly where the left wants
it to be.
The problem is that people are selfish–me included–and so what is needed is
not better ideas about ourselves but better laws. And for that we will need a higher level of
political engagement and a refusal to accept candidates who sell themselves as a "lesser
evil." It's the decline of democracy that brought on the rise of Reagan and Thatcher and
Neoliberalism and not some change in public consciousness (except insofar as the general
public became wealthier and more complacent). In America incumbents are almost universally
likely to be re-elected to Congress and so they have no reason to reject Neoliberal
ideas.
So here's suggesting that a functioning political process is the key to reform and not
some change in the PR.
Carolinian, like you, I try to include myself in statements about "the problem with
people." I believe one of the things preventing progress is our tendency to believe it's only
those people that are the problem.
Human nature people are selfish. It's like the Christian marriage vow – which I understand is a Medieval invention
and not something from 2,000 years ago – for better or worse, meaning, we share (and
are not to be selfish) the good and the bad.
"Not neoliberals, but all of us." "Not the right, but the left as well." "Not just Russia, but America," or "Not just America, but Russia too."
Perhaps a rational system is one that accepts selfishness but keeps it within limits.
Movements like the Chicago school that pretend to reinvent the wheel with new thinking are by
this view a scam. As J.K. Galbraith said: "the problem with their ideas is that they have
been tried."
My small brain got stuck on your reference to a 'Christian marriage vow'. I was just
sitting back and conceiving what a Neoliberal marriage vow would sound like. Probably a cross
between a no-liabilities contract and an open-marriage agreement.
"people are selfish"?; or "people can sometimes act selfishly"? I think the latter is the
more accurate statement. Appeal to the better side, and more of it will be forthcoming.
Neolib propaganda appeals to trivial, bleak individualism..
I'm not sure historic left attempts to appeal to "the better angels of our nature" have
really moved the ball much. It took the Great Depression to give us a New Deal and WW2 to
give Britain the NHS and the India its freedom. I'd say events are in the saddle far more
than ideas.
I rather look at it as a "both and" rather than an "either or." If the political
groundwork is not done beforehand and during, the opportunity events afford will more likely
be squandered.
And borrowing from evolutionary science, this also holds with the "punctuated equilibrium"
theory of social/political change. The strain of a changed environment (caused by both events
and intentionally created political activity) for a long time creates no visible change to
the system, and so appears to fail. But then some combination of events and conscious
political work suddenly "punctuates the equilibrium" with the resulting significant if not
radical changes.
Chile today can be seen as a great example of this: "Its not 30 Pesos, its 30 Years."
Carolinian, you provide a good illustration of the power of the dominant paradigm to make
people believe exactly what the article said–something I've observed more than enough
to confirm is true. People act in a wide variety of ways; but many people deny that altruism
and compassion are equally "human nature". Both parts of the belief pointed out
here–believing other people are selfish and that we're not–are explained by
projection acting in concert with the other parts of this phenomenon. Even though it's flawed
because it's only a political and not a psychological explanation, It's a good start toward
understanding.
"You and I are so deeply acculturated to the idea of "self" and organization and species
that it is hard to believe that man [sic] might view his [sic] relations with the environment
in any other way than the way which I have rather unfairly blamed upon the nineteenth-century
evolutionists."
Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, p 483-4
This is part of a longer quote that's been important to me my whole life. Worth looking up.
Bateson called this a mistake in epistemology–also, informally, his definition of
evil. http://anomalogue.com/blog/category/systems-thinking/
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of
time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that
glorifies it."
― Frédéric Bastiat
Doesn't mean it's genetic. In fact, I'm pretty sure it means it's not.
The Iron Lady once proclaimed, slightly sinisterly: "Economics is the method. The object
is to change the soul." She meant that British people had to rediscover the virtue of
traditional values such as hard work and thrift. The "something for nothing" society was
over.
But the idea that the Thatcher era re-established the link between virtuous effort and
just reward has been effectively destroyed by the spectacle of bankers driving their
institutions into bankruptcy while being rewarded with million-pound bonuses and munificent
pensions.
The dual-truth approach of the Neoliberal Thought Collective (thanks, Mirowski) has been
more adept at manipulating narratives so the masses are still outraged by individuals getting
undeserved social benefits rather than elites vacuuming up common resources. Thanks to the
Thatcher-Reagan revolution, we have ended up with socialism for the rich, and everyone else
at the mercy of 'markets'.
Pretending that there are not problems with free riders is naive and it goes against
people's concern with justice. Acknowledging free riders on all levels with institutions that
can constantly pursue equity is the solution.
At some points in life, everyone is a free rider. As for the hard workers, many of them
are doing destructive things which the less hard-working people will have to suffer under and
compensate for. (Neo)liberalism and capitalism are a coherent system of illusions of virtue
which rest on domination, exploitation, extraction, and propaganda. Stoking of resentment (as
of free riders, the poor, the losers, foreigners, and so on) is one of the ways those who
enjoy it keep it going.
The Iron Lady once proclaimed, slightly sinisterly: "Economics is the method. The object
is to change the soul." She meant that British people had to rediscover the virtue of
traditional values such as hard work and thrift. The "something for nothing" society was
over.
But the idea that the Thatcher era re-established the link between virtuous effort and
just reward has been effectively destroyed by the spectacle of bankers driving their
institutions into bankruptcy while being rewarded with million-pound bonuses and munificent
pensions.
The dual-truth approach of the Neoliberal Thought Collective (thanks, Mirowski) has been
more adept at manipulating narratives so the masses are still outraged by individuals getting
undeserved social benefits rather than elites vacuuming up common resources. Thanks to the
Thatcher-Reagan revolution, we have ended up with socialism for the rich, and everyone else
at the mercy of 'markets'.
Pretending that there are not problems with free riders is naive and it goes against
people's concern with justice. Acknowledging free riders on all levels with institutions that
can constantly pursue equity is the solution.
The Iron Lady had a agenda to break the labor movement in the UK.
What she did not understand is Management gets the Union (Behavior) it deserves. If there
is strife in the workplace, as there was in abundance in the UK at that time, the problem is
the Management, (and the UK class structure) not the workers.
As I found out when I left University.
Thatcher set out to break the solidarity of the Labor movement, and used the neo-liberal
tool of selfishness to achieve success, unfortunately,
The UK's poor management practices, (The Working Class can kiss my arse) and complete
inability to form teams of "Management and Workers" was, IMHO, is the foundation of today's
Brexit nightmare, a foundation based on the British Class Structure.
And exploited, as it ever was, to achieve ends which do not benefit workers in any
manner.
The left needs to acknowledge that aspects of the neoliberal agenda have been
overwhelmingly popular: it has successfully tapped into people's instincts about the kind
of life they want to lead, and wrapped these instincts up in a compelling narrative about
how we should see ourselves and other people.
Sigh, no this is not true. This author is making the mistake that everyone is like the top
5% and that just is not so. Perhaps she should get out of her personal echo chamber and talk
to common people.
In my travels I have been to every state and every major city, and I have worked with just
about every class of people, except of course the ultra wealthy and ultra powerful –
they have people to protect them from the great unwashed like me – and it didn't take
me long to notice that the elite are different from the rest of us but I could never explain
exactly why. After I retired, I started studying and I've examined everything from Adam
Smith, to Hobbes, to Kant, to Durkheim, to Marx, to Ayn Rand, to tons of histories and
anthropologies of various peoples, to you name it and I've come to the conclusion that most
of us are not neoliberal and do not want what the top 5% want.
Most people are not overly competitive and most do not seek self-interest only. That is
what allows us to live in cities, to drive on our roadways, to form groups that seek to
improve conditions for the least of us. It is what allows soldiers to protect each other on
the battlefield when it would be in their self interest to protect themselves. It is what
allowed people in Europe to risk their own lives to save Jews. And it is also what allows
people to live under the worst dictators without rebelling. Of course we all want more but we
have limits on what we will do to get that more – the wealthy and powerful seem to have
no limits. For instance, most of us won't screw over our co-workers to make ourselves look
better, although some will. Most of us won't turn on our best friends even when it would be
to our advantage to do so, although some will. Most of us won't abandon those we care about,
even when it means severe financial damage to us, although some will.
For lack of a better description, I call what the 5% have the greed gene – a gene
that allows them to give up empathy and compassion and basic morality – what some of us
call fairness – in the search for personal gain. I don't think it is necessarily
genetic but there is something in their makeup that cause them to have more than the average
self interest. And because most humans are more cooperative than they are competitive, most
humans just allow these people to go after what they want and don't stand in their way, even
though by stopping them, they could make their own lives better.
Most history and economics are theories and stories told by the rich and powerful to
justify their behavior. I think it is a big mistake to attribute that behavior to the mass of
humanity. Archeology is beginning to look more at how average people lived instead of seeking
out only the riches deposited by the elite, and historians are starting to look at the other
side of history – average people – to see what life was really like for them, and
I think we are seeing that what the rulers wanted was never what their people wanted. It is
beginning to appear obvious that 95% of the people just wanted to live in their communities
safely, to have about what everyone else around them had, and to enjoy the simple pleasures
of shelter, enough food, and warm companionship.
I'm also wondering why the 5% think that all of us want exactly what they want. Do they
really think that they are somehow being smarter or more competent got them there while 95%
of the population – the rest of us – failed?
At this point, I know my theory is half-baked – I definitely need to do more
research, but nothing I have found yet convinces me that there isn't some real basic
difference between those who aspire to power and wealth and the rest of us.
" ..and I've come to the conclusion that most of us are not neoliberal and do not want
what the top 5% want. Most people are not overly competitive and most do not seek
self-interest only. That is what allows us to live in cities, to drive on our roadways, to
form groups that seek to improve conditions for the least of us. It is what allows soldiers
to protect each other on the battlefield when it would be in their self interest to protect
themselves. "
I really liked your comment Historian. Thanks for posting. That's what I've felt in my gut
for a while, that the top 5% and the establishment are operating under a different mindset,
that the majority of people don't want a competitive, dog eat dog, self interest world.
I agree with Foy Johnson. I've been reading up on Ancient Greece and realizing all the
time that 'teh Greeks' are maybe only about thirty percent of the people in Greece. Most of
that history is how Greeks were taking advantage of each other with little mention of the
majority of the population. Pelasgians? Yeah, they came from serpents teeth, the end.
I think this is a problem from the Bronze Age that we have not properly addressed.
Mystery Cycles are a nice reminder that people were having fun on their own.
I have more or less the same view. I think the author's statement about neoliberalism
tapping into what type of life people want to lead is untenable. Besides instinct (are we all
4-year olds?), what people want is also very much socially constructed. And what people do is
also very much socially coerced.
One anecdote: years ago, during a volunteer drive at work, I worked side by side with the
company's CEO (company was ~1200 headcount, ~.5bn revenue) sorting canned goods. The guy was
doing it like he was in a competition. So much so that he often blocked me when I had to
place something on the shelves, and took a lot of space in the lineup around himself while
swinging his large-ish body and arms, and wouldn't stop talking. To me, this was very rude
and inconsiderate, and showed a repulsive level of disregard to others. This kind of behavior
at such an event, besides being unpleasant to be around, was likely also making work for the
others in the lineup less efficient. Had I or anyone else behaved like him, we would have had
a good amount of awkwardness or even a conflict.
What I don't get is, how does he and others get away with it? My guess is, people don't
want a conflict. I didn't want a conflict and said nothing to that CEO. Not because I am not
competitive, but because I didn't want an ugly social situation (we said 'excuse me' and
'sorry' enough, I just didn't think it would go over well to ask him to stop being obnoxious
and dominant for no reason). He obviously didn't care or was unaware – or actually, I
think he was behaving that way as a tactical habit. And I didn't feel I had the authority to
impose a different order.
So, in the end, it's about power – power relations and knowing what to do about
it.
Yep, I think you've nailed it there deplorado, types like your CEO don't care at all
and/or are socially unaware, and is a tactical habit that they have found has worked for them
in the past and is now ingrained. It is a power relation and our current world unfortunately
is now designed and made to suit people like that. And each day the world incrementally moves
a little bit more in their direction with inertia like a glacier. Its going to take something
big to turn it around
I too believe "most of us are not neoliberal". But if so, how did we end up with the kind
of Corporate Cartels, Government Agencies and Organizations that currently prey upon
Humankind? This post greatly oversimplifies the mechanisms and dynamics of Neoliberalism, and
other varieties of exploitation of the many by the few. This post risks a mocking tie to
Identity Politics. What traits of Humankind give truth to Goebbels' claims?
There definitely is "some real basic difference between those who aspire to power and
wealth and the rest of us" -- but the question you should ask next is why the rest of us
Hobbits blindly follow and help the Saurons among us. Why do so many of us do exactly what
we're told? How is it that constant repetition of the Neoliberal identity concepts over our
media can so effectively ensnare the thinking of so many?
Maybe it's something similar to Milgram's Experiment (the movie the Experimenter about
Milgram was on last night – worth watching and good acting by Peter Sarsgaard, my kind
of indie film), the outcome is just not what would normally be expected, people bow to
authority, against their own beliefs and interests, and others interests, even though they
have choice. The Hobbits followed blindly in that experiment, the exact opposite outcome as
to what was predicted by the all the psychology experts beforehand.
people bow to authority , against their own beliefs and interests, and others
interests, even though they have choice
'Don't Make Waves' is a fundamentally useful value that lets us all swim along. This can
be manipulated. If everyone is worried about Reds Under the Beds or recycling, you go along
to get along.
Some people somersault to Authority is how I'd put it.
Yep, don't mind how you put that Mo, good word somersault.
One of the amusing tests Milgram did was to have people go into the lift but all face the
back of the lift instead of the doors and see what happens when the next person got in. Sure
enough, with the next person would get in, face the front, look around with some confusion at
everyone else and then slowly turn and face the back. Don't Make Waves its instinctive to let
us all swim along as you said.
And 'some people' is correct. It was actually the majority, 65%, who followed directions
against their own will and preferred choice in his original experiment.
That's a pretty damn good comment that, Historian. Lots to unpick. It reminded me too of
something that John Wyndham once said. He wrote how about 95% of us wanted to live in peace
and comfort but that the other 5% were always considering their chances if they started
something. He went on to say that it was the introduction of nuclear weapons that made
nobody's chances of looking good which explains why the lack of a new major war since
WW2.
Good comment. My view is that it all boils down to the sociopathic personality disorder.
Sociopathy runs on a continuum, and we all exhibit some of its tendencies. At the highest end
you get serial killers and titans of industry, like the guy sorting cans in another comment.
I believe all religions and theories of ethical behavior began as attempts to reign in the
sociopaths by those of us much lower on the continuum. Neoliberalism starts by saying the
sociopaths are the norm, turning the usual moral and ethical universe upside down.
Your theory is not half-baked; it's spot-on. If you're not the whatever it takes, end
justifies the means type, you are not likely to rise to the top in the corporate world. The
cream rises to the top happens only in the dairy.
Your 5% would correspond to Altemeyer's "social dominators". Unfortunately only
75% want a simple, peaceful life. 20% are looking for a social dominator to follow. It's
psychological.
Excellent comment. Take into consideration the probability that the majority of the top 5%
have come from a privileged background, ensconced in a culture of entitlement. This "greed"
gene is as natural to them as breathing. Consider also that many wealthy families have
maintained their status through centuries of calculated loveless marriages, empathy and other
human traits gene-pooled out of existence. The cruel paradox is that for the sake of riches,
they have lost their richness in character.
This really chimes with me. Thanks so much for putting it down in words.
I often encounter people insisting humans are selfish. It is quite frustrating that this
more predominant side of our human nature seems to become invisible against the
propaganda.
I'm barely into Jeremy Lent's The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's
Search for Meaning , but he's already laid down his central thesis in fairly complete
form. Humans are both competitive and cooperative, he says, which should surprise no one.
What I found interesting is that the competitive side comes from primates who are more
intensely competitive than humans. The cooperation developed after the human/primate split
and was enabled by "mimetic culture," communication skills that importantly presuppose that
the object(s) of communication are intentional creatures like oneself but with a somewhat
different perspective. Example: Human #1 gestures to Human #2 to come take a closer look at
whatever Human #1 is examining. This ability to cooperate even came with strategies to
prevent a would-be dominant male from taking over a hunter-gatherer band:
[I]n virtually all hunter-gatherer societies, people join together to prevent powerful
males from taking too much control, using collective behaviors such as ridicule, group
disobedience, and, ultimately, extreme sanctions such as assassination [This kind of
society is called] a "reverse dominant hierarchy because rather than being dominated, the
rank and file manages to dominate.
yes, this chimes in with what I`ve been thinking for years after puzzling about why
society everywhere ends up as it does – ie the fact that in small groups as we evolved
to live in, we would keep a check on extreme selfish behaviour of dominant individuals. In
complex societies (modern) most of us become "the masses" visible in some way to the system
but the top echelons are not visible to us and are able to amass power and wealth out of all
control by the rest of us. And yes, you do have to have a very strange drive (relatively
rare, ?pathological) to want power and wealth at everyone else`s expense – to live in a
cruel world many of whose problems could be solved (or not arise in the first place) by
redistributing some of your wealth to little palpable cost to you
Africa over a few million years of Ice Ages seems to have presented our ancestors with the
possibility of reproducing only if you can get along in close proximity to other Hominids
without killing each other. I find that a compelling explanation for our stupidly big brains;
it's one thing to be a smart monkey, it's a whole different solution needed to model what is
going on in the brain of another smart monkey.
And communications: How could spoken language have developed without levels of trust and
interdependence that maybe we can not appreciate today? We have a word for 'Blue' nowadays,
we take it for granted.
There is a theory that language originated between mothers and their immediate progeny,
between whom either trust and benevolence exist, or the weaker dies. The mother's chances for
survival and reproduction are enhanced if she can get her progeny to, so to speak, help out
around the house; how to do that is extended by symbolism and syntax as well as example.
I recall the first day of Econ 102 when the Prof. (damned few adjuncts in those days)
said, "Everything we discuss hereafter will be built on the concept of scarcity." Being a
contrary buggah' I thought, "The air I'm breathing isn't scarce." I soon got with the program
supply and demand upward sloping, downward sloping, horizontal, vertical and who could forget
kinked. My personal favorite was the Giffen Good a high priced inferior product. Kind of like
Micro Economics.
Maybe we could begin our new Neo-Economics 102 with the proviso, "Everything we discuss
hereafter will be based on abundance." I'm gonna' like this class!
Neo-lib Econ does a great job at framing issues so that people don't notice what is
excluded. Think of them as proto-Dark Patternists.
If you are bored and slightly mischievous, ask an economist how theory addresses
cooperation, then assume a can opener and crack open a twist-top beer.
Isn't one of the problems that it's NOT really built on the concept of scarcity? Most
natural resources run into scarcity eventually. I don't know about the air one breaths,
certainly fish species are finding reduced oxygen in the oceans due to climate change.
If you would like that class on abundance you would love the Church of Abundant Life which
pushes Jesus as the way to Abundant Life and they mean that literally. Abundant as in Jesus
wants you to have lots of stuff -- so believe.
I believe Neoliberalism is a much more complex animal than an economic theory. Mirowski
builds a plausible argument that Neoliberalism is a theory of epistemology. The Market
discovers Truth.
Had a lovely Physics class where the first homework problem boiled down to "How often do
you inhale a atom (O or N) from Julius Caesar's last breath". Great little introduction to
the power and pratfalls of 'estimations by Physicists' that xkcd likes to poke at. Back then
we used the CRC Handbook to figure it out.
Anyway, every second breath you can be sure you have shared an atom with Caesar.
I don't think Maggie T. or uncle Milty were thinking about the future at all. Neither one
would have openly promoted turfing quadriplegic 70-year-olds out of the rest home. That's how
short sighted they both were. And stupid. We really need to call a spade a spade here. Milty
doesn't even qualify as an economist – unless economics is the study of the destruction
of society. But neoliberalism had been in the wings already, by the 80s, for 40 years. Nobody
took into account that utility-maximizing capitalism always kills the goose (except Lenin
maybe) – because it's too expensive to feed her. The neoliberals were just plain dumb.
The question really is why should we stand for another day of neoliberal nonsense? Albeit
Macht Frei Light? No thanks. I think they've got the question backwards – it shouldn't
be how should "we" reconstruct our image now – but what is the obligation of all the
failed neoliberal extractors to right society now? I'd just as soon stand back and watch the
dam burst as help the neolibs out with a little here and a little there. They'll just keep
taking as long as we give. This isn't as annoying as Macron's "cake" comment, but it's close.
I did like the last 2 paragraphs however.
Here's a sidebar. A universal one. There is an anomaly in the universe – there is
not enough accumulated entropy. It screws up theoretical physics because the missing entropy
needs to be accounted for for their theories to work to their satisfaction. It seems to be a
phenomenon of evolution. Thus it was recently discovered by a physics grad student that
entropy by heat dissipation is the "creator" of life. Life almost spontaneously erupts where
it can take advantage of an energy source. And, we are assuming, life thereby slows entropy
down. There has to be another similar process among the stars and the planets as well, an
evolutionary conservation of energy. So evolution takes on more serious meaning. From the
quantum to the infinite. And society – it's right in the middle. So it isn't too
unreasonable to think that society is extremely adaptable, taking advantage of any energy
input, and it seems true to think that. Which means that society can go long for its goal
before it breaks down. But in the end it will be enervated by lack of "resources" unless it
can self perpetuate in an evolving manner. That's one good reason to say goodbye to looney
ideologies.
For a view of humanity that is not as selfish, recommend "The Gift" by Marcel Mauss.
Basically an anthropological study of reciprocal gift giving in the oceanic potlatch
societies. My take is that the idea was to re-visit relationships, as giving a gift basically
forces a response in the receiver, "Am I going to respond in kind, perhaps even upping what
is required? Or am I going to find that this relationship simply isn't worth it and walk
away?"
Kind of like being in a marriage. The idea isn't to walk away, the idea is you constantly
need to re-enforce it. Except with the potlatch it was like extending that concept to the
clan at large, so that all the relationships within the clan were being re-enforced.
"Kind of like being in a marriage. The idea isn't to walk away, the idea is you constantly
need to re-enforce it. "
amen.
we, the people, abdicated.
as for humans being selfish by default i used to believe this, due to my own experiences
as an outlaw and pariah.
until wife's cancer and the overwhelming response of this little town,in the "reddest"
congressional district in texas.
locally, the most selfish people i know are the one's who own everything buying up their
neighbor's businesses when things get tough.
they are also the most smug and pretentious(local dems, in their hillforts come a close
second in this regard) and most likely to be gop true believers.
small town and all everybody literally knows everybody, and their extended family and those
connections are intertwined beyond belief.
wife's related, in some way, to maybe half the town.
that matters and explains my experience as an outcast: i never belonged to anything like that
and such fellowfeeling and support is hard for people to extend to a stranger.
That's what's gonna be the hard sell, here, in undoing the hyperindividualist, "there is no
such thing as society" nonsense.
I grew up until Junior High in a fishing village on the Maine coast that had been around
for well over a hundred years and had a population of under 1000. By the time I was 8 I
realized there was no point in being extreme with anyone, because they were likely to be
around for the rest of your life.
I fell in love with sun and warmth when we moved away and unfortunately it's all
gentrified now, by the 90s even a tar paper shack could be sold for a few acres up in
Lamoine.
Yep, small towns are about as close as we get to clans nowadays. And just like clans, you
don't want to be on the outside. Still when you marry in, it would be nice if the town would
make you feel more a member like a clan should / would. ;-)
But outside of the small town and extended families I think that's it. We've been atomized
into our nuclear families. Except for the ruling class – I think they have this quid
pro quo gift giving relationship building figured out quite nicely. Basically they've formed
their own small town – at the top.
By the way, I understand Mauss was an influence on Baudrillard. I could almost imagine
Baudrillard thinking how the reality of the potlatch societies was so different than the
reality of western societies.
That's the big problem I see in this discussion. We know, or at least think we know,
what's wrong, and what would be better; but we can't get other people to want to do something
about it, even those who nominally agree with us. And I sure don't have the answer.
Neoliberalism, in its early guise at least, was popular because politicians like Thatcher
effectively promised something for nothing. Low taxes but still decent public services. The
right to buy your council house without putting your parents' council house house in
jeopardy. Enjoying private medical care as a perk of your job whilst still finding the NHS
there when you were old and sick. And so on. By the time the penny dropped it was too
late.
If the Left is serious about challenging neoliberalism, it has to return to championing the
virtues of community, which it abandoned decades ago in favour of extreme liberal
individualism Unfortunately, community is an idea which has either been appropriated by
various identity warriors (thus fracturing society further) or dismissed (as this author
does) because it's been taken up by the Right. A Left which explained that when everybody
cooperates everybody benefits, but that when everybody fights everybody loses, would sweep
the board.
If the Left is serious about challenging neoliberalism, it has to return to championing
the virtues of community
I agree. The tenuous suggestions offered by the article are top down. But top-down
universal solutions can remove the impetus for local organization. Which enervates the power
of communities. And then you can't do anything about austerity, because your Rep loves the
PowerPoints and has so much money from the Real Estate community.
Before one experiences the virtue, or power, of a community, one has to go through the
pain in the ass of contributing to a community. It has to be rewarding process or it won't
happen.
"An example of how this plays out can be seen in academic studies showing that, in game
scenarios presenting the opportunity to free-ride on the efforts of others, only economics
students behaved as economic models predicted: all other groups were much more likely to pool
their resources. Having been trained to believe that others are likely to be selfish,
economists believe that their best course of action is to be selfish as well. The rest of us
still have the instinct to cooperate. Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising: after all, as
George Monbiot argues in 'Out of the Wreckage', cooperation is our species' main survival
strategy."
Since so many people believe their job is their identity, would be interssting to know
what the job training or jobs were of the "others."
>so many people believe their job is their identity
Only because the social sphere, which in the medium and long term we *all depend
on* to survive, has been debased by 24/7/365 neolib talking points, and their purposeful
economic constrictions..
How many people have spent their lives working for the "greater good"? How many work
building some transcendental edifice from which the only satisfaction they could take away
was knowing they performed a part of its construction? The idea that Humankind is selfish and
greedy is a projection promoted by the small part of Humankind that really is selfish and
greedy.
Where does wealth creation actually occur in the capitalist system?
Nations can do well with the trade, as we have seen with China and Germany, but this comes
at other nation's expense.
In a successful global economy, trade should be balanced over the long term.
Keynes was aware of this in the past, and realised surplus nations were just as much of a
problem as deficit nations in a successful global economy with a long term future.
Zimababwe has lots of money and it's not doing them any favours. Too much money causes
hyper-inflation.
You can just print money, the real wealth in the economy lies somewhere else.
Alan Greenspan tells Paul Ryan the Government can create all the money it wants and there is
no need to save for pensions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNCZHAQnfGU
What matters is whether the goods and services are there for them to buy with that money.
That's where the real wealth in the economy lies.
Money has no intrinsic value; its value comes from what it can buy.
Zimbabwe has too much money in the economy relative to the goods and services available in
that economy. You need wheelbarrows full of money to buy anything.
It's that GDP thing that measures real wealth creation.
GDP does not include the transfer of existing assets like stocks and real estate.
Inflated asset prices are just inflated asset prices and this can disappear all too easily as
we keep seeing in real estate.
1990s – UK, US (S&L), Canada (Toronto), Scandinavia, Japan
2000s – Iceland, Dubai, US (2008)
2010s – Ireland, Spain, Greece
Get ready to put Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Hong Kong on the list.
They invented the GDP measure in the 1930s, to track real wealth creation in the economy
after they had seen all that apparent wealth in the US stock market disappear in 1929.
There was nothing really there.
How can banks create wealth with bank credit?
The UK used to know before 1980.
https://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/uploads/monthly_2018_02/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-13_53_09.png.e32e8fee4ffd68b566ed5235dc1266c2.png
Before 1980 – banks lending into the right places that result in GDP growth (business
and industry, creating new products and services in the economy)
After 1980 – banks lending into the wrong places that don't result in GDP growth (real
estate and financial speculation)
What happened in 1979?
The UK eliminated corset controls on banking in 1979 and the banks invaded the mortgage
market and this is where the problem starts.
Real estate does make the economy boom, but there is no real wealth creation in inflating
asset prices.
What is really happening?
When you use bank credit to inflate asset prices, the debt rises much faster than GDP.
https://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/uploads/monthly_2018_02/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-13_53_09.png.e32e8fee4ffd68b566ed5235dc1266c2.png
The bank credit of mortgages is bringing future spending power into today.
Bank loans create money and the repayment of debt to banks destroys money.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf
In the real estate boom, new money pours into the economy from mortgage lending, fuelling a
boom in the real economy, which feeds back into the real estate boom.
The Japanese real estate boom of the 1980s was so excessive the people even commented on the
"excess money", and everyone enjoyed spending that excess money in the economy.
In the real estate bust, debt repayments to banks destroy money and push the economy towards
debt deflation (a shrinking money supply).
Japan has been like this for thirty years as they pay back the debts from their 1980s
excesses, it's called a balance sheet recession. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk
Bank loans effectively take future spending and bring it in today.
Jam today, penury tomorrow.
Using future spending power to inflate asset prices today is a mistake that comes from
thinking inflating asset prices creates real wealth.
GDP measures real wealth creation.
Did you know capitalism works best with low housing costs and a low cost of living?
Probably not, you are in the parallel universe of neoliberalism.
William White (BIS, OECD) talks about how economics really changed over one hundred years
ago as classical economics was replaced by neoclassical economics.
He thinks we have been on the wrong path for one hundred years.
Some very important things got lost 100 years ago.
The Mont Pelerin society developed the parallel universe of neoliberalism from
neoclassical economics.
The CBI (Confederation of British Industry) saw the light once they discovered my equation
(Michael Hudson condensed)
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
"Wait a minute, employees get their money from wages and businesses have to cover high
housing costs in wages reducing profit" the CBI
It's all about the economy, and UK businesses will benefit from low housing costs. High housing costs push up wages and reduce profits. Off-shore to make more profit, you can pay lower wages where the cost of living is lower,
e.g. China; the US and UK are rubbish.
What was Keynes really doing?
Creating a low cost, internationally competitive economy. Keynes's ideas were a solution to the problems of the Great Depression, but we forgot why
he did, what he did.
They tried running an economy on debt in the 1920s. The 1920s roared with debt based consumption and speculation until it all tipped over into
the debt deflation of the Great Depression. No one realised the problems that were building
up in the economy as they used an economics that doesn't look at private debt, neoclassical
economics.
Keynes looked at the problems of the debt based economy and came up with redistribution
through taxation to keep the system running in a sustainable way and he dealt with the
inherent inequality capitalism produced.
The cost of living = housing costs + healthcare costs + student loan costs + food + other
costs of living
Disposable income = wages - (taxes + the cost of living)
High progressive taxation funded a low cost economy with subsidised housing, healthcare,
education and other services to give more disposable income on lower wages.
Employers and employees both win with a low cost of living.
Keynesian ideas went wrong in the 1970s and everyone had forgotten the problems of
neoclassical economics that he originally solved.
Classical economics – observations and deductions from the world of small state,
unregulated capitalism around them
Neoclassical economics – Where did that come from?
Keynesian economics – observations, deductions and fixes for the problems of
neoclassical economics
Neoclassical economics – Why is that back?
We thought small state, unregulated capitalism was something that it wasn't as our ideas
came from neoclassical economics, which has little connection with classical economics.
On bringing it back again, we had lost everything that had been learned in the 1930s, by
which time it had already demonstrated its flaws.
Ultimately, neoliberalism is about privatization and ownership of everything. This is why
it's so important to preserve the Common Good, the vital resources and services that support
earthly existence. The past 40 years has shown what happens when this falls out of balance.
Our value system turns upside down – the sick become more valuable than the healthy, a
violent society provides for the prisons-for-profit system and so on. The biggest upset has
been the privatization of money creation.
This latest secret bank bailout (not really secret as Dodd-Frank has allowed banks to
siphon newly created money from the Fed without Congressional approval. No more public
embarrassment that Hank Paulson had to endure.) They are now up to $690 billion PER WEEK
while the media snoozes. PPPs enjoy the benefits of public money to seed projects for private
gain. The rest of us have to rely on predatory lenders, sinking us to the point of Peak Debt,
where private debt can never be paid off and must be cancelled, as it should be because it
never should've happened in the first place.
"Neoliberalism, which has influenced so much of the conventional thinking about money,
is adamant that the public sector must not create ('print') money, and so public
expenditure must be limited to what the market can 'afford.' Money, in this view, is a
limited resource that the market ensures will be used efficiently. Is public money, then, a
pipe dream? No, for the financial crisis and the response to it undermined this neoliberal
dogma.
The financial sector mismanaged its role as a source of money so badly that the
state had to step in and provide unlimited monetary backing to rescue it. The creation of
money out of thin air by public authorities revealed the inherently political nature of
money. But why, then, was the power to create money ceded to the private sector in the
first place -- and with so little public accountability?And
if money can be created to serve the banks, why not to benefit people and the
environment? "
The Commons should have a shot at revival as the upcoming generation's desires are
outstripped by their incomes and savings. The conflict between desires and reality may give a
boost to alternate notions of what's desirable. Add to this the submersion of cities under
the waves of our expanding oceans, and one gets yet another concrete reason to think that
individual ownership isn't up to the job of inspiring young people.
A Commons of some sort
will be needed to undo the cost of generations of unpaid negative externalities. Fossil
fuels, constant warfare, income inequality, stupendous idiocy of kleptocratic government
these baked in qualities of neo-liberalism are creating a very large, dissatisfied, and
educated population just about anywhere one looks. Suburbia will be on fire, as well as
underwater. Farmlands will be parched, drenched, and exhausted. Where will Larry Summers dump
the garbage?
Joe Rogan finally got around to interviewing Tulsi, along with another vet named Jocko
Willink. Tulsi does splendidly but unsurprisingly, finally allowed to complete a sentence
without fighting stupid questions. Around the middle of the clip, Willink has a passionate
description of the rebirth of manufacturing in Maine, which is surprising!
Not that he's wrong about social media but he actually said this (I imagine with a
straight face) – " "let's hold these companies responsible for those who use their
sites to advocate mass murder of children because of their race or religion."
Apparently he doesn't know that Israel is on both Faceplant and Twitster
How World Bank arbitrators mugged Pakistan
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
Wall Street hedge funds and lawyers have turned an arcane procedure of international
treaties into a money machine, at the cost of the world's poorest people. The latest
shakedown is a 5.9-billion-U.S.-dollars award against Pakistan's government in favor of two
global mining companies – Antofagasta PLC of Chile and Barrick Gold Corporation of
Canada – for a project that was never approved by Pakistan and never carried out.
Here are the facts.
In 1993, a U.S.-incorporated mining company, BHP, entered into a joint venture (JV) with
the Balochistan Development Authority (BDA), a public corporation in Pakistan's impoverished
Balochistan province. The JV was set up to prospect for gold and copper, and in the event of
favorable discoveries, to seek a mining license.
BHP was not optimistic about the project's profitability and dragged its feet on
exploration. In the early 2000s, it assigned the prospecting rights to an Australian company,
which created Tethyan Copper Company (TCC) for the project.
In 2006, Antofagasta acquired TCC for 167 million U.S. dollars, and sold half to Barrick
Gold. Soon after the purchase, however, the original JV agreement with BHP was challenged in
Pakistan's courts.
In 2013, the Pakistan Supreme Court found that the JV's terms violated Pakistan's mining
and contract laws in several ways and declared the agreement – and thus the rights
claimed by TCC – to be null and void.
Specifically, the Court ruled that the BDA did not have authority to bind Balochistan to
the terms of the JV agreement; that it awarded the contract without competition or
transparency; and that it had greatly exceeded its authority and violated the law by
promising extensive deviations from the rules normally applicable to mining projects.
Moreover, the JV failed to obtain, and even to pursue, many mandatory approvals from the
state and federal governments, and BHP failed to undertake prospecting in a timely manner
required under the mining law.
The Supreme Court's decision came after years of public-interest litigation challenging
the deal for violations of domestic law and the rights of the public. In the meantime, the
BDA's chairman was found to have conflicts of interest and to be living beyond the means
afforded by his official salary, which in the Court's words was tantamount to corruption.
In a normal world, the Court's judgment would be respected absent proven evidence of
corruption or other wrongdoing against the justices. But in the world we actually inhabit,
the so-called international rule of law enables rich companies to exploit poor countries with
impunity and disregard their laws and courts.
When TCC lost its case in Pakistan's Supreme Court, it simply turned to the World Bank's
International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), in complete disregard
of Pakistan's laws and institutions.
A panel of three arbitrators with no expertise in or respect for Pakistan's legal
system ruled that TCC deserved compensation for all future profits that it allegedly would
have earned if the non-existent project, based on a voided agreement, had gone
forward!
Because there was no actual project, and no agreement for one, the arbitrators had no
basis to say what terms – royalties, corporate taxes, environmental standards, land
area, and other basic provisions – the governments of Balochistan and Pakistan would
have set. In fact, disagreement on many of those terms had stalled negotiations for
years.
Nonetheless, the ICSID panel arbitrarily decided that TCC would have had the right to mine
1,000 square kilometers, though the mining law forbade licensing such a vast area. The
arbitrators ruled that TCC would have received a tax holiday for 15 years, even though there
is no evidence that such a tax holiday was in the offing – or even legal. The
arbitrators decided that TCC would have benefited from a royalty rate several percentage
points below the mandatory statutory rate, though there is no reason why Pakistan would have
set such a low rate.
The arbitrators also ruled that TCC would have met all environmental standards, or that
the government would have exempted TCC from relevant requirements, though the mining area is
in a desert region subject to extreme water stress, and the mining project would have
demanded vast amounts of water. And the arbitrators ruled that to obtain the land needed for
TCC's pipeline, the government would have taken it from its owners and inhabitants.
The arbitration ruling is utterly capricious. An illegal project, declared null and
void by Pakistan's Supreme Court and never pursued, was found by the World Bank's arbitration
panel to be worth more than four billion U.S. dollars to TCC's owners, who had paid 167
million U.S. dollars for it in 2006.
Moreover, the tribunal declared that Pakistan must compensate TCC in full, with back
interest, and cover its legal fees, raising the bill to 5.9 billion U.S. dollars, or roughly
two percent of Pakistan's GDP. It is more than twice Pakistan's entire public spending on
health care for 200 million people, in a country where seven percent of children die before
their fifth birthday. For many Pakistanis, the World Bank's arbitration ruling is a death
sentence.
The ICSID is not an honest broker. One of the tribunal members in the TCC case is using
the same expert put forward by TCC for another case in which the arbitrator is acting as
counsel! When challenged about this obvious conflict of interest, the arbitrator refused to
step down and the ICSID proceeded as if all were normal.
Thanks to the World Bank's arbitrators, the rich are making a fortune at the expense of
poor countries. Multinational companies are feasting on unapproved, non-existent
projects.
Fixing the broken arbitration system should start with a reversal of the outrageous ruling
against Pakistan and a thorough investigation of the flawed and corrupt process that made it
possible.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, professor of sustainable development and professor of health policy
and management at Columbia University, is director of Columbia's Center for Sustainable
Development.
Antifragile states
Explains how globalisation has allowed small states to become major players and big cities to
outgrow their nation-states.
By Branko Milanovic
In a series of books, and especially in Antifragile, Nassim Taleb has introduced an
important concept -- that of being antifragile, referring to 'things that gain from
disorder'. 'Fragile' is, of course, the opposite: it connotes something that thrives under
stable conditions but, being brittle, loses, and at times loses big, amid volatility. In the
middle, 'robust' indicates resilience against uncertainty and turmoil, without the capacity
to profit from it.
The contrast between antifragile and the two other categories relates to that between
centralised, top-down formations (such as unitary states) and decentralised, bottom-up and
more flexible, federal structures. As an example of the latter Taleb takes Switzerland, with
its decentralised cantonal system and grassroots democracy.
But Switzerland is also antifragile in another sense. It has historically been a country
that benefited from turmoil and disorder outside its borders -- from wars, nationalisations,
uncertain property rights and outright plunder. In all these cases, whether Jews were trying
to save their property from 'Aryanisation', Chinese millionaires feared a revolution or
African potentates needed a haven in which to park their loot, Switzerland offered the
comfort of safety. It was (and is) the ultimate antifragile state: it thrives on
disorder.
Dubious legality
While Switzerland became emblematic of such a safe haven, it is hardly unique nowadays in
benefiting from it. Globalisation and worldwide turmoil, combined with openness of capital
accounts, have allowed many small economies to specialise in functions which run from asset
safety and money-laundering to tax avoidance and evasion. In most cases, the legality of such
transactions is dubious; many belong to the grey zone where neither full legality nor full
illegality can be attributed.
In western Europe, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Ireland have engaged in stimulating tax
evasion, including from neighbouring countries. In his Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge
of Tax Havens, Gabriel Zucman documents the large outflows from Switzerland and inflows into
Luxembourg's banking system which followed the (forced) decision by the Swiss authorities to
impose withholding tax on accounts held by foreigners.
Ireland's provision of safe haven from taxes to various large multinational corporations
received quite a lot of attention when the European Commission obliged the county to assess
these rates, particularly for Apple, at other than zero. In what may well be a singular
historical case, the Irish government complained about having to receive billions more
taxes!
Elsewhere, as in the Caribbean, small nation-states have specialised in providing the
legal framework for shell companies. In Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One
Percent, Brooke Harrington describes a single building in the Cayman Islands which houses
headquarters for several hundred companies. Shell companies have played an enormous role in
the money-laundering which followed privatisations in many east-European countries after
1989, as well as in providing cover for many illegal activities -- from drug and arms sales
to people-trafficking.
Cyprus benefited enormously from the Lebanese and Yugoslav civil wars, as well as from the
confusion over property rights in Russia and Ukraine. Montenegro, the smallest of the
ex-Yugoslav republics, had economically the most successful transition, not least thanks to
massive cigarette-smuggling.
Globalisation effect
All such states are antifragile in the sense that Taleb gives to the term. But their
success provides us also with a lesson in the effects of globalisation. It shows that the old
notion of state 'viability' -- based on a supposed threshold of size -- is now plain
wrong.
Under globalisation, the specialisation of small states into niche activities enables them
to prosper: they do not need to produce cars or mobile phones to become rich. They do not
need even to have a domestic market. It suffices to find an activity which relatively few
other countries offer and for which there is an increasing global demand, as the world
becomes more volatile, or lawless or corrupt. They become antifragile.
The success of such states is replicated at subnational level. Big cities such as London,
New York, Miami and Barcelona offer many of the services and amenities we find in small
nation-states (asset protection, expert money-laundering) but in addition provide
agglomeration externalities (increasing returns to scale thanks to the physical presence in
the same place of many companies) and thriving housing markets. They too are antifragile.
This has implications for the political life of the nation-states where such cities are
located. Global cities are increasingly linked to other global cities and other countries,
less and less to their own hinterland. They are what Fernand Braudel called villes-monde.
They remind us of medieval cities, which were often more powerful than much larger states.
The power of cities such as Venice and Genoa ended with the advent of the nation-states which
became political, economic and military behemoths, absorbing city-states or relegating them
to oblivion.
Voting differently
Globalisation is bringing them back, however. While nation-states politically and
economically fragment, and in some cases (as with climate change) show themselves to be not
the right loci to address a problem, the villes-monde thrive. Many already vote very
differently from the surrounding areas: London had a solid anti-Brexit majority (60 per
cent), Budapest, Istanbul and Moscow voted against their countries' authoritarian leaders and
New York is leading the 'rebellion' against its own citizen who is currently the president of
the United States.
The important political question in the 21st century will be how a modus vivendi between
the globalised large cities, and the elites living there, and the rest of their nations can
be achieved. Will there be a redistribution of political power within countries, endless
friction between the 'globalists' and 'nativists' or, in extremis, secession by the
antifragile villes-monde?
Branko Milanovic is visiting presidential professor at the Graduate Center of City University
of New York (CUNY).
American nationalism binds the whole-to-its-parts by using narrative to weaponize emotions
and broadcast the idea of American 'wholeness' as somehow exceptionally greater than the sum of
its parts.
There can be no doubt that zealotry became the dynamic forging the American character .
First and foremostly, enunciations spat out by bearded prophets were carried on the winds of
ontological time and eventually landing on the shores of the new world along with bible and
crucifix to stave off inequities and help shape a mind-set (and foreign policy) for those
taking possession of the Kingdom of God. A colonial policy that inevitably consigned the
population of the occupied territories into misery and poverty would in time come to be
regarded as regime change. The Protestant reformation was always about gilding the God
narrative with a work ethic equal to the sum of its mercantile whole.
To this very day, individual achievements take precedence over collective values as
missionary zeal is believed to have the potential to sublimate the libido and divert energy
into productive work activities. The nub of the narrative being the ineffable
Protestant-cum-existentialist credential underpinning the virtues of 19th century Anglophile
culture that found ways of appeasing the mind with dreamlike emoluments to convey the promise
of earthly rewards for the industrious of mind or simply put; mercantilism became
a-one-size-fits-all solution for man's irascible struggle with his existential hairshirt.
In time, European mercantile classes would invasively penetrate every corner of the globe
for the purpose of wealth extraction. Those who sought material gratification would eventually
come to define democracy as freedom to pursue individual desires. What emerged from this was
class-identified gentrification and fake sugar-coated democracy supporting a form of
fake-individuality that created a class system based on the exploitation on just about
everything.
As time passed the existential stature of the state grew, while the existential stature of
the individual remained the same. With the advent of mercantilism came a national economic
policy designed to maximize exports and minimize imports, with the state taking a more
adversarial role in all business arrangements. For the state to be greater than the sum of its
parts meant exporting a greater quantity of its manufactured products to its trading partners
while minimising the amount of goods they imported from them.
To do this it was necessary to devise policies that aimed to reduce a possible current
account deficit and achieve a current account surplus. Mercantilism introduced a national
economic policy aimed at accumulating monetary reserves through a positive balance of trade,
especially in finished goods fine policies in theory, but when push came to shove in the
competitive arena, greed inevitably exposed these polices to the raw 'talents' of people like
Sheriff Trump and most of his contemporaries , who interpret business as dealership and
mawkishly set out to wage economic warfare on all and sundry.
The practice of sucking in wealth associated with the resources of Africa, India, the
Americas, India and other Asian destinations was so successful that Britain almost
inadvertently found itself in possession of an empire. It had reached a plateau where the sum
was greater than its parts and to sustain its 'sum-status' meant creating an alliance of
collusive narratives to justify its pre-eminence and the best way to do so and retain control
of the narrative was to resort to propaganda and trophy issues that would weaponize the
emotions of the population. Hence the modern state found a way to prioritize itself at the
expense of the individual. Over time, business cartels in tandem with the government would
create ever more contextual paradigms for the individual to deal with.
What was required to sustain the status quo was a narrative to make the people feel proud of
the fact that they were part of a-top-dog-team in action. Once the authors of the narrative
realized that propaganda, when coupled with patriotism, could produce adherents imbued with
convictions that were inherent in the narrative, they realized that language itself could
cement a profitable relationship between buyer and seller and public relations became a force
unto itself.
If you were part of the bourgeoisie who came into existence in the 19th centuries as a
consequence of the wealth pouring into Europe and Britain from the colonial exploitation of
Africa or India, Ireland, Asia etc. and your conscience was troubled by virtue of being party
to a culture sliding grandiosely up its own existential arse, you could find balm within the
isolated confines of the psychiatrist's couch if your pockets were deep enough. If you were of
a humble disposition, there was the pastor or the priest who could deal with your existential
woes. If you made it to the 20th century you probably would have become so conditioned by
events as to be unaware of other people's suffering and if you made it to the 21 century perish
the thought!
It was in this phase of history that commerce cleverly entered the business of explaining
the meaning of existence per educational fiat for a price! Thereafter it would be secular
experts who explained the meaning of life to anybody who could afford to pay for enlightenment
while simultaneously repressing revolutionary instincts that could, in the first instance,
allow the light of reason to filter through.
With the crafting of the existential narrative, more and more people came to see themselves
as parts in a new whole. Personal history became the curveball of the 20th century, promoting a
vision of America as utopia on steroids, which in turn, produced a sky-is-the-limit kind of
optimism. America had long taken over from where Britain had left off after experiencing a fin
de siecle stampede through its pearly gates in the 19th century which eventually produced an
adrenaline rush to end all adrenaline rushes by the time it put a man on the moon. The net
result was that American industry became kingpin for a century which left it convinced of its
own invincibility.
When did America start to believe that it had to possess the biggest nuclear arsenal for it
to feel that 'whole' America had become greater than the sum of its rival's parts? Which raises
the question; given the way power is used by the modern democratic-capitalist state, is the
American constitution merely an example of baggage retained for baggage sake? Is there anything
beyond raw power that may define its essence? Does it have an essence, or is it merely guided
by some dark light that emanates from a single word 'democracy' that stands alone on the blank
piece of paper that was placed in a bottle and cast upon the ocean with information that might
help 'the people' fulfil their desires?
Do the people not see that they need to be free from illusions that enfold them before they
can revolutionize their system and move on?
The elites who control the narrative remain invisible, they are neither deep nor surface
stakeholders, they simply control the money flow. They are the sum-total of the faceless state,
protected by protocols, secret intelligence agencies and the reality of the military budget
that is put in place to maintain top-dog status for the elites and the illusions that comfort
the multifarious minions now quarantined in citizen- zones that continue to emasculate their
revolutionary spirit.
The current impeachment process in America best illustrates the sterility the population is
immiserated in. They should be impeaching themselves (instead of looking for a scapegoat) for
their inability to confront their own record. They seem unaware that they are party to a
bloodbath that has devastated much of the Middle East and many other societies across the
globe.
Once again, Americans are involved in the early stages of an election that leaves the
question of America's foreign policy in the too hard basket. A charade that would make
Machiavelli blush. But alas, when blush comes to shove, American might is a God given right and
collateral damage is not something that would soon alter the tone of its pugnaciously
thick-skinned approach to reality.
Then there is ever more evidence of the schism that is corporate existentialism as opposed
to individual existentialism. The former owning the right to squash the latter ever since
Corporate America took the civil out of civilisation by assiduously seeking to remove
voices/data/information/truth and honourable journalism from serving the public interest.
To observe how Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden (also Daniel Ellsberg,
Jeffrey Wigand, Thomas Andrew Drake and Frank Serpico) were treated for divulging the execrable
crimes of the American state are odious to say the least. That so many Americans, in condoning
"the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" mentality, and dismissive of the service their
whistle-blowers are providing, is appalling. A new class of people have come into existence and
they hate whistle-blowers because they speak truth to power pity the millions of Americans who
don't think that way!
And what does the MSM really think of all this? That the New York Times continues to readily
publish Bibi Netanyahu's blandishments concerning existential threats to Israel while ignoring
the fact that Palestine have had their country invaded and countless Palestinians now live
under appalling conditions where existential rights do not even apply to them. The hurt that is
inflicted on Palestinians is akin to the hurt that can be extended to say, Julian Assange,
because both insidiously demean the human spirit.
These are actions that highlight the schism that exists between governance and the governed
existence of the state in relation to the existence of the individual or any other agent in the
individual legal zone we recognise as being separate from the privileged existential zone of
governments that includes corporations who enjoy limited liability by virtue of their status in
law. Existentialism, at the individual level, is a concept born of leisure (think affluence),
but when dealing with fiscal reality, finds its sovereignty somewhat overshadowed by the
external trappings of an existential system designed to keep the checks and balances that
favour the imperial narrative.
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.
Please
enter a valid email Thank you for subscribing!Something went wrong. Please refresh
and try again.
Six months ago when the US Government slammed Assange with 17 charges under The Espionage
Act for publishing the Chelsea Manning Leaks, indications were that these actions were taken to
stifle the existence of a precedent that challenged the rights of a government to suppress the
existence of truth itself; eventually it became their right to gag the message and the
messenger.
The American police state is a multi-billion-dollar boondoggle meant to keep the property
and the resources of the American people flowing into corrupt government agencies and their
corporate partners. In its present incarnation, it unmistakably exists as a pariah whose
insidious meddling in other people's systems knows no limitations. It unrelentingly spews out
lies at every opportunity which vaunt variations on a theme of America's self-righteous
greatness ad nauseam. Its porous foreign policy exists to suck-out the essence of vulnerable
states that are exposed to the gravitation pull of weaponised systems such as Wall Street and
The Pentagon.
The systems that have weaponized American culture have spawned a host of 'yes' men and women
the MSM is aglow with them. The emotional and intellectual life of main street America is
ominously self-righteous and defensive. To understand how reflexive American politics is, is to
discover by merely surfing channels that the American public has become the meat in a
political-duopoly sandwich.
To listen to Elizabeth Warren expostulating on Bolivia attests to a form of political incest
that bedevils America. The Massachusetts Senator wanted to air her foreign policy bona fides in
an interview with a former Barack Obama administration apparatchik on the podcast "Pod Save
America."
Warren praised Trump's strategy of appointing the deflated Venezuela coup leader Juan Guaido
as president and declared, "I support economic sanctions." She also described the country's
democratically elected president Nicolas Maduro as a "dictator." although the interview was
conducted back in February, video clips have recently resurfaced and gone viral on social
media.
Which brings me back to the observation that America's mawkish culture is viral in ways that
are mainly lethal for those it disapproves of. It behaves like a giant octopus forever
extending its tentacles into places that it wishes to exploit or annihilate. And behold The
American Posse has morphed into stealth forces that operate outside of international law, human
decency or basic accountability. It abhors the idea that leaders like Nicolas Maduro could curb
the extortionist practices of corporate America and set about eliminating poverty in his
beloved Bolivia. Worst of all is the fact that the American public condones regime change and
all the other rapacious practices it is known for.
Sadly, America has become like an illiterate robot in a mathematical minefield stomping and
headbutting everyone and everything it perceives as a competitor while waving its nuclear
missiles and pruning shears at spectres of the existential sub-particle kind that threaten to
lead humanity in a direction where it might discover that dancing the socialist fandangle might
be o.k. after all.
"... We should also note in passing that the Nobel Prize in Economics is not actually a Nobel Prize. ..."
"... You are right that the Nobel Prize in Economics is not a Nobel Prize and it is awarded by a bank. Plus, Milton Friedman won in 1976: that tells you a lot about why neoclassical economists are mainly chosen. ..."
"... many of the neoclassical models are pseudoscience, unreflective of the real world. ..."
"... Both awards pander to the rentier class. ..."
"... What? Not even a breath about the insane system called globalization, where raw material from all over the world is shipped to China to be processed into finished goods in the most polluting way possible, to have those goods then shipped and trucked to the Amazon horrorhouses and Walmart stores to be bought and then thrown in the trash a few months later. ..."
There is a quote from The Wolf (Harvey Keitel, Pulp Fiction) not apt for a family blog,
but very apt to describe what a Nobel Prize is, and most prizes indeed are. It is about
sucking
Nordhaus reinforces the conservatism of Sveriges Riksbank so he deserves the prize. I
wouldn't ever expect the prize being given to cutting edge studies that question the validity
of day-by-day assumptions embedded in institutions like S.R.
You are right that the Nobel Prize in Economics is not a Nobel Prize and it is awarded
by a bank. Plus, Milton Friedman won in 1976: that tells you a lot about why neoclassical
economists are mainly chosen.
In February 1995, following acrimony within the selection committee pertaining to the
awarding of the 1994 Prize in Economics to John Forbes Nash, the Prize in Economics was
redefined as a prize in social sciences. This made it available to researchers in such
topics as political science, psychology, and sociology.[29][30] Moreover, the composition
of the Economics Prize Committee changed to include two non-economists. This has not been
confirmed by the Economics Prize Committee. The members of the 2007 Economics Prize
Committee are still dominated by economists, as the secretary and four of the five members
are professors of economics.[31] In 1978, Herbert A. Simon, whose PhD was in political
science, became the first non-economist to win the prize,[citation needed] while Daniel
Kahneman, a professor of psychology and international relations at Princeton University is
the first non-economist by profession to win the prize.
It seems strange to me that non-economists would be awarded a prize for the economy. The
bank certainly knows who to select though!
Milton Friedman was monetarist who taught at the premier neoclassical school, the
University of Chicago. Karl Marx was the premier classical (political) economist. The
neoclassical school gradually came to deny land as a distinct factor of production, John
Bates Clark (whom there is an award named after) solidified the conflation of land and
capital.
This is why many of the neoclassical models are pseudoscience, unreflective of the
real world.
What? Not even a breath about the insane system called globalization, where raw
material from all over the world is shipped to China to be processed into finished goods in
the most polluting way possible, to have those goods then shipped and trucked to the Amazon
horrorhouses and Walmart stores to be bought and then thrown in the trash a few months
later.
Cognative dissonanace much? Lots of economic activity there, with nothing to show for it
except a growing heap of trash and Bezos and the Waltons getting richer by hundreds of
millions per day. What a phucking world.
Her premise, that neoliberal economics is past its sell-by date, is almost too little too
late. It was past its sell-by date by 1950 when it was just getting its second foul wind. We
are in this fix because it was so easy to get here. By using oil for energy. Nobody has used
the butterfly metaphor for oil fed climate change, but it describes the mess. Every
individual use of oil/natgas for our modern lifestyle puts a whole series of requirements for
the very maintenance of that lifestyle – which (like her comment that more work hours
propagate not just more emissions but more manufacturing and more consumption is a vicious
circle) expand exponentially. And what she says point blank, "the thing about a sufficiently
high carbon tax is that it is so disruptive of the market that it has to be accompanied by a
robust and comprehensive role for the state" is just pure poetic justice.
We believe this is due to two factors -- the very high carbon footprints of people at
the top and a political economy effect, in which the wealthy have outsized political impact
and are able to forestall effective climate responses.
I have my suspicions about general carbon footprints based on income levels. I suspect
that many less affluent people end up commuting more because of housing usually being more
costly in cities and immediately nearby cities. Think about it for a moment, are all the
affluent neighborhoods close or far from local centers of employment? In my view the
implication is that carbon footprint from driving around is a necessity for large part of
lower income population while car use comes out more as a luxury, a free choice, for more
affluent people – they have the financial means to find housing relatively close to the
work, while lower income people don't have this choice.
Extrapolating more, I would suspect that most of carbon footprint is at least partially a
necessity for lower income people, while the for higher income people the larger carbon
footprint represents free choice and conspicuous consumption – they do it because they
can .
There are really easy ways to decrease carbon footprint: Dense and functional cities to
enable anyone make the climate friendly choices of not driving car around. But there is
extreme opposition to these kind of dense affordable cities, even in my seemingly progressive
nordic home country. Most of all, housing is seen as a open market business instead of
personal right. This is important, as this prevents the EU countries of more forcible
interventions in to the housing markets but this whole situation is just insane right now as
most EU countries get loans at negative rates, they could easily build and rent out housing
at 'market' prices with really low margins and still at profit for the state. In my view
states should intervene forcibly to urban housing markets to push out new quality housing to
disrupt and drop the general market prices at the moment. Many people, and especially working
people, are staying out of larger cities because the general prices are too high for them.
State intervention would enable anyone to make the 'right' choices and then heavier carbon
taxes could be enacted and people would still have free choice to live where they want and
drive car if they want. But this isn't possible because the free market principles are
applied to housing markets by EU antitrust officials and this prevents state
interventions.
The most ridiculous part of this whole thing that ideology of free market capitalism and
how it's applied prevents this, it's more important to preserve the wealth and rights of
owners in the cities instead of doing the right things. Meanwhile neoliberals and european
ordoliberals are shouting with their heads red that debt is bad and demanding that all the
member countries must work hard to reduce their debt levels no matter what happens. These
people say they agree that climate change is real, but his acknowledgement is just cynical
gaslighting from them, as the only actions they will approve are debt reduction, tax
reduction and privatization of public goods. For them, the state is the problem, not the
solution.
Rich and affluent people have hijacked the whole economic discussion and most important is
ideology of protecting property rights and 'individual' freedoms, to the detriment of our
planet and all of us living on it.
Ultimately it's all about population growth, and in particular, government policies aimed
at maximizing population growth, and top-down pressure from the rich to censure any
discussion of this topic.
That's why they recently gave a Nobel Prize to some economists pushing 'solutions' to
poverty in places like India that have been demonstrated over and over not to work: because
the policy that does work is to limit fertility rates (example: China post-Mao), and the the
rich don't want that, because they love cheap labor.
"... More importantly, the trend at the NATO foreign ministers' meeting at Brussels on November 19-20, in the run-up to the London summit, showed that despite growing differences within the alliance, member states closed ranks around three priority items in the US global agenda -- escalation of the aggressive policy toward Russia, militarization of space and countering China's rise. ..."
"... Stoltenberg said , "Space is also essential to the alliance's deterrence and defence, including the ability to navigate, to gather intelligence, and to detect missile launches. Around 2,000 satellites orbit the Earth. And around half of them are owned by NATO countries." ..."
"... "Is our enemy Russia or China as I sometimes hear?" he added at a press conference with Stoltenberg. "Is it the job of the Atlantic alliance to name them as enemies? I don't think so. Our common enemy, it seems, is the terrorism which is striking all our countries." ..."
"... The congruence of interests between Berlin and Washington vis-a-vis Macron manifested itself in the NATO's endorsement of the US-led escalation against Russia and China, with France rather isolated. However, this congruence will be put to test very soon at the summit meeting of the Normandy format over Ukraine, which France is hosting on December 9, following the NATO's London summit. France is helping Russia to negotiate a deal with Ukraine. ..."
"... With NATO being set up by Washington for a confrontationist posture, Russia and China won't let their guard down. Addressing a meeting of the Russian Federation Security Council on November 22, Putin said , "There are many uncertainty factors competition and rivalry are growing stringer and morphing into new forms The leading countries are actively developing their offensive weapons the so-called 'nuclear club' is receiving new members, as we all know. We are also seriously concerned about the NATO infrastructure approaching our borders, as well as the attempts to militarise outer space." ..."
"... The Russian response is also visible on the ground. The share of modern weapons and equipment in the Russian Army and Navy has reached an impressive level of 70 percent. The first pilot batch of next-generation T-14 Armata tanks will arrive for the Russian troops in late 2019 – early 2020. ..."
The December 3-4 summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in London resembles
a family reunion after the acrimony over the issue of military spending by America's European
allies.
The trend is up for defence spending across European Allies and Canada. Over $100 billion is
expected to be added to the member states' defence budgets by end-2020.
More importantly, the trend at the NATO foreign ministers' meeting at Brussels on November
19-20, in the run-up to the London summit, showed that despite growing differences within the
alliance, member states closed ranks around three priority items in the US global agenda --
escalation of the aggressive policy toward Russia, militarization of space and countering
China's rise.
The NATO will follow Washington's lead to establish a space command by officially regarding
space as "a new
operational domain" .
According to NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, this decision "can allow NATO planners
to make a request for allies to provide capabilities and services, such as satellite
communications and data imagery."
Stoltenberg said , "Space is also essential to
the alliance's deterrence and defence, including the ability to navigate, to gather
intelligence, and to detect missile launches. Around 2,000 satellites orbit the Earth. And
around half of them are owned by NATO countries."
Equally, Washington has been urging the NATO to officially identify China's rise as a
long-term challenge. According to media reports, the Brussels meeting acceded to the US demand
and decided to officially begin military surveillance of China.
The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hit out at
China after the Brussels meeting:
"Finally, our alliance must address the current and potential long-term threat posed by
the Chinese Communist Party. Seventy years ago, the founding nations of NATO came together
for the cause of freedom and democracy. We cannot ignore the fundamental differences and
beliefs in the – between our countries and those of the Chinese Communist Party."
So far so good.
However, it remains to be seen if Washington's grand design to draw NATO into its
"Indo-Pacific strategy" (read containment of China) will gain traction. Clearly, the US intends
to have a say in the European allies' growing business and economic relations with China to
delimit Chinese influence in Europe. The US campaign to block 5G technology from China met with
rebuff from several European countries.
On the other hand, the European project has unravelled and the Franco-German axis that was
its anchor sheet has become shaky. The rift between Paris and Berlin works to Washington's
advantage but, paradoxically, also hobbles the western alliance system.
The French President Emmanuel Macron annoyed Germany by his recent calls for better
relations with Russia "to prevent the world from going up in a conflagration"; his brutally
frank remarks about NATO being "brain dead" and the US policy on Russia being "governmental,
political and historical hysteria"; and his repeated emphasis on a European military policy
independent of the US.
"NATO is an organization of collective defense. Against what, against who is it defending
itself? Who is our common enemy? This question deserves clarification," Macron said after
talks in Paris with Jens Stoltenberg, NATO's secretary-general on Thursday, according to the
Times.
He argues that new talks with Russia are vital to European security and has pushed for
European involvement in a new deal to replace the defunct Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces
treaty between the U.S. and Russia.
"Is our enemy Russia or China as I sometimes hear?" he added at a press conference with
Stoltenberg. "Is it the job of the Atlantic alliance to name them as enemies? I don't think
so. Our common enemy, it seems, is the terrorism which is striking all our countries."
The congruence of interests between Berlin and Washington vis-a-vis Macron manifested itself
in the NATO's endorsement of the US-led escalation against Russia and China, with France rather
isolated. However, this congruence will be put to test very soon at the summit meeting of the
Normandy format over Ukraine, which France is hosting on December 9, following the NATO's
London summit. France is helping Russia to negotiate a deal with Ukraine.
The recent phone calls between
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky underscored
the growing interest in Moscow and Kiev at the leadership level to improve relations between
the two countries.
Moscow's breakthrough Avangard missile system with the hypersonic boost-glide vehicle will
be deployed on combat duty with the Strategic Missile Force in December 2019
In the final analysis, the Franco-German relations are of pivotal importance to not only
Europe's strategic future but the western alliance system as such. If anyone was in doubt, the
French veto in October
means sudden death for the proposal on European Union accession of the Balkan state of North
Macedonia, which NATO is inducting as its newest member. Berlin and Washington are livid, but a
veto is a veto.
With NATO being set up by Washington for a confrontationist posture, Russia and China won't
let their guard down. Addressing a meeting of the Russian Federation Security Council on
November 22, Putin said , "There are many uncertainty
factors competition and rivalry are growing stringer and morphing into new forms The leading
countries are actively developing their offensive weapons the so-called 'nuclear club' is
receiving new members, as we all know. We are also seriously concerned about the NATO
infrastructure approaching our borders, as well as the attempts to militarise outer
space."
Putin stressed, "In these conditions, it is important to make adequate and accurate
forecasts, analyze the possible changes in the global situation, and to use the forecasts and
conclusions to develop our military potential."
Significantly, only four days before Putin made the above remarks, Chinese President Xi
Jinping told him at a meeting in Brasilia on the sidelines of the BRICS summit that "the
ongoing complex and profound changes in the current international situation with rising
instability and uncertainty urge China and Russia to establish closer strategic coordination to
jointly uphold the basic norms governing international relations, oppose unilateralism,
bullying and interference in other countries' affairs, safeguard the respective sovereignty and
security, and create a fair and just international environment."
Putin responded by saying that "Russia and China have important consensus and common
interests in maintaining global strategic security and stability. Under the current situation,
the two sides should continue to maintain close strategic communication and firmly support each
other in safeguarding sovereignty, security, and development rights." ( Chinese MFA )
The Russian response is also visible on the ground. The share of modern weapons and
equipment in the Russian Army and Navy has reached an impressive level of 70 percent. The first
pilot batch of next-generation T-14
Armata tanks will arrive for the Russian troops in late 2019 – early 2020.
On November 26, Russian Defence Ministry stated that Moscow's breakthrough Avangard missile
system with the hypersonic boost-glide vehicle will be deployed on combat duty with the Strategic Missile Force
in December.
For the first time, the electronic warfare systems at Russia's military base in Tajikistan will be reinforced
with the latest Pole-21 jamming station that can counter cruise missiles, drones and guided air
bombs and precision weapon guidance systems. Moscow is guarding against the US and NATO
presence in Afghanistan.
How about the hysteria that led to the Spanish War? "Remember the Maine," The ship was
supposedly sunk in Havana Harbor by Spanish perfidy. In fact the Maine blew up because a coal
bunker fire burned through a bulkhead and set off something or other. That was the US Navy's
investigative finding after the war. Don't tell me about Hearst. Hearst was just selling
newspapers. The American people went into a hysteric rage against Spain and that was the cause
of war. Hearst just wanted to find "Rosebud." Figure it out.
And now we have the approaching end of the world through man made climate change. It would
be funny if there were not so many who believe it.
Science? Hah! For every study you can produce in support of this fantasy I will find you one
to rebut it. All you ecofreaks! Don't send me material about this. I will not help you support
the hysteric fantasy. Send money to the Democratic Party. They believe this crap. pl.
Now this is a post I can get behind. For me it has been the hysteria and the ease with which
people are manipulated through propaganda that has astonished me, because that is what the
climate change agenda is all about. We can all agree that humans have had a devastating
impact on every corner the environment, every ecosystem. However, it is a leap of
manufactured faith (manipulation) to claim that humans are responsible for climate change.
To support this bogus hypothesis, scientists strangle and manipulate data in an effort to
justify draconian laws and policies that can only line the pockets of the very rich at the
expense of the rest of the tax paying population. Carbon tax is the real aim here, a totally
bullshit pretext to suck more trillions of dollars from the economies of the world.
Self-selecting "experts" join the chorus because of fear of censorship and loss of status
while the brave ones are called, as always, climate change denialists, and thus
denigrated.
Oh man! Even most of the lefties I associate with believe it. They are supposed to,
through the tenets of their secular 'religion,' use solid evidence as their guides. The
evidence is not persuasive. The Earth has gone through fluctuations in climate for ever. The
dinosaurs made do in a much hotter earth, if the geologic evidence be true. It took a cosmic
strike to do them in.
Humans are the top predators here because they can adapt to change much quicker than any
other animal. Modern human civilization may not be recognizable to any of us in two hundred
years. That would be true with or without "climate change." We will carry on, one way or
another.
Similarly to what Bandit wrote above, I see various 'elites' angling to make book on whatever
does happen. The Science Fiction writer William Gibson has proposed in his book "The
Peripheral," a near future based on a massive world population die back that he calls "The
Jackpot."
Read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peripheral
All in all, we live in 'Interesting Times.'
Thank you for your indulgence.
"... November in Ukraine has been marked by the adoption of the so called 'land reform', in accordance of the demands made by the IMF amongst other international financial organizations. The reform opens the way for the mass privatization of Ukraine's agricultural lands. The IMF has been making these demands for many years but assorted Ukrainian presidents have tried to postpone such an unpopular decision. Recent polls show that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians of all political persuasions are opposed to land privatization, from far-right to far-left. ..."
"... After an intensive period of deindustrialization, which has taken place in recent years, agricultural land remain the only asset with any value in Ukraine but even so, it may be bought for very little. A remarkable fact is that one of the deputies from the ruling party 'Servant of the people,' Nikita Poturayev , while pressing his colleagues at the Parliament to vote for the bill on land reform, claimed [1] that this would be 'settling scores with maniac V. Lenin', i.e. the purpose of the bill was to abolish the land nationalization carried out following the October revolution. ..."
"... Ukrainian political expert Ruslan Bortnik says that the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky and his team came to power under an obligation to sell out the agricultural land of Ukraine to foreign companies. Those who buy these lands, according to Bortnik, will only be thinking about making the quickest possible buck. "Foreign companies are already operating on Ukrainian soil [renting land]," said Bortnik, ..."
"... "But they are competing with large Ukrainian agricultural holdings. They do not dominate. If the adopted land market model is launched, then only large foreign companies will remain in our market Let's be honest – we are not a sovereign country. At least our government is under external control. And this is a part of the obligations of this government. This is the condition under which they came to power. They are paying the debts through privatization." [2] ..."
"... Ukrainian farmers who still are landowners, formally at least – they just can't sell it – are the same people who are unable to pay their gas and electricity bills, especially after the recent raising of energy prices – another IMF demand. ..."
"... For the most part, it was in the region of $7.4 billion of stolen Ukraine's public money, from which only a "small share" was used to bribe Western politicians, like Hunter Biden. The deputies have stressed that, according to the investigation of Ukraine's general prosecution, the withdrawn and laundered money was then invested back into Ukraine. In particular through the Franklin Templeton Investments, the money was used to buy domestic government bonds (DGB), issued by Kiev at high interest rate. ..."
"... Ukrainian prosecutor Konstantin Kulik recently stated [4] in an interview that Ukraine takes IMF loans to pay out on these debt obligations (DGB). As deputy Aleksandr Dubinsky stressed at the press conference, 40% of the current public budget goes towards the payment of the public debt of Ukraine, including the repayment of DGB at inflated interest rates. ..."
November in Ukraine has been marked by the adoption of the so called 'land reform', in accordance of the demands made by the
IMF amongst other international financial organizations. The reform opens the way for the mass privatization of Ukraine's agricultural
lands. The IMF has been making these demands for many years but assorted Ukrainian presidents have tried to postpone such an unpopular
decision. Recent polls show that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians of all political persuasions are opposed to land privatization,
from far-right to far-left.
After an intensive period of deindustrialization, which has taken place in recent years, agricultural land remain the only
asset with any value in Ukraine but even so, it may be bought for very little. A remarkable fact is that one of the deputies from
the ruling party 'Servant of the people,' Nikita Poturayev , while pressing his colleagues at the Parliament to vote for the bill
on land reform, claimed [1] that this would be 'settling scores with maniac V. Lenin', i.e. the purpose of the bill was to abolish
the land nationalization carried out following the October revolution.
Ukraine's fertile soil up for grabs
It has long been known that Ukraine's soil is very fertile. Indeed, during WW2 the invading Nazis made a point of appropriating
quantities of it; forcing POWs to collect the top soil and load it onto trains en route to Germany. Now these same lands could fall
into the hands of international agro-holdings.
Ukrainian political expert Ruslan Bortnik says that the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky and his team came to power
under an obligation to sell out the agricultural land of Ukraine to foreign companies. Those who buy these lands, according to Bortnik,
will only be thinking about making the quickest possible buck. "Foreign companies are already operating on Ukrainian soil [renting
land]," said Bortnik,
"But they are competing with large Ukrainian agricultural holdings. They do not dominate. If the adopted land market model
is launched, then only large foreign companies will remain in our market Let's be honest – we are not a sovereign country. At
least our government is under external control. And this is a part of the obligations of this government. This is the condition
under which they came to power. They are paying the debts through privatization." [2]
Ukrainian farmers who still are landowners, formally at least – they just can't sell it – are the same people who are unable
to pay their gas and electricity bills, especially after the recent raising of energy prices – another IMF demand. Obviously,
their financial desperation will mean that many will have to sell their land at a low price, certainly well below the market value.
Meanwhile, Ukraine remains the poorest country on the continent of Europe and Ukrainian agricultural land remains the cheapest. Moreover,
the lands may be bought up as repaying large loans collected by the Kiev government following the Euromaidan coup in 2014.
This scheme of buying up Ukraine's land is connected with the ongoing corruption scandal in the US: the one related to Joe Biden
and the gas company 'Burisma'. At the end of November, Ukrainian MPs (non-factional people's deputy Andrey Derkach; a deputy from
the Batkivshchyna Party Aleksey Kucherenko; and a deputy from the ruling Servant of the People party, Aleksandr Dubinsky) revealed
it at the press-conference [3].
The point here is that the former Minister of Ecology of Ukraine Nikolay Zlochevsky , an owner of "Burisma" gas company, in 2014
introduced a number of Western politicians to the board of directors of his company, which helped him to avoid accusations of corruption.
Hunter Biden , son of former US Vice President Joe Biden , received monthly large payments for his "consultancy services". As a result
Ukraine's General prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the corruption schemes of the company, was forced – under
pressure – to resign by Joe Biden, who even boasted about it in the US media.
Ukrainian MPs have now claimed at a press-conference that the money used to bribe the son of the former Vice President of the
United States was in fact stolen. "Biden received money, the source of which is not the successful activity of Burisma, brilliant
business moves, or recommendations. It is the money of the citizens of Ukraine. It was obtained by criminal means," said the MP Andrey
Derkach. The ultimate goal of all this fraud, in which the Bidens were deeply involved, will be the bankruptcy of Ukraine in 2020-2021,
through the formation of a pyramid of public debt.
Laundering scheme to withdraw money from Ukraine
According to Ukrainian deputies, this was a part of a bigger laundering scheme to withdraw money from Ukraine via Latvian banks
and the fund 'Franklin Templeton Investments,' which is close to the United States Democratic Party. The founder of the foundation,
John Templeton Jr., was one of the main sponsors of the campaign of former US President Barack Obama.
For the most part, it was in the region of $7.4 billion of stolen Ukraine's public money, from which only a "small share"
was used to bribe Western politicians, like Hunter Biden. The deputies have stressed that, according to the investigation of Ukraine's
general prosecution, the withdrawn and laundered money was then invested back into Ukraine. In particular through the Franklin Templeton
Investments, the money was used to buy domestic government bonds (DGB), issued by Kiev at high interest rate.
The principle of this scheme is that with the assistance of American funds, the laundered money was legalised and invested in
government bonds at 6-8% in dollars and 15-17% in Ukrainian currency (hryvnia). This is leading to enormous growth in the Ukrainian
public debt and eventually the bankruptcy of the country's economy.
Eventual bankruptcy of the economy
Ukrainian prosecutor Konstantin Kulik recently stated [4] in an interview that Ukraine takes IMF loans to pay out on these
debt obligations (DGB). As deputy Aleksandr Dubinsky stressed at the press conference, 40% of the current public budget goes towards
the payment of the public debt of Ukraine, including the repayment of DGB at inflated interest rates.
According to him, bankruptcy on the debts could happen by the end of 2020 or 2021.
And this scheme is connected with land privatization, as adopted by Kiev in November in accordance with the IMF demand. "DGBs
are a financial instrument by which the state owes all its property when paying off the DGB. And if the land market is opened, the
state will have no other valuable property, with the exception of land," said Dubinsky, demanding the suspension of debt payments
to international creditors.
As a result of this unpopular land reform and the widespread violations of labour rights, Ukraine's trade-unions called a general
strike [5] for November 14 and began preparations. For the first time in the history of independent Ukraine, a strike committee was
formed at the all-national level. This committee was joined by trade unions, individual entrepreneurs, small businesses, agricultural
producers and farmers.
Management fires workers, pays themselves millions in bonuses
On November 14, Ukrainian railroad workers protested [6] in front of the Presidential office in Kiev against the announced plans
to fire some 50% of railroad personnel. The workers demanded the railroad management should resign instead. The deputy head of the
railroad trade-union, Alexander Mushenok, recently said [7] that currently "only 20 workers are employed where 60 workers are needed."
At the same time the workers claim that the top-level management of the company are paying themselves millions in bonuses. One of
the IMF demands requires that the Kiev authorities privatize the railroad system as well. In practice, this means that the few profitable
routes will be privatized by western companies, while the majority of non-profitable routes – to poorly developed provinces – will
remain state-owned, making the railway transport even less profitable.
The entire course of privatization, as promoted by the IMF, can be summarized by the principle 'privatization of profits, nationalization
of losses." And the new Kiev government is far too dependent to protest against the imposition of this policy; however, this will
effectively mean that this government will lose its credibility and trustworthiness among the people.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog
site, internet forums. etc.
"... Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News, ..."
"... a "distinctly American phenomenon," ..."
"... My voice is being silenced by free speech-hating Silicon Valley behemoths who want me disappeared forever. It is CRUCIAL that you support me. Please sign up for the free newsletter here . Donate to me on SubscribeStar here . Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. ..."
After increasing for decades, American life expectancy is now facing an alarming decline
thanks mainly to suicides of white working age men.
A study published by the journal JAMA, found that life expectancy in America increased from 1959
to 2014 but that the number plateaued in 2011 and began decreasing in 2014.
"The study... found that the decline is
mostly among "working-age" Americans, or
those ages 25 to 64
," reports
Live
Science
.
"In this group,
the risk of dying from drug abuse, suicide, hypertension and more
than 30 other causes is increasing.
"
The decline in life expectancy for working aged males has not been recorded in other developed
countries and is
a "distinctly American phenomenon,"
according to study
co-author Steven H. Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.
According to Lisa Britton, CNN's coverage of the story omitted the crucial point that the
decline was being driven by male suicides.
"
CNN just did a piece on the declining life-expectancy rate in the US and failed to
mention it's the MEN's rate that is declining!
Women have maintained a steady rate
although there's been an uptick in the women's overdose rate (The Wash Post turned their story
into that) Wow," she tweeted.
As we discuss in the video below, the only demographic group that has seen a dramatic rise in
suicides and "deaths of despair" is white, middle aged, working class men.
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of
must-read stories.
Please enter a valid email
Thank you for subscribing!
Something went wrong. Please refresh and try
again.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rw1dNtDEA00
Despite this, the media and the culture still relentlessly blames that same demographic
for both historical and contemporary societal ills, de-legitimizing their trauma under the rubric
of "white privilege."
* * *
My voice is being silenced by free speech-hating Silicon Valley behemoths who want me
disappeared forever. It is
CRUCIAL
that you support me. Please sign up for the
free newsletter
here
. Donate to me on SubscribeStar
here
.
Support my sponsor –
Turbo Force
– a supercharged boost of
clean energy without the comedown.
Tags
Social Issues
Re: The 'crisis of capitalism' is not the one Europeans think it is.
The article is basically correct but I also think that the author downplays how
devastating these changes have been. It seems like he is arguing that the changes wrought by
capitalism are merely a cultural problem. I think our problems are much worse than just
people being uncomfortable with capitalism invading spheres of life previously left outside
of the market, as important as that issue is.
I think this period is similar to the early modern period where once prosperous peasant
societies were destroyed by policies like the enclosure movement. A recent article in The
Guardian discussed this process.
With subsistence economies destroyed, people had no choice but to work for pennies
simply in order to survive. According to the Oxford economists Henry Phelps Brown and
Sheila Hopkins, real wages declined by up to 70% from the end of the 15th century all the
way through the 17th century. Famines became commonplace and nutrition deteriorated. In
England, average life expectancy fell from 43 years in the 1500s to the low 30s in the
1700s.
The author was discussing Europe so perhaps that explains why he seems to see this as a
cultural issue, but I believe that the United Kingdom is also seeing a rise in deaths of
despair and this trend might spread to the Continent in the future if things get bad
enough.
My point is that the crisis of capitalism is worse than Branko Milanović makes it out
to be. I worry that focusing on things like changing family structure falls into the hands of
left-neoliberals who will say that people just need to be more "progressive" and accept
changes to family life, which is hypocritical given that affluent people are actually
doubling down on the nuclear family model (divorce rates have been dropping among the
well-educated) and the advantages it brings when it comes to life outcomes. It is galling to
hear liberals talk about dysfunction among working-class people as if it were progressive
while they enjoy dual income "power marriages" and make sure their children are given massive
advantages in upbringing.
More generally, the biggest problem is that most people never asked for these changes,
they were forced on ordinary people by elites. It is ridiculous that in the 21st century
humans have to just accept massive and often devastating changes to their lives without
having any voice in the decision to make those changes.
A sense of powerlessness is also driving the widespread populist anger across many
countries. At one time there were powerful labor unions and left-wing political parties that
spoke for ordinary people but these have either declined or disappeared altogether so people
are left looking for allies and populists like Trump and Salvini are happy to benefit from
their anger and desperation.
""Mathematical models demonstrate that far from wealth trickling down to the poor, the
natural inclination of wealth is to flow upward, so that the 'natural' wealth distribution in
a free-market economy is one of complete oligarchy".
I think he's confusing the commercialisation of everyday life with capitalism. The second
is a result of the first looking for new ways of making money out of us, as traditional
options like making things now seem less attractive. So the very fabric of life itself has
now become an endless series of financial calculations, where we are all "customers" instead
of citizens. Even the state now adopts the practices and the vocabulary of the private
sector. But there's no reason why regulated capitalism can't coexist with traditional social
patterns: it's a political choice to allow it to get its greasy fingers on some of the most
important parts of our existence and turn them into financial opportunities.
The real story here is the decline of the extended family, which only really began after
WW2. Previously (and in my experience up until at least the 1960s) different generations
would do different things: grandparents would look after children, grandparents in turn would
be looked after by younger members of the family, uncles would play football with the boys,
aunties would take groups of children to the cinema. There wasn't any other way, really, in
which the basic functions of life could be managed. Members of the family would often live
within walking or cycling distance of each other. Much of this has now been monetised for
profit, but of course only if you have the money to pay for it in the first place. We need to
remember that the "nuclear family" is a very recent development and frankly, only works if
you can somehow buy in the services the extended family used to provide (and people resent
having to do that). And as much as anything else the rise of the nuclear family is the result
of the financialisation of housing, and the destruction of public housing stocks, which
together with the parallel destruction of traditional forms of community employment have
frequently led to families being scattered all over the country, anywhere they can find jobs
and accommodation.
I don't think globalisation has much to do with this, except as an alibi for the
destruction of communities. And I do think it is relatively new, except in the sense that
capitalism has always destroyed everything it touches. For example, clothing was often made
within the family because ready to wear clothing didn't really arrive for ordinary people
until about a century ago. Even then, unless you were wealthy, clothes would be altered to
fit younger children, or modified to suit the latest fashions for adults. Likewise, well
after WW2, many families grew vegetables in their back garden; and cars, washing machines and
even valve radios could be repaired at home if you were reasonably handy.
Its an interesting feature of Asian capitalism in that its been able to 'free ride' on
tight family bonds – extended families have allowed it to avoid the need to provide the
sort of social safety net that even capitalists acknowledged was necessary in Europe to
prevent social unrest (hence Christian Democracy). As Asian countries follow the west in
gradually loosening family bonds (especially in China, where they seem far more delicate than
in Japan/South Korea), etc, I'm curious to see how they'll deal with it.
"(especially in China, where they seem far more delicate than in Japan/South Korea)"
I confess to not knowing as much about China as I should, or at least, not knowing much
about family life there. Why do you suggest the bonds there are weaker? Some sort of systemic
issue?
"There?" Experience as a child in San Francisco witnessing classmates first of generation
Chinese immigrant parents reflects the strength of patience and delayed gratification. Fifty
pound three dollars sack of white rice per month, handful of wilted vegetables bought for
pennies. Meat as a condiment, if at all, working jobs as waiters, busboys, or the real plum,
boring job as warehouseman for government, the entire family living in one basement
apartment. Clothing handed down, no car, nothing new bought. Social services and Great
Society welfare provided by race or language based non-profits, or government, taken full
advantage of for older parents with no reported income.
People from same village in China, possibly related, often not, pool their money, get down
payment on apartment house, entire family moves into bigger apartment, basement rented to
other newly arrived immigrants.
Meanwhile, affluent fourth generation American kids get high and do their own thing,
pursuing a music or art career.
Fast forward fifty years. 70%+ percent of property in city owned by Chinese surnamed
people. Children of original family now sitting on tens of millions of dollars of apartments,
collecting huge rents out of starry eyed techbros and 'bras from Kansas.
Artists and musicians living in cars, if lucky enough to have one, or in a tent on the
street.
Real fundamental reason for the stunning rise of Asia: their values. Hard work, savings,
family, education, and current pleasures foregone in favor of future gains.
The U.S. had a really cushy time, protected by two oceans, with highly navigable rivers,
lots of arable land in a temperate climate zone, and legal structures in place that fostered
industrialization. That enabled us to win WW II and then write the rules afterwards:
everybody else had to work hard, earn a profit, then buy dollars before they could then buy a
barrel of oil. Whereas we could just print oil. Such a tailwind! Kept us ahead for decades.
But alas all good things must end.
'Hard work, savings, family, education, and current pleasures foregone in favor of future
gains.'
Yep, they use to be western values which you could find in the UK, the US, Australia, etc.
In a mostly free economy they were winning values and helped people work their way up the
social ladder.
In the rigged economy that we have these days, they do not work so well so a lot of people
have given up on them. Of course if the economy goes south in a big way, they may once again
become good traits to practice.
400,000 GM-made trucks didn't hurt. A massive and inhospitable, marshy terrain. A
willingness to apply human cannon fodder. A military philosophy that said "quantity has a
quality all its own". Willingness to scorch earth. Willingness to move more than 100,000
factories past the Urals. Dogged courage of the people.
In my experience China has become a much more atomised society since it embarked on its
great experiment with high growth capitalism – exacerbated by the one child policy. Its
a very difficult thing to measure I think, but while there certainly are very tight Chinese
families, I think there are a lot of individual Chinese cast adrift in those huge cities
without the cultural adaption to individualism which is normal in the west.
This system is breaking quickly in Korea. The burden of caring for elders falls on the
oldest son, and there's a lot of chafing at these responsibilities, especially now that women
are equally represented in Korean academic and office spaces. Throw in the increasing age of
marriage and childbearing and you get people aging faster than their offspring can build up a
nest egg.
It's quite common to see elderly people doing bottom-of-the-barrel manual labor to survive
in Seoul. In my neighborhood, an old couple living next door worked from sun-up to sun-down
collecting cardboard with their moped-pulled cart. Collecting trash for recyling is almost
entirely the domain of the over-50 set. Others sell vegetables on sidewalks, and some resort
to Korea's various forms of sex work (I say only half-jokingly that prostitution is the
bedrock of Korea's economy)
I came across this recently, sorry if it was via NC! I found it very interesting, and it's
pertnent to this family stuff.
Western Individualism Arose from Incest Taboo – Researchers link a Catholic Church ban
on cousins marrying in the Middle Ages to the emergence of a way of life that made the West
an outlier https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/western-individualism-arose-from-incest-taboo/
the church's obsession with incest and its determination to wipe out the marriages
between cousins that those societies were built on. The result, the paper says, was the rise
of "small, nuclear households, weak family ties, and residential mobility," along with less
conformity, more individuality, and, ultimately, a set of values and a psychological outlook
that characterize the Western world. The impact of this change was clear: the longer a
society's exposure to the church, the greater the effect.
The West itself is not uniform in kinship intensity. Working with cousin-marriage data from
92 provinces in Italy (derived from church records of requests for dispensations to allow the
marriages), the researchers write, they found that "Italians from provinces with higher rates
of cousin marriage take more loans from family and friends (instead of from banks), use fewer
checks (preferring cash), and keep more of their wealth in cash instead of in banks, stocks,
or other financial assets." They were also observed to make fewer voluntary, unpaid blood
donations.
The Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) societies of Western
Europe and what the authors call "their cultural descendants in North America and Australia"
have long been recognized as outliers among the world's populations for their independence of
thought and other traits, such as a willingness to trust strangers.
(- I'm definitely not sure about that very last bit!)
Contrast with this:
"When brothers dwell together and one of them dies and leaves no son, the wife of the
deceased shall not be married to a stranger, outside the family. Her husband's brother shall
unite with her: he shall take her as his wife and perform the levir's duty. The first son
that she bears shall be accounted to the dead brother.."
Keeping it in the family. Bet that led to a lot of fratricides
Multiple Husbands | National Geographic (the husbands are brothers) https://youtu.be/d4yjrDSvze0
4 minutes – fascinating. A viable birth rate control.
I've also heard of other groups where women marry brothers in regions where the men go off
tending sheep and yaks etc for extended periods.
Polyandry is usually practice in places where it is **very** difficult to make a living;
having multiple brothers marry one woman was sometimes the only to get the resources to have
children. Otherwise, no children for anyone.
I know of two cases where the husband died and the wife married the brother very quickly:
one of these cases was my maternal grandmother, who had children already, and needed the
support. This situation only seems unusual in the modern American cultural bubble.
I'd say the real crisis of capitalism, or the world economic system, isn't the rise of
inequality or the commodification of life (didn't Marx claim that capitalism tears up all
pre-existing social relations?).
It's the climate emergency and environmental collapse, undermining the foundations on which
the entire world economy rests. Without a planet to support us, we can't do much except die,
and the economy is, in a way, the sum of what we do. Death of us, or at any rate our
civilisation, means death of the economy.
My thoughts too, there are several crises converging.
One is what Milanovic is onto, which I would name the commodification of cultural
reproduction, which won't end well, on top of the exhaustion of fossil fuels based
industrialization cubed by climate change.
It's easy to get preoccupied by one, another or the other, but in the end they are all an
integrated reaction to humanity letting it's collective Ego remake the world according to the
dictates of its' collective Id. But we do now have the collective knowledge and wisdom to
confront this reality through a communicative infrastructure finally broad enough to address
the scope of the challenge, if we can act quickly enough.
Ugh, another amp-infested link, this one sneaky, rather than a readily-visible trailing
/amp, we have 'amp' sneaked in in place of the usual 'www' at start of the URL. Thanks, evil
f*ckers at Google! Here is the original uncorrupted link the Guardian article:
That clip of AOC is amazing. She's got a serious talent in public speaking and not just
sounding good. She shows an ability to communicate important ideas and concepts that can
change minds.
It's been very visible at her events for bernie, too.
Maybe young and inexperienced in some cases.
Maybe pushed to go along in some cases in order to get a few crumbs from pelosi AOC base in
congress remains small.
A little like complaints of Bernie maybe he's picking his fights, and maybe he's not perfect.
But they're both way better than a lesser evil, and who else?
She demonstrates her ignorance and political extremism yet again.
From the abstract of "
The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital ," Costanza et al., 1996
– a paper which I've heard sort of started the field of ecological economics: For the entire biosphere, the value (most of which is outside the market) is estimated to
be in the range of US$16–54 trillion per year, with an average of US$33 trillion per
year.
Thus we humans, being a part of the biosphere, are collectively worth less than
US$16–54 trillion per year. And Costanza's a professor and vice chancellor, with a PhD.
AOC's got a measly BA, so what does she know about the value of life?
xkeys: You forget the /s sign? What has a "measly BA" got to do with not "know(ing) about
the value of life?" Having a PhD does not necessarily mean a person knows more than a
non-PhD.
I would rather hear about AOC's "ignorance and political extremism" than your take on this
or any subject.
I had been wondering what this /s thing was, but I probably wouldn't have used it if I'd
known. It seemed unnecessary.
Sorry if you took me seriously. I think she not only understands, but promotes the value of
life. Unlike so many critters. It's great she's in there doing what she does. We need more
like her – lots more, fast.
(I would like to hear from NC commenters if I've misunderstood Costanza. Does the paper
really claim that humanity is worth less than $X trillion/year, as the abstract appears to
imply? I've skimmed it for any unusual definitions of biosphere, but noticed none.)
Don't feel bad, it is INCREDIBLY difficult to tell when people are being sarcastic on the
internet because there are no verbal or gesticular cues to it the way there is in person to
person contact. Thats why we use the /sarc tag to indicate sarcasm, because otherwise people
may take the comment at face value. Its not required, of course, but not using it runs the
risk of people taking the comment at face value, which is very easy to do because text
doesn't convey context the way speech does.
Yes, I'm going to use it in future!
I thought "a measly BA" would give the game away, but as you say, it's hard to tell on the
net. It so happens I'm no respecter at all of academic qualifications in and of themselves.
I've known too many idiots with degrees spouting patent nonsense for that. Eg most economists
(NC's economists definitely excepted!)? And vice-versa.
It doesn't have to be Yves, Lambert or an economist. Just someone whose read enough of
this stuff to have a handle on it. I just think it sounds utterly preposterous.
It makes some sort of sense to say that destroying 1% of the biosphere will result in $X/year
loss. Could be a way of evaluating our options, for example.
That does not mean destroying 10% will result in $10 times X/year economic loss; probably
more like $100 times X, whichever way you measure it.
Long before 90%, the only living things left would probably be the deep subterranean bacteria
and archaea, which are relatively insulated from whatever we do to the air, land and oceans.
I doubt if they'd have much room in their economy for dollars or GDP.
At 100% biosphere destruction, the earth is a lifeless planet by definition. Surely the real
cost is infinite? And what conceivable meaning would a financial cost, price or value have by
that stage?
Any offers?
Aaron is no longer with DemocracyNow. He now has a show "PushBack" on The Gray Zone.
https://thegrayzone.com/pushback/ He also disagreed
with DN about their coverage of the RussiaRussiaRussia hoax. IMHO I think DN just wants to be
more about nostalgic and being more mainstream. I no longer rely on it for my news daily.
By "Aaron on DN" I meant, Aaron on the subject of DN.
I know this has the potential to be ageist, but I can't help wondering if this is yet
another case of individuals and entire organizations "evolving" over time in a more
conservative direction based on whatever pressures. The fact that The Intercept has totally
eclipsed them, and in fact the entire left media, when it comes to major stories, should be a
wakeup.
To add to that, I'd also recommend Taibbi and Katie Halper's new podcost "Useful Idiots".
They've had some good guests so far, and lead the show off with some light-hearted
commentary, but from a perspective outside of the acceptable range in most media.
I think Krystal and Saagar are doing the best political commentary anywhere. Her post
yesterday about the long knives coming for Bernie from the Obama and Hilary camps is just
stellar stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfRT7rs2Ea4
I think that you may have a point. If I just followed the main news outlets, I would have
a totally distorted view of what was going on in the world and being led to support causes
that by rights I should be totally against. I too listen to NC, Jimmy Dore, Krystal &
Saager, Katie Halper, Aaron Maté, Caitlin Johnstone and a bunch of others – all
of them prophets without honour.
Re Boeing–that's kind of a non story as the whole point of a stress test is to test
to destruction or near destruction in order to find areas that need structural improvement.
In other words testing is a good thing. Perhaps they should have done more of it before
releasing the Max.
Re-Democracy Now and Syria-Juan Cole probably told Amy not to talk about the new
revelations. Cole and Goodman have been Syria regime change boosters.
The point is not that the fuselage failed – its that it failed short (marginally so,
but it still failed) before it reached its stress level. You would expect almost all
engineering structures to survive significantly beyond the target stress level, especially in
such controlled circumstances, which do not allow for structural decay over time or slight
manufacturing flaws.
The story did say that Boeing will now add reinforcements to strengthen as a result of the
test. But it also said that the FAA will now hand the process over to Boeing so perhaps that
is the "hook."
I've been one of the first around here to criticize Boeing, but I do think the
villain-ization of the Seattle company is a bit over the top. Obviously if planes continue
falling out of the sky they are over. It's not like they can be quite as sneaky as, say, auto
companies in order to save a few dollars or even a lot of dollars.
Didn't the semi-"new" Leadership of Boeing move the Corporate Headquarters from Seattle to
Chicago some years ago? And didn't that same leadership open a no-unions-allowed factory area
in South Carolina in the long term hope of attriting the Legacy Seattle facility to a size
small enough to exterminate? Thereby exterminating the Legacy Union presence?
In what sense is Boeing a "Seattle" company anymore?
"The story did say that Boeing will now add reinforcements to strengthen as a result of
the test. But it also said that the FAA will now hand the process over to Boeing . . ."
Here is the problem: It is easy to add reinforcements, but how will you know that they
will work? In practice–as opposed to theory–they often don't. Occasionally they
even make things worse (oops!) The only way to know is to test–which is precisely what
Boeing says it will not do, and will not have to do.
A failure at 99% load is a failure. Changing your criteria and standards after the fact is
not engineering, it is MBA-style creative accounting.
If killing people for money is not evil, then certainly Boeing is not evil. This should be
clear to everyone,
It was disappointing and informing when Amy repeated blatant anti-Syria (Assad the
butcher, etc.) propaganda without any comment or counter. I don;t watch them any more they
seem to be part of the overall apparatus, albeit the "controlled opposition".
They were wrong from the beginning on Syria and showed little to no skepticism. Terribly
disappointing after all this time that they are still so wrong – unwilling to admit
it.
I had no idea they fell for the Russia absurdities.
Who butters their bread these days? Has that changed over the years?
Can I recommend "This is Hell"? It's a fantastic podcast/radio show that does in-depth
interviews with all kinds of authors and thinkers. The show is unabashedly skeptical of
capitalism and the established order. Its host, Chuck Mertz, gleefully jokes that it is
intended to be the opposite of Amy Goodman's show. It keeps a snarky and dark sense of humor
throughout. I'm surprised I've never seen it mentioned here in all my years as a lurker
I used to be a huge enthusiast of DN -- proudly wore their t-shirts, contributed
(modestly), and attended several speaking events to hear Amy Goodman in person.
Now I rarely listen -- unless I'm stuck in a car and it's randomly on the radio. It's 90%
ID politics and Trump Derangement Syndrome. Once I started hearing dubious CIA talking points
on Syria and Ukraine, and Adam Schiff reverbs on Russiagate, I gave up. I can get that stuff
from MSNBC in unadulterated doses.
And Aaron Maté is a treasure in a journalistic wasteland. His interviews with Jimmy
Dore are especially lively because they're a perfect combo: Aaron is informed and thoughtful,
and Dore provides the biting satire, punching way, way, way above his weight class.
Lest we forget, in the fog of circular firing-squad war surrounding the Pacifica board
some 10 years ago, when it was narrowly prevented from monetizing (selling) a radio band or
two, and Free Speech Radio News replaced DN as the strikers' news source, Amy privatized DN,
took ownership of it, and at that time paid herself $400 per annum. Scams have
consequences.
Here in flyover territory, I listened to KPFA, which carries Democracy Now, for about 10
years because it was available on the internet and it kept me sane. DN gave a different
perspective from other news coverage. Stopped listening to Pacifica around the time of the
2016 election because there was so much HRC favoritism expressed and they no longer air a
favorite, "Twit Wit Radio".
We, family and friends, donated heavily to KPFA, >$500 a year each.
Once they started blaming my ancestors, and me, for everything wrong with America and
world history, and then started claiming to represent (only) the interests of "students",
"migrants", "women of color","transgender people" and other iPol nonsense, we stopped
donating.
The above groups can support them.
We now donate to the classical music station KFFC and KPOO, the black entertainment station,
which while spewing African-centric iPol nonsense occasionally, is a great station for music
and is about as local as you can get.
I haven't looked at Znet in a couple of years but I did so this morning and my worst fear
was not realized. They have a ton of articles (I typed Syria chemical weapons into the search
box on their home page and it returned a full page including Pepe Escobar and other writers I
recognized and at the bottom of the page the little forward widget indicated 74 pages
of search results) skeptical of the ruling class propaganda on chemical weapons use
accusations at the Syrian government.
Amy Goodman doesn't read Znet? She doesn't have time?
You see, free markets are a great idea in theory. Or you can call it "capitalism", or
combine the two and say "free market capitalism". There's very little wrong with it in theory.
You have an enormous multitude of participants in an utterly complex web of transitions, too
complex for the human mind to comprehend, and in the end that web figures out what values all
sorts of things, and actions etc., have.
I don't think capitalism in itself is a bad thing; what people don't like is when it veers
into neo-liberalism, when everything is for sale, when communities or their governments no
longer own anything, when roads and hospitals and public services and everything that holds
people together in a given setting is being sold off to the highest bidder. There are many
things that have values other than monetary ones, and neo-liberalism denies that. Capitalism in
itself, not so much.
It's like nature, really, like evolution, but it's Darwin AND empathy, individuals AND
groups. The problem is, and this is where it diverges from nature, you have to make sure the
markets remain free, that certain participants -or groups thereof- don't bend the rules in
their own favor. In that sense it's very similar to what the human race has been doing to
nature for a long time, and increasingly so.
Now, if you limit the discussion to finance and economics, there would appear to be one
institution that's in an ideal place to make sure that this "rule-bending" doesn't take place,
that markets are fair and free, or as free as can be. That institution is a central bank. But
whaddaya know, central banks do the exact opposite: they are the ones making sure markets are
not free.
In the ideal picture, free markets are -or would be- self-correcting, and have an inbuilt
self-regulating mechanism. If and when prices go up too much, the system will make sure they go
lower, and vice versa. It's what we know from physics and biology as a negative -self
correcting- feedback loop. The self-correcting mechanism only activates if the system has
veered too much in one direction, but we fail to see that as good thing when applied to both
directions, too high and too low (yes, Goldilocks, exactly).
It's only when people start tweaking and interfering with the system, that it fails.
Negative feedback vs positive feedback are misunderstood terms simply because of their
connotation. After all, who wants anything negative? But this is important in the free markets
topic, because as soon as a central bank starts interfering in, name an example, housing prices
in a country, the system automatically switches from negative feedback to positive -runaway-
feedback, there is no middle ground and there is no way out anymore, other than a major crash
or even collapse.
Well, we're well on our way to one of those. Because the Fed refused to let the free market
system work. They, and the banks they represent, wanted the way up but then refused the way
down. And now we're stuck in a mindless positive feedback loop (new highs in stocks on a daily
basis), and there's nothing Jay Powell and his minions can do anymore to correct it.
The system has its own correction mechanism, but Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen and now Powell
thought they could do better. Or maybe they didn't and they just wanted their banker friends to
haul in all the loot, it doesn't even matter anymore. They've guaranteed that there are no free
markets, because they murdered self-correction.
Same goes, again, for ECB and BOJ; they're just Fed followers (only often even crazier). In
fact since they have no petrodollar, they don't just follow, they have to do the Fed one
better. Which is why they have negative interest rates -and the US does not -yet-: it's the
only way to compete with the reserve currency. Of course today even the Fed, and "even even"
the PBOC, are discussing moving to negative rates, and by now we're truly talking lemmings on
top of a cliff.
"Let's throw $10 trillion at the wall just so home prices or stock prices don't go down!"
Yeah, but if they've been rising a lot, maybe that's the only direction they can and should go.
It may not be nice for banks and so-called "investors", but it's the only way to keep the
system healthy. If you don't allow for the negative feedback self-correction, you can only
create much bigger problems than you already have. And then you will get negative feedback
squared and cubed.
Author conflicts himself in the article. This paragraph is utterly stupid:
"I don't think capitalism in itself is a bad thing; what people don't like is when it veers
into neo-liberalism, when everything is for sale, when communities or their governments no
longer own anything, when roads and hospitals and public services and everything that holds
people together in a given setting is being sold off to the highest bidder. There are many
things that have values other than monetary ones, and neo-liberalism denies that. Capitalism in
itself, not so much."
We have a healthcare cartel and massively subsidized costs (medicare, etc). It's not a free
market at all. It's a cartel. The Fed is a true monopoly. Free markets would be much better for
roads, hospitals and public services - all of those are horrible everywhere I've lived.
Investing is the biggest scam this side of the milkyway. I see it all the time and its
nailing future generations to the deck of a sinking ship.
Everytime I see one of those multi million or multi billion jobs, like a shopping mall or
some resort going up all I can say is, "Its never going to get paid off in the investors
lifetime. Since most of the people that invested in them are in their 60's, 70's and 80's.
They just skim the money off the top until the day they die and all that will be left are
hollowed out abandoned shells for the next generations to pay taxes on just to have them torn
down and the whole polluted mess cleaned up.
NO WAY most of these projects will ever get paid off before they're totally useless to
society. Look at all those falling down apartment buildings in the cities. Once a great
investment now a great pile of worthless junk.
" In the ideal picture, free markets are -or would be- self-correcting"
Yeppers. That is why when globalists exclaim "we have a LABOR SHORTAGE in ________
industry", it's b.s.
If you have a labor shortage, the rules of supply and demand would dictate that the company
owners must pay higher prices (wages) to employees to retain them, and attract new ones. It's
exactly what happens to consumers when there is a lemon, tomato or gas shortage -- prices go up
and we all pay. When companies attract employees with higher wages, the market responds -- kids
in school realize if they want a job, they could go into that industry and get snapped up
easily -- since there's a supposed "labor shortage". And voila, no more "labor shortage" and
the market corrects itself.
That should happen, but it doesn't, as globalists manipulate the market by allowing in more
surplus labor (mass immigration) from developing countries, which is labor market manipulation
-- forever gaming the system so they always have more leverage and the upper-hand in wage
negotiations. If you have a "labor shortage" and are offering minimum wage, no one is going to
step up for those jobs, other than the immigrants you just flooded into your country.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to
believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people
from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally
important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the
mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the
State."- Joseph Goebbels
"... Preface by Washington's Blog: A leading cybersecurity expert has publicly said that Mr. Eliason's research as presented in this article does not violate the law. Washington's Blog does not express an opinion about whether or not the claims set forth in this article are accurate or not. Make up your own mind. ..."
"... StopFake- Irena Chalupa- Chalupa is the sister to the same Alexandra Chalupa that brought the term Russian hacking to worldwide attention. Irena Chalupa is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center. She is also a senior correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where she has worked for more than twenty years. Ms. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the Atlantic Council, where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel Stopfake.org She is a Ukrainian Diaspora leader. The Chalupa's are the 1st family of Ukrainian propaganda. She works with and for Ukrainian Intelligence through the Atlantic Council, Stopfake, and her sisters Andrea (Euromaidanpr) and Alexandra. ..."
Originally By George Eliason, an American journalist living in Ukraine.
Preface by Washington's Blog: A leading cybersecurity expert has publicly said that Mr.
Eliason's research as presented in this article does not violate the law. Washington's Blog
does not express an opinion about whether or not the claims set forth in this article are
accurate or not. Make up your own mind.
Note: If any images are hard to see, you can look
here . (I'm not sure why, but these images are a tad fuzzier at ZH.)
A little over a year ago, the deep-state graced the world with Propornot . Thanks to them, 2017
became the year of fake news. Every news website and opinion column now had the potential to be
linked to the Steele dossier and Trump collusion with Russia. Every journalist was either with
us or against us. Every one that was against us became Russia's trolls.
Fortunately for the free world, the anonymous group known as Propornot that tried to "out"
every website as a potential Russian colluder, in the end only implicated themselves.
Turnabout is fair play and that's always the fun part, isn't it? With that in mind, I know
the dogs are going to howl this evening over this one.
The damage Propornot did to scores of news and opinions websites in late 2016-2017provides
the basis of a massive civil suit. I mean huge, as in the potential is there for a tobacco
company sized class-action sized lawsuit. I can say that because I know a lot about a number of
entities that are involved and the enormous amount of money behind them. How serious is
this?
In 2016, a $10,000 reward
was put out for the identities of Propornot players. No one has claimed it yet, and now, I
guess no one will. There are times in your life that taking a stand has a cost. To make sure
the story gets out and is taken seriously, this is one of those times.
If that's what it takes for you to understand the danger Propornot and the groups around
them pose to everyone you love, if you understand it, everything will have been well worth
it.
In this article, you'll meet some of the people staffing Propornot. You'll meet the people
and publications that provide their expenses and cover the logistics. You'll meet a few of the
deep state players. We'll deal with them very soon. They need to see this as the warning shot
over the bow and start playing nice with regular people. After that, you'll meet the NGO's that
are funding and orchestrating all of it. How am I doing so far?
The image that you see is the clincher or game winner that supplies the necessary proof up
front and the direct path to Propornot. This was a passive scan of propornot.com showing the
administrative dashboard belongs to the InterpreterMag.com as shown on the left of the image.
On the right, it shows that uploads to Propornot.com come from InterpreterMag.com and is a
product of that publication.
Now we have the first layer of Propornot, fake news, and our 1st four contestants. We havea
slew of new media organizations that are influenced by, or feeding Propornot. Remember, fake
news got off the ground and got its wings because of the attention this website received from
the Washington Post in Dec. 2016.
At the Interpreter Mag level, here are the people:
Michael Weiss is the Editor-in-Chief at the InterpreterMag.com. According to his Linkd profile , he
is also a National Security Analyst for CNN since Jul 2017 as well as an Investigative
Reporter for International Affairs for CNN since Apr 2017. He has been a contributor there
since 2015. He has been a Senior Editor at The Daily Beast since Jun 2015.
With the lengthy CNN cred's, how much involvement does CNN have in fake news? Yes, I know,
but we're talking about Propornot.
Catherine
A. Fitzpatrick is a Russian translator and analyst for the Interpreter. She has worked as
an editor for EurasiaNet.org and RFE/RL.
Pierre Vaux is an
analyst and translator for the Interpreter. He's also an intern. He is a contributor to
the Daily Beast, Foreign Policy, RFE/RL and Left Foot Forward and works at Dataminr Inc.
James Miller's bio at the InterpreterMag .com includes Managing Editor of The Interpreter
where he reports on Russia, Ukraine, and Syria. James runs the "Under The Black Flag" column
at RFE/RL which provides news, opinion, and analysis about the impact of the Islamic State
extremist group in Syria, Iraq, and beyond. He is a contributor at Reuters, The Daily Beast,
Foreign Policy, and other publications. He is an expert on verifying citizen journalism and
has been covering developments in the Middle East, specifically Syria and Iran, since 2009.
Follow him on Twitter: @MillerMENA- Miller even works for the US Embassy in Kiev "diplo-page"
the Kiev Post.
The Interpreter is a product of the Atlantic Council. The Digital Forensics Research Lab has been carrying
the weight in Ukrainian-Russian affairs for the Atlantic Council. Fellows working with the
Atlantic Council in this area include:
StopFake- Irena Chalupa- Chalupa is the sister to the same Alexandra
Chalupa that brought the term Russian hacking to worldwide attention. Irena Chalupa
is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center. She is
also a senior correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where she has worked
for more than twenty years. Ms. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the Atlantic
Council, where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor
for Ukraine's propaganda channel Stopfake.org She is a Ukrainian
Diaspora leader. The Chalupa's are the 1st family of Ukrainian propaganda. She works with
and for Ukrainian Intelligence through the Atlantic Council, Stopfake, and her sisters Andrea
(Euromaidanpr) and Alexandra.
The strand that ties this crew together is they all work for Ukrainian Intelligence. If you
hit the links, the ties are documented very clearly. We'll get to that point again shortly, but
let's go further:
Propornot-> Atlantic Council -> Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)
Who are the BBG? According to Wikipedia- "The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is an
independent agency of the United States government. According to its website, its mission is to
"inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy. The
BBG supervised Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio y Television
Marti, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcast Networks.
The board of the BBG was eliminated and replaced with a single appointed chief executive
officer as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, which was
passed in December 2016."
"... "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."- Joseph Goebbels ..."
At yesterday's Thanksgiving table, fifteen adults present, there was not one word uttered
about impeachment, Russia, Ukraine, and, most notably, a certain Golden Golem of Greatness,
whose arrival at the center of American life three years ago kicked off a political hysteria
not witnessed across this land since southern "fire eaters" lay siege to Fort Sumter.
I wonder if some great fatigue of the mind has set in among the class of people who follow
the news and especially the tortured antics of Rep. Adam Schiff's goat rodeo in the House intel
Committee the past month. I wonder what the rest of congress is detecting among its
constituents back home during this holiday hiatus. I suspect it is that same eerie absence of
chatter I noticed, and what it may portend about the nation's disposition toward reality.
The dead white man Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) famously observed that "all truth
passes through three stages: first, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and
third, it is accepted as self-evident."
America has been stuck in stage two lo these thirty-six months since Mr. Trump shocked the
system with his electoral victory over She-Whose-Turn-Was-Undoubted, inciting a paroxysm of
rage, disbelief, and retribution that has made the Left side of the political transect
ridiculous, and repeatedly, ignominiously so, as their fantasies about Russian "collusion" and
sequential chimeras dissolve in official proceedings.
The astounding failure of Mr. Mueller's report did nothing to dampen the violent
derangement. There was no rethinking whatsoever about the terms-of-engagement in the Left's war
against the populist hobgoblin. The solidarity of delusion remained locked in place, leading to
Mr. Schiff's recent antics over his false "whistleblower" and the enfilade of diplomatic
flak-catchers tasked to ward off any truthful inquiry into events in Ukraine.
But then, with the Thanksgiving shut-down, something began to turn. It was signaled
especially in the Left's chief disinformation organ, The New York Times , with a week-long
salvo of lame stories aimed at defusing the Horowitz report, forthcoming on December 9. The
Times stories were surely based on leaks from individuals cited in the IG's report, who were
given the opportunity to "review" the briefs against them prior to the coming release. The
stories gave off an odor of panic and desperation that signaled a crumbling loss of conviction
in the three-year narrative assault on the truth -- namely, that the US Intel Community
organized a coup to overthrow the improbable President Trump.
From this point forward, the facts of the actual story -- many of them already in the public
record, one way or another, and sedulously ignored by the news media -- will be officially
detailed by federal authorities outside the orbit of the coupsters, and finally beyond the
coupsters' control. The facts may include the uncomfortable truth that Mr. Mueller and his
helpers were major players in the bad-faith exercises of the Intel Community against the
occupant of the White House.
I'm not so sure that the Resistance can keep up the fight,
since their enemy is reality as much as reality's mere personification in Mr. Trump. The
violent opposition Schopenhauer spoke of in his three-stage model was just procedural in this
case, moving through the courts and committees and other organs of the state. I don't think the
Left can bring the fight to the streets. They don't have it in them, not even the ANTIFA corps.
The hard truths of perfidy and treachery in the upper ranks of government will rain down in the
weeks ahead, and when they do, there's an excellent chance that they will be greeted as
self-evident. The Times , the WashPo and the cable news networks will have no choice but to
report it all. My guess is that they will display a kind of breathlessly naïve wonder that
such things are so. Most remarkably, they might just assert that they knew it all along -- a
final twitch of bad faith as the new paradigm locks into place.
I expect that we will see something else happen along with that: a loud repudiation of the
Democratic Party itself, a recognition that it betrayed the mental health of the nation in its
lawless and demented inquisitions . I expect that sentiment will extend to the party's current
crop of candidates for the White House, to the delusional proposals they push, and perhaps even
to the larger ethos of the Wokester religion that has programmatically tried to destroy the
common culture of this country -- especially the idea that we have a duty to be on the side of
truth.
And then there is the Magnitsky Act, Behind the Scenes one showing in the US then banned in all Western countries. Two minute trailer
https://vimeo.com/286527081
I've never wanted to be wrong more in my life, but this IG report and the "investigation"
by Barr et al isn't going to "find" $hit. 99% of their time, effort, and energy has been
focused on what they absolutely have to report and destroying evidence they can get away
with. No big name, evil MFers will be touched by this. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not.
You are correct and the contempt they are going to face will render all of them
meaningless for the rest of their lives. If in doubt, ask Romney; if he gave someone
directions to a doughnut shop they would assume it was a lie.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to
believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people
from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally
important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the
mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the
State."- Joseph Goebbels
The Horowitz report on 12-19-19. CNN has already front run the report and reveled a
nothing little fatty that will be blamed for the FISA abuse. There will be no bomb shells
that the mainstream media can't obfuscate. The county is divided and facts no longer matter.
The good news is the right is too polite to fight in the streets and the left are such
pussies nobody can really be afraid of them.
Democrats live in a lie. They live in a completely made up propaganda-supported la-la
land, and they get angry when the rest of the world recognizes those lies.
"... The EU are, really, really pissed with the USA for making this happen. ..."
"... So the EU lost Russia and for the bobby prize they got the entirely corrupt Ukraine instead ..."
"... You will know when the **** has well and truly hit the fan for the Ukraine, when the USA finally uncovers some 'er' surprise evidence that the Ukraine government actually shot down that Malaysian flight and hit them with across the board sanctions to well and truly cripple it prior to trying to dump it back on Russia but the EU gets stuck with it for a while longer, to become a festering den of organized crime in the EU. ..."
The EU are, really, really pissed with the USA for making this happen. They had always
hoped to get a broken up Russia into the EU and now, instead, they will have to deal with a
Russia China economic union with strong defense ties and whole bunch of other countries
around the globe tied to it.
So the EU lost Russia and for the bobby prize they got the entirely corrupt Ukraine
instead, almost like the USA wanted to **** the EU up with the Ukraine on purpose (they just
wanted to **** over Russia and got way too greedy trying to pillage the Ukraine and turned
the entire mess into a real **** show, that only has one way forward for the Ukraine, grovelling back to Russia and Russia will make higher and higher demands of them because who
wants to deal with a entirely corrupt **** show).
You will know when the **** has well and truly hit the fan for the Ukraine, when the USA
finally uncovers some 'er' surprise evidence that the Ukraine government actually shot down
that Malaysian flight and hit them with across the board sanctions to well and truly cripple
it prior to trying to dump it back on Russia but the EU gets stuck with it for a while
longer, to become a festering den of organized crime in the EU.
Russia still says some nice things about the Ukraine but they are in no hurry to get them
back.
"... The relative structural fluidity in a small-scale democracy succumbs to "social viscosity" in a large-scale organization. According to the "iron law," democracy and large-scale organization are incompatible ..."
The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory, first developed by the German syndicalist
sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book, Political Parties.
The "iron law of oligarchy" states that all forms of organization, regardless of how
democratic or autocratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop
oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible,
especially in large groups and complex organizations.
The relative structural fluidity in a
small-scale democracy succumbs to "social viscosity" in a large-scale organization. According
to the "iron law," democracy and large-scale organization are incompatible.
"... Iron Law of Oligarchy refers to the inherent tendency of all complex organizations to develop a ruling clique of leaders with interests in the organization itself rather than in its official aims. ..."
"... It became difficult for the mass membership to provide any effective counterweight to this professional, entrenched, leadership, the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Aristotle used the term oligarchy as a synonym for rule by the rich. Oligarchy is not always a rule by wealthy people, for which the term is plutocracy . Oligarchy means "the rule of the few" and monarchy means "the rule of the one" ..."
"... Oligarchy can also be compared with aristocracy . In an aristocracy, a small group of wealthy or socially prominent citizens control the government. Members of this high social class claim to be, or are considered by others to be, superior to the other people because of family ties, social rank, wealth, or religious affiliation. ..."
Civil Service is a self-perpetuating oligarchy, the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Many writers
believe that any political system eventually evolves into iron law of oligarchy. James Madison,
the fourth President of the United States said: "Never fear. The iron law of oligarchy always
obtains." In iron law of oligarchy, actual differences between viable political rivals are
small, the oligarchic elite impose strict limits on what constitutes an 'acceptable' and
'respectable' political position. Iron Law of Oligarchy was first defined by German sociologists like Robert
Michels (1876-1936).
According to writers, Zulma Riley, Keith Riley, and Robert Michels, modern Democracy should be considered
as elected Oligarchy
. They called this theory the iron law of oligarchy. Michels discovered that in the Iron Law of
Oligarchy, even in the most egalatarian movements, elites will call
most of the shots.
Iron Law of Oligarchy refers to the inherent tendency of all complex organizations to
develop a ruling clique of leaders with interests in the organization itself rather than in its
official aims.
It became difficult for the mass membership to provide any effective
counterweight to this professional, entrenched, leadership, the Iron Law of Oligarchy.
Aristotle used the term oligarchy as a synonym for rule by the rich. Oligarchy is not always a
rule by wealthy people, for which the term is plutocracy . Oligarchy means "the rule of
the few" and monarchy
means "the rule of the one".
Such power-sharing from one person to a larger group of persons
happened when English nobles got together in 1215 to force King John of England to sign the
Magna Carta, a recognition of failure of oligarchy. Magna Carta guaranteed greater rights to
greater numbers of people, thus setting the stage for English constitutional monarchy .
Oligarchy can also be compared with aristocracy . In an aristocracy, a small
group of wealthy or socially prominent citizens control the government. Members of this high
social class claim
to be, or are considered by others to be, superior to the other people because of family ties,
social rank, wealth, or religious affiliation.
Breaking the iron law of oligarchy: union revitalization in the American labor movement.
Voss, Kim and Sherman, Rachel - The American Journal of Sociology [AJS], 106(2), 303 - 49.
ABSTRACT: This article addresses the question of how social movement organizations are able to
break out of bureaucratic conservatism. The article concludes by drawing out the theoretical
implications of the finding that bureaucratic conservatism can sometimes be overcome in mature
social
movements .
Nice link. It's often interesting to hear from the source the explanation for why their
actions acceptable and everything will be OK. The financial industry is generally a con game
built on managing perception and after all its all about the money when we strip away the
facade. As the former ZH was so effective in making known - when it gets serious one has to
lie.
I have now read completely the St. Louis Fed report that I linked to in comment #7 and I want
to provide a quote from it and discuss the obfuscation therein.
"
In addition to owing money to "the public," the U.S. government also owes money to
departments within the U.S. government. For example, the Social Security system has run
surpluses for many years (the amount collected through the Social Security tax was greater
than the benefits paid out) and placed the money in a trust fund. These surpluses were used
to purchase U.S. Treasury securities. Forecasts suggest that as the population ages and
demographics change, the amount paid in Social Security benefits will exceed the revenues
collected through the Social Security tax and the money saved in the trust fund will be
needed to fill the gap. In short, some of the $22 trillion in total debt is intergovernmental
holdings -- money the government owes itself. Of the total national debt, $5.8 trillion is
intergovernmental holdings and the remaining $16.2 trillion is debt held by the public.
"
The US Social Security Insurance program use to be a stand alone entity with a huge trust
fund of Treasuries that wasn't debt but in the Reagan/Greenspan era the funds were "stolen"
(turned into debt) and used to fund "Star Wars" etc. while payment for the program became a
budget item along with managing the contribution amounts to keep it viable into the
future....they took it away from the actuarial folk, spent the money and it is now a
political debt football.
"Thomas Bowers, a former Deutsche Bank executive and head of the American
wealth-management division, killed himself in Malibu, California, on Tuesday, November 19th,
according to the Los Angeles county coroner's initial report.
You have to look at the banker suicide index. Banker suicides go up exponentially prior to
a banking collapse. I lost count of banker suicides during the 2008 collapse. Bank troubles =
suicides of high ranking employees is the algorithm.
Following up as vk has done from the weekend thread, thanks to Walter @258 there for
suggestions on further reading of de Beaumont who accompanied de Tocqueville - I only have an
abridged paperback, fairly battered, of the latter at present. Would love to get the full two
volumes as I'm finding it a fascinating read so far. Lots of quirky bits, due to his
background, but it's a lively account. They came during the Jackson administration and only
stayed nine months - so far I'm only through the first few chapters.
And thanks also to William Gruff @ 262 on the weekend thread - yes, indeed I was thinking
of expansion rather than empire, and you are correct that many peoples filled the intervening
spaces with thriving civilizations. I presently feel very fortunate to live on pueblo land. I
do own my little house but they own the land, and that is as it should be. Still, if you call
that empire building, then you would also call the settlers who first set foot on east coast
lands empire builders, since they too displaced tribal communities. I just could not see that
they were as some of them were refugees, and some corporate entities - a mixed bag at least,
not a military invasion. But okay, empire building for the French, the English, the Spanish
as they made incursions on the established native populations, the pilgrims also - I
apologize for not using the term. I did not mean to offend. I simply had a different
definition, that of colonization or in some cases out and out refuge, in mind.
I compare it to what happened in my native land, that is, where I was born - New Zealand.
A very similar early process and natives in separate tribes certainly occupying the entire
country - so conflict ensued. I am proud also to have a bit of that native blood, as do many
kiwis, through my maternal grandmother, so I know where you are coming from. It's a wonderful
gift. Still, I do think there's a distinction between empire building that occurs from a
country to other countries and that which happens within a country as populations interact.
It's hard to see New Zealand today, for instance, as an empire, but I suppose some do and we
have empires in every country by that definition. (Just had a chuckle to think of states like
Oregon having an empirical mindset: visit, don't stay!)
And back to vk @ 12, I think one definite shrinkage point for population in the US is the
current economical barriers to raising a family - it is extremely expensive these days to
have a baby. That has deterred members of my own family - not to mention the difficulties a
young couple has even without thinking of doing so. This country is eating its own children
and has been for a very long time.
Well, happy Thanksgiving anyway. It was good of native people to help the needy; it just
was.
"... it's not that fascism is a personality trait, but rather fascism, or more generally right wing populism, is a social phenomenon where some personality traits are weaponised ..."
"... That's a good analogy. But this only means that the financial oligarchy can be a privileged social group crossing racial lines. The term "Jews" as used by fascists was, at least initially, directly at financial oligarchy, where this ethnic group was overrepresented. In general, anti-Semitism can be viewed as a scapegoating, a primitive and misguided protest against the excesses of capitalism. In this sense, "economic crises happen because banks are run by Jews, who are evil or not part of the community" has the real meaning "economic crises happen because banks are run by the financial oligarchy, which is evil or not part of the community." ..."
"... I see Brexit more of a spontaneous protest against neoliberal globalization, which is not that much connected with "conservative cultural values" but with more prosaic things like displacement of workers by foreigners, disappearance of good job due to relentless outsourcing/offshoring, automation and cost-cutting, reduction of national sovereignty (including inability to regulate labor flows) due to EU neoliberal policies, brazen betrayal by the New Labour of working and lower middle class economic and social interests, growth in inequality and gradual slide of the standard of living of working and lower middle class due to the redistribution of wealth up immanent under neoliberalism etc. ..."
"... The same set of reasons which in the USA led to the election of Trump and decimation of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party (Hillary fiasco). After almost 30 years, US workers managed to understand that Clinton's democrats are essentially "wolfs in sheep's clothing" and decided to show them the middle finger, which as a side effect of the two-party system led to the election of Trump. ..."
"... And this process is irreversible, unless Democratic Party changes, and Clinton democrats brass is excluded from the party and sent to the dustbin of history, where they belong. That's why I am skeptical about Dem Party chances in 2020, unless one of the trio Warren/Sanders/Tulsi (who promote some level of changes) is the nominee. The train of history has left the station for the Corporate Democrats, and they are still standing on the old platform, hoping that it returns. ..."
"... And I view the resurgence of the far-right nationalism as a primitive form of social protest, which of course is hijacked, exploited and misdirected by sleek demagogy from the second branch of oligarchy that does not like the results of globalization, and resent FIRE and Silicon Valley branch, in full accordance with the dialectical view on Oligarchy, where with time neoliberal oligarchy inevitably splits and factions start fighting with each other tooth and nail. ..."
So in the end the problem is, are "loyalty, authority, sanctity" actually fascist
values? In my opinion largely yes,
That's a bridge too far. FYI fascism is an ideology of national socialism, or socialism
for one privileged and racially defined group (eclectic, but still an ideology), not a system
of badly defined personal traits, or values.
Moreover, loyalty (and a certain level of groupthink and conformism) can be legitimately
viewed as a precondition of survival of any organized group. Look at religious group that
adopt all those three values. Are all of them (or even most of them) fascist?
But one of the observable differences between Republican and Democratic Parties in the USA
is the difference in the level of authoritarism of the average member of the party. That's an
interesting difference that has certain social implications as for policies that each of the
parties favor most when in power (I abstract here from the sad fact that the USA Corporate
Dems recently became the second pro-war militarist party, and learned to love intelligence
agencies; two things unimaginable in 60th and 70th. )
I disagree. Fascism is not an ideology in the way we understand the term, it's just too
muddled, and certainly is not socialism for a single ethnic group : Hitler and Mussolini even
more used a lot of socialist buzzwords because at the time socialism polled well, but in
reality many if not most of their policies were in direct opposition to that of the socialist
parties of the time, and they came to power by beating and literally killing socialists.
At best we could say that fascism is closer to ordoliberalism, as they never put in question
the role of property, but they saw some behaviors as a form of excessive capitalism. But even
there they put it in moral terms, economic crises happen because banks are run by Jews, who are
evil or not part of the community, or because of a Bolshevik Jewish American Masonic conspiracy
(Mussolini).
What happens IMO is that currently right leaning parties would lose big time if they fought
elections on economics, so they have to fight elections on cultural values. If they fight on
cultural values they can get the support of many people of the working class who would
otherwise give them the middle finger.
At some point the conservative cultural values may become prevalent even on the economic
interests, as we see in the case of brexit, but this happens because conservative parties bet
on conservative cultural values early on.
When we get to conservative cultural values, these are not really a specific set of values,
or actually every society has its own traditional values. The point is that the right wing
populists bet on the values that are perceived as traditional in that point of time, because
such values have an appeal that goes beyond social class.
The values of "loyalty, authorithy and sacred" are certainly part of the human psyche,
because everyone is loyal to something, respects some authority and holds this or that thing as
sacred, but if you take them in the abstract they just mean "I'm part of a group and I will
follow it", so in the way Haidt seems to discuss them they refer just to the perception of
being part of a community and fighting off the outsiders, that dovetails with the weaponisation
of traditional cultural values by the right.
So it's not that fascism is a personality trait, but rather fascism, or more generally
right wing populism, is a social phenomenon where some personality traits are weaponised
.
This is a good comment that clarifies your views considerably. And with this
clarification, I believe we are generally on the same page. Thank you.
At best, we could say that fascism is closer to ordoliberalism, as they never put in
question the role of property, but they saw some behaviors as a form of excessive
capitalism. But even there they put it in moral terms; economic crises happen because banks
are run by Jews, who are evil or not part of the community, or because of a Bolshevik
Jewish American Masonic conspiracy (Mussolini).
That's a good analogy. But this only means that the financial oligarchy can be a
privileged social group crossing racial lines. The term "Jews" as used by fascists was, at
least initially, directly at financial oligarchy, where this ethnic group was
overrepresented. In general, anti-Semitism can be viewed as a scapegoating, a primitive and
misguided protest against the excesses of capitalism. In this sense, "economic crises happen
because banks are run by Jews, who are evil or not part of the community" has the real
meaning "economic crises happen because banks are run by the financial oligarchy, which is
evil or not part of the community."
What happens IMO is that, currently, right-leaning parties would lose big time if they
fought elections on economics, so they have to fight elections on cultural values. If they
fight on cultural values, they can get the support of many people of the working class who
would otherwise give them the middle finger.
Not only right-leaning parties. All neoliberal parties. That's why identity politics is as
important under neoliberalism as it was under classic national socialism. That's a classic
application of "Divide and Conquer" principle in politics, which, in turn, is the Corollary
of the Iron Law of Oligarchy, the way the oligarchic elite weakens threats to its rule by
distracting population from actual issues, and imposing strict limits on what constitutes an
'acceptable' and 'respectable' political position. Neo-McCarthyism serves the same
purpose.
At some point, the conservative cultural values may become prevalent even on the
economic interests, as we see in the case of Brexit, but this happens because conservative
parties bet on conservative cultural values early on.
I respectfully disagree. I see Brexit more of a spontaneous protest against neoliberal
globalization, which is not that much connected with "conservative cultural values" but with
more prosaic things like displacement of workers by foreigners, disappearance of good job due
to relentless outsourcing/offshoring, automation and cost-cutting, reduction of national
sovereignty (including inability to regulate labor flows) due to EU neoliberal policies,
brazen betrayal by the New Labour of working and lower middle class economic and social
interests, growth in inequality and gradual slide of the standard of living of working and
lower middle class due to the redistribution of wealth up immanent under neoliberalism
etc.
The same set of reasons which in the USA led to the election of Trump and decimation
of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party (Hillary fiasco). After almost 30 years, US
workers managed to understand that Clinton's democrats are essentially "wolfs in sheep's
clothing" and decided to show them the middle finger, which as a side effect of the two-party
system led to the election of Trump.
And this process is irreversible, unless Democratic Party changes, and Clinton
democrats brass is excluded from the party and sent to the dustbin of history, where they
belong. That's why I am skeptical about Dem Party chances in 2020, unless one of the trio
Warren/Sanders/Tulsi (who promote some level of changes) is the nominee. The train of history
has left the station for the Corporate Democrats, and they are still standing on the old
platform, hoping that it returns.
And I view the resurgence of the far-right nationalism as a primitive form of social
protest, which of course is hijacked, exploited and misdirected by sleek demagogy from the
second branch of oligarchy that does not like the results of globalization, and resent FIRE
and Silicon Valley branch, in full accordance with the dialectical view on Oligarchy, where
with time neoliberal oligarchy inevitably splits and factions start fighting with each other
tooth and nail.
Russiagate and Ukrainegate (which is essentially Russiagate 2.0) are just two reflections
of this internal political struggle within the USA oligarchy. Struggle that in some forms
gradually became closer and closer to the civil war (or, at least, The War between Antony and
Octavian) for political dominance as views on the ways to overcome the current crisis of
neoliberalism in the USA of those two factions became more and more incompatible.
Historically national socialism emerged as a way to overcome the crisis of capitalism at the
beginning of the XX century.
it's not that fascism is a personality trait, but rather fascism, or more generally
right wing populism, is a social phenomenon where some personality traits are
weaponised.
I agree. That's an interesting angle to view the current resurgence of the far right. But
it does not explain the fact why in the USA many members of trade unions voted for Trump.
Also, please take a look at the phenomenon of Tucker Carson.
Thank you again for your insights into this complex social phenomenon.
"... The polarizing Fox host dismantled the official Western media narrative in a seven-minute segment that included an interview with the Guardian correspondent who personally witnessed the second whistleblower present evidence to the agency. ..."
"... "America almost attacked a country and killed untold thousands of people over an attack that may never have happened in the first place – that powerful people may very well have been lying about," Carlson told his audience, replaying footage of his show from the days following the attack to show he'd always been suspicious it had happened as reported. ..."
Fox News host Tucker Carlson has crossed an MSM Rubicon and questioned the Douma "gas
attack" fraud on air, bringing up the OPCW whistleblower. Then he "rooted for Russia" over
Ukraine. Was it a "betrayal," or epic truth-trolling?
Carlson boldly went where no mainstream TV host had gone before, unpacking the
explosive story of April 2018's Douma "chemical weapons attack." While the "attack" was
attributed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by an altered report from the Organization for
the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, two whistleblowers within the group accused it of
omitting evidence to craft a misleading narrative – a fact that has never crossed the
lips of US media until Monday night.
Must Watch @TuckerCarlson Segment Tonight: New Evidence Shows Syria's Assad May Have
Been Falsely Blamed for 2018 Chemical Attack"We've been lied to, we've been manipulated, we
knew it at the time." pic.twitter.com/vKw6YnphcT
-- The Columbia Bugle (@ColumbiaBugle) November 26, 2019
The polarizing Fox host dismantled the official Western media narrative in a
seven-minute segment that included an interview with the Guardian correspondent who
personally witnessed the second whistleblower present evidence to the agency.
"America almost attacked a country and killed untold thousands of people over an attack
that may never have happened in the first place – that powerful people may very well
have been lying about," Carlson told his audience, replaying footage of his show from the
days following the attack to show he'd always been suspicious it had happened as
reported.
Carlson is politically astute and media smart. He would not make such statements unless he
was sure they would not be excessively damaging, advance his message and boost his
popularity. A real risk is Fox News pulling the plug though.
Fortuitous indeed that I was not eating or drinking anything when he mentioned Samantha Power
and 'stupid decisions'; otherwise, there would have been a pressure-diffused spray of it
everywhere. He did indeed let it all hang out – I continue to marvel at his
transformation. Who would ever have imagined? I would once have liked to hear of him being
roasted alive over a slow fire, back when he was snarking and smirking his way through
defenses of the Bush administrations ham-fisted policy strangulation. Well, by God, whatever
it takes, and hero biscuits to the medium. Rock on, Tucker.
"... Sanders went on to argue that "pressure has got to be put on media" to cover policy issues like income inequality and poverty more heavily, instead of devoting attention to sensational campaign moments and the state of political horse races. ..."
"... 'You know what, forget the political gossip. Politics is not a soap opera. Talk about the real damn issues facing this country.'" ..."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has not been shy about
his disdain for the mainstream media. But the
Democratic presidential hopeful
has rarely, if ever, articulated it as bluntly as he did in an interview that aired on
MSNBC 's "
The Rachel Maddow Show " on Friday night. Sanders
called out the network for its corporate character in a novel exchange with host
Rachel Maddow .
"The American people are sick and tired of establishment politics and economics, and by the way, a little bit tired of corporate
media as well," Sanders told Maddow in an interview taped in Burlington, Vermont.
Maddow pressed Sanders for specifics on how he would change the media if he were president. "What's the solution to corporate
media?" she asked.
"We have got to think of ways the Democratic party, for a start, starts funding the equivalent of Fox television," Sanders
answered. Of course, MSNBC is a corporate media outlet that is widely seen as a Democratic version of Fox News because of the perceived
sympathies of many of its political talk shows.
Sanders went on to argue that "pressure has got to be put on media" to cover policy issues like income inequality and poverty
more heavily, instead of devoting attention to sensational campaign moments and the state of political horse races.
He then claimed that bringing that pressure to bear would be difficult, since corporate ownership makes it harder for news outlets
to cover issues in a way that conflicts with the interests of top executives. "MSNBC is owned by who?" Sanders asked. "Comcast, our
overlords," Maddow responded with a chuckle.
"All right, Comcast is not one of the most popular corporations in America, right?" Sanders said. "And I think the American people
are going to have to say to NBC and ABC and CBS and CNN, 'You know what, forget the political gossip. Politics is not a soap
opera. Talk about the real damn issues facing this country.'"
"Ruthless Quotas at Amazon Are Maiming Employees" [
The Atlantic ].
"[Candice Dixon] started the job in April 2018, and within two months, or nearly 100,000
items, the lifting had destroyed her back.
An Amazon-approved doctor said she had bulging discs
and diagnosed her with a back sprain, joint inflammation, and chronic pain, determining that
her injuries were 100 percent due to her job. She could no longer work at Amazon. Today, she
can barely climb stairs.
Walking her dog, doing the dishes, getting out of her chair --
everything is painful. According to her medical records, her condition is unlikely to improve.
So this holiday-shopping season, as Amazon's ferocious speed is on full display, Dixon is at a
standstill.
She told Reveal in mid-October that her workers'-compensation settlement was about
to run out. She was struggling to land a new job and worried she'd lose her home." •
However, Dixon can take comfort in the knowledge that she's done her little bit to send Jeff
Bezos to the moon. So there's that.
When did Kyiv's control of Crimea and the Donbass become critical to the national security
of the United States, when Russia has controlled Ukraine almost without interruption from
Catherine the Great in the 18th century to Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 20th century?
Among the reasons Trump is president is that he raised provocative questions about NATO and
Russia left unaddressed for three decades, as U.S. policy has been on cruise control since the
Cold War.
And these unanswered questions are deadly serious ones.
Do we truly believe that if Russia marched into Estonia, the U.S. would start attacking
the ships, planes and troops of a nation armed with thousands of tactical and strategic
nuclear weapons?
Would NATO allies Spain, Portugal and Italy declare war on Russia?
In 1914 and 1939, in solidarity with the mother country, Britain, Canada declared war on
Germany. Would Justin Trudeau's Canada invoke NATO and declare war on Putin's Russia -- for
Estonia or Latvia?
Under NATO, we are now committed to go to war for 28 nations. And the interventionists who
took us into Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen want U.S. war guarantees extended to other nations
even closer to Russia.
One day, one of these war guarantees is going to be called upon, and we may find that the
American people were unaware of that commitment, and are unwilling to honor it, especially if
the consequence is a major war with a nuclear power.
NATO was formed to protect Europe from the 'enemy' - Russia. But Russia hasn't shown or
proven its threat to Europe for decades - despite the manufactured scaremongering used to
keep the MIC funded. But now, the Chinese can (have) take(n) over that particular role so the
MIC funding is 'safe' and Russia should be taken in as a potential partner and valuable
marketplace for European countries to access.
A ground-based conflict with Russia is a ludicrous prospect - it would turn nuclear in
days - so any form of 'army' to protect those borders is nonsensical. It's not like the
sand-bandit countries where there is no real opposition (to spending) and conflicts can be
manufactured and engineered as a retail source of income.
Funny drawing, Vlad kisses Angela. In real life, Vlad is a big villain, but not a pervert.
How much schnapps needs to be drunk for Merkel to like? 1 liter or 2? This is a joke.
The USSR ceased to exist in 1991, the Russians withdrew their troops from Europe in 1995.
NATO was supposed to protect Europe from the invasion of the USSR - the invasion did not
happen, the USSR traded with Europe. Russia, this country with a normal capitalist economy
and 4 world religions on its territory that coexist peacefully. Russia trades with Europe and
does not attack. NATO is not intended to protect Europe from the Muslim tsunami, and there is
no united European army (not because Europe cannot, but because Europe does not want because
of love for the American "freebie", which is actually cheese in a mousetrap). So why do need
NATO - to suck money and resources from European countries? A good question.
Anyone with even an elementary understanding of geopolitics knows NATO is yet another arm
of US power, and a market for the US MIC.
We Europeans, with the notable exception of the always-on-the-wrong-side-of-history Poles,
do NOT want or need NATO. We are not threatened other than by the consequences of Zionist US
foreign policy.
Russia is our natural ally and reliable trading partner, as is Iran, as is China.
"... Is it just me (wink, wink) but I find it completely coincidental that both Strzok (100%) and Pientka (likely) are of Polish origins. ..."
"... Your comment brings to mind the outdated Russophobia of many in positions of influence within the American administration. I couldn't remember who coined the term "the crazies in the basement" as applied to the more hawkish elements in US politics ..."
"... "The "crazies in the basement" is an expression that was coined originally by some unknown member of George W's administration. It used to designate the small clique of Neo-Cons who had found their way into Bush junior's team of advisors, before they rose to dubious fame after the 9/11 attacks. ..."
"... Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, at the time Colin Powell's chief of staff, described their status enhancement from "lunatic fringe" to top executives in the White House with his Southern sense of humor, adding that they had become almost overnight what was henceforth called the Cheney "Gestapo". And what happened over the weekend in the Middle-East -- and in D.C. -- certainly looked like a distant but distinct reminder of that period in the early 2000s when "crazies" coming right out of a dark basement took over the policy agenda on questions that would require adult supervision." ..."
"... Both in Canada and the States men and women of Eastern European background have risen to positions of influence in the respective administrations. I'd argue that that has not been uniformly beneficial. Not when those men and women enlist under the crazy banner. ..."
"... To a great degree American foreign policy no longer operates in the interests of the broad mass of the American people. It too often plays to the obsessions inherited from Old Europe. ..."
Is it just me (wink, wink) but I find it completely coincidental that both Strzok (100%) and Pientka (likely) are of Polish origins.
Could it be my Russian paranoia. Nah, I am being unreasonable -- those people never had a bad feeling towards Trump's attempts to
boost Russian-American relations with Michael Flynn spearheading this effort.
Jokes aside, however, I can only imagine how SVR
and GRU are enjoying the spectacle. I can only imagine how many "free" promotions and awards can be attach to this thing as a
free ride.
Your comment brings to mind the outdated Russophobia of many in positions of influence within the American administration. I couldn't
remember who coined the term "the crazies in the basement" as applied to the more hawkish elements in US politics. I thought it
had been an American Admiral. I had no luck finding a reference so I googled it. Still no joy with the American admiral, but the
list thrown up had near the top of it this informative quote from Patrick Bahzad.
"The "crazies in the basement" is an expression that was coined originally by some unknown member of George W's administration.
It used to designate the small clique of Neo-Cons who had found their way into Bush junior's team of advisors, before they rose
to dubious fame after the 9/11 attacks.
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, at the time Colin Powell's chief of staff, described their status enhancement from "lunatic fringe"
to top executives in the White House with his Southern sense of humor, adding that they had become almost overnight what was henceforth
called the Cheney "Gestapo". And what happened over the weekend in the Middle-East -- and in D.C. -- certainly looked like a distant
but distinct reminder of that period in the early 2000s when "crazies" coming right out of a dark basement took over the policy
agenda on questions that would require adult supervision."
Both in Canada and the States men and women of Eastern European background have risen to positions of influence in the
respective administrations. I'd argue that that has not been uniformly beneficial. Not when those men and women enlist under the
crazy banner. Or, to put it more soberly, form part of the neocon wing of those administrations. Though I, as an outside
observer, might be prejudiced here because I happen not to get on very well with Brzezinski and his copious output.
Allowing for that prejudice, which I confess runs very deep, I still think that to an extent American foreign policy has been
hijacked by Eastern European emigres who themselves retain some of the prejudices and mindset of another age and place.
Looking at it from afar, the influence of some Eastern European emigres on American foreign policy has been uniformly deleterious.
And that from a long way back and no matter whether those emigres are in Washington or Tel Aviv.
It cannot but help be distorting, that influence. It's not merely that unexamined Russophobia is embedded in the DNA of many
Eastern Europeans. There's a narrow minded focus on aggressive Machtpolitik, bred from centuries of violent territorial disputes
with neighbors.
That, transferred to the world stage as it must be when it infects the foreign policy of the United States - because that is
a country that cannot but help be at the centre of the world stage - distorts US foreign policy. To a great degree American
foreign policy no longer operates in the interests of the broad mass of the American people. It too often plays to the obsessions
inherited from Old Europe.
In the most famous of his speeches Churchill spoke of the time when, as he hoped, "the New World, with all its power and might,
steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."
Let the historians dispute as they will, that is what happened. And continued to happen for half a century and more. But there
was a price few noticed. The New World might have stepped forward to rescue the old, but it carried back from that old world a
most destructive freight.
Very well put. No better example, apart from being utter academic failure, expected from "white board" theorists with zero understanding
of power, exists of this than late Zbig. Only blind or sublime to the point of sheer idiocy could fail to see that Brzezinski's
loyalties were not with American people, but with Poland and old Polish, both legitimate and false, anti-Russian grievances. He
dedicated his life to settling whatever scores he had with historic Russia using the United States merely as a vehicle. So do
many, as you correctly stated, Eastern European immigrants to the United States. They bring with them passions, of which Founding
Fathers warned, and then infuse them into the American political discourse. It finally reached it peak of absurdity and, as I
argue constantly, utter destruction of the remnants of the Republic.
I wrote what follows before reading Andrei's response to EO, but do not see much reason to change what I had written.
When in 1988 I ended up working at BBC Radio 'Analysis' programme because it was impossible to interest any of my old television
colleagues in the idea that one might go to Moscow and talk to some of the people involved in the Gorbachev 'new thinking', my
editor, Caroline Anstey, was an erstwhile aide to Jim Callaghan, the former Labour Prime Minister.
As a result of his involvement with the Trilateral Commission, she had a fascinating anecdote about what one of his fellow
members, the former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, said about another, Zbigniew Brzezinski: that he could never work out which
of his country's two traditional enemies his Polish colleague hated most.
Almost a generation after hearing her say this, in December 2013, I read an article Brzezinski published in the 'Financial
Times, headlined 'Russia, like Ukraine, will become a real democracy.'
Unfortunately, it is behind a subscription wall, but it clearly expresses its author's fundamental belief that after all those
years of giving Russia the 'spinach' treatment -- to use Victoria Nuland's term -- it would finally 'knuckle under', and become
a quiescent satellite of the West.
An ironic sidelight on this is provided in a recent article by a lady called Anna Mahjar-Barducci on the 'MEMRI' site -- which
actually has some very useful material on matters to do with Russia for those of us with no knowledge of the language -- headlined
'Contemporary Russian Thinkers Series -- Part I -- Renowned Russian Academic Sergey Karaganov On Russia And Democracy.'
Its subject, who I remember well from the days when he was very much one of the 'new thinkers', linked to it on his own website,
clearly pleased at what he saw as an accurate and informed discussion of his ideas.
There is an obvious risk of succumbing to facetiousness, but sometimes what one thinks are essential features of an argument
can be best brought out at the risk of caricaturing it.
It seems to me that some of the central themes of Karaganov's writing over the past few years -- doubly interesting, because
his attacks on conventional Western orthodoxies are very far from silly, and because he is a kind of 'panjandrum' of a significant
section of the Russian foreign policy élite -- may be illuminated in this way.
So, attempting to link his Russian concerns to British and American ones, some central contentions of his writings might be
put as follows:
'"Government of the people, by the people, for the people' looked a lovely idea, back in 1989. But if in practice "by the people"
means a choice of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn, how can it be "for the people?"
'Moreover, it turned out that our "deplorables" were always right, against us 'intellectuals', in grasping that, with "Russophobes"
running Western policy, a "real democracy" would simply guarantee that we remained as impotent and humiliated as people like Brzezinski
clearly always wanted us to be.
'Our past, and our future, both in terms of alliances and appropriate social and political systems, are actually "Eurasian":
a 'hybrid' state, whose potential greatest advantage actually should be seen as successfully synthesising different inheritances.
'As the need for this kind of synthesis is a normal condition, with which most peoples have to reckon, this gives us a very
real potential advantage over people in the West, who, like the communists against whom I rebelled, believe that there is one
path along which all of humanity must -- and can -- go.'
At the risk of over-interpreting, I might add the following conclusion:
'Of course, precisely what this analysis does not mean is that we are anti-European -- simply that we cannot simply come to
Europe, Europe come some way to meet us.
'Given time, Helmut Schmidt's fellow countrymen, as also de Gaulle's, may very well realise that their future does not lie
in an alliance with a coalition of people like Brzezinski and traditional "Russophobes" from the "Anglosphere".
'And likewise, it does not lie with the kind of messianic universalist "liberalism" -- and, in relation to some of the SJC
and LGBT obsessions, one might say "liberalism gone bonkers" -- which Putin criticized in his interview with the "Financial Times"
back in June.
An obvious possibility implicit in the argument is that, if indeed the continental Europeans see sense, then the coalition
of traditional 'Anglophobes' and the 'insulted and injured' or the 'borderlands' may find itself marginalized, and indeed, on
the 'dustbin of history' to which Trotsky once referred.
Of course, I have no claims to be a Russianist, and my reading of Karaganov may be quite wrong.
But I do strongly believe that very superficial readings of what was happening when I was working in the 'Analysis' office,
back in 1988-9, have done an immense disservice alike to Britain and the United States.
Very well put. No better example, apart from being utter academic failure, expected from "white board" theorists with zero understanding
of power, exists of this than late Zbig. Only blind or sublime to the point of sheer idiocy could fail to see that Brzezinski's
loyalties were not with American people, but with Poland and old Polish, both legitimate and false, anti-Russian grievances. He
dedicated his life to settling whatever scores he had with historic Russia using the United States merely as a vehicle. So do
many, as you correctly stated, Eastern European immigrants to the United States. They bring with them passions, of which Founding
Fathers warned, and then infuse them into the American political discourse. It finally reached it peak of absurdity and, as I
argue constantly, utter destruction of the remnants of the Republic.
David, Karaganov is an opportunist, granted a smart one. But the events of two days ago with Putin and Lavrov being personally
present at the unveiling of the monument to Evgenii Primakov in a front of Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs speaks, in fact
screams, volumes. You know of Primakov's Doctrine. It is being fully implemented as I type this and it means that the West "lost"
(quotation marks are intentional--Russia was not West's to lose) Russia and it can be "thankful" for that to a so called Russia
Studies field in the West which was primarily shaped and then turned into the wasteland, in large part thanks to influx of East
European "scholars" and some "Russian" dissidents which achieved their objectives by drawing a caricature. They succeeded and
Russia had it with the West.
DH, appreciate your comment. Haven't read the MEMRI paper yet. Scanned the first page though.
Karaganov is an opportunist, granted a smart one. ... You know of Primakov's Doctrine. It is being fully implemented as
I type this and it means that the West "lost" (quotation marks are intentional--Russia was not West's to lose)
Well, two things sticked out for me during Tumps reelection campain.
1) on the surface he stated, he wanted closer relations to Russia. Looked at more closely, as should be expected, maybe. They
were ambigous. If I may paraphrase it colloguially: I meet them and, believe me, if I don't get that beautiful deal, i'll be out
of the door the next second.
2) he promised to be enigmatic, compared to earlier American administrations. In other words, hard to read or to predict. Guess
one better is as dealmaker. But in the larger intelligence field? Enigmatic may well be a commonplace. No?
Otherwise, Andrei, I would appreciate your further elaboration on Karaganov as opportunist.
Andrei: Strzok and Pientka come from Galicia -- the westernmost portion of what is now Ukraine -- that was acquired by Empress
Maria Theresa in the mid - 18th century.
I have been curious about precisely where both Srzok and Pientka came from, but have not had time to do any serious searches.
What is the actual evidence that they have Galician origins?
And, if they do, what are these?
I would of course automatically tend to assume that Polish names mean that their origins are Polish.
But then, if this is so, why are they enthusiastically collaborating with 'Banderista' Ukrainians?
It has long been a belief of mine that one of Stalin's great mistakes was to attempt to incorporate Galicia into the empire
he was creating.
Had he returned it to Poland, the architects of the Volhynia massacres of Poles -- as also of the massacres of Jews in Lviv/Lvov/Lemberg
-- could have gone back to their old habits of assassinating Polish policemen.
I first picked up the Galician connection in an article by Scott Humor: " North America is a land run by Galician zombies "
-- published by The Saker on July 4, 2018. It seems that Galicians, especially those that arrived after WWII, migrate into security
positions such as ICE / FBI / NSA etc. It may have to do with a family history of work in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Regrettably, I am not from Eastern Europe and cannot help you further about the Bortnicks, the Gathkes, Buchtas, and so on.
This is unacceptable in a democracy and China needs to get involved to regain their
freedumb.
2017 –Berkeley, California, February 1, civil unrest ensued at UC Berkeley as Milo
Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak on the campus.
2017 – 2017 Anaheim, California protests, February 21, protesters demonstrate after
police officer grabs boy and fires his gun. Protesters damage property and throw bottles and
rocks at police.
2017 – May Day, violence breaks out at May Day protests in Olympia, and Portland, as
masked anarchists damage property and clash with police.
2017 – 2017 Unite the Right rally, Charlottesville, Virginia, August 11–12. At
a Unite the Right rally of white nationalists and white supremacists opposing the removal of
a statue of Robert E. Lee, rally attendees and counter-protesters clashed, sometimes
violently. A woman, Heather Heyer, was killed and 19 other injured when a rally attendee
drove his car into a crowd of counter-protestors. Two law enforcement officers also died in a
helicopter crash while monitoring the event.
2017 – 2017 St. Louis protests, beginning September 15, large protests erupted when
police officer Jason Stockley was found not guilty of murder in the shooting death of Anthony
Lamar Smith on December 20, 2011. Some of the protests turned destructive and the police
became violent. Windows were broken at Mayor Lyda Krewson's house and in the Central West End
business district on the first night, many windows were broken in the Delmar Loop on Sept 16,
a few were broken downtown on Sept 17 after police drove swiftly through a crowd following a
peaceful march. Police conducted a kettling mass arrest operation of nonviolent protesters
and bystanders, beating and pepper spraying many, including journalists, documentary
filmmakers, and an undercover officer. Protests and sporadic unrest continued daily for
weeks.
2019 - Memphis riot, June 13, following the fatal shooting of Brandon Webber by U.S.
Marshals, Memphis, TN
I always said Obama spoke like he had oatmeal stuck to the roof of his mouth because he
usually stood for exactly nothing.
Obama was such a parsed speaker devoid of conviction except to be in service to a dutiful
fulfillment to neoliberal establishment policies, I'm surprised the headline doesn't go
something like:
"Obama Privately Considered to Privately Consider Leading a Consideration to Consider a
Stop Bernie Consideration "
"Michael Bloomberg's Right-Wing Views on Foreign Policy Make Him a Perfect Candidate for the
Republican Nomination" [
The Intercept ]. "Take the war in Iraq. The then-Republican mayor of New York not only
backed the illegal invasion and occupation
in March 2003, but he also supported perhaps the most egregiously dishonest and bizarre
justification for the war: that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks. This, of
course, was a
brazen lie told by the likes of
Dick Cheney and Fox News . But it was
also publicly endorsed by Bloomberg . Three years later, in March 2007, the then-mayor of New
York backed the Bush administration against congressional Democrats who were trying to set a
timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq . Then there is the Israel-Palestine
conflict. Bloomberg is a longstanding supporter of Israel and especially Benjamin Netanyahu
Bloomberg helped launder the
reputation of the crown prince in March 2018, when he hosted the reckless autocrat in New
York and smiled for photos with him in a Starbucks." • I dunno. Sounds pretty mainstream
to me
... ... ...
"Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street"
(PDF) [ The Global
Justice Clinic (NYU School of Law) and the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic at
the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice (Fordham Law School) ]. Bloomberg was,
of course, Mayor at the time of Occupy. "The protests in New York City, as widely reported,
have been almost categorically peaceful, and only isolated instances of violence by individuals
at protests have been observed or alleged. But in many instances, the police have responded
aggressively to nonviolent protest, and have escalated situations -- through arbitrary or
misapplications of the law, an excessive police presence, or the use of unwarranted force. The
police response has thus, in some individual cases and considered cumulatively, undermined
basic assembly and expression freedoms. At times, it has itself also presented a threat to the
safety of New Yorkers." • Best quote I could find in the time available, but I'm sure
there's more.
... ... ...
"Bernie lets it rip against Bloomberg 'arrogance'" [ Politico ].
"Bernie Sanders insists he has nothing personal against Michael Bloomberg. 'I really don't.' He
just thinks he's trying to 'buy an election,' is demonstrating 'the arrogance of billionaires'
and, as Bloomberg opens his near-bottomless wallet to pay for TV ads, is complicit in
'undermining' American democracy." • And indeed, those charges aren't personal. I mean,
Sanders isn't asking Mike what brand of lifts he uses in his shoes, after all.
I always said Obama spoke like he had oatmeal stuck to the roof of his mouth because he
usually stood for exactly nothing.
Obama was such a parsed speaker devoid of conviction except to be in service to a dutiful
fulfillment to neoliberal establishment policies, I'm surprised the headline doesn't go
something like:
"Obama Privately Considered to Privately Consider Leading a Consideration to Consider a
Stop Bernie Consideration "
"... For the Democrats to reform they need first to acknowledge that their alliance with Wall Street is a dead end and that they need to oppose the absolute rule of capital. At a minimum they should be capable of acknowledging the conflict that exists between the interests of capital and the rest of the population (Warren); and of expressing a principled determination to take the side of the majority of the population in this conflict. ..."
James Carville observed that night in 2016, Democrats haven't been this weak for more than
half-a-century. Some Democrats learned the lesson and ran on 'just fix the damn roads' in
2018 and won. Impeachment is very, very likely to do what the ACA did to Dems in 2010.
Rather than build on the hard-won victories of 2018, Democrats have decided to pursue a
dead-end policy doomed to failure which will galvanize the GOP base and drive independents
months before the election. Even a week ago, I wasn't sure whether Trump will be elected. I'm
much, much more certain now. I warned in 2017 of the opportunity costs of looking for silver
stake solutions to what OW and Carville correctly understand as bad policy, poor candidates,
identity politics, and bad messaging.
So, Russia? My guess is that after the stomping that may very well fall upon the Dems, we
might very well see real reform in the Democratic party, just as we have in the GOP. Trump's
GOP protects businesses, individuals, Americans, opportunity, and social security. And all
the bad shit that both parties always support. Dems need to figure out that Trump has stolen
their message and is on the way to stealing their base. If minorities turn out for Trump (the
GOP wet-dream) Dems are going to face a nightmare scenario. And 34 percent of
African-Americans currently support Trump.
That's a very apt observation with one reservation: one major factor in 2018 success was
Mueller investigation. Now there will be backlash against it, which favors Trump.
Moon of Alabama has a very interesting discussion of the Catch 22 style situation "Full of
Schiff" Dems found themselves with "Pelosi impeachment gambit": in no way they can allow Senate
trial, and they can't allow just a censure, or they lose the face (Schiff career is probably
over at this point in any case)
-- If more Democratic swing-state representatives defect from the impeachment camp, which
seems likely, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have a big problem. How can she proceed?
-- If the House votes down impeachment Donald Trump wins.
-- If the House holds no vote on the issue Donald Trump wins.
-- If the House votes for censure Donald Trump will have won on points and the issue will
be over.
-- If the House votes for impeachment the case goes to the Senate for trial.
The Republican led Senate has two choices:
-- It can decide to not open an impeachment trial by simply voting against impeachment.
Trump wins.
-- It can open a impeachment trial, use it to extensively hurt the Democrats and, in the
end, vote against impeachment. Trump wins big time.
A senate impeachment trial would be a disaster for the Dems as Joe & Hunter and Adam
Schiff get to testify under oath.
A censure means that Trump won on points and now can play victim in 2020 election. Situation
which he likes and exploiting which he is a great master (that's why he wants the Senate
trial). And which increases chances of his reelection. In the latter case that most probably
means the end of career (if not prosecution) for Vindman, Hill and other "accusers" (Pelosi
sacrificial pawns in this gambit)
My feeling is that Clinton democrats are doomed to be a failure in 2020. And that Democratic
Party needs to reform (which they failed to do after 2016 fiasco.)
For the Democrats to reform they need first to acknowledge that their alliance with Wall
Street is a dead end and that they need to oppose the absolute
rule of capital. At a minimum they should be capable of acknowledging the conflict that exists
between the interests of capital and the rest of the population (Warren); and of expressing a
principled determination to take the side of the majority of the population in this
conflict.
"... With Republicans in control of the Senate, the California elder stateswoman always knew that articles of impeachment would have to be based on crimes so egregious and beyond doubt that even Republicans would have had no choice but to convict the president. ..."
"... The math may not be on the Democrats' side, as they have 31 House members representing districts won by Trump in 2016. ..."
"... Pelosi simply cannot discount the fact that at least half – and maybe more – of those Democrat representatives will consider their own chances of re-election as they cast their votes on articles of impeachment. ..."
"... Unlike impeachment, censure is not a constitutional measure. That is not to say that censure is unconstitutional, but that it is simply a course of action devised by Congress and not described in the nation's founding document. There is no mandatory consequence to censure, and nobody would suggest that censure could lead to removal from the office of president. It has been used most often to rebuke or reprimand members of Congress, though Trump, were he censured, would not be the first commander in chief to have faced it. ..."
"... In effect, censure is an act of disapproval. For a member of Congress, it may entail such undesirable consequences as loss of committee memberships or even suspension; it comes with no penalties when used against executive branch officials. And that is how it should be, or the concepts of separation of powers and co-equal branches of government would likely be swept away in an avalanche of partisan censure votes. ..."
"... The Founding Fathers proscribed impeachment for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. These are serious crimes – high crimes. Removing from office a duly elected president for anything less is congressional tyranny. Perhaps, before they step into the abyss, some Democrats are coming to that realization. Or perhaps they are simply guarding their posteriors. ..."
At this point, Democrats appear to have dug themselves a rather deep impeachment
hole, and at least a few of them are now looking for a ladder. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(D-CA) saw this coming but could not withstand the Trump-derangement tide. They do have a way
out, and at least a few of them – along with their surrogates in the media –
realize that censure, rather than impeachment, is their best option for dealing with President
Trump in a way that will not come back to bite their carefully guarded posteriors.
Nancy Pelosi
Regardless of what one may think of Pelosi's political bent, she has always been more
pragmatic than her more strident party colleagues. Sure, she will step in front of any camera
and talk about how Trump is spitting on the Constitution, crushing the souls of hard-working
Americans, and planning to detain all non-white people before our very eyes. But, for the most
part, she understands political realities.
With Republicans in control of the Senate, the California elder stateswoman always knew that
articles of impeachment would have to be based on crimes so egregious and beyond doubt that
even Republicans would have had no choice but to convict the president.
In their impeachment
inquiry , congressional Democrats have come nowhere near that standard. Worse still, they
may barely have the votes to advance articles of impeachment to the Senate. As the balance of
power in the House now stands, the majority Democrats can afford to lose no more than 16 votes
from their own caucus in order to impeach – assuming they get no Republican votes. The
math may not be on the Democrats' side, as they have 31 House members representing districts
won by Trump in 2016.
Pelosi simply cannot discount the fact that at least half – and maybe more – of
those Democrat representatives will consider their own chances of re-election as they cast
their votes on articles of impeachment.
Second Thoughts?
Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-MI) is not one of those who represent a 2016 Trump-voting
district. In fact, her safe Democrat district encompasses part of eastern Detroit. Even so, Lawrence
has seen the writing on the wall: Among independent voters, enthusiasm for impeachment is
waning, and Lawrence – who previously supported the idea – is perhaps now thinking
beyond her own chances of re-election.
"I will tell you, sitting here knowing how divided this country is," Lawrence explained
Nov. 24 during a radio interview, "I don't see the value of taking [Trump] out of office, but
I do see the value of putting down a marker saying his behavior is not acceptable."
An editorial, published Nov. 23 by The Detroit News, suggests censure of the president
rather than impeachment, and The Chicago Tribune followed suit on Nov. 25. It is neither unfair
nor inaccurate to point out that the left-wing media rarely take up a political narrative not
preapproved by someone within the Democratic Party. So the sudden appearance of editorials
arguing for censure strongly suggests that Democrat strategists are leaning in that direction
or at least testing the waters.
What Is Censure?
Unlike impeachment, censure is not a constitutional measure. That is not to say that censure
is unconstitutional, but that it is simply a course of action devised by Congress and not
described in the nation's founding document. There is no mandatory consequence to censure, and
nobody would suggest that censure could lead to removal from the office of president. It has
been used most often to rebuke or reprimand members of Congress, though Trump, were he
censured, would not be the first commander in chief to have faced it.
In effect, censure is an act of disapproval. For a member of Congress, it may entail such
undesirable consequences as loss of committee memberships or even suspension; it comes with no
penalties when used against executive branch officials. And that is how it should be, or the
concepts of separation of powers and co-equal branches of government would likely be swept away
in an avalanche of partisan censure votes.
Both the Senate and the House have the power to censure or reprimand, and each chamber may
do it without the approval or involvement of the other. Censure requires only a simple
majority. At least some Democrats, surely, are considering how much easier than impeachment
censure will be. They also may be considering how a censure resolution will provide the
opportunity to pontificate at length – on live TV – about Trump's moral turpitude
and failings, both as a human being and as a president.
In 1834, Democrat President Andrew Jackson was censured by a Whig Senate for firing the
Treasury secretary. President John Tyler, a Democrat-turned-Whig who may have been even more of
a boat-rocking maverick than Trump, was reprimanded (another form of censure) in 1842 by the
House of Representatives. President James Polk was reprimanded in 1848 by the House. President
Abraham Lincoln was reprimanded by the Senate in 1864.
Some members of Congress argued for censuring, rather than impeaching, President Bill
Clinton, and that brings up an important point about impeachment: Attempting to remove a
president from office by any means other than a general election is, without a doubt, the
gravest and most consequential action the Congress can take. If the constitutional republic
– with its democratic method of choosing a president – is to be preserved, a
president should not be removed from office by Congress for anything less than an act that
directly endangers the American people or the U.S. government.
Jackson, Tyler, and Lincoln did nothing that justified such a measure. Polk took the country
to war without congressional approval – very much an impeachable offense, many would
argue. How about Clinton? He was not impeached for having sexual relations with a White House
intern but for lying about it to Congress.
If every politician were removed from office for lying, we would have no political
leadership at all. Clinton's lie did not jeopardize the security or stability of the United
States, and one could certainly argue that his was not an impeachable offense. At the time, the
American people appeared to agree.
The Founding Fathers proscribed impeachment for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and
misdemeanors. These are serious crimes – high crimes. Removing from office a duly elected
president for anything less is congressional tyranny. Perhaps, before they step into the abyss,
some Democrats are coming to that realization. Or perhaps they are simply guarding their
posteriors.
When did Kyiv's control of Crimea and the Donbass become critical to the national security
of the United States, when Russia has controlled Ukraine almost without interruption from
Catherine the Great in the 18th century to Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 20th century?
Among the reasons Trump is president is that he raised provocative questions about NATO and
Russia left unaddressed for three decades, as U.S. policy has been on cruise control since the
Cold War.
And these unanswered questions are deadly serious ones.
Do we truly believe that if Russia marched into Estonia, the U.S. would start attacking
the ships, planes and troops of a nation armed with thousands of tactical and strategic
nuclear weapons?
Would NATO allies Spain, Portugal and Italy declare war on Russia?
In 1914 and 1939, in solidarity with the mother country, Britain, Canada declared war on
Germany. Would Justin Trudeau's Canada invoke NATO and declare war on Putin's Russia -- for
Estonia or Latvia?
Under NATO, we are now committed to go to war for 28 nations. And the interventionists who
took us into Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen want U.S. war guarantees extended to other nations
even closer to Russia.
One day, one of these war guarantees is going to be called upon, and we may find that the
American people were unaware of that commitment, and are unwilling to honor it, especially if
the consequence is a major war with a nuclear power.
NATO was formed to protect Europe from the 'enemy' - Russia. But Russia hasn't shown or
proven its threat to Europe for decades - despite the manufactured scaremongering used to
keep the MIC funded. But now, the Chinese can (have) take(n) over that particular role so the
MIC funding is 'safe' and Russia should be taken in as a potential partner and valuable
marketplace for European countries to access.
A ground-based conflict with Russia is a ludicrous prospect - it would turn nuclear in
days - so any form of 'army' to protect those borders is nonsensical. It's not like the
sand-bandit countries where there is no real opposition (to spending) and conflicts can be
manufactured and engineered as a retail source of income.
Funny drawing, Vlad kisses Angela. In real life, Vlad is a big villain, but not a pervert.
How much schnapps needs to be drunk for Merkel to like? 1 liter or 2? This is a joke.
The USSR ceased to exist in 1991, the Russians withdrew their troops from Europe in 1995.
NATO was supposed to protect Europe from the invasion of the USSR - the invasion did not
happen, the USSR traded with Europe. Russia, this country with a normal capitalist economy
and 4 world religions on its territory that coexist peacefully. Russia trades with Europe and
does not attack. NATO is not intended to protect Europe from the Muslim tsunami, and there is
no united European army (not because Europe cannot, but because Europe does not want because
of love for the American "freebie", which is actually cheese in a mousetrap). So why do need
NATO - to suck money and resources from European countries? A good question.
Anyone with even an elementary understanding of geopolitics knows NATO is yet another arm
of US power, and a market for the US MIC.
We Europeans, with the notable exception of the always-on-the-wrong-side-of-history Poles,
do NOT want or need NATO. We are not threatened other than by the consequences of Zionist US
foreign policy.
Russia is our natural ally and reliable trading partner, as is Iran, as is China.
The problem is compounded by the lousy reputation Economics has acquired among proponents of
an inclusive economy. Too often the discipline is viewed as the source of the policies that
have produced the excesses and fragilities of our time. Mainstream economics and neoliberalism
are viewed as one and the same.
We beg to differ:
Many of the dominant policy ideas of the last few decades are supported neither by sound
economics nor by good evidence. Neoliberalism – or market fundamentalism, market
fetishism, etc. -- is a perversion of mainstream economics, rather than an application
thereof. And contemporary economics research is rife with new ideas for creating a more
inclusive society. But it is up to us economists to convince their audience about the merits
of these claims.
As important as specific policy prescriptions in different domains of economics are, we also
have a bigger claim: our essays produce overarching themes that taken together provide a
coherent overall vision for economic policy that stands as a genuine alternative to market
fundamentalism. This is a vision that rejects the reliance on competitive equilibrium as a
realistic benchmark, understands that the world is always second-best, highlights the role of
power imbalances in shaping existing institutional arrangements, and emphasizes the need for
imagination in devising alternatives that are both more inclusive and more conducive to
prosperity. We strive for a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.
We do not intend to duplicate the excellent work being done in policy think tanks in
Washington, D.C. and elsewhere. Many economists engage with these think tanks and their ideas
get airing through them. Our initiative is different in that it is a network of academic
economists. We are committed to policy proposals based on sound scholarship. But we also care
about what these policy ideas imply in turn for the way in which we should practice Economics
in the class room and in the seminar room. And we are less influenced by immediate political
constraints or opportunities of the policy scene in Washington, D.C.
We believe Economics can be an ally of inclusive prosperity. That is why we have embarked on
this project. The initial set of policy briefs on the EfIP website is our first step. We hope
they will stimulate and accelerate academic economists' sustained engagement with creative
ideas for inclusive prosperity and that we will be able to follow up soon with an even richer
set of policy discussions.
UPDATE Bloomberg (D)(3): "China to lift ban on state-owned firms buying Bloomberg
terminals, source says" [South China Morning Post]. "China never explained the ban but it
came shortly after the agency published a story on June 29, 2012, about the finances of the
extended family of Xi Jinping – then the vice-president. After the ban, the company
withheld an investigative report about Wang Jianlin, the chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group
and the one of the wealthiest tycoons well connected with Chinese leaders, in 2013, according
to a report by The New York Times. Michael Forsythe, the key author of the investigative
reports, left the company shortly afterwards. Bloomberg has never admitted the practice of
self-censorship." • Hmm.
I recall that the Russiagate conspiracy theory was "proven" factual as well, and by many of
the same people who claim that Biden's corruption has been "debunked". Even though it was
absurd on its face and had been debunked numerous times, many people in fact continue to
insist otherwise.
We tend to think of propaganda as something generated by the state. This is a prime example
of it coming from ideologues within universities, and making its way to the public via
sympathizers in the mass media. Eventually, these lies become de facto truths, either because
people really do believe in them, or the cost of questioning them becomes too great, so people
conform. In time, younger people -- those who grew up being socialized into the lie -- don't
know any different. In my interviews for my forthcoming book on lessons we must learn from the
communist experience, a Ukrainian immigrant named Olga Grigorenko, recalling her Soviet
childhood, said "Nobody told me that I was living in a lie. I was just living my life in my
country, the Soviet Union. Nobody said it was a lie."
As she grew older, she came to see that in fact she lived within a system of lies. Her
husband, Vladimir, spoke about how the ideology corrupted all knowledge. From the
transcript:
Vladimir: For example, all history was represented as the fight between capitalism
and the workers. It takes a really creative mind to see the system of classes from
Marxism-Leninism presenting itself in ancient Egypt. But that's what they did. All history
books were filled with that point of view. The Florentine Republic was the equal of the Great
October Revolution – things like that. All our history books were like that. Every
scientific paper was supposed to have a prefatory chapter describing how Marx and Engels were
geniuses in that particular field of science, and how their findings anticipated whatever
this scientific article described. Any and all sciences had to show a connection to the
decision of the party in a previous convention.
Olga: But nobody believed in it.
Vladimir: But everybody knew that you had to say these things in order to be
published.
More:
Olga: In high school and middle school, we had to write essays, like normal school
kids do. But you never could write what you think about the subject. Never, ever. The subject
could be interesting, but you never could put what do you think. You have to find some way to
relate that to the communist view.
Vladimir: The general culture taught you this doublethink.
Olga: I remember when I was eight or nine years old, I came home from school and
told my parents a funny anecdote about a famous Red Army hero, one that made him look bad. I
just started to tell my parents, and my father looked at me and said, 'Never do that again.
Not in our house, not anywhere. Just stop, and forget. You can't tell funny stories about
communist leaders.' And I was afraid.
Vladimir: Sooner or later, society would tell you what you shouldn't say. And if
you said it, you would end up in the camp.
We are reproducing that system here, in an American way. It begins with the ideological
corruption of knowledge in the institutions of higher education, then moves out from there. How
difficult do you imagine it would be within the New York Times newsroom, or any major
American newsroom, to mount a serious challenge to the concepts of "whiteness," "patriarchy,"
and the like? In fact, we have an example of it, from this summer:
the leaked transcript of the Times 's internal town hall meeting , in which an
unnamed staffer told editor-in-chief Dean Baquet that "I just feel like racism is in
everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our
national reporting."
Baquet declined the opportunity to deliver a Journalistic Standards 101 lecture to this
person, and instead gave a fuzzy non-answer (
read the transcript ; you'll see) praising the paper's then-upcoming "1619 Project," a
massive initiative attempting to "reframe" American history around slavery.
If you'll recall, the 1619 Project was named for the year the first African slave arrived on
American shores; the Times said that year, not 1776, ought to be remembered as the
founding of America.
"... this is why the US went into Afghanistan, to get in between China & Iran ..."
"... The implication of what you just said is that the United States will never leave Afghanistan as in ever. Even if the Taliban take the whole country leaving only Kabul and its surroundings, the US will still opt to stay to have bases to launch drones and aircraft from to dominate the region. ..."
From the moment that the U.S. re-imposed sanctions in earnest on Iran late last year,
Pakistan has been looking at ways to resuscitate a deal that had been agreed in principle
before the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) last
May. This deal involved moving as much gas as Pakistan needs from Iran's Asalouyeh into
Pakistan's Gwadar and then on to Nawabshah for further transit if required. At the same time,
China has been in long-running discussions with Pakistan over the specific projects that
Beijing wanted to place in Pakistan as part of its 'One Belt, One Road' (OBOR) programme. All
the while, the U.S. has been
trying to stymie any such arrangement but OilPrice.com understands that the
Iran-China-Pakistan deal is now back on, and with a vengeance.
China's covert strategic deals are virtually always buried in interminably long anodyne
statements that belie the true laser-focused intentions of Beijing and this time is no
different. Joint statements just over a week ago from both Pakistan and China sides laid out
four projects that are part of a 'broader co-operation' between China and Pakistan. They all
sound relatively run-of-the-mill affairs, although still major undertakings, and are: the
upgrading of the Pakistan Refinery Karachi, the building out of a coal to liquid engineering
plant based on Thar coal at Thar Sindh, the utilisation of Thar Block VI for coal gasification
and fertiliser projects, and the finalisation of the feasibility study on South-North Gas
Pipeline Project that traverses Pakistan.
The fact that they are much more significant to the global geopolitical balance was
evidenced by the U.S.'s furious warnings to Pakistan, based on the fact that all of these
projects are in reality a key part of Beijing's planned China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
(CPEC), which, in turn, is a cornerstone of the OBOR initiative. Even as it was, U.S. South
Asia diplomat, Alice Wells, warned that CPEC – which, vitally, includes heavy financing
from Beijing and, therefore, a massive debt obligation to China by the host country over time
– will only profit Beijing. As it stands, the cost of just the first round of CPEC
projects has risen from an initial costing of US$48 billion to at least US$62 billion right
now. "It's clear, or it needs to be clear, that CPEC is not about aid," said Wells. "[The CPEC]
corridor is going to take a growing toll on the Pakistan economy, especially when the bulk of
payments start to come due in the next four to six years," she added. "Even if loan payments
are deferred, they are going to continue to hang over Pakistan's economic development
potential, hamstringing Prime Minister [Imran] Khan's reform agenda," she underlined.
The U.S.'s fury would have been much worse if it knew that, in fact, the 'finalisation of
the feasibility study on South-North Gas Pipeline Project' whilst true, is just proverbially
the tip of the iceberg. "The actual plan is to resuscitate the Iran-Pakistan oil and gas
pipelines over time, beginning with the gas pipeline, moving unlimited amounts of Iranian gas
to Pakistan, and then into China and the rest of Asia should it be needed," a senior source who
works closely with Iran's Petroleum Ministry told OilPrice.com last week. "It is being done in
conjunction with Russia, with the twin aims of firstly ensuring that China's 'One Belt, one
Road' initiative continues to run smoothly from the East through Pakistan and then Westwards
into Iran and onwards into Europe," he said. "And, secondly, to ensure for Russia that Iran's
gas does not start flowing freely into Europe as and when the U.S. sanctions are lifted, as
this would undermine Russia's power over Europe, which is founded on supplying over a third of
Europe's gas," he added.
For China, the new pipeline – integral to its plan of making Iran and Pakistan its
client states over time – has the added benefit of putting the U.S. on the backfoot in
the ongoing trade war. For Iran, the incentives of closer ties with China and Russia are
principally financial but also relate to China being just one of five Permanent Members on the
U.N. Security Council (the others being Russia, the U.S., the U.K., and France). For Pakistan
as well there is the added incentive that it is tired of being lambasted by the U.S. for its
duplicity in dealing with international terrorism. Not that long ago, the U.S. accused Pakistan
of supporting the Taliban (correct but it was catalysed by the U.S.'s key Middle Eastern
'ally', Saudi Arabia), Al Qaeda (correct but catalysed, funded and logistically supported by
the Saudis), the Haqqani network (correct but also funded and logistically supported by the
Saudis), and Islamic State (sort of correct but that was also mainly, of course, the Saudis)
against U.S. forces, despite taking hundreds of billions of dollars in aid payments.
Islamabad has also been an outspoken critic of renewed U.S.
sanctions against Iran. Just after the first wave of the new sanctions were rolled out on 7
August last year, Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesman Muhammad Faisal said that: "We are
examining the implications of the U.S.'s re-imposed sanctions on Iran, however, Pakistan, being
a sovereign state, reserves the right to pursue legitimate economic and commercial interests
while respecting the international legal regime." Later, in his inaugural speech as Pakistan's
then-new Prime Minister, Imran Khan, called for improving ties with the country's immediate
neighbours, including Iran, from whose President, Hassan Rouhani, he also accepted an
invitation for an early state visit to Tehran. Bubbling back at that time to the top of the
list of practical initiatives that could be advanced quickly was the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline
(IPP), which, according to the Iran source: "[Imran] Khan personally backs and has made a
priority project."
In practical terms, Pakistan certainly needs all the sustainable energy sources it can get.
As it stands, the country has seen domestic natural gas production stagnate at around 4 billion
cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) against demand of more than 6 Bcf/d, which has led to repeated load
shedding in many major cities of up to 15 hours a day. Moreover, the supply and demand
disparity is set to become even worse very soon, as industry estimates project that Pakistan's
domestic gas production is set to fall to nearer 2 Bcf/d by 2020, due to aging infrastructure,
whilst demand will rise to around 8 Bcf/d by the same time, driven by rising demand from the
power, industry, and domestic sectors as the economy continues to grow by around 5% per year.
According to Pakistan's Ministry of Energy (MoE), the planned 0.75 Bcf/d of gas (for five
years, in the first instance) that would flow from Iran's supergiant South Pars natural gas
field would add around 4,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity into the Pakistan grid, via a direct
Iran-Pakistan pipeline.
The original agreement for the IPP, signed between Iran and Pakistan in 1995, was predicated
on the pipeline running from Iran's supergiant South Pars non-associated natural gas field into
Karachi but the most recent iteration of the route involves the gas running from Iran's
Asalouyeh and into Pakistan's Gwadar and then on to Nawabshah. The latest projection of the
cost of the pipeline is around US$3.5 billion, according to industry sources, although US$2.5
billion of this has already been invested in the 900 kilometre stretch on Iran's side that has
already been completed. Pakistan's 780 kilometre stretch has yet to be started.
Given the geopolitical importance of both Iran and Pakistan to Russia and China, though, as
analysed in greater depth in my
new book on the global oil markets , finding the money for the remainder of the project
will not be a problem at all For China, there is a threefold motivation. First, its plans to
integrate the IPP into the CPEC project means that Gwadar is earmarked to be a key logistical
node in China's 'One Belt, One Road' initiative. Second, it wants to keep Iran as one of its
key suppliers of oil and gas in the future. And third, it regards supporting those who the U.S.
opposes as being a central plank of its foreign policy, even over and above the short-term
tactic of wrong-footing the U.S. in the ongoing trade war. "One immediate reaction [of China to
the burgeoning trade war with the US], will be to seek to expand and broaden economic links by
offering improved market access to non-U.S. companies, by strengthening supply chain links and
by replacing American commodities with imports from emerging market nations," according to
Jonathan Fenby, China research chairman at TS Lombard, in London.
"There is a tectonic shift going on that goes well beyond the tariff war, as China
seeks to assert itself regionally and tries to establish a wider global role for itself while
the U.S. moves from the 'constructive engagement' of the Clinton, Bush and Obama
administrations to regarding China as a 'strategic competitor'," he added. The U.S. clearly
sees it the same way, not just based on the latest comments by Wells but also on the fact that
as long ago as January 2010, the U.S. formally requested that Pakistan abandon the project in
return for which it would receive assistance from Washington for the construction of a
liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal and for the importing of electricity from Tajikistan
through Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor.
The implication of what you just said is that the United States will never leave
Afghanistan as in ever. Even if the Taliban take the whole country leaving only Kabul and its
surroundings, the US will still opt to stay to have bases to launch drones and aircraft from
to dominate the region.
So in twenty years time we might see a story how some young soldier has just arrived
in-country to Afghanistan who will be proud that his grandfather took part in the original
invasion and that he is now following in his grandfather's and father's footsteps.
China, the new world-engineers, has gotta be looking at Pakistan as an industrial water
source. They're probably already building several dams to catch the runoff. Perhaps mining
too – same mountains as Afghanistan, just the other side, no?
China has the money and
manpower. Iran the energy. In fact, we could be thinking the same thing.
Ambassador Wells' warning "..is going to take a growing toll on the Pakistan economy,
especially when the bulk of payments start to come due.." indicates the lack of a mirror in
the State Dept or a copy of the text of the 13th IMF 'bailout' signed last July.
"... Despite massive amounts of evidence to the contrary, such people now enthusiastically whitewash the decades preceding Trump to turn it into a paragon of human liberty, justice and economic wonder. You don't have to look deep to understand that resistance liberals are now actually conservatives, brimming with nostalgia for the days before significant numbers of people became wise to what's been happening all along. ..."
"... Lying to yourself about history is one of the most dangerous things you can do. If you can't accept where we've been, and that Trump's election is a symptom of decades of rot as opposed to year zero of a dangerous new world, you'll never come to any useful conclusions ..."
"... Irrespective of what you think of Bernie Sanders and his policies, you can at least appreciate the fact his supporters focus on policy and real issues ..."
"... An illiberal democracy, also called a partial democracy, low intensity democracy, empty democracy, hybrid regime or guided democracy, is a governing system in which although elections take place, citizens are cut off from knowledge about the activities of those who exercise real power because of the lack of civil liberties; thus it is not an "open society". There are many countries "that are categorized as neither 'free' nor 'not free', but as 'probably free', falling somewhere between democratic and nondemocratic regimes". This may be because a constitution limiting government powers exists, but those in power ignore its liberties, or because an adequate legal constitutional framework of liberties does not exist. ..."
From a big picture perspective, the largest rift in American politics is between those
willing to admit reality and those clinging to a dishonest perception of a past that never
actually existed. Ironically, those who most frequently use "post-truth" to describe our
current era tend to be those with the most distorted view of what was really happening during
the Clinton/Bush/Obama reign.
Despite massive amounts of evidence to the contrary, such people now enthusiastically
whitewash the decades preceding Trump to turn it into a paragon of human liberty, justice and
economic wonder. You don't have to look deep to understand that resistance liberals are now
actually conservatives, brimming with nostalgia for the days before significant numbers of
people became wise to what's been happening all along.
They want to forget about the bipartisan coverup of Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11, all
the wars based on lies, and the indisputable imperial crimes disclosed by Wikileaks, Snowden
and others. They want to pretend Wall Street crooks weren't bailed out and made even more
powerful by the Bush/Obama tag team, despite ostensible ideological differences between the
two. They want to forget Epstein Didn't Kill Himself.
Lying to yourself about history is one of the most dangerous things you can do. If you can't
accept where we've been, and that Trump's election is a symptom of decades of rot as opposed to
year zero of a dangerous new world, you'll never come to any useful conclusions. As such, the
most meaningful fracture in American society today is between those who've accepted that we've
been lied to for a very long time, and those who think everything was perfectly fine before
Trump. There's no real room for a productive discussion between such groups because one of them
just wants to get rid of orange man, while the other is focused on what's to come. One side
actually believes a liberal world order existed in the recent past, while the other
fundamentally recognizes this was mostly propaganda based on myth.
Irrespective of what you think of Bernie Sanders and his policies, you can at least
appreciate the fact his supporters focus on policy and real issues. In contrast, resistance
liberals just desperately scramble to put up whoever they think can take us back to a
make-believe world of the recent past. This distinction is actually everything. It's the
difference between people who've at least rejected the status quo and those who want to rewind
history and perform a do-over of the past forty years.
A meaningful understanding that unites populists across the ideological spectrum is the
basic acceptance that the status quo is pernicious and unsalvageable, while the status
quo-promoting opposition focuses on Trump the man while conveniently ignoring the worst of his
policies because they're essentially just a continuation of Bush/Clinton/Obama. It's the most
shortsighted and destructive response to Trump imaginable. It's also why the Trump-era alliance
of corporate, imperialist Democrats and rightwing Bush-era neoconservatives makes perfect
sense, as twisted and deranged as it might seem at first. With some minor distinctions, these
people share nostalgia for the same thing.
This sort of political environment is extremely unhealthy because it places an intentional
and enormous pressure on everyone to choose between dedicating every fiber of your being to
removing Trump at all costs or supporting him. This anti-intellectualism promotes an ends
justifies the means attitude on all sides. In other words, it turns more and more people into
rhinoceroses.
Eugène Ionesco's masterpiece, Rhinoceros, is about a central European town where
the citizens turn, one by one, into rhinoceroses. Once changed, they do what rhinoceroses do,
which is rampage through the town, destroying everything in their path. People are a little
puzzled at first, what with their fellow citizens just turning into rampaging rhinos out of
the blue, but even that slight puzzlement fades quickly enough. Soon it's just the New
Normal. Soon it's just the way things are a good thing, even. Only one man resists the siren
call of rhinocerosness, and that choice brings nothing but pain and existential doubt, as he
is utterly profoundly alone.
A political environment where you're pressured to choose between some ridiculous binary of
"we must remove Trump at all costs" or go gung-ho MAGA, is a rhinoceros generating machine. The
only thing that happens when you channel your inner rhinoceros to defeat rhinoceroses, is you
get more rhinoceroses. And that's exactly what's happening.
The truth of the matter is the U.S. is an illiberal democracy in practice,
despite various myths to the contrary.
An illiberal democracy, also called a partial democracy, low intensity democracy, empty
democracy, hybrid regime or guided democracy, is a governing system in which although
elections take place, citizens are cut off from knowledge about the activities of those who
exercise real power because of the lack of civil liberties; thus it is not an "open society".
There are many countries "that are categorized as neither 'free' nor 'not free', but as
'probably free', falling somewhere between democratic and nondemocratic regimes". This may be
because a constitution limiting government powers exists, but those in power ignore its
liberties, or because an adequate legal constitutional framework of liberties does not
exist.
It's not a new thing by any means, but it's getting worse by the day. Though many of us
remain in denial, the American response to various crises throughout the 21st century was
completely illiberal. As devastating as they were, the attacks of September 11, 2001 did
limited damage compared to the destruction caused by our insane response to them. Similarly,
any direct damage caused by the election and policies of Donald Trump pales in comparison to
the damage being done by the intelligence agency-led "resistance" to him.
So are we all rhinoceroses now?
We don't have to be. Turning into a rhinoceros happens easily if you're unaware of what's
happening and not grounded in principles, but ultimately it is a choice. The decision to
discard ethics and embrace dishonesty in order to achieve political ends is always a choice. As
such, the most daunting challenge we face now and in the chaotic years ahead is to become
better as others become worse. A new world is undoubtably on the horizon, but we don't yet know
what sort of world it'll be. It's either going to be a major improvement, or it'll go the other
way, but one thing's for certain -- it can't stay the way it is much longer.
If we embrace an ends justifies the means philosophy, it's going to be game over for a
generation. The moment you accept this tactic is the moment you stoop down to the level of your
adversaries and become just like them. It then becomes a free-for-all for tyrants where
everything is suddenly on the table and no deed is beyond the pale. It's happened many times
before and it can happen again. It's what happens when everyone turns into rhinoceroses.
* * *
If you enjoyed this, I suggest you check out the following 2017 posts. It's never been more
important to stay conscious and maintain a strong ethical framework.
I recall that the Russiagate conspiracy theory was "proven" factual as well, and by many of
the same people who claim that Biden's corruption has been "debunked". Even though it was
absurd on its face and had been debunked numerous times, many people in fact continue to
insist otherwise.
It's a tough road being a contrarian on Russia. This is especially true today when the
entirety of the U.S. and European political system is aligned to demonize Russia at nearly
every level.
And the main reason for this is that Russia under President Vladimir Putin refuses to do the
West's bidding both at home and abroad. The central tenet of U.S. foreign policy is that U.S.
concerns, no matter where they are, are supreme and everyone else's are subordinate.
Russia under Putin doesn't play that game. He hasn't for nearly twenty years now. This is
not to say, of course, that objectively speaking Putin is a good man or even a good leader. In
studying Putin for the past seven years I've come to one inescapable conclusion.
He was exactly the leader Russia needed to dig the country out of the abyss it found itself
in when he took over. He is exactly the kind of leader Russia needs to guide it through the
next period of history.
So much analysis of Putin and Russia is so thoroughly ideologically tainted that, on that
basis alone, it should be dismissed out of hand. And it has been successful enough that even
the best analysts who are truly skeptical of the U.S. narrative still get some of the basics
about Russia and Putin horribly wrong.
I've been recommending Russia as an investment to people since early 2015 and its
state-owned gas giant Gazprom (NYSE:OGZPY) since mid-2014. I haven't wavered in that
recommendation, despite the ups and downs.
And the reason for this is simple. While markets do not trade on fundamentals every day,
over the long run a market's or stock's fundamentals do eventually overcome sentiment and
assert themselves on the price.
So, in 2014 when oil prices collapsed so did the price of Gazprom. The ruble went through a
crisis intended to oust Putin from power in revenge for his thwarting the U.S. takeover of
Crimea.
Putin's deft handling of the ruble crisis and Russia's impeccable national balance sheet
allowed both to survive and begin digging the country out of the latest hole placed in front of
it.
Since then the U.S. has piled on obstacle after obstacle in front of Russia in the global
marketplace for capital. The Magnitsky Act has been used like a bludgeon to scare investors
away from the land of the Evil Putin.
False flags and overt provocations to war in Syria, Ukraine and the U.K. have slowed the
pace of investment in Russia's capital markets. Gazprom for years languished both because of
the political risks of U.S. pressure in Europe to stop first the South Stream and then the
Nordstream 2 pipelines.
Frivolous lawsuits from Ukraine, the EU and the Baltics have dogged the company for years.
The EU has changed its laws to retroactively try and gain a legal upper hand on Gazprom's
pricing of natural gas. But, ultimately, none of it has worked.
Slowly, but surely, Russia's fundamentals and its stable and improving political situation
are winning the hearts of investors looking for yield in a yield-free world.
"They've made themselves bulletproof," says James Barrineau, co-head of emerging-market
debt for Schroders Investment in New York.
"They can pay off all their foreign debts with their central bank reserves. Plus, they're
cutting interest rates. The currency is very stable. And they have room on the fiscal side to
spend on their economy."
The first point is something I pointed out in 2015. The numbers were this good then. And
yet, the ratings agencies, like dutiful quislings, cut Russia's ratings to junk status.
And they did this against fundamentals like having enough money to pay off the entire
country's debt load, public and private, and at the time at
13.3% debt-to-GDP ratio . Today that ratio stands, after a currency crisis, at just
11.8%.
Someone remind me what the U.S.'s is?
As always, what the world responded to was the hardship of the U.S. all but kicking Russia
out of the dollar-funding markets. The only step not taken against Russia was removing it from
the SWIFT interbank messsaging system.
That wasn't done for the same reasons that it wasn't reinstated by Trump on Iran after he
pulled out of the JCPOA. It doesn't work. All it does is hasten the rate at which the country
learns to work without U.S. dollars.
By 2019 Russia, China and Iran have alternatives to SWIFT to prosecute international trade
outside of the U.S.'s purview. Once those transactions leave SWIFT the U.S. loses a very
powerful monitoring tool.
And in surviving this full court press to destroy Russia financially and keep capital from
fleeing there the U.S. has made it a stronger destination today than it would have ever been
had it not gone this route.
Instead of isolating Russia financially and destroying the ruble, it actually made the
dollar more suspect and raised the profile of the ruble across central Asia.
President Trump has weaponized the dollar to such an extent that he's raised the costs of
using it for countries that do significant business with Russia above that of the ruble.
And it starts with the political stability created by Putin and his deft diplomatic corps,
led by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Putin has made it a point of always keeping his promises
on the world stage, no matter how rocky the relationship.
Trump on the other hand has unilaterally bullied and sanctioned most of the world for not
doing what he wants. Putin keeps making this point over and over again, Trump is destroying the
long-term viability of the dollar. The key to that statement being 'long-term.'
Because a country that acts honorably on the world stage, encourages trade over blackmail,
honors its contracts even when the rules are arbitrarily changed against them and stands by its
allies will generate the kind of good will that will increase the willingness of people locally
to accept that country's currency.
Since Trump went on his sanction the world policy, the ruble has been on a tear in
international markets. While mildly strengthening versus the dollar (0.8%), the ruble has risen
11% versus the total basket of its trading partners (REER).
This is the clearest picture I can paint of the ruble decoupling from the U.S. dollar and
it's a trend worth watching into the future. Because as the dollar rises into the teeth of the
brewing financial crisis (think European banking meltdown currently underway) the ruble will
act as a port in the storm for those economies terminally short dollars.
With the Bank of Russia finally letting its boot off the neck of the Russian economy by
lowering interest rates aggressively over the past four months, the Ruble hasn't degraded one
bit.
If anything all this has done is strengthen demand for the ruble as pent-up demand in the
form of huge domestic savings now can be deployed as new business loans and corporate bond
issues at far better rates a few months ago.
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.
Please
enter a valid email Thank you for subscribing!Something went wrong. Please refresh
and try again.
That said the Bank of Russia is still behind the curve by looking at the spread between the
Overnight lending rate (a proxy for the benchmark rate) and the yield on a 1 year government
note.
All that's happened since Elvira Nabullina began cutting rates is demand for Russian debt
has skyrocketed as investors in the West search for safe returns and across Emerging Markets
starved of dollars. And while the ruble is nowhere close to overthrowing the dollar on the
global stage and likely never will, it only takes a small shift in demand to create outsized
effects on markets as comparatively small as Russia's.
The rate of de-dollarization of the Russia economy is not as fast as the headlines would
have you believe, but it is happening. The ruble now accounts for more than 30% of Russian
exports and 20% of its overall international trade.
The world is insanely short dollars at this point and will continue to be for the next
decade. That much is certain. It will fuel a massive dollar rally ove the next few years.
But Russia isn't alone in the woods anymore on this path. India, Turkey, China, Iran and
others understand what that reliance on the dollar means during economic downturns. And they
are working with Putin to lay the groundwork to keep their economies from collapsing as the
dollars flow out.
This is why Putin and Xi have been adamant about building ways to bypass the dollar for
local trade. It will allow the dollar short positions of local companies to fade just like did
for Russian companies after the ruble crisis in 2015.
Now that we're four years beyond the worst of that and the political reality surrounding
Russia far better than it was then, its stock market is booming, demand for its debt is rising
and contrarian investors are looking for the next generational play to park their cash despite
the obstacles the U.S. places in front of them.
The key for this will be the EU, as Russia's trade with the EU in euros is nearly as big as
it is in dollars now. This is what will prompt the rescinding of sanctions against Russia this
year.
When that happens you can expect a big pop in the Moscow Exchange.
The major forecasters see an oil supply surplus next year, but those bearish outlooks
largely depend on the health of U.S. shale growth in 2020, an assumption that is looking
increasingly fanciful.
Financial struggles are well-known, but the dominoes continue to fall. As Bloomberg
reported , some drillers have recently seen their credit lines reduced, limiting their
access to fresh capital. Twice a year in the spring and fall, banks reassess their credit lines
to shale drillers, and decide how much they will authorize companies to borrow. This time
around is expected to be the first time in roughly three years that lenders tighten up lending
capacities.
The curtailment in lending comes at a time when scrutiny on shale finances is increasing.
Share prices have fallen sharply this year as investors lose interest. The industry continues
to burn
cash , and lenders and investors shunning the industry.
Of course, if drillers cannot borrow to cover their financing gaps, they may be forced into
bankruptcy. The cutting of the borrowing base "can be a good precursor to potential bankruptcy
because as capital markets stay closed off for these companies, the borrowing base serves as
the only source of liquidity," Billy Bailey, Saltstone Capital Management LLC portfolio
manager, told Bloomberg.
Not every company is entirely cut off from capital markets. As Liam Denning
points out , Diamondback Energy was able to issue $3 billion in new bonds at low interest
rates, which highlights the case of "haves and have nots" within the industry.
But the financial stress helps explain the slowdown in U.S. oil production this year. The
U.S. added about 2 million barrels per day (mb/d) between January 2018 and the end of last
year; but output is only up a few hundred thousand barrels per day in 2019 from January through
August.
Confusingly, the IEA still forecasts a substantial increase in U.S. oil production in 2020
at 1.2 mb/d, but not
everyone agrees with that optimistic outlook. The credit crunch and financial stress in the
shale sector could lead to a disappointment in 2020.
It is against this bewildering backdrop that OPEC+ must decide its next move. The IEA says
that OPEC+ is in for some trouble as a supply glut looms – in large part because of shale
growth. Others agree, to be sure. Commerzbank said that OPEC's efforts to focus on laggards
such as Iraq and Nigeria will be insufficient. "It is a mystery why OPEC should believe that it
can avoid this oversupply by making just a few cosmetic adjustments," the investment bank said.
"By early next year at the latest OPEC thus risks being rudely awakened."
However, at the same time, the physical market is showing some slightly bullish signs. In
the oil futures market, front-month contracts for Brent are
trading at a premium to longer-dated ones. The six-month premium rose to $3.50 per barrel
recently, up from $1.90 last month,
Reuters reports. A large premium is typically associated with a tighter market.
Moreover, there is a chance of a thaw in the U.S.-China trade war, which could provide some
tailwinds to the global economy. It's become impossible to trust the daily rumors coming from
Washington and Beijing, but the two sides have shown some desire to at least call a truce and
not step up the tariffs.
Still, the economy has slowed. The OECD
warned that global GDP will decelerate to just 2.9 percent this year, and remain within a
2.9-3.0 percent range through 2021. This is the weakest rate of growth in a decade, and is down
sharply from the 3.8 percent seen last year. "Two years of escalating conflict over tariffs,
principally between the US and China, has hit trade, is undermining business investment and is
putting jobs at risk," the OECD said.
The U.S. and China, then, have a great deal of influence over the near-term prospects for
oil. As mentioned, there is still a wide range of opinions on the magnitude of the oil supply
surplus in 2020, but a breakthrough in the trade war would immediately shift growth
projections, oil demand trajectories, and, importantly, sentiment. Even the mere expectation of
an economic rebound would send oil prices rising, at least for a little while.
On the other hand, the thaw in the trade war is far from inevitable. The two sides have
shown little evidence, if any, that they are actually making progress on some of the structural
issues at hand. There is still the possibility that the talks fall apart and the trade war
marches on, or even grows worse.
Because it is generally assumed that the oil market has already factored in some degree of
optimism around tariff reduction, which has likely added a few dollars to the barrel of oil, a
reassessment to the downside would surely send oil prices tumbling.
Is it any wonder that the old foreign service establishment "embrace a geopolitical outlook that is simplistic, foolhardy, and
dangerous"?
The foreign service exam of that era (probably no better today) tested substantially on ones knowledge of fiction: novels and
such.
Rather like choosing career foreign service officers based on a person's performance in the entertainment trivia night at the
local watering hole. It was a test of memory not logic or insightfulness or historical perspective. These folks are not latter-day
De Toquevilles or great historians, even if many came from colleges viewed as top drawer.
"... He combines intrusive and authoritarian measures with an eager defense of plutocracy. ..."
"... This is the "centrism" of catering to corporate interests, pursuing a destructive hawkish foreign policy, and shortchanging the public at home. He would serve as the perfect foil for both Sanders and Warren. ..."
"... His stubborn brand of plutocratic centrism, as well as his overzealous use of stop-and-frisk tactics, would likely be a nonstarter for progressives, as well as the blue-collar workers who flipped to Trump in 2016. ..."
"... All indications are that most Democratic voters have no interest in what Bloomberg is selling. ..."
His brand of plutocratic centrism does not makes much sense in 2019
Bret Stephens cheers
on Mike Bloomberg's odd decision to run for the Democratic presidential nomination:
First, he would be a very good president, potentially a great one. Second, he stands a
much better chance of beating Donald Trump than anyone in the current Democratic field.
The claim that Bloomberg would be a good president is debatable at best, and there doesn't
appear to be any evidence to support the assertion that he has a better chance of winning than
any other Democratic candidate. Stephens is committing the pundit's fallacy by assuming that
the Democratic candidate that he finds least obnoxious must be the most appealing to voters,
and he is so ideologically biased against most Democrats and misrepresents their positions so
badly that his assessment of what they will do can't be trusted.
Both of Stephens' claims are almost beside the point, since it is very doubtful that
Bloomberg has any chance of securing the nomination. Bloomberg has repeatedly flirted with the
idea of running for president, and until now he has always been smart enough not to do it, but
for whatever reason he now intends to waste his money and everyone else's time with a vanity
campaign that has no real constituency among voters. The former mayor of New York could try
running on his record, but during his time as mayor he showed why he would have very limited
appeal in a general presidential election. He combines intrusive and authoritarian measures
with an eager defense of plutocracy. His presidential campaign is itself an expression of
that plutocracy reacting against what it perceives to be an unacceptable threat. Bloomberg has
been described
as a centrist, but he is a "centrist" only in the worst sense of siding with entrenched and
powerful interests. This is the "centrism" of catering to corporate interests, pursuing a
destructive hawkish foreign policy, and shortchanging the public at home. He would serve as the
perfect foil for both Sanders and Warren.
Tina Nguyen summed it up very well in an article
last year:
His stubborn brand of plutocratic centrism, as well as his overzealous use of
stop-and-frisk tactics, would likely be a nonstarter for progressives, as well as the
blue-collar workers who flipped to Trump in 2016.
It would be difficult to think of a worse mismatch between a candidate and a party than
Bloomberg and the Democrats. Bloomberg is a multi-billionaire seeking the nomination of a party
whose voters tend to view billionaires with a mix of distrust and loathing. Where Sanders and
Warren speak to Democratic voters and activists' concerns about inequality and the
concentration of wealth and power, Bloomberg is the walking embodiment of those concerns and he
is entering the race in no small part because he rejects the other candidates' policy
ideas.
As for Bloomberg's foreign policy views, his record will hardly endear him to Democratic
voters, either. This is the same man who disgracefully linked the Iraq war with 9/11 in
2004 back when he was still a Republican. He said, "Don't forget that the war started not very
many blocks from here." Of course, the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, except
that the Bush administration cynically exploited the fear produced by the attacks to sell an
unjust war based on lies. Bloomberg's past support for the Iraq war and his willingness to
promote Bush administration propaganda at the time will probably come back to haunt him as a
candidate.
Finally, Bloomberg's campaign "strategy" is eerily reminiscent of Rudy Giuliani's hilarious,
failed attempt in 2008. John Cassidy
explains :
Did you hear the one about Michael Bloomberg's plan to win the Democratic Presidential
nomination? He's going to skip the first four primaries and caucuses -- in Iowa, New
Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina -- then come storming through on Super Tuesday, March
3rd, when fourteen more states will go to the polls, including three biggies: California,
Texas, and North Carolina. A week later, the billionaire former New York City mayor will
steamroll his way through more states, including Michigan, Missouri, and Washington, giving
him unstoppable momentum as he heads for a general-election battle with Donald Trump.
Actually, it isn't a joke -- or not an intentional one.
This "strategy" is just dripping with entitlement. The idea that any candidate, no matter
how wealthy or well-known, can simply "skip" the early contests and expect to be taken
seriously as a candidate later on is so arrogant that it is practically begging for voters to
repudiate it at the polls. All indications are that most Democratic voters have no interest
in what Bloomberg is selling. Cassidy continues:
Just last week, pollsters from Fox News asked a sample of people intending to vote in the
Democratic primary how they would react if Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, or Bloomberg
entered the race. Half said they would definitely vote for Obama, twenty-seven per cent said
they would definitely vote for Clinton, and six per cent said they would definitely vote for
Bloomberg. Actually, six per cent may overstate Bloomberg's potential pool of supporters.
Nathaniel Rakich, of FiveThirtyEight, notes that Bloomberg "was generally registering around
2 or 3 percent in national primary polls before first taking his name out of consideration in
March."
Bloomberg is undoubtedly a successful businessman, and unlike Trump his success is real, but
he is also wildly out of touch with what most Democratic voters believe and want.
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC, where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in
the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The
American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from
the University of Chicago, and resides in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter .
A liberal watchdog group's attempt to nail Rudy Giuliani has backfired in spectacular
fashion after their FOIA request resulted in the US State Department releasing detailed
accusations of corruption against the Bidens - based on interviews with former Ukrainian
officials who were in charge of the investigations .
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the group
American Oversight , the State Department on Friday night released almost 100
pages of records detailing efforts by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate
corruption, which include contacts with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Rep. Devin Nunes
(R-CA) earlier this year.
While American Oversight's '
gotcha ' is that Giuliani had "multiple contacts" with Mike Pompeo and others while
investigating Ukraine corruption, they completely ignore interview notes containing detailed
allegations by former Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin - who Joe Biden had fired, as
well as his successor, prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko - who "believes Mr. Viktor Shokin the
former Prosecutor General is honest."
Viktor Shokin :
On a January 23, 2019 phone call between Shokin and Giuliani, Igor Fruman, Lev Parnas and
George Boyle, Shokin said:
"He was appointed to the position of General Prosecutor of Ukraine from 2015 until April of
2016, when he was removed at the request of Mr. Joseph Biden the Vice President of the United
States ."
"He [Shokin] became involved in a case against Mr. Mykola Zlochevsky the former Minister of
Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine. The case was opened as a result of Mr. Zlochevsky
giving himself/company permits to drill for gas and oil in Ukraine . Mr. Zlochevsky is also the
owner of Burisma Holdings ."
"Mr. Shokin stated that there are documents that list five (5) criminal cases in which Mr.
Zlochevesky is listed, with the main case being for issuing illegal gas exploration permits.
The following complaints are in the criminal case.
Mr. Zlochevsky was laundering money
Obtained assets by corrupt acts bribery
Mr. Zlochevsky removed approximately twenty three million US dollars out of Ukraine
without permission
While seated as the Minister he approved two addition entities to receive permits for gas
exploration
Mr. Zlochevsky was the owner of two secret companies that were part of Burisma Holdings
and gave those companies permits which made it possible for him to profit while he was the
sitting Minister .
"Mr Shokin further stated that there were several Burisma board appointments were made in
2014 as follows:
Joseph Blade former CIA employee assigned to Anti-Terrorist Unit
Alesksander Kwasnieski former President of Poland
Devon Archer roomate to the Christopher Heinz the step-son of Mr. John Kerry United
States Secretary of State
" Mr. Shokin stated that these appointments were made by Mr. Slochevsky in order to protect
himself. "
Shokin then details how in July 2015, "US Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt told him that the
investigation has to be handled with white gloves, which according to Mr. Shokin, that implied
do nothing. On or about September 2015 Mr. Pyatt gave a speech in Odessa where he stated that
the cases were not investigated correctly and that Mr. Shokin may be corrupt ."
"Mr. Shokin further stated that on February of 2016 warrants were placed on the accounts of
multiple people in Ukraine. There were requests for information on Hunter Biden to which
nothing was received. "
"It is believed that Hunter Biden receives a salary, commission plus one million dollars
."
"President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko [who Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in
US loan guarantees] told Mr. Shokin not to investigate Burisma as it was not in the interest of
Joe and/or Hunter Biden . Mr. Shokin was called into Mr. Poroshenko's office and told that the
investigation into Burisma and the Managing Director where Hunter Biden is on the board, has
caused Joe Biden to hold up one billion dollars in US aid to Ukraine.
"Mr. Shokin stated that on or around April of 2016 Mr. Petro Poroshenko called him and told
him he had to be fired as the aid to the Ukraine was being withheld by Joe Biden. Mr. Biden
told Mr. Poroshenko that he had evidence that Mr. Shokin was corrupt and needed to be fired.
Mr. Shokin was dismissed in April of 2016 and the US aid was delivered within one and one half
months."
"On a different point Mr. Shokin believes the current Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch denied
his visa to travel to the US. Mr. Shokin stated that she is close to Mr. Biden. Mr. Shokin also
stated that there were leaks by a person named Reshenko of the Ukrainian State Secret Service
about the Manafort Black Book. Mr. Shokin stated that there is possible deceit in the Manafort
Black Book ."
Yuriy Lutsenko :
Lutsenko takes Shokin's interview one step further in a January 25 phone interview with
Giuliani and associates - describing how Ukraine has two secretive units which are protected by
a US Ambassador.
"Mr. Lutsenko went on to explain that there is a unit called Specialized Anticorruption
Prosecutor's Office (SAP) which has under its purview National Anticorruption Bureau Ukraine
(NABU) which investigates corruption cases that involved public figures from Mayors upward. He
stated that the current US Ambassador protects SAP and NABU ," adding "His office has
absolutely no control over SAP or NABU and can't even ask what they are working on however they
fall under his "control."
Of note, NABU was established in October 2014 "by Mr. George Kent who was the Deputy Chief
to the Mission in Ukraine."
Lutsenko "went on to say that he began looking at the same case Mr. Shokin was looking at
(mentioned above) and he believes Hunter Biden receives millions of dollars in compensation
from Burisma. He produced a document from Latvia that showed several million dollars that were
distributed out of Burisma's account. The record showed two (2) companies and four (4)
individuals receiving approximately sixteen million dollars in disbursements as
follows:
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.
Please
enter a valid email Thank you for subscribing!Something went wrong. Please refresh
and try again.
Companies:
Wirelogic Technology $14,665,982
Digitex $1,900,000
Individuals:
Alexsander Kwasnewski $1,150,000
Alan Apter $302,887
Devon Archer Amount not revealed by Latvia
Hunter Biden Amount not revealed by Latvia
"Mr Lutsenko
Read the interviews below (and see the full release here
):
I gave up long ago in relying on US main stream media to find truth. US MSM TRUTH is now
an oxymoron, words that should never be used in together in the same sentence. If you don't
know what an oxymoron is well military intelligence is an oxymoron, and cotton balls and
jumbo shrimp.
One of the ancillary negative attributes is Americans are lied to so much, or given the
'mushroom treatment' to the extent that completely uninformed people suddenly act like they
are world-renowned experts on a variety of subjects. In reality they don't know the
difference between **** and shinola, they are so buried in the former and kept out of the
light or any form of enlightenment.
The entire political and social discourse in America has declined to the point that most
of what I hear on US MSM TV is bull shyt, and disgusting. Only in America has the discussion
of what matters for the future of a nation and its people been reduced to the level of anal
and insipid.
If you pay attention to facts and truth, it doesn't take long to recognize MSM for what it
is; Sheople Food for ignorant sheep.
The Americans appear to be the least informed people I've met in my travels around various
countries. It's truly sad that these people from other countries know more about Merica than
Mericans do. Yet MSM belittles them.
Some of the best articles I've read regularly are here @ Zero Hedge. These articles are by
people that have their eyes and ears wide and the brain is firing on all cylinders.
You truly live in a country run by idiots with 3rd world like elections. The
contradictions between common sense and government actions are just too many to have happened
by accident or chance. But perhaps the leaders are not the idiots. Maybe the people that
actually tolerate them are the true morons.
So state department has all these information and didn't use it! Trump and Giuliani had to
break the USA law. How stupid are they? How stupid? Why Trump hold military aid when just
asking Pompeo and he would have given him everything?
LMAO I would love Trump to be impeached for something stupid and unnecessary, he didn't
even care if Ukrainian start investigation of Bidens he just wanted press conference! LOL
LMAO
All the banana Republicans just made my day, Nunes is in trouble now tooo lol
How absurd! Hollywood would cash it, should name it: "The Dumb in The White House"!
Really? Got a link to prove your spew? Well I have 1 that says you are wrong.
===================
Obama Bin Biden and the HRC crime cabal is being exposed at every turn.
You might find this piece interesting. Link to full article below. This is going deep.
Looks like theft of loans incoming, then laundered, then re-lent back to Ukraine. If so,
going to be ugly on Obama Bin Biden and the Libtard Clan.
How many other countries that got regime changed did this happen in?
"Last week, November 14, the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO), unnoticed by the media,
announced a new suspicion to the notorious owner of Burisma, ex-Ecology Minister Zlochevsky.
According to the suspicion, the Yanukovych family is suspected, in particular, with
legalizing (laundering) of criminally obtained income through Franklin Templeton Investments,
an investment fund carrying out purchases of external government loan bonds totaling $7.4
billion," Derkach said.
With reference to the investigation, he emphasized: it was money criminally obtained by
the "family" of Yanukovych and invested in the purchase of Ukrainian debt in 2013-2014.
For his part, MP Oleksandr Dubinsky from the Servant of the People faction said that
according to investigators, "the Yanukovych 'family' illegally obtained $7.4 billion and
laundered the funds through an investment fund close to some representatives of the U.S.
Democratic Party in the form of external government loan bonds."
Meanwhile, Derkach said that several facts indicate Franklin Templeton Investments'
relationship with the U.S. Democratic Party.
"The son of Templeton's founder, John Templeton Jr., was one of President Obama's major
campaign donors. Another fund-related character is Thomas Donilon. Managing Director of
BlackRock Investment Institute, shareholder Franklin Templeton Investments, which has the
largest share in the fund. It is noteworthy that he previously was Obama's national security
advisor," Derkach said."
America is the epicenter of world public and private corruption and gangsterism - a
kleptocracy run by criminals complicit with corporate crooks, headquartered on Wall Street,
profiting at the public's expense.
Monied interests transformed the nation into an unprecedented money making racket,
scamming ordinary people of their savings, jobs, homes and futures so privileged elites can
get richer and more powerful.
From inception, the business of America has always been business - meaning license to
pillage, defraud and benefit extralegally, including tax avoidance more than anywhere else
worldwide, encouraging high-net-worth foreign individuals to shift funds to the US free from
taxation.
Government of, by, and for its privileged few allows grand theft on an unprecedented
scale. Markets are manipulated up or down for profit, scamming the unwary.
Authorities permitted the greatest ever wealth shift from ordinary people to its rich and
powerful, the grandest of grand theft, facilitated by Fed controlled money, credit and debt -
Wall Street owned and operated.
America's dark legacy is largely concealed from view. Enormous wealth is hidden in tax
havens or investments at home and abroad, free from taxation.
Wall Street banks and other giant US financial institutions are at the center of
unprecedented criminality, aided by government co-conspirators.
Even Saul Alinsky would say the Dumbocrats have gone overboard with his admonition to:
"Accuse your opponents of that of which you are guilty"
Since accusing Trump of corruption and their fake impeachment has drawn more attention to
Biden and then to the entire corruption of the entire Obama administration. And to the
corruption Queen, Hillary and then to the fake charity/money laundering operation known as
the Clinton Global Initiative. But we don't call them libtards without good reasons. They
should have followed the rule the mafia uses:
In the past, I thought that Hong Kong was dominated by a narrow rich oligarchy with rules
that kept the input from hoi-polloi to the minimum, which meant low taxes for business and the
rich etc. From the point of view of Cato Institute it is the definition of paradise, but the
life in paradise may have its discontent.
Compare with Chile that has exemplary record of "property rights" since Pinochet era with a
constitution that makes it very hard to change, and yet, the locals are not happy and neither
Russian nor Bolivarian agitators were identfied.
Or Colombia, another shiny bastion of democracy, allowing very wide spectrum of relationship
between bosses and workers (assassinations of uppity organizers included). I would be curious
if systematic and widespread murder in the defense of freedom merits downgrading in Cato
Institute world freedom index.
Here's a handy piece of advice for non-American nations around the world: Whenever some
American starts running its mouth about crusading for Freedom, Democracy, Human Rights, or
similar propaganda slogans, get ready to defend your nation. These slogans are merely the
American version of the White Man's Burden and Western Civilizing Mission.
They are a clear and present threat that the American predator is slouching towards
you.
So Trump is coaching us deplorables that freedom is literally nonsense unless we say
"freedom from ____ ". [we have to fill in the blank space to make any sense!]
I am sure he knows that. Doesn't he? I am sure you, dear reader,knows it, too.
Trump wants freedom from taxation. And he wants to be free to oppress others. Also, see
Hudson's definition of the term in his J is for Junk Economics as Trump was totally
schooled in neoliberal economics.
"Hong Kong is a repressive police state" says Joshua Wong, and yet it is consistently near
the top of the list in the Cato Institute world freedom index.
"... Without understanding the reality of Obama's coup in Ukraine , there is no way of honestly explaining Ukrainegate. The 1953 Iran coup produced, as blowback, the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Obama's 2014 coup in Ukraine likewise is having its blowbacks, but of different types zerohedge ..."
"... Victoria Nuland is reported to have been overheard to say on a cell phone - "Fuck the EU." This was evidently a response to European attempts to head off a coup by West Ukrainian sons and grandsons of Galicians (west Ukrainians) who fought with Nazi Germany against the USSR in WW2. Actually there was a Galician division (a lot of Galicians) in the Waffen SS. Some might think that was not such a bad thing in itself but does the world really need a Ukraine run by neo-Nazis? ..."
There are many instances of U.S. coups that the Government lied about and that afterward had
negative blowback. The 1953 U.S. coup against Iran's democratically elected Government wasn't
revealed to the American public until decades after it had happened. It had long been alleged to have been a
'democratic revolution' in Iran . Our Government and media have been lying to us for a long
time, and not only about 'WMD in Iraq'. We shall be documenting here that that 1953 coup
in Iran (and other similar instances by the U.S. Government) is being repeated (yet again) in
the case of the February 2014 U.S. coup that occurred in Ukraine. The regime is very effective at lying , at deceiving , at manipulating , its public, no less now than it was then .
Without
understanding the reality of Obama's coup in Ukraine , there is no way of
honestly explaining Ukrainegate. The 1953 Iran coup produced, as blowback, the Islamic
Revolution in Iran in 1979. Obama's 2014 coup in Ukraine likewise is having its blowbacks, but
of different types zerohedge
-----------------
Victoria Nuland is reported to have been overheard to say on a cell phone - "Fuck the EU."
This was evidently a response to European attempts to head off a coup by West Ukrainian sons
and grandsons of Galicians (west Ukrainians) who fought with Nazi Germany against the USSR in
WW2. Actually there was a Galician division (a lot of Galicians) in the Waffen SS. Some might
think that was not such a bad thing in itself but does the world really need a Ukraine run by
neo-Nazis?
There is the awkward issue of the Donbas industrial region in east Ukraine. The people there
are mostly Orthodox Christians in contrast to the Galicians who claim to be my
co-coreligionists in the embrace of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Well, they are
demographically that at least. The east Ukrainians prefer Russia, poor fools. The extent of
Russian government intervention in the east is unclear to me. It is likely that it extends to
equipment, ammunition and training, at least that.
A question for me is the motivation behind the antipathy of the American neo-liberals and
neocons toward Russia. There are a lot of Jews scattered among these groups. Is it a group
memory of Tsarist pograms that eats at them? Israel does not seem to have a special problem
with modern Russia. Is it Russia's relentless persecution of homosexuals? There are a lot of
LGBTQ supporters among the two groups. Or, do these people see Russia as a plausible
geopolitical rival for the US? Surely it cannot be as simple, or simpleminded as that. The
undying USSR as chimera? Perhaps it is that. pl
The dichotomy between the fairly good relations Russia has with Israel compared to the
States has long seemed peculiar. There are a lot of Russian Jewish ex-pats in Israel and
quite a few in the USA though I think most of those here arrived earlier than the ones in
Israel.
In spite of the wide perception here of official suppression of Jews in Russia reality
perhaps differs.
Amy Chua, in writing her book "World on Fire" recounts her Jewish husband's response when
she discovered 6 of the 7 principal oligarchs were Jewish. He raised an eyebrow and said:
"Only 6?"
The oligarchs were extremely unpopular in Russia. Some of these oligarchs have since been
purged while others re-aligned from Yeltsin to Putin.
The book is a good read about different economically dominant minorities around the
World.
Regarding the motivation behind the antipathy of the American neo-liberals and neocons toward
Russia, I think it might have something to do with all those Merkavas taken out by Kornets in
2006.
Well, there would be the mindset that gave rise to the Wolfowitz doctrine--a fear and
loathing of near-peer competitors. Rage at having had them down and a boot at their throats
under Yeltsin, only for them to get up off the mat. When you think of how much insulted
hubris goes into the rage against Iran after the humiliation of the Embassy takeover and
eviction. Then there is Putin's assertion of primacy over the West-aided pillage by Russia's
own oligarchs. His reading of the riot act to them, not few of whom were Jewish. Another
unforgivable sin. And perhaps more than anything the example he sets of patriotic resistance
to transnational oligarchy. And now they are beginning to hand out some diplomatic and
military ass-kickings, if war is an extension of policy, they seem to have established
military doctrine that actually serves to support diplomatic and political campaigns, rather
than the reverse. Anyway, a few thoughts...
Chris Hedges is our very own modern day Thomas Paine. Too bad most the sheep don't even
know he exists let alone be fired by his deeply powerful words and ideas. He is so dangerous
he is universally banned by any and all major media. He is so smart, so well read and so
incredibly morally powerful, they make sure only those few who like myself, go looking can
actually find him.
I only recently discovered Hedges myself. Needless to say, his speeches have blown my
mind. It only requires one to take a look at the world around us to see he speaks the truth.
If only more would wake up to this truth.
renderer-text-content expanded"> There is this Frank Zappa quote, I keep thinking of
when listening to Chris Hedges "The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's
profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to
maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will
move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the
theater." The illusion is hastily crumbling ... thanks CH for wording the decay so
clearly
Four cops were recently indicted for beating an under cover cop posing as a protester
during the recent St Louis race riots. Chris is absolutely correct when he says antifa is
half cops. The oligarchs want Marshall Law. And cops are playing their part in seeing that it
comes to pass.
And again, if we do win despite all the structural injustices in the system the Rs inherited and seek to expand, well, those
injustices don't really absolutely need to be corrected, because we will still have gotten the right result from the system
as is.
This is a pretty apt description of the mindset of Corporate Democrats. Thank you !
May I recommend you to listen to Chris Hedge 2011 talk
On Death of the Liberal Class At least to the first
part of it.
Corporate Dems definitely lack courage, and as such are probably doomed in 2020.
Of course, the impeachment process will weight on Trump, but the Senate hold all trump cards, and might reverse those effects
very quickly and destroy, or at lease greatly diminish, any chances for Corporate Demorats even complete on equal footing in 2020
elections. IMHO Pelosi gambit is a really dangerous gambit, a desperate move, a kind of "Heil Mary" pass.
Despair is a very powerful factor in the resurgence of far right forces. And that's what happening right now and that's why
I suspect that far right populism probably will be the decisive factor in 2020 elections.
IMHO Chris explains what the most probable result on 2020 elections with be with amazing clarity.
Bill Clinton destroyed the USA economy and middle class like no president has ever done.
Bush II and Obama exacerbated the destruction by the hundred folds.
I believe Hedges statement that "the true correctives to society were social movements
that never achieved formal political power" is perhaps one of the most important things for
each of us to understand.
I watched this with interest and curiosity and growing skepticism although he makes some
killer points and cites some extremely disturbing facts; above all he accepts and
uncritically so the American narrative of history.
The message from democrats is "hey we're not bigots". Most people (repubs+dems) aren't. If
they keep calling on that for energy the Dems will forever continue to lose. If they don't
come back to the working class they might as well just call themselves conservatives.
Those of us who seek the truth can't stop looking under every stone. The truth will set
you free but you must share it with those who are ready to hear it and hide it from those who
can hurt you for exposing it. MT
"A Society that looses the capacity for the sacred cannibalizes itself until it dies
because it exploits the natural world as well as human beings to the point of collapse."
I believe Hedges statement that "the true correctives to society were social movements
that never achieved formal political power" is perhaps one of the most important things for
each of us to understand.
I watched this with interest and curiosity and growing skepticism although he makes some
killer points and cites some extremely disturbing facts; above all he accepts and
uncritically so the American narrative of history. The Progressive movement, for example,
(written into American history as being far more important that it ever really was,) unlike
Socialism or Communism was primarily just a literary and a trendy intellectually movement
that attempted, (unconvincingly,) to persuade poor, exploited and abused Americans that non
of those other political movements, (reactive and grass-roots,) were needed here and that
capitalism could and might of itself, cure itself; it conceded little, promised much and
unlike either Communism or Socialism delivered fuck all. Personally I remain unconvinced also
by, "climate science," (which he takes as given,) and which seems to to me to depend far too
much on faith and self important repeatedly insisting that it's true backed by lurid and
hysterical propaganda and not nearly enough on rational scientific argument, personally I
can't make head nor tail of the science behind it ? (it may well be true, or not; I can't
tell.) But above all and stripped of it his pretensions his argument is just typical theist,
(of any flavor you like,) end of times claptrap all the other systems have failed, (China for
example somewhat gives the lie to death of Communism by the way and so on,) the end is neigh
and all that is left to do is for people to turn to character out of first century fairly
story. I wish him luck with that.
The message from democrats is "hey we're not bigots". Most people (repubs+dems) aren't. If
they keep calling on that for energy the Dems will forever continue to lose. If they don't
come back to the working class they might as well just call themselves conservatives.
I have always loved Chris Hedges, but ever since becoming fully awake it pains me to see
how he will take gigantic detours of imagination to never mention Israel, AIPAC or Zionism,
and their complete takeover of the US. What a shame.
The continued growth of unproductive debt against the low or nonexistent growth of GDP is
the recipe for collapse, for the whole world economic system.
I agree with Chris about the tragedy of the Liberal Church. Making good through identity
politics however, is every bit as heretical and tragic as Evangelical Republican corrupted
church think, in my humble, Christian opinion.
The death of the present western hemisphere governments and "democratic" institutions must
die right now for humanity to be saved from the zombies that rule it. 'Cannibalization" of
oikonomia was my idea, as well as of William Engdahl. l am glad hearing Hedges to adopt the
expression of truth. ( November 2019. from Phthia , Hellas ).
ass="comment-renderer-text-content expanded"> Gosh , especially that last conclusion
,was terrific so I want to paste the whole of that Auden poem here:- September 1, 1939 W. H.
Auden - 1907-1973
... ... ...
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
It does serves the interests of military-industrial complex. And this is all that matters.
Notable quotes:
"... IMHO, in Ukraine the USA deviated from its longstanding policy of supporting constitutional order governance, allied with far right nationalists and smashed the constitutional order installing marionette far right government ( Nulandgate ) . On the part of the USA this was done to achieve geopolitical goals of weakening Russia. On the part of UE this was done for expanding EU economic "Lebensraum" into xUSSR space. ..."
"... In this sense, Obama, and especially Obama's State Department, are a clear predecessors of Trump's turn to the right. See the discussion by Professor Cohen: ..."
While the discussion of this issue on emotional level is clearly fun, the key question here is: did the economic conditions
in the USA changed in a way that the majority of population from now on will consistently support a far right party (or a far
right faction within the Republican Party).
And to support far right (neofascist) ideas as a reaction to the process of sliding standard of living and the lack of job
opportunities in conditions of the crisis of neoliberalism in the USA and the associated process of de-legitimization of neoliberal
elite (Schiff)
Marxism used to teach us that the way people live define the way people think ;-)
I am also alarmed at the support of Ukrainegate among esteemed commentariat. When you consider "military assistance" as the
way to pressure the country, the first thing to discuss is whether this military assistance serves the USA national interests
or not. This was not done.
IMHO, in Ukraine the USA deviated from its longstanding policy of supporting constitutional order governance, allied with far
right nationalists and smashed the constitutional order installing marionette far right government ( Nulandgate ) . On the part
of the USA this was done to achieve geopolitical goals of weakening Russia. On the part of UE this was done for expanding EU economic
"Lebensraum" into xUSSR space.
This was the case, long before Trump, when the USA demonstrated clearly neofascist tendencies in foreign policy. In this sense,
Obama, and especially Obama's State Department, are a clear predecessors of Trump's turn to the right. See the discussion by Professor
Cohen:
"... their ground on which to impeach Trump -- and thereby to install the current Vice President Mike Pence as being America's President -- Trump's having colluded with Russia in order to win the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, but that effort failed because it was false and was based on highly questionable evidence, supplied largely through a firm, Crowdstrike, that the Democratic National Committee had hired in order to find dirt against then-candidate and now-President Trump. ..."
"... Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it ... It sounds horrible to me. ..."
"... These matters are likelier to be publicly discussed afterward, when the case goes to the Senate, but might be too 'sensitive' to be brought up even there -- especially if they make both Democratic and Republican officials look bad, such as, for example, if both Democrats and Republicans had participated in a February 2014 coup against, and overthrowing, Ukraine's democratically elected Government, and -- if that happened, as we will show it did -- how this fact might affect Trump's relationship with Zelensky. So: a lot is to be shown here, and this will be information that the 'news'-media have been hiding from the public, not reporting to the public. ..."
"... Without understanding the reality of Obama's coup in Ukraine , there is no way of honestly explaining Ukrainegate. The 1953 Iran coup produced, as blowback, the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Obama's 2014 coup in Ukraine likewise is having its blowbacks, but of different types. ..."
"... Obama had selected Yovanovitch because he knew that (just like Pyatt) she supported his polices regarding Ukraine and would adhere to his instructions. Yovanovitch was part of Obama's team, just as she had previously been part of George W. Bush's team. All three of them were staunch neoconservatives, just as Ambassador Pyatt had been, and just as Victoria Nuland had been, and just as Joe Biden had been. ..."
"... A neoconservative believes in the rightfulness of American empire over this entire planet, even over the borders of the other nuclear superpower, Russia. Obama's standard phrase arguing for it was "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation" , meaning that all other nations are "dispensable." ..."
"... Yovanovich stated her views regarding what America's policies toward Ukraine should be, and these were Obama's policies, too; these views are the neoconservative outlook [and my own comments in brackets here will indicate her most egregious distortions and lies in this key passage from her]: ..."
...the American public should have been far more skeptical about the Ukrainegate
narrative than they were, because, at first, Democrats were trying to use, as their ground on
which to impeach Trump -- and thereby to install the current Vice President Mike Pence as being
America's President -- Trump's having colluded with Russia in order to win the 2016 election
against Hillary Clinton, but that effort failed because it was false and was based on highly
questionable evidence, supplied largely through a firm, Crowdstrike, that the Democratic
National Committee had hired in order to find dirt against then-candidate and now-President
Trump. Now the Democrats' ground, for replacing President Donald Trump by his Vice President
Mike Pence, is that in Trump's 25 July 2019 phone-call to Ukraine's new President Volodmyr
Zelensky, Trump supposedly pressured Zelensky to have Joe Biden investigated.
One of the first signs of a liar is that the person switches his story -- changes to a new
and different reason for 'justifying' his actions (in this case, impeachment) -- and this
clearly is being done now by the Democrats and the 'news'-media, in order to replace President
Donald Trump by his Vice President Mike Pence. Consequently: Americans are insufficiently
suspicious against the present impeachment hearings. Americans need to examine carefully beyond
the mere surface -- much deeper. The links here are provided in order to facilitate the
reader's direct access to the highest quality (i.e., most trustworthy) evidence in the case, so
that the reader may see, on one's own , what the 'news'-media do not report.
25 September 2019 was when
a clear and copyable version of the transcript of that complete July 25th phone
conversation finally became published, online, by Rhode Island's Providence Journal; and
here is the only passage in the complete transcript where Trump mentioned Biden (three times,
in fact -- the only three times that the word "Biden" appears in the entire transcript):
Rudy [Giuliani] very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you
could speak to him, that would be great. The former ambassador [to Ukraine] from the United
States, the woman [Marie Yovanovitch] , was bad news and the people she was dealing with in
the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, there's a lot
of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to
find out about that so whatever you can do with the [U.S.] Attorney General [William Barr]
would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can
look into it ... It sounds horrible to me.
What "prosecution," of whom, for what, and why? The media ignore those questions. when they
aren't simply assuming an answer to them. But no such answer ought to be assumed. Nor should
these important questions be ignored. Here, the answers to those questions will be
documented.
Furthermore, elsewhere in that conversation, Trump said:
I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and
Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole
situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike. I guess you have one of your wealthy people.
The server, they say Ukraine has it.
Zelensky responded by asserting that "the next prosecutor general [in Ukraine] will be 100%
my person" and that "he or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company
[Crowdstrike] that you mentioned in this issue." Nothing at all was said by Zelensky about any
Biden, at any point in the entire phone-call. It wasn't mainly about the Bidens such as the
press alleges to be the case.
In fact: the "favor" that Trump was asking about wasn't concerning the Bidens, but it
instead concerned the investigation that Trump's Attorney General (referenced here when Trump
said "whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great") is now heading, into the
question of why Obama's FBI and entire intelligence community had proceeded with the highly
suspect Christopher Steele and Crowdstrike report that the Democratic National Committee had
hired under Obama in order to come up with allegations to use against Trump, and why the Obama
Administration never demanded to inspect the DNC's own server in order to examine the key
physical evidence in the alleged Russiagate case against Trump -- much less, what testimony and
evidence Julian Assange might have in the alleged Russiagate case . What did Trump mean when he
said "The server, they say Ukraine has it"? Did Trump actually think that Zelensky could supply
that physical evidence? What did he mean? What was he asking of Zelensky when Trump said, "The
server, they say Ukraine has it"?
One can't understand the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump unless one understands
accurately what was happening in Ukraine and what the motivations were of the persons who were
involved in U.S.-Ukraine policy, first under U.S. President Barack Obama, and then under his
successor Donald Trump. Information will be presented here, about those matters, which probably
won't come up in the House impeachment hearings. These matters are likelier to be publicly
discussed afterward, when the case goes to the Senate, but might be too 'sensitive' to be
brought up even there -- especially if they make both Democratic and Republican officials look
bad, such as, for example, if both Democrats and Republicans had participated in a February
2014 coup against, and overthrowing, Ukraine's democratically elected Government, and -- if
that happened, as we will show it did -- how this fact might affect Trump's relationship with Zelensky. So: a lot is to be shown here, and this will be information that the 'news'-media
have been hiding from the public, not reporting to the public.
There are many instances of U.S. coups that the Government lied about and that afterward had
negative blowback. The 1953 U.S. coup against Iran's democratically elected Government wasn't
revealed to the American public until decades after it had happened. It had long been alleged to have been a
'democratic revolution' in Iran . Our Government and media have been lying to us for a long
time, and not only about 'WMD in Iraq'. We shall be documenting here that that 1953 coup in
Iran (and other similar instances by the U.S. Government) is being repeated (yet again) in the
case of the February 2014 U.S. coup that occurred in Ukraine. The regime is very effective at lying , at deceiving , at manipulating , its public, no less now than it was then . Without
understanding the reality of Obama's coup in Ukraine , there is no way of
honestly explaining Ukrainegate. The 1953 Iran coup produced, as blowback, the Islamic
Revolution in Iran in 1979. Obama's 2014 coup in Ukraine likewise is having its blowbacks, but
of different types.
PART TWO: TRUMP'S PURPOSE IN THE 25 JULY
2019 CALL TO ZELENSKY
The argument to be presented here is that Trump, in this phone-call, and generally, was
trying not only to obtain help with evidence-gathering in the "Crowdstrike" matter (which A.G.
Barr is now investigating, and which also is the reason why Trump specifically mentioned
"Crowdstrike" at the only instance in the phone-call where he was requesting a "favor" from
Zelensky), but to change the policy toward Ukraine that had been established by Obama (via
Obama's coup and its aftermath). This is a fact, which will be documented here. Far more than
politics was involved here; ideology was actually very much involved. Trump was considering a
basic change in U.S. foreign policies. He was considering to replace policies that had been
established under, and personnel who had been appointed by, his immediate predecessor, Barack
Obama. Democrats are extremely opposed to any such changes. This is one of the reasons for the
renewed impeachment-effort by Democrats. They don't want to let go of Obama's worst policies.
But changing U.S. foreign policy is within a President's Constitutional authority to do.
Trump fired the flaming neoconservative John Bolton on 10 September 2019. This culminated a
growing rejection by Trump of neoconservatism -- something that he had never thought much about
but had largely continued from the Obama Administration, which invaded and destroyed Libya in
2011, Syria in 2012-, Yemen in 2015-, and more -- possibly out-doing even George W. Bush, who
likewise was a flaming neocon. Trump's gradual turn away from neoconservatism wasn't just
political; it was instead a reflection, on his part, that maybe, just maybe, he had actually
been wrong and needed to change his foreign policies, in some important ways. (He evidently
still hasn't yet figured out precisely what those changes should be.)
For example, on 15 November 2019, the impeachment focus was on the testimony of Marie
Yovanovitch, whom Trump had recently (
in May 2019 ) fired as the Ambassador to Ukraine. Democrats presented her as having been
the paradigm of professionalism and nonpartisanship in America's foreign service. She was
actually a neoconservative who had been appointed as an Ambassador first by President George W.
Bush on 20 November 2004, after her having received an M.S. from the National War College in
2001. Obama appointed her, on 18 May 2016, to replace Geoff Pyatt ( shown and heard in this video confidentially
receiving instructions from Obama's agent controlling Ukraine-policy, Victoria Nuland ) as
the Ambassador to Ukraine. Obama had selected Yovanovitch because he knew that (just like
Pyatt) she supported his polices regarding Ukraine and would adhere to his instructions.
Yovanovitch was part of Obama's team, just as she had previously been part of George W. Bush's
team. All three of them were staunch neoconservatives, just as Ambassador Pyatt had been, and
just as Victoria Nuland had been, and just as Joe Biden had been.
A neoconservative believes in the rightfulness of American empire over this entire planet,
even over the borders of the other nuclear superpower, Russia. Obama's standard phrase arguing
for it was "The United States is and remains
the one indispensable nation" , meaning that all other nations are "dispensable." This
imperialistic belief was an extension of Yale's 'pacifist' pro-Nazi America
First movement , which was supported by Wall Street's Dulles brothers in the
early 1940s , and which pro-Nazi movement Trump himself has prominently praised. Unlike the
progressive U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had planned the U.N. in order to be
the anti -imperialist emerging first-ever global world government of nations, which would
democratically set and ultimately enforce international laws of a new global federation of
nations -- a global democratic federation of sovereign republics -- neoconservatives are U.S.
imperialists, who want instead to destroy the U.N., and to extend American power over the
entire world, make America not only the policeman to the world but the lawmaker for the world,
and the judge jury and executioner of the world, the global dictator. The U.N. would be
weakened to insignificance. This has gradually been occurring. It continued even after what had
been thought to have been the 1991 end of the Cold War, and after Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize
in 2009 for his deceptive rhetoric. Yale's John
Bolton was the leading current proponent of the America First viewpoint, much more straightforward in his advocacy of
it than the far wilier Obama was; and, until recently, Trump supported that unhedged
advocacy for the neoconservative viewpoint: U.S. imperialism. Regarding the campaign to take
over Russia, however, he no longer does -- he has broken with Bolton on that central
neoconservative goal, and he is trying to reverse that policy, which had been even more extreme
than Obama's policy towards Russia was (which policy had, in fact , produced the coup in Ukraine).
When the Cold War had supposedly ended in 1991, it ended actually only on the Russian side, but secretly it continued and continues on
as policy on the American imperialists' side . The neoconservative side, which controlled
the U.S. Government by that time (FDR's vision having been destroyed when Ronald Reagan entered
the White House in 1981), has no respect whatsoever for Russia's sovereignty over its own land,
and certainly not over the land of Russia's neighbors, such as Ukraine, which has a 1,625-mile
border with Russia. Neoconservatives want U.S. missiles to be pointed at Moscow all along
Russia's border. That would be as if Russia had wanted to position Russian missiles all along
Canada's and Mexico's borders with the U.S.; it would disgust any decent person, anywhere, but
neoconservatives aren't decent people. Neoconservatives (U.S. imperialists) seek for all of
Russia's neighbors to become part of the U.S. empire, so as to isolate Russia and then become
able to gobble it up. All neoconservatives want this ultimately to happen. Their grasp for
power is truly limitless. Only in the tactical issues do they differ from one-another.
In her testimony behind closed doors to Senators, on
11 October 2019 , Yovanovich stated her views regarding what America's policies toward
Ukraine should be, and these were Obama's policies, too; these views are the neoconservative
outlook [and my own comments in brackets here will indicate her most egregious distortions and
lies in this key passage from her]:
Because of Ukraine's geostrategic position bordering Russia on its east, the warm waters
of the oil-rich Black Sea to its south, and four NATO allies to its west, it is critical to
the security of the United States [this is like saying that Mexico and Canada are crucial to
the security of Russia -- it's a lie] that Ukraine remain free and democratic [meaning, to
neoconservatives, under U.S. control] , and that it continue to resist Russian expansionism
[like Russia cares about U.S. expansionism over all of the Western Hemisphere? Really? Is
that actually what this is about? It's about extending U.S. imperialism on and across
Russia's border into Russia itself] Russia's purported annexation of Crimea [but, actually,
"Clear and
convincing evidence will be presented here that, under U.S. President Barack Obama, the U.S.
Government had a detailed plan, which was already active in June 2013, to take over Russia's
main naval base, which is in Sevastopol in Crimea, and to turn it into a U.S. naval
base." ] , its invasion of Eastern Ukraine, and its defacto control over the Sea of Azov,
make clear Russia's malign intentions towards Ukraine [not make clear Russia's determination
not to be surrounded by enemies -- by U.S.-stooge regimes. For Russia to avoid that is
'malign', she says] . If we allow Russia's actions to stand, we will set a precedent that the
United States will regret for decades to come. So, supporting Ukraine's integration into
Europe and combating Russia' s efforts to destabilize Ukraine [Oh, America didn't do that destabilization ?]
have anchored our policy since the Ukrainian people protested on the Maidan in 2014 and
demanded to be a part of Europe and live according to the rule of law [But Ukrainians before
Obama's takeover of Ukraine in February 2014 didn't actually want to be part of the EU nor of
NATO, and they considered NATO to be a threat to Ukraine. "In 2010,
Gallup found that whereas 17% of Ukrainians considered NATO to mean 'protection of your
country,' 40% said it's 'a threat to your country'." ] That was U.S. policy when I became
ambassador in August 2016 [after Obama's successful coup there took over its
media and turned Ukrainian opinion strongly against Russia] , and it was reaffirmed as that
policy as the policy of the current administration in early 2017. [Yes, that's correct,
finally a truthful assertion from her. When Trump first came into office, he was a
neoconservative, too.] The Revolution of Dignity [ you'll see here the 'dignity' of it ]
and the Ukrainian people's demand to end corruption forced the new Ukrainian Government to
take measures to fight the rampant corruption that long permeated that country's political
and economic systems [and that still do, and perhaps more now than even before] .
That's just one example -- it's about the role of Ambassador Yovanovitch. But the focus of
Ukrainegate isn't really that. It's not Yovanovitch. It is what Trump was trying to do, and
what Joe Biden was trying to do, and what Obama had actually done. It is also about Joe Biden's
son Hunter, because this is also about contending dynasties, and not only about contending
individuals. Trump isn't certain, now, that he wants to continue being a full-fledged
neoconservative, and to continue extending Obama's neoconservative policies regarding Ukraine.
So: this is largely about what those policies actually were. And here is how Joe Biden comes
into the picture, because Democrats, in trying to replace President Donald Trump by a President
Mike Pence, are trying to restore, actually, Barack Obama's policy in Ukraine, a policy of
which the Bidens themselves were very much Obama's agents, and Mike Pence would be expected to
continue and extend those policies. Here will be necessary to document some personal and
business relationships that the U.S. news-media have consistently been hiding and even lying
about, and which might not come up even in the expected subsequent Senate hearings about
whether to replace Trump by Pence:
PART THREE: THE CENTRALITY OF UKRAINIAN OLIGARCH IHOR
KOLOMOYSKY
The real person who was the benefactor to, and the boss of, Vice President Joe Biden's son,
Hunter Biden, at the Ukrainian gas-exploration company Burisma Holdings, was not the person
that the American press says was, Mykola Zlochevsky, who had been part of the Ukrainian
Government until Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in February 2014, but it
was instead Ihor Kolomoysky, who was part of the newly installed Ukrainian Government, which
the Obama Administration itself had actually just installed in Ukraine (and that
phone-conversation appointing Ukraine's new leader is explained here ), in what the head of the "private CIA" firm Stratfor has
correctly called "the most blatant coup in
history." ( Here's more
explanation of that coup which was done by Obama. )
One cannot even begin accurately to understand the impeachment proceedings against America's
current President Donald Trump ("Ukrainegate"), unless one first knows and understands
accurately what the relationships were between Trump and the current Government of Ukraine, and
the role that the Obama Administration had played in forming that Government (installing it),
and the role that Hunter Biden had been hired to perform for his actual boss at Burisma,
Kolomoysky, soon after Obama (via Obama's agent Victoria Nuland) had installed Ukraine's new
Government.
As I had written on
28 September 2019 , "In order to understand why Ukraine's President Voldomyr Zelensky
doesn't want the dirt about Joe Biden to become public, one needs to know that Hunter Biden's
boss and benefactor at Burisma Holdings was, at least partly, Zelensky's boss and benefactor
until Zelensky became Ukraine's President, and that revealing this would open up a can of worms
which could place that former boss and benefactor of both men into prison at lots of places
."
That article, at the phrase "
dug up in 2012," discussed and linked to a careful 2012 study of Burisma which had actually
been done in Ukraine by an investigative nonprofit (Antac)
funded by America's billionaire George Soros (who was another major funder of the 2014 Ukrainian coup , as well as of Barack
Obama's political career itself) in order to help to bring down Yanukovych. However, what this
study found was not the incriminating evidence against Zlochevsky which had been hoped.
It
found instead that the person who owned the controlling interest in Burisma was not really the Yanukovych-supporter Mykola Zlochevsky; it was, in fact, the Ukrainian billionaire Ihor
Kolomoysky, who supported Yanukovych's overthrow. Kolomoysky, shortly after the coup, became
appointed as the governor in a region of Ukraine, by the Obama Administration's post-coup
Ukrainian Government. Obama's financial backer Soros knew, or should have known, that
Zlochevsky had sold almost all of his Burisma holdings to Kolomoysky in 2011, but Obama's
Administration was nonetheless trying to get the newly installed Ukrainian Government to
prosecute Zlochevsky because Zlochevsky was associated with the Ukrainian President whom Obama
had just overthrown. Hunter Biden's function was to help to protect Mr. Kolomoysky against
being targeted by the newly installed Government in the anti-corruption campaign that the Obama
Administration and the EU were pressing upon that new Ukrainian Government. Hunter Biden was to
serve as a U.S. fixer for his new boss Kolomoysky, to deflect the anti-corruption campaign away
from Kolomoysky as a target and toward Zlochevsky as a target. And Hunter's father, Joe Biden,
followed through on that, by demanding that Ukraine prosecute Zlochevsky, not Kolomoysky.
Soros isn't really against corruption; he is against corruption by countries that he wants to
take over, and that he uses the U.S. Government in order to take over. Neoconservatism is
simply imperialism, which has always been the foreign-affairs ideology of aristocrats and of
billionaires. (In America's case, that includes both Democratic and Republican billionaires.)
So, it's just imperialism in America. All billionaires who care at all about international
relations are imperialists; and, in America, that's called "neoconservative." The American
issue regarding Ukraine was never actually Ukraine's corruption. Corruption is standard and
accepted throughout the U.S.-and-allied countries; but against countries they want to take over
it becomes a PR point in order to win acceptance by the gulls, of their own country's
imperialism and its own associated corruption. "Our country's corruption is acceptable, but
yours is not," is the view. That's the standard imperialist view. Neoconservatism --
imperialism anywhere, actually -- is always based on lies. Imperialism, in fact, is part of
nationalism, but it is excluded by patriotism; and no nationalist is a patriot. No patriot is a
nationalist. Whereas a nationalist supports his country's billionaires, a patriot supports his
country's residents -- all of them, his countrymen, on a democratic basis, everyone having
equal rights, not the richest of the residents having the majority or all of the rights. A
nationalist is one-dollar-one-vote; a patriot is one resident one vote. The only people who are
intelligently nationalist are billionaires and the agents they employ. All other nationalists
are their gulls. Everyone else is a patriot. Ordinarily, there are far more gulls than
patriots.
Information hasn't yet been published regarding what Trump's agent Rudolph Giuliani has
found regarding Burisma, but the links in the present article link through to the evidence that
I am aware of, and it's evidence which contradicts what the U.S.-and-allied press have been
reporting about the Bidens' involvement in Ukraine. So: this information might be what Trump's
team intend to reveal after the Democratic-Party-controlled House of Representatives indicts
Trump (send to the Republican Senate a recommendation to replace him by Mike Pence as America's
President), if they will do that; but, regardless, this is what I have found, which
U.S.-and-allied news-media have conspicuously been not only ignoring but blatantly
contradicting -- contradicting the facts that are being documented by the evidence that is
presented here . Consequently, the links in this article prove the systematic lying by
America's press, regarding Ukrainegate.
After the Soros-funded Antac had discovered in 2012 that Kolomoysky ruled Burisma, the great
independent Australian investigative journalist who has lived for 30 years in and reported from
Moscow, John Helmer , headlined on 19
February 2015 one of his blockbuster news-reports,
"THE HUNT FOR BURISMA, PART II -- WHAT ROLE FOR IGOR KOLOMOISKY, WHAT LONDON MISSED, WHAT
WASHINGTON DOESN'T WANT TO SEE" , and he linked there not only to Ukrainian Government
records but also to UK Government records, and also to corporate records in Cyprus, Panama, and
elsewhere, to document that, indeed, Kolomoysky controlled Burisma. So, all of the
U.S.-and-allied 'news'-reporting, which merely assumes that Zlochevsky controlled this firm
when Hunter Biden became appointed to its board, are clearly false. (See
this, for example, from Britain's Guardian , two years later, on 12 April 2017, simply
ignoring both the Antac report and the even-more-detailed Helmer report, and presenting
Zlochevsky -- Kolomoysky's decoy -- as the appropriate target to be investigated for Burisma's
alleged corruption.) So: when Joe Biden demanded that Ukraine's Government prosecute
Zlochevsky, Biden was not, as he claims he was, demanding a foreign Government to act against
corruption; he was instead demanding that foreign Government (Ukraine) to carry out his own
boss, Barack Obama's, agenda, to smear as much as he could Viktor Yanukovych -- the Ukrainian
President whom Obama had overthrown. This isn't to say that Yanukovych was not corrupt; every
post-Soviet Ukrainian President, and probably Prime Minister too, has been corrupt. Ukraine is
famous for being corrupt. But, this doesn't necessarily mean that Zlochevsky was corrupt.
However, Kolomoysky is regarded, in Ukraine, as being perhaps the most corrupt of all
Ukrainians.
Perhaps Kolomoysky's major competitor has been Victor Pinchuk, who has long been famous in
Washington for donating heavily to Bill and Hillary Clintons' causes. For example, on 11 March
2018, the independent investigative journalist Jeff Carlson, bannered "Victor
Pinchuk, the Clintons & Endless Connections" and he reported that
He is the founder of Interpipe, a steel pipe manufacturer. He also owns Credit Dnipro
Bank, some ferroalloy plants and a media empire.
He is married to Elena Pinchuk, the daughter of former Ukrainian President Leonid
Kuchma.
Pinchuk's been accused of profiting immensely from the purchase of state-owned assets at
severely below-market prices through political favoritism.
Pinchuk used his media empire to deflect blame from his father-in-law, Kuchma, for the
September 16, 2000 murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze. Kuchma was never charged but is
widely believed to have ordered the murder. A series of recordings would seem to back
up this assertion.
On April 4 through April 12 2016, Ukrainian Parliamentarian Olga Bielkov had
four meetings – with Samuel Charap (International Institute for Strategic Studies),
Liz Zentos (National Security Council), Michael Kimmage (State Dept) and David Kramer (McCain
Institute).
Doug Schoen filed FARA documents
showing that he was paid $40,000 a month by Victor Pinchuk (page 5) – in part to
arrange these meetings.
Schoen attempted to arrange another 72 meetings with Congressmen and media (page 10). It
is unknown how many meetings took place.
Schoen has worked for both Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Schoen helped Pinchuk establish ties with the Clinton Foundation. The Wall Street Journal
reported
how Schoen connected Pinchuk with senior Clinton State Department staffers in order to
pressure former Ukrainian President Yanukovych to release Yulia Tymoshenko – a
political rival of Yanukovych – from jail.
The relationship between Pinchuk and the Clintons continued.
A large network of collaborators, all connected to NATO's PR agency the Atlantic Council,
were also discussed and linked to; and, in one of the video clips, Victoria Nuland headed a
panel discussion in Munich Germany at which numerous leading Democratic Party neoconservatives,
and neoconservative foreign leaders, discussed how wonderful the "Deep State" is, and praised
the Republican neocon John McCain, who had helped Victoria Nuland to install the fascist
Government of Ukraine.
Joe Biden's campaign for president, as well as his defence against charges of corrupt
influence peddling and political collusion in the Ukraine, are being promoted in Washington
by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk through the New York lobbyist, candidate adviser and
pollster, Douglas Schoen (left).
This follows several years of attempts by Pinchuk and Schoen to buy influence with Donald
Trump, first as a candidate and then as president; with Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani; and
with John Bolton, Trump's National Security Adviser in 2018 and 2019. Their attempts
failed.
Pinchuk has been paying Schoen more than $40,000 every month for eight years. The amount
of money is substantially greater than Biden's son Hunter Biden was paid by Pinchuk's
Ukrainian rival Igor Kolomoisky through the oil company Burisma and Rosemont Seneca Bohai,
Biden's New York front company.
Pinchuk's message for the Democratic candidates and US media, according to Schoen's Fox
News [4] broadcast in August, is: "Stop killing your own, stop beating up on your own
frontrunner, Joe Biden."
On November 12th, the New York Times headlined "Ukraine's President Seeks Face-to-Face Meeting With Putin" and
reported that Zelensky is now sufficiently disturbed at the declining level of the EU's and
Trump Administration's continuing support for Ukraine's Government, so that Zelensky is
desperately trying to restore friendly relations with Russia. The next day, that newspaper
bannered "A Ukrainian Billionaire Fought
Russia. Now He's Ready to Embrace It." This report said: "Mr. Kolomoisky, widely seen as
Ukraine's most powerful figure outside government, given his role as the patron of the recently
elected President Volodymyr Zelensky, has experienced a remarkable change of heart: It is time,
he said, for Ukraine to give up on the West and
turn back toward Russia ." Kolomoysky, in other words, who had been on Obama's team in
Ukraine, no longer is on the U.S. team under Trump. A reasonable inference would be that
Kolomoysky increasingly fears the possibility of being prosecuted. Continuation of the Obama
plan for Ukraine seems increasingly unlikely.
Here are some crimes for which Kolomoysky might be prosecuted:
Allegedly, Kolomoysky, on 20 March 2015,
brought to a board meeting of Ukraine's gas-distribution company UkrTransNafta, of which
Kolomoysky was a minority shareholder, his hired thugs armed with guns , in an
unsuccessful attempt to intimidate the rest of the board to impose Kolomoysky's choice to
lead the company. Ukraine's President, Petro Poroshenko, soon thereafter, yielded to the
pressure from Ukraine's bondholders to fire
Kolomoysky as a regional governor, and then nationalized Ukraine's biggest bank,
PrivatBank, which had looted billions of dollars from depositors' accounts and secreted the
proceeds in untraceable offshore accounts, so that the bank had to be bailed out by Ukraine's
taxpayers. (Otherwise, there would have been huge riots against Poroshenko.)
Zelensky is squeezed between his funder and his public, and so dithers. For example, on 10
September 2019, the Financial Times reported
that "The IMF has warned Ukraine that backsliding on Privatbank's nationalisation would
jeopardise its $3.9bn standby programme and that officials expect Ukraine to push for recovery
of the $5.5bn spent on rescuing the bank." Stealing $5.5B is a big crime, and this was Obama's
Ukrainian Government. Will it also be Trump's?
There are others, but those could be starters.
So, both Kolomoysky and Zelensky are evidently now considering to seek Moscow's protection,
though Kolomoysky had previously been a huge backer of, and helped to fund, killing of the
Donbassers who rejected the Obama-imposed Russia-hating Ukrainian regime.
Any such prosecutions could open up, to international scrutiny, Obama's entire Ukrainian
operation. That, in turn, would expose Obama's command-complicity in the ethnic cleansing operation , which Kolomoysky's co-planner
of the 2 May 2014 massacre inside the Odessa Trade Unions Building, Arsen Avakov,
euphemistically labelled the "Anti Terrorist Operation" or "ATO," to eliminate as many as possible of the residents in the former
Donbass region of Ukraine, where over 90% of the voters had voted for Yanukovych.
PART FOUR: TRUMP'S MANY POLICY-DILEMMAS REGARDING UKRAINE
If Putin offers no helping hand to Zelensky, what will happen to Ukraine, and to Ukrainians?
Might Trump finally campaign for the United States to become one of the "States Parties" to the
International Criminal Court , so that Obama, Nuland, Soros, and others who had overthrown
Ukraine's
democratically elected Government could be tried there? How would Trump be able to immunize
himself for such
crimes as his own 14 April 2018 unprovoked missile-attack against Syria ? How likely is it
that he would ever actually become a supporter of international law, instead of an imperialist
(such as he has always been) and therefore opponent of international law? He, after all, is
himself a billionaire, and no billionaire has ever fought for international law except in an
instance where he benefited from it -- never for international law itself . Trump isn't likely
to be the first. But here's how it could happen:
Donald Trump has surrounded himself with neoconservatives. There's not much distance between
his policies toward Ukraine versus Barack Obama's and Joe Biden's. However, after Trump becomes
impeached in the House (if that happens) and the impeachment trial starts in the Republican
U.S. Senate, there will then be a perfect opportunity for Trump to embarrass the Democratic
Party profoundly by exposing not only Joe Biden but Biden's boss Obama as having
caused the war in Ukraine . In order for him to do that, however, he'd also need to expose
the rot of neoconservatism. Nobody in Washington does that, except, perhaps the rebelling
Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard, and she's
rejected in the national polls now by the public within her own Party . Neoconservatism is
the uniform foreign-policy ideology of America's billionaires, both Republican and Democratic,
and this is why Washington is virtually 100% neocon. In America, wealth certainly doesn't
trickle down, but ideology apparently does -- and that's not merely neoliberalism but also its
international-affairs extension: neoconservatism. Nonetheless, if a Trump re-election ticket
were Trump for President, and Gabbard for Vice President, it might be able to beat anything
that the Democrats could put up against it, because Trump would then head a ticket which would
remain attractive to Republicans and yet draw many independents and even the perhaps 5% of
Democrats who like her. Only Sanders, if he becomes the Democratic nominee (and who is the
least-neoconservative member of the U.S. Senate), would attract some of Gabbard's supporters,
but he wouldn't be getting any money from the 607 people who mainly fund American politics. The
2020 U.S. Presidential contest could just go hog-wild. However, America's billionaires probably
won't let that happen. Though there are only 607 of therm, they have enormous powers over the
Government, far more than do all other Americans put together. The U.S. Supreme Court made it
this way, such as by the 1976 Buckley decision , and the 2010 Citizens United
decision .
So: while justice in this impeachment matter (and in the 2020 elections) is conceivable, it
is extremely unlikely. The public are too deceived -- by America's Big-Money
people.
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.
Please
enter a valid email Thank you for subscribing!Something went wrong. Please refresh
and try again.
And you know, I'll say this to President Trump. You want to investigate Joe Biden? You
want to investigate Hunter Biden? Go at it. Do it. Do it hard. Do it dirty. Do it the way you
do, do it. Just don't do it by asking a foreign leader to help you in your campaign. That's
your job, it's not his.
My goal in these hearings is two things. One is to get an answer to Colonel Vindman's
question ["Is it improper for the President of the United States to demand a foreign
government investigate a United States citizen and political opponent?"] . And the second
coming out of this is for us as a Congress to return to the Ukraine policy that Nancy Pelosi
and Kevin McCarthy both support, it's not investigations, it's the restoration of democracy
in Ukraine and the resistance of Russian aggression.
He wants a return to Obama's anti-Russian Ukraine-policy. Though Zelensky had won Ukraine's
Presidency by a record-shattering 73% because he had promised to end the war (which the U.S.
had started), America's Deep State are refusing to allow that -- they want to force him to
accept more U.S.-made weapons and more U.S. training of Ukraine's troops in how to use them
against its next-door neighbor Russia.
Furthermore, in some respects, Trump is even more neoconservative than Obama was. Trump
single-handedly nullified Obama's only effective and good achievement, the Iran nuclear deal.
Against Iran, Trump is considerably more of a neocon than was Obama. Trump has squeezed
Iranians so hard with his sanctions as to block other countries from buying from and selling to
Iran; and this blockade has greatly impoverished Iranians, who now are rioting against their
Government. Trump wants them to overthrow their Government. His plan might succeed. Trump's
biggest donor, Sheldon
Adelson , hates Iranians, and Trump is his man. On Iran, Trump remains a super-neocon.
Perhaps Adelson doesn't require him to hate Russians too.
Furthermore, on November 17th, the same day when riots broke out in Iran against Iran's
Government, Abdullah Muradoğlu headlined in Turkey's newspaper Yeni Safak ,
"Bolivia's Morales was overthrown by a Western coup just like Iran's Mosaddeg" , and he
presented strong circumstantial evidence that that coup, too -- which had occurred on November
10th -- had been a U.S. operation. How could Trump criticize Obama for the coup against Ukraine
when Trump's own coup against Bolivia is in the news? America is now a two-Party fascist
dictatorship. One criminal U.S. President won't publicly expose the crimes of another criminal
U.S. President who was his predecessor.
The next much-discussed witness that the Democrats brought forth to testify against Trump
was America's Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, on November 20th. Sondland was a hotels
and real-estate tycoon like Trump. Prior to Trump's becoming President, Sondland had had no
experience in diplomacy. At the start of 2017, "four companies registered to Sondland
donated $1 million to the Donald Trump inaugural committee" ; and, then, a year later,
Trump appointed him to this Ambassadorial post. Sondland evasively responded to the aggressive
questioning by Senate Democrats trying to get him to say that Trump had been trying to "bribe"
Zelensky. Then, the Lawfare Blog of the staunchly neoconservative Brookings Institution's
Benjamin Wittes headlined "Gordon Sondland
Accuses the President of Bribery" and Wittes asserted that "today, Amb. Gordon Sondland,
testifying before the House in the ongoing impeachment inquiry, offered a crystal clear account
of how President Trump engaged in bribery." But Sondland provided no evidence except his
opinion, which can be seen online at "Opening Statement before
the United States House of Representatives" , when he said:
Fourth, as I testified previously, Mr. Giuliani's requests were a quid pro quo for
arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky. Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make
a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server and Burisma. Mr.
Giuliani was expressing the desires of the President of the United States, and we knew that
these investigations were important to the President.
I asked the President, what do you want from Ukraine? The President responded, nothing.
There is no quid pro. The President repeated, no quid pro. No quid pro quo multiple times.
This was a very short call. And I recall that the President was really in a bad mood. I tried
hard to address Ambassador Taylor's concerns because he is valuable and [an] effective
diplomat, and I took very seriously the issues he raised. I did not want Ambassador Taylor to
leave his post and generate even more turnover in the Ukraine Mission."
The testimony of all of these people was entirely in keeping with their neoconservatism and
was therefore extremely hostile toward anything but preparing Ukraine to join NATO and serve on
the front line of America's war to conquer
Russia . Trump might be too stupid to understand anything about ideology or geostrategy,
but only if a person accepts neoconservatism is the anger that these subordinates of his
express toward him for his being viewed by them as placing other concerns (whether his own, or
else America's for withdrawing America from Obama's war against Russia) suitable reason for
Congress to force Trump out of office. Given that Trump, even in Sondland's account, did say
"The President responded, nothing. There is no quid pro. The President repeated, no quid pro.
No quid pro quo multiple times," there is nothing that's even close to a "beyond a reasonable
doubt" standard which is provided by their personal feelings that Trump had a quid-pro-quo
about anything regarding Ukraine -- a policy of Obama's that Trump should instead firmly have
abandoned and denounced as soon as he became President. Testimony from his own enemies, whom
Trump had been stupid enough to have appointed, when he hadn't simply extended Obama's
neoconservative policies and personnel regarding Ukraine, falls far short of impeachable. But
right and wrong won't determine the outcome here anyway, because America has become a
two-party, one-ideology, dictatorship.
This is what happens when billionaires control a
country . It produces the type of foreign policies the country's billionaires want, rather
than what the public actually need. This is America's Government, today. It's drastically
different than what America's Founders had hoped. Instead of its representing the states
equally with two Senators for each, and instead of representing the citizens equally, with
proportional per-capita representation in the U.S. House, and instead of yet a third system of
the Electoral College for choosing the Government's Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief, it
has become thoroughly corrupted to being, in effect, just one-dollar-one-vote -- an aristocracy
of wealth controlling the entire Government -- exactly what the Founders had waged the
Revolution in order to overthrow and prevent from ever recurring: a dictatorial aristocracy, as
constituting our Government, today.
* * *
PS: Though I oppose almost everything that the hearings' Ranking Minority Member, the
neoconservative (and, of course, also neoliberal) Republican Devin Nunes , stands for, I close here with
his superb summary of the hearings, on November 21st , in which he validly described the
Democrats' scandalously trashy Ukrainegate case against Trump (even though he refused to look
deeper to the issues I raise in this article -- he dealt here merely with how "shoddy" the case
the Democrats had presented was):
Throughout these bizarre hearings, the Democrats have struggled to make the case that
President Trump committed some impeachable offense on his phone call with Ukrainian president
Zelensky. The offense itself changes depending on the day ranging from quid pro quo to
extortion, to bribery, to obstruction of justice, then back to quid pro quo. It's clear why
the Democrats have been forced onto this carousel of accusations. President Trump had good
reason to be wary of Ukrainian election meddling against his campaign and of widespread
corruption in that country. President Zelensky, who didn't even know aid to Ukraine had been
paused at the time of the call, has repeatedly said there was nothing wrong with the
conversation. The aid was resumed without the Ukrainians taking the actions they were
supposedly being coerced into doing.
Aid to Ukraine under President Trump has been much more robust than it was under President
Obama, thanks to the provision of Javelin anti-tank weapons. As numerous witnesses have
testified, temporary holds on foreign aid occur fairly frequently for many different reasons.
So how do we have an impeachable offense here when there's no actual misdeed and no one even
claiming to be a victim? The Democrats have tried to solve this dilemma with a simple slogan,
"he got caught." President Trump, we are to believe, was just about to do something wrong and
getting caught was the only reason he backed down from whatever nefarious thought crime the
Democrats are accusing him of almost committing.
I once again urge Americans to continue to consider the credibility of the Democrats on
this Committee, who are now hurling these charges for the last three years. It's not
president Trump who got caught, it's the Democrats who got caught. They got caught falsely
claiming they had more than circumstantial evidence that Trump colluded with Russians to hack
the 2016 election. They got caught orchestrating this entire farce with the whistleblower and
lying about their secret meetings with him. They got caught defending the false allegations
of the Steele dossier, which was paid for by them. They got caught breaking their promise
that impeachment would only go forward with bipartisan support because of how damaging it is
to the American people.
They got caught running a sham impeachment process between secret depositions, hidden
transcripts, and an unending flood of Democrat leaks to the media. They got caught trying to
obtain nude photos of President Trump from Russian pranksters pretending to be Ukrainians,
and they got caught covering up for Alexandra Chalupa, a Democratic National Committee
operative, who colluded with Ukrainian officials to smear the Trump campaign by improperly
redacting her name from deposition transcripts, and refusing to let Americans hear her
testimony as a witness in these proceedings. That is the Democrats pitiful legacy in recent
years. They got caught.
Meanwhile, their supposed star witness testified that he was guessing that President Trump
was tying Ukrainian aid to investigations despite no one telling him that was true, and the
president himself explicitly telling him the opposite, that he wanted nothing from Ukraine.
Ladies and gentlemen, unless the Democrats once again scramble their kangaroo court rules,
today's hearing marks the merciful end of this spectacle in the Impeachment Committee,
formerly known as the Intelligence Committee. Whether the Democrats reap the political
benefit they want from this impeachment remains to be seen, but the damage they have done to
this country will be long lasting. Will this wrenching attempt to overthrow the president?
They have pitted Americans against one another and poison the mind of fanatics who actually
believe the entire galaxy of bizarre accusations they have levelled against the president
since the day the American people elected him.
I sincerely hope the Democrats in this affair [end this] as quickly as possible so our
nation can begin to heal the many wounds it has inflicted on us. The people's faith in
government and their belief that their vote counts for something has been shaken. From the
Russia hoax to this shoddy Ukrainian sequel, the Democrats got caught. Let's hope they
finally learn a lesson, give their conspiracy theories a rest, and focus on governing for a
change. In addition, Mr. Chairman, pursuant to House Rule XI, clause 2(j)(1), the Republican
members transmit a request to convene a minority day of hearings. Today you have blocked key
witnesses that we have requested from testifying in this partisan impeachment inquiry. This
rule was not displaced by H.Res.660, and therefore under House Rule 11 clause 1(a), it
applies to the Democrats impeachment inquiry. We look forward to the chair promptly
scheduling an agreed upon time for the minority day of hearings so that we can hear from key
witnesses that you have continually blocked from testifying.
I'd also like to take a quick moment on an assertion Ms. Hill made in the statement that
she submitted to this Committee, in which she claimed that some Committee members deny that
Russia meddled in the 2016 election. As I noted in my opening statement on Wednesday, but in
March, 2018, Intelligence Committee Republicans published the results of a year long
investigation into Russian meddling. The 240 page report analyzed 2016 Russian meddling
campaign, the US government reaction to it, Russian campaigns in other countries and provided
specific recommendations to improve American election security. I would [have] asked my staff
to hand these reports to our two witnesses today just so I can have a recollection of their
memory. As America may or may not know, Democrats refused to sign on to the Republican
report. Instead, they decided to adopt minority views, filled with collusion conspiracy
theories. Needless to say, it is entirely possible for two separate nations to engage in
election meddling at the same time, and Republicans believe we should take meddling seriously
by all foreign countries regardless of which campaign is the target.
The latest (2019) Reuters international survey in which over 2,000 people in each one of 38
countries were asked whether they agree that "You
can trust most news most of the time" shows that the United States scores #32 out of the
38, at the very top of the bottom 16% of all of the 38 countries surveyed, regarding trust in
the news-media. Reuters had previously found, in their
2018 edition , that, among Americans, "those who identify on the left (49%) have almost
three times as much trust in the news as those on the right (17%). The left gave their support
to newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times while the right's alienation from
mainstream media has become ever more entrenched." In the 2019 edition, what had been 49% in
America rose now to 53%, and what had been 17% sank now to 9%: the billionaires' (i.e.,
mainstream) media are trusted almost only by liberals here. What the media report is considered
trustworthy almost only by liberals, in today's America. By 53% to only 9% -- an almost 6 to 1
ratio -- the skeptics of the billionaires' press are Republicans. Of course, if the media are
distrusted, then the nation can't be functioning as a democracy. But the media will be
distrusted if they lie as much as America's do. Untrusted 'news'-media are a sure indication
that the nation is a dictatorship (such as it is if the billionaires control the media) . In
America, only liberals think that America is a democracy and therefore might possess the basic
qualification (democracy) to decide what nations need to be regime-changed (such as America did
to Iran, Iraq, Libya, Honduras, Bolivia, and is still trying to do to Venezuela, Cuba,
Nicaragua, Iran again, Syria, and Yemen; but not to -- for examples -- Saudi Arabia, UAE, and
Israel); and which ones don't (such as America's governmentally-annointed 'allies', including
some barbaric dictatorships). Liberals trust America's dictatorship as if it were instead a democracy.
Conservatives do not; nor, of course, do progressives. FDR's vision, of a United Nations which
would set and enforce the rules for international relations (neither the U.S. nor any other
country would do that), is now even more rejected by the Democratic Party than it is by the
Republican Party. And the politically topsy-turvy result is Democrats trying to impeach the
Republican Trump for his trying to cut back on Obama's imperialistic ( anti -FDR) agenda.
Trump, after all, didn't do the coup to Ukraine; Obama did
.
The same reason they give it to most countries - there is no oversight once the funds are transferred, then have kickbacks
funnelled into private accounts that belong to the very politicians who argue for the aid. That's one way these scumbag career
pols become multimillionaires.
The "NATO crowd" (aka neocon sh*t bags, aka 'the war party') is always still fighting the last war. NATO is totally obsolete
agents irrelevant. Wars are no longer fought with arms bombs & bullets. The NATO crowd are all fascists wearing american colors.....
they don't really care about america or her values. They only care about power; their bankrupt vision. They don't care what uniform
their SS storm troopers wear as long as they can be the chess players moving the pieces
The meaning of the events in Ukraine in 2014 is very simple. In 2014, a group of Ukrainian oligarchs of Jewish nationality
(Poroshenko-Valtsman, Kolomoisky, Rabinovich, ... + the entire Rada of 2014, consisting mainly of ethnic Jews) carried out a coup
(read - treason), violated the Constitution, overthrew the democratically elected president , made a provocation in the form of
murder (with the assistance of hired Polish, Georgian, American snipers) people on the Maidan from both sides, declared Russian-speaking
Ukrainians in the east of the country as second-class people + arranged terror with the help of Nazis from Galicia and Volhynia,
hired by Kolomoisky's money and obeying him (the Nazis obey a *** - a "funny" fact), they burned 297 people alive in Odessa (3
of them children and 1 and a pregnant woman), and then ~ 300 more people were killed on the streets (in total ~ 600 people were
killed that day in Odessa).
The beautiful Jewish boy (Zelensky), who portrays the president of Ukraine, is a protege of Kolomoisky (like Obama was the
protege of Chicago bankers), Ukraine's gold reserves in New York, gas transit from Russia is lost, relations with Russians are
completely lost, the United States got into the "Ukrainian swamp like a pigs in the mud".
Bottom line: Only Zionist Jews won in the United States and the former Ukraine, all the rest lost.
People will judge the Zionists as the German National Socialists for their crimes in the international trebunal, because
now according to the methods of doing business, American Zionism is no different from German National Socialism. If our American
and Israeli Jewish friends do not like this, what can I say? These are your problems, for crimes against humanity you will be
responsible and you will not get out of this.
"The testimony of all of these people was entirely in keeping with their neoconservatism and was therefore extremely hostile
toward anything but preparing Ukraine to join NATO and serve on the front line of
America's war to conquer Russia ."
And THIS is exactly what its all about.
Liberals supporting this insanity are now imperialist boot lickers. When war on Russia comes, every Dem voter should be immediately
sent to Ukraine to fight on the front lines.
Democrats get away with this because for 8 years MSM and the political elite white washed or were silent on Obama war crimes.
The sheep know not what they do and if they do: **** THEM
The entire history of man has been centered around the politic class skimming money off the working class. Although the current
exposition may phrase some particular politic, the virus at large is incurable.
The problem is that the most lucrative deposits in the North Sea are already exhausted. What is left is higher cost oil, which
might not be economically feasable to extract with prices below at least $70 per barrel.
The uncertainty of the future of Brexit has left the United Kingdom's economy in stagnation
as business investment falters on the eve of the nation's December general election. While
Boris Johnson tries to rally voters to instill their confidence in him to usher in a new era of
economic prosperity and growth in Britain by way of leaving the European Union at any cost, the
economy is, in fact, doing just the opposite. This is just one of the great ironies of Brexit,
the separatist movement that just can't seem to cut the cord.
... ... ...
What 's more, with the complexity of modern transnational supply chains, nothing is simple
and absolutely nothing is isolated. This has led to hesitant investment in a great number of UK
industries including North Sea oil, since, as the UK's Press and Journal puts it, "
with Brexit looming, the North Sea supply chain is only as good as its weakest link ."
The
article goes on to say that "key factors such as licensing and taxation of oil and gas
exploration, development and production activities are already UK government responsibilities,
while the legal and regulatory regime under the Petroleum Act 1998 is generally regarded as
satisfactory. [...] While expectations for this year are optimistic, the added complication of
Brexit could impede recovery. As a consequence of the downturn the market is now oversupplied,
except in a few specialised areas."
As long as Brexit drama continues, uncertainty and a lack of trust in the British economy
will continue to fester, continuing the cycle of economic downturn and inflation in the UK.
This means that North Sea investors, one of the UK's more important economic sectors,
undoubtedly see the writing on the wall and are already looking for foreign failsafes if they
haven't secured them already.
In an interview with Associated Press, US Attorney General William Barr put all conspiracy
theories to rest once and for all by assuring the world that alleged sex trafficker and alleged
billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's death was simply the result of a very, very, very long series of
unfortunate coincidences.
"I can understand people who immediately, whose minds went to sort of the worst-case
scenario because it was a perfect storm of screw-ups," Barr told AP on Thursday .
Justice Department prosecutor U.S. Attorney
John Durham is questioning personnel connected to the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment,
which awarded multiple contracts to FBI informant Stephan Halper. Halper, who was informing the
bureau on Trump campaign advisors, is a central figure in the FBI's original investigation into
President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, SaraACarter.com has learned.
These latest developments reveal the expansive nature of what is now a Justice Department
criminal probe into the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign. The revelation also comes
on the heels of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report regarding the bureau's
investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia. Sen.
Lindsey Graham, R-SC, announced to Fox News' Sean Hannity Wednesday night the lengthy
investigative report will be released to the public on Dec., 9.
DOJ Attorney General William
Barr, who appointed Durham, is conducting a separate investigation alongside Horowitz's
probe. Both investigations are examining how U.S. intelligence agencies began investigating now
debunked ties between Russia and Trump campaign personnel in the 2016 presidential
election.
Multiple sources confirmed to this news site that Durham has spoken extensively with sources
working in the Office of Net Assessment, as well as outside contractors, that were paid through
Pentagon office.
Department of Justice officials declined to comment on Durham's probe.
In 2016, Halper was an integral part of the FBI's investigation into short-term Trump
campaign volunteer,
Carter Page and George Papadopolous . Halper first made contact with Page at his seminar in
July 2016. Page, who was already on the FBI's radar, was accused at the time of being
sympathetic to Russia. Halper stayed in contact with Page until September 2017.
During that time, the FBI sought and obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court (FISC) to spy on Page and used Halper to collect information on him,
according to sources. It is further alleged that Halper may have secretly recorded his
conversations with Page and Papadopolous. Some congressional officials believe that if
recordings exist they were kept from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and would be
exculpatory evidence that would've exonerated Page from the
FISA warrant and allegations that Papadopolous was attempting to seek any help from the
Russians with regard to Hillary Clinton's emails.
In an interview with Papadopolous earlier this year, he told this reporter that he was
shocked when Halper insinuated to him that Russia was helping the Trump campaign. Papadopolous
said that he told him, "he didn't have any idea what the hell he was talking about that would
be treason and I have nothing to do with that."
Grassley's Office Gets Pentagon Docs
Moreover, this news site has learned that the Pentagon has finally sent Finance Committee
Chairman Chuck Grassley's committee the information it requested in July, regarding Halper's
contracts and the Office of Net Assessment. Grassley sent the request in a
letter to Department of Defense Acting Secretary Mark Esper, after a Pentagon Inspector
General investigation discovered that the office failed to conduct appropriate oversight of the
contracts. Grassley urged Esper for the information.
According to the DoD Inspector General's report the
Office of Net Assessment (ONA) Contracting Officer's Representatives (CORs) "did not
maintain documentation of the work performed by Professor Halper or any communication that ONA
personnel had with Professor Halper; therefore, ONA CORs could not provide sufficient
documentation that Professor Halper conducted all of his work in accordance with applicable
laws and regulations. We determined that while the ONA CORs established a file to maintain
documents, they did not maintain sufficient documentation to comply with all the FAR
requirements related to having a complete COR."
Although, Grassley stated that he wanted the information no later than July 25, the Pentagon
delivered the information only last week.
Grassley's office didn't elaborate on what information was given to the committee but
confirmed that it was in the process of reviewing hundreds of pages of documents.
"The committee is currently reviewing information received recently from the Pentagon, in
response to Grassley's request," said Taylor Foy, a spokesman for the committee. Foy
confirmed Grassley is continuing to investigate the matter.
Pentagon officials did not immediately respond to calls and emails. ( SaraACarter.com will
update this story if they so chose to respond. )
The Pentagon Audit
Grassley's July letter stated that "shockingly, the audit found that these types of
discrepancies were not unique to contracts with Professor Halper, which indicates ONA must take
immediate steps to shore up its management and oversight of the contracting process."
"Accordingly, no later than July 25, 2019, please explain to the Committee the steps DoD
has taken to address the recommendations that DoD IG made with respect to ONA's contracting
procedures and produce to the Committee all records related to Professor Halper's contracts
with DoD," Grassley's letter stated. "In addition, I request that ONA provide a briefing to
my Committee staff regarding the Halper contracts."
The 74-year old professor, has rarely spoken out publicly since being outed by The
Washington Post, and other news organizations, as one of the informants for the bureau who
spied on the Trump campaign. He spent a career developing top-level government
connections–not just through academia, as he did in Great Britain through the Cambridge
Security Initiative, but through his connections in both the CIA and British MI-6. He is
expected to be speaking this month at the seminar, he helped found, according to The Daily
Caller.
"The results of this audit are disappointing and illustrate a systemic failure to manage
and oversee the contracting process," stated the Senator in the
letter sent July, 12 to the DOD. "Time and again, DoD's challenges with contract
management and oversight are put on display. It is far past time the largest, most critical
agency in this country steps up and takes immediate action to increase its efforts to stop
waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars."
The Office of Net Assessment came under fire in 2016, when Bill
Gertz, a columnist for The Washington Times, revealed that it failed to produce the
top-secret net assessments the office was established to do for more than a decade, despite its
then nearly $20 million annual budget.
In August, a Pentagon Inspector General report revealed that the office failed to document
the research Halper had conducted for the Pentagon in four separate studies worth roughly $1
million. The inspector general's report revealed that loose contracting practices at the office
and failed oversight was to blame.
True to Kissingerian form, the story turns out to be not exactly true. Zhou was actually
responding to a question about France's political convulsions in 1968, not 1789.
But Kissinger's spin on the anecdote struck me as perceptive.
The meaning of a great historical event might take a long time–a very long
time–to become apparent. I didn't want to jump to conclusions about the causes of JFK's
murder in downtown Dallas on November 22, 1963.
It's still too early to tell. Fifty six years after the fact, historians and JFK researchers
do not have access to all of the CIA's files on the subject The 1964 Warren Commission report
exonerated the agency with its conclusion that Kennedy was killed by one man alone. But the
agency was subsequently the subject of five official JFK investigations, which cast doubt on
its findings.
The Senate's Church Committee investigation showed that the Warren Commission knew nothing
of CIA assassination operations in 1963. JFK records released in the last 20 years show the
Commission's attorneys had no real understanding the extensive counterintelligence monitoring
of Lee Harvey Oswald before JFK was killed. We now know that senior operations officers,
including counterintelligence chief James Angleton, paid far closer attention to the obscure
Oswald as he made his way to Dallas than the investigators were ever told.
To be sure, there is no proof of CIA complicity in JFK's death. And conspiracy theories
spouted by the likes of the Alex Jones and James Fetzer deserve no attention. The fact remains
some of the most astute power players of 1963–including Lyndon
Johnson , Charles DeGaulle,
Fidel Castro , and Jackie and Robert Kennedy–concluded that JFK was killed by his
enemies, and not by one man alone. Did these statesmen get it wrong, and the under-informed
Warren Commission get it right?
The new documentary,
Truth is the Only Client, says yes. The film, shown last month in the auditorium of the
U.S. Capitol, features interviews with numerous former Warren Commission staffers. Supreme
Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who served as a fact checker for the Commission in 1964, defends
the lone gunman conclusion, saying, "You have to look at the new evidence and when you do, I
come to the same conclusion."
Justice Breyer, oddly, passes judgment on evidence he has not seen. The record of the CIA's
role in the events leading JFK's assassination is far from complete. In 2013 I reported on JFK
Facts that Delores Nelson CIA's information coordinator had stated in a sworn affidavit filed
in federal court, that the agency retained 1,100
assassination-related records that had never been made public.
A small portion of this material was released in 2017, including new details about the
opening of the CIA's first Oswald file in October 1959.
Yet thousands of JFK files remain secret. According to the latest figures from the National
Archives, a total of 15,834 JFK files remain fully or
partially classified, most of them held by the CIA and FBI. Thanks to an
October 2017 order from President Trump, these documents will not be made public until
October 2021 , at the earliest.
The assumption of Justice Breyer and many others is that any and all unseen CIA material
must exonerate the agency. It's an odd conclusion. If the CIA has nothing to hide, why is it
hiding so much? While 95 percent of the still-secret files probably are trivial, the remaining
5 percent -- thousands of pages of material–are historically pregnant. If made public,
they could clarify key questions in the long-running controversy about JFK's death.
These questions have been raised most concisely by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a career CIA officer
who served in senior positions. Now a senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center, Mowatt-Larssen
has implicated his former employer in the Dallas ambush. In a
presentation at Harvard last December, Mowatt-Larssen hypothesized that a plot to kill JFK
emanated from the CIA's station in Miami where disgruntled Cuban exiles and undercover officers
loathed JFK for his failure to overthrow Castro's government in Cuba.
Mowatt-Larssen has yet to publish his presentation and documentation, so I can't say if he's
right or wrong. But he asks the right question: "How can intelligence operational and
analytical modus operandi help unlock a conspiracy that has remained unsolved for 55 years?"
And he focuses on the right place to dig deeper: the CIA's Miami office, known as WAVE
station.
My own JFK questions involve George Joannides, a decorated undercover officer who served as
branch chief in the Miami station in 1963. He ran psychological warfare operations against
Cuba. In 2003, I sued the CIA for Joannides' files. The lawsuit ended 15 years later in July
2018, when Judge Brett Kavanaugh, in his last
opinion before ascending to the Supreme Court, tossed my case. Kavanaugh declared the
agency deserved "deference upon deference" in its handling of Freedom of Information Act
requests about JFK files.
Nonetheless, my lawsuit illuminated the extraordinary sensitivity of the psy-ops Joannides
ran out of WAVE station. As reported in the New York Times, Fox News, Associated
Press, and Politico
, Morley v. CIA forced disclosure of the fact Joannides had received the CIA's Career
Intelligence Medal in 1981. The honor came two years after he stonewalled the House Select
Committee on Assassination about what he knew of Oswald's contacts with pro-and anti-Castro
Cubans in the summer and fall of 1963.
I believe Joannides was honored because he concealed the existence of an authorized covert
operation involving Oswald that has never been publicly acknowledged. In CIA lingo, Joannides
protected the agency's "sources and methods" concerning Oswald. And he might have done more.
His actions may have also shielded other officers who knew of a scheme to kill the liberal
president and lay the blame on Cuba. Never been seen by JFK investigators, they contain details
about his Joannides' undercover work in Miami in 1963, when he funded Oswald's antagonists
among the anti-Castro Cuban exiles. They also detail his work in 1978, when he duped
chief investigator Robert Blakey and the House Select Committee on Assassination. These
records, the agency says, cannot be released in 2019 without risk of "irreversible harm" to
national security.
It's a bizarre claim, at odds with the law. These ancient documents, all of them more than
40 years old, meet the statutory definition of "assassination-related," according to federal
judge John Tunheim. He chaired the Assassination Records Review Board which oversaw the
declassification of 4 million pages of JFK files between 1994 and 2017. In an interview,
Tunheim told me that, under the terms of the 1992 JFK Records Act, the Joannides files are
subject to mandatory review and release. "It's a no-brainer," he said.
Yet the files remain off-limits to the public. Thanks to the legal consensus, articulated by
Justices Kavanaugh and Breyer, the CIA enjoys "deference upon deference" when it comes to the
JFK assassination story. As a result, the JFK Records Act has been flouted. The public's
interest in full disclosure has been thwarted.
Yet legitimate questions persist: Did a plot to kill JFK originate in the agency's Miami
station as Mowatt-Larssen suggests? The fact that the CIA won't share the evidence that could
answer the CIA man's question is telling.
So these days, when people ask me who killed JFK, I say the Kennedy was probably victimized
by enemies in his own government, possibly including CIA officers involved in anti-Castro and
counterintelligence operations. I have no smoking gun, no theory. Just look at the suspicious
fact pattern, still shrouded in official secrecy, and it's easy to believe that JFK was, as
Mowatt-Larssen puts it, "marked for assassination."
56 years later, thousands of CIA documents still withheld. None of the principals/agents/
players in the assassination are alive. So the excuse that documents are withheld to protect
individuals no longer holds water. The documents are being withheld to protect the agency
itself (and other organizations) from revealing the roles they played in overthrowing an
elected President of the US.
To be sure, there is no proof of CIA complicity in JFK's death . . . er, not quite see
Russ Baker, Parrott Memo:
[DATE: November 22, 1963]
At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H.W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-shore Drilling Company,
Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following
information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.
BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he
recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES
PARROTT has been talking of killing the president when he comes to Houston.
BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active
in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt MRS FAWLEY, telephone number SU
2-5239, or ARLENE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican
Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of
PARROTT.
BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas
Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone Number is CA 2-0395.
According to Nixon, "Jack Rubenstein is LBJ's boy" and although Nixon damn sure wanted to
be President, he "wasn't willing to kill for it."
But LBJ was.
And when a reasonable person wonders why LBJ would twice call back the jets as the Liberty
was being destroyed, it's not difficult to see why. Israel knows the blackmail game well.
With all the explainations out there, I'll put my money on Nixon.
Ordinary people don't want to believe the worst about their leaders, even a slime-bucket
like LBJ, but Larry didn't really have a dentist appointment on 9-11, and 3000 people were
murdered with the consent of some of our dearest leaders.
The facade that the elite hide behind can't fall fast enough, but it's definately falling.
You can only be so naive.
LBJ was actually kind of a "patsy", too, being used by the REAL power brokers... Recall
that he DUCKED down in his limo just before the shots rang out because, while he was let in
on the plot, he really wasn't sure that "they" might not want to take him out too!.... Tragic
as it all was (& still is), it's quite a fascinating story...
Definitely fascinating, and whatever the details, he was certainly in on it. Everything he
did in Dallas indicated that. Cruel guy. Hillary-like, for lack of a better term.
Well Mr Kennedy made his Fortune bootlegging thru Prohibition and that relates Mob ties
!
Shipping Seagrams across the Great Lakes from Canada by Swift Boats that then was
hotshotted across the nation combined with moonshiners that later becoming NASCAR Racers
!
You may be correct, I just think to a lesser extent, Joseph P Kennedy Sr. did tell JFK how
many Votes do you want to Win Election by !
Release of the documents wouldn't pose any threat to the average American. When they claim
National security, they actually mean Deep/Dark state shadow government security. Revealing
the actions of an invisible and very powerful global force operating inside the US government
is their fear.
The Kill shot came from man inside storm drain that Assassin stood inside with Kennedy's
driver car slowdown ( edited out of Car slowdown ) Forcing President John Kennedy 's head
back and to the Left blowing much of his Skull off !
"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people
inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret
proceedings...
Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing
around the globe...no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting
a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been
more clear and its presence has never been more imminent...
For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies
primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration
instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free
choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.
It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building
of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic,
intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are
concealed, not published.
Its mistakes are buried, not headlined.
Its dissenters are silenced, not praised.
No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed."
Change playback time to 0.25X. Watch the guy with wide girth standing on the curb to the
left of the car, watch his right arm rise up, pull back, fall down to his right side and toss
a black shiny object to the ground. This is Jack Ruby, The owner and operator of a titty bar.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ruby4.htm
"liberal president"--NOT! In Chris Matthews book, Kennedy and Nixon, it paints a picture
of DNC Dem candidates at each others' throats in the DNC smoke filled room. LBJ, Humphrey,
JFK, the Usual Suspects were in front of the committee. JFK horrified all of the prospective
nominees. He stated,"If I don't get the nomination, my old man is going to back NIXON!" There
you have it: was it Oswald or was it LBJ? You choose which it was: Lone Wolf or the VP who
wanted to be POTUS. The "liberal president" was actually quite close to Nixon until 1960.
As the deep state relentlessly tries to take Trump down, maybe he should go scorched earth
and declassify the files implicating the CIA. Can a former President go into witness
protection? Ha.
LYNN FRIES : This newsdoc explores the folly of expecting private enterprise to
operate in the service of the public interest on a grand scale, globally, in key fields:
Financing the United Nations 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals, Climate change,
Health, Digital cooperation, Gender equality and the empowerment of women, Education and
skills. Specifically, it explores the United Nation's Strategic Partnership Agreement with the
World Economic Forum. The agreement was signed by the Office of the UN Secretary-General and
Executives of WEF, the World Economic Forum better known as DAVOS, a leading proponent of
public-private partnerships and a multistakeholder approach to global governance.
The United Nations as the world's intergovernmental multilateral system should always focus
on protecting common goods and providing global public benefits. That's the position of
signatories of an Open Letter sent to the UN Secretary-General by hundreds of civil society
organizations from all regions of the world. The letter states: "This public-private
partnership will permanently associate the UN with transnational corporations, some of whose
essential activities have caused or worsened the social and environmental crises that the
planet faces. This is a form of corporate capture". The letter calls on the Secretary-General
to terminate the Agreement.
I met up with Harris Gleckman to get his take on all this. Harris Gleckman is the author of
"Multistakeholder Governance and Democracy: A Global Challenge" and is currently working on a
handbook on the governance of multistakeholderism. Harris Gleckman is a Senior Fellow at the
Center for Governance and Sustainability, UMass Boston. We go now to our featured clips of that
meeting.
LYNN FRIES : Civil society is calling the World Economic Forum-UN Agreement as a
corporate takeover of the UN.
HARRIS GLECKMAN: The UN Charter starts with the words "We the Peoples". What the
Secretary-General is doing through the Global Compact and now through the partnership with the
World Economic Forum is tossing this out the window. He is saying: I'm going to align the
organization with a particular structural relationship with multinationals, with
multistakeholderism, and set aside attention to all the different peoples of the world in their
particular interests of environment, health, water needs and really talk about how to govern
the world with those who have a particular role in creating problems of wars from natural
resources, of creating problems relating to climate, creating problems relating to food supply
and technologies. That is undermining a core element of what the United Nations has been and
should be for its next 75 years.
LYNN FRIES : It's striking that the Agreement was signed as the UN is celebrating 100
years of multilateralism, the centenary year 1919 to 2019. And next year 2020 will mark the
1945 signing of the UN Charter 75th anniversary.
HARRIS GLECKMAN : Lynn, if I could give you an overview of what I'm concerned about
the aspect of this about multistakeholderism is that the Secretary-General is the leading
public figure for the multilateral system, the intergovernmental system. The World Economic
Forum is the major proponent or one of the major proponents that a multi-stakeholder governance
system should replace or marginalize the multilateral system. So the Secretary-General is
taking steps to just jump on the bandwagon of multistakeholderism without a public debate about
the democratic character of multistakeholderism, about a public debate about whether this is
effectively able to solve problems, without a public debate about how stakeholders are selected
to become global governors or even a public debate about what role the UN should have with any
of these multistakeholder groups.
LYNN FRIES : I noted that the letter that was sent to the UN Secretary-General was
also copied to the President of the General Assembly, the President of the Security Council and
the Chair of the G77 with a request that it be circulated to all Governments as an Official
Document.
HARRIS GLECKMAN : The Secretary-General should have gone to the intergovernmental
process to debate this issue and now civil society is saying to the intergovernmental process:
If the Secretary-General isn't going to tell you about it, we want you to have that debate
anyway.
LYNN FRIES : In addressing the UN Secretary-General the letter by Civil Society
Organizations recognized that the Secretary-General faced serious challenges.
HARRIS GLECKMAN: Yes it is absolutely the case that the Secretary-General is caught
in a very difficult bind. Governments are not able to collect and are not collecting their
taxes from the bulk of international business activities because of movements around tax
havens. Government's say: well we don't have the money, so we cannot underwrite an effort to
have a credible global governance system and this is affecting the operation of the UN. So the
Secretary-General is looking at a challenge. He has the financial challenge: under payment of
current dues and underfunding of the whole organization and an aggressive effort by the Trump
administration to deconstruct all the organizations of the international system in a period
Lynn where as you observed it's the hundredth year of multilateralism and the 75th year of the
United Nations. And here the Secretary-General has two major crises on his hands in terms of
the integrity of the system.
LYNN FRIES: Briefly give us some context on what you see as the motivation of the
World Economic Forum.
HARRIS GLECKMAN : The World Economic Forum's motivation for joining, for perhaps,
even driving forward this idea of a strategic partnership came from their work following the
financial crisis starting n 2008-09. Davos, the common name for the World Economic Forum,
convened 700 people working for a year and a half on a project that they called Global Redesign
Initiative. They created that project because they realized that the whole public view about
globalization as "a good for the world" was crumbling as a result of the financial crisis. And
so they wanted to propose a new method of governing the world. And two of the elements of their
proposal – that's actually a 700 page research paper – were to have a new
relationship with governments in the United Nations system and to advocate that the global
problems of the world should be solved by multistakeholder groups. This new partnership with
the Secretary-General is an implementation of what they laid out in their Global Redesign
Initiative to have a special place in the United Nations system for corporations to influence
the behavior of the international organizations. And also for those corporations to be able to
say to other people: Look we're in partnership with the United Nations so treat us as if we
were neutral friendly bodies.
Let me just share with you a couple of examples that may help convey how serious that is.
The Sustainable Development Goals were negotiated by governments in open sessions and they
determined what the goals should be in 17 areas. Multistakeholder groups have announced that
they are going to implement Goal 8 or Goal 6. And in the process, they declare: Here is how we
will work on health, here's how we will work on education, here's how we will work on the
environment. And rewrite what is the outcome of the Sustainable Development Goals in their own
organizational interest. In some ways, that's not surprising. You bring together a group of
companies, selected governments, selected civil societies, selected academics and they will
have their own internal dynamic of concern. But what they do is they assert that what they are
doing- their rewritten version- actually they are telling the world: Well, we are actually
doing the UN version. But that is not what their text is.
For example, in the energy field, in the energy goal there are five key adjectives that
describe the target about global energy needs. The leading multistakeholder group, Sustainable
Energy for All, their target has four of those adjectives and they drop the one which was
AFFORDABILITY. This is how the process of multistakeholders taking over an area, redefining it
but to the public announcing that they are implementing the intergovernmental goals is an
unhealthy development in global governance.
LYNN FRIES : The Civil Society letter referred to the Agreement as a public-private
partnership as did you in a recent OPED. Explain more about the public interest issue with
public-private partnerships.
HARRIS GLECKMAN : Well let's take a particular effort of a public-private partnership
in providing water in a city. Historically this is a public or a municipal function to make
sure that there is adequate amounts of water. The quality of water is healthy and its safety.
And that it's regularly and reliably available to the residents in the area. When a
public-private partnership comes in, the corporate side may have an interest in some of these
goals but add an additional one. That is they want a return on their investment, they want a
profit from it. So some of the items of those various public functions – access, quality
of material of water, reliability of water, access to all people then gets suddenly changed. So
if there's a manufacturing facility in one part of town more water may be diverted in that
direction. If water purification is a little hard about a particular element: We may get a
little lazy about doing that in the interests of profits. If it's going to take a lot of work
to dig up a street and replace pipes, they'll say: Well, we can wait another five years and use
those pipes which may have lead in them. All because now you add the fact that this
public-private partnership needs to make a return of profit on what should be, what
historically has a public municipal function. So you create this unequal development in terms
of meeting public needs against the now new requirement that if you want a water system, you
have to produce a profit for some of the actors involved.
LYNN FRIES : Food security is a major issue for vast populations. Comment on the
implications for food security.
HARRIS GLECKMAN : If we want to build, recover, create a food secure world, you need
to work with those who are growing, producing foods directly. Not those who are processing,
distributing, marketing, rebranding. We need to start at the very base and create a system of
engagement with small farmers, with small fishing families, with those around the world who are
the actual food producers. Who have been preserving knowledge and building knowledge for
centuries, they received that knowledge from centuries. That's the direction that would change
the way in which we could actually look at the issues of hunger and food security in the world
in a quite different fashion. Going to those who have a profit-centered motive in global
governance will sharply narrow what might be possible to do. That's what the partnership will
tend to do as the Secretary General and WEF have private discussions about how do we address
the issue of food security while not talking very loud about how we make a profit in that
process.
LYNN FRIES : If the UN Secretary-General invited you for a 1:1 what would you
say?
HARRIS GLECKMAN : I think that I would say to the Secretary-General that he needs to
give a major re-examination of the way the United Nations works with all of the peoples of the
world. In order to provide a stronger base for the United Nations, the doors have to be made
wider so that the views of various popular bodies, social movements, communities around the
world have far greater access to the United Nations. I'd also say to him. Mr. Secretary
General, the UN needs an open and clear conflict of interest policy and a conflict of interest
practice. For those multinationals who are causes of problems, who aggravate the global
problems of inequality we need and you as Head of the United Nations need to separate the
United Nations from that process. They should not be invited to attend meetings. They should
not be allowed to make statements. In the climate area, those who are continuing to extract
natural resources from the ground where they should stay we have taken too much of carbon out
of the ground. If we're going to meet the Paris Accord, they should have no role entering the
United Nations. I'd also say to the Secretary General that he needs to establish a much bigger
office to support civil society. At the moment, the UN support for civil society organization
institutional support is about two people. That is absolutely the wrong level of engagement
with the wider elements of civil society. And the last thing I would probably say to the
Secretary-General is that the UN is very proud of having developed a system of internal
governance that protects the weaker countries, the smaller countries, that their views can be
heard in the intergovernmental governance process. The Secretary-General should not engage with
multi stakeholder groups who do not have a rulebook that allows for the protection of smaller
members of the group, that does not have a way to appeal and challenge decisions that does not
require public disclosure of their finances, all of those characteristics of
multistakeholderism. The Secretary General should have and the UN should have no relationship
with those who are not interested in protecting core concepts of democracy
LYNN FRIES : We have to leave it there. Special thanks to our guest contributor,
Harris Gleckman, and thank you for watching and for your interest in this segment of
GPEnewsdocs coming to you from Geneva, Switzerland.
The WEF and its various constituencies try to overtake control of development with their
"public-private partnership" flag but how these, let's say, partnerships, actually work and
interact with local communities and governments is an issue that need to attract more
scrutiny and transparency. If one uses the migratory pressure as a measure, so far,
development in Africa, South America and South Asia is not doing a good job on the part of
local communities. There may be a few success cases, as it seems to be the case that
deforestation in Brazil that while proceeding it's way, has somehow slowed down compared to
the last decade of the XXth century. But when a success story is analysed what you find
behind is simply strong government action as the Brazilian did starting in 2004 when they
begun the monitoring of development in the Amazon basin and expanded in 2006 with a
moratorium in soya culture and beef production. The WEF has a series of initiatives on what
they call sustainable development that sound excellent in their web pages but in reality do
not seem to work so well and the UN should be kept independent and legally above of the WEF
initiatives to monitor development and accountability. This initiative will almost certainly
result in foxes governing henhouses.
As I see it the WEF makes the hell of a good PR job without counterbalancing parties.
Truly scary stuff and why does it remind me of the way public transport was destroyed in
the US: step 1 – starve it of revenue; step 2 – privatize it (while promising
better service); step 3 – let it rot; and step 4 – close it down (responding to
the public, gripping about how bad the service had become). The job accomplished!
One has to wonder what the Sec. General has been smoking lately and where are Russians and
Chinese to push back?
The UN will never accomplish its mission, man is incapable of bringing about world peace.
The UN is here for one reason and one reason only and that is to destroy the false religious
system when the political rulers hand it their power to accomplish just that.
If WEF is looking at doing infrastructure on a global scale that is based on good science,
is sustainable and maintainable, the ultimate power over the "multi-stakeholder groups"
submitting their bids to the UN should be the UN – this means a new UN mandate that
must be ratified yearly by voters, and bureaucrats that must win elections. If this big idea
is going to accomplish what needs to be done the "stakeholders" might want to take a close
look at what happened to the dearly departed ideas of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism was
destroyed from within by the need for ever more profit; by the" rat-race to the bottom" and
by externalizing costs in the form of pollution – by the most obviously unsustainable
practices, both social and environmental. If the goal is clear and comprehensive all these
problems inherent in yesterday's capitalism will have to be addressed at the get-go. It is a
difference of scale whether a city hires a contractor to do new waterlines, or the UN hires
"multi stakeholder groups" to do some continent-wide 50 year project. That means the UN will
need to become answerable to the people for the management of all these big ideas. Because
conflict of interest will be so massive as to be unmanageable otherwise. And one definition
will be imperative – Just what stake or stakes is/are held by "multi-stakeholder
groups"? Because what is at stake is the planet itself. Not money.
The UN problem has always been money. The 200 nation states are dilatory in paying their
dues. This gives the few rich countries power – 'cooperate with us and we'll fund your
activities.' Its not as bare-faced as I state it but you get the picture. To solve this
problem we need the majority of countries to vote to make national dues a precedent claim on
each government. Publish the result of the vote and monthly progress towards the aim. Name
the countries cooperating.
Once the UN administration is confident of its income it can plan its activities better,
make peoples' health and livelihoods a priority and achieve a much higher profile amongst
humanity.
"Mining transnationals find it cheaper to buy water rights than to desalinate seawater and
transport it for tens or hundreds of kilometers. Even more so if they have to use less
polluting but more expensive desalination technologies.
This is an unequal and unjust war where the main victims are the poor population, small
farmers and the sustainable development of our region of Atacama.
We continue to approve and facilitate the approval of mining projects and mega-projects
without making it a condition not to consume water from the basin.
– The population of Copiapó, Caldera, Tierra Amarilla and Chañaral,
particularly the lower income population, suffers the consequences of having to endure
repeated supply cuts, low pressure and a terrible quality of drinking water.
The drinking water crisis in the mentioned cities is a direct consequence of the over
exploitation of the Copiapó river basin by foreign mining companies, of the
purchase-sale and speculation with water rights, as well as of the irrationality and
indolence of the State in not establishing priorities in the use of the vital water" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lGEONBfvTM
Although corporate meddling is not unheard of in the UN system, under the new terms of the
UN-WEF partnership, the UN will be permanently associated with transnational corporations. In
the long-term, this would allow corporate leaders to become 'whisper advisors' to the heads
of UN system departments.
The UN system is already under a significant threat from the US Government and those who
question a democratic multilateral world. Additionally, this ongoing corporatization will
reduce public support for the UN system in the South and the North, leaving the system, as a
whole, even more vulnerable.To prevent a complete downfall, the UN must adopt effective
mechanisms that prevent conflicts of interest consistently. Moreover, it should strengthen
peoples and communities which are the real human rights holders, while at the same time build
a stronger, independent, and democratic international governance system.
There is a strong call to action going on by hundreds of organizations against this
partnership agreement http://bit.ly/33bRQZP
Never has the world seen so many simultaneous outbreaks of mass protests against various
governments and regimes.
Currently there is public unrest simmering in Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Hong Kong, France,
Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.
But which ones are authentic grassroots movements , and which ones have been hijacked by
outside powers or are being co-opted by the United States Department of Regime Change?
The following segment explores some of the dynamics at play, and what signs to look out for
in various global uprisings...
After weeks of impeachment testimony by angry ambassadors and opinionated bureaucrats who
decided to take US foreign policy into their own hands, House Intelligence Committee Chairman
Adam Schiff (D-CA) failed to produce a single 'smoking gun' to use against President Trump.
Instead, the paper-tiger charade has fired up the Republican base and awakened a "sleeping
giant" of support for Trump - whose request that Ukraine
Instead, the paper-tiger charade has fired up the Republican base and awakened a "sleeping giant" of support for Trump -
whose request that Ukraine investigate seemingly obvious corruption by Joe and Hunter Biden set off a hornet's nest of triggered
Democrats which Nancy Pelosi warned against (before caving to her party), predicting this exact outcome.
Perhaps the Democrats don't realize that voters care more about finding out if Biden is corrupt than whether Trump would have
weaponized a negative outcome. That's called politics, and the American public hasn't forgotten that the Obama / Biden DOJ sent
spies into the Trump campaign based on a fabricated dossier assembled by a former UK spy.
And by failing to find impeachable evidence while shielding Biden from scrutiny in light of the failed Russiagate narrative,
Schiff may have turned Trump into a billionaire martyr.
To that end, The Hill's Joe Concha highlights poignant commentary by Fox News host Mark Levin, who says that Schiff has
awakened a "sleeping giant" of Republican support for Trump - comparing the Democratic lawmaker to WWII Japanese Admiral Isoruku
Yamamoto.
After we were attacked at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Yamamoto of Japan said, 'I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping
giant and fill him with a terrible resolve'," Levin told host Sean Hannity. "You know, Adam Schiff, you are in some ways Admiral
Yamamoto: You just awakened a sleeping giant. You threw everything you had at the president, at the Republicans, at 63 million
voters who voted for this president."
"This is the best you have? You have nothing," added Levin. "You are the Democratic Party's Yamamoto." "This was the weakest
conga line of hand-picked witnesses I've ever seen in any hearing at any time ... There's no smoking gun."
"... Ukraine is the largest nation in Europe, with a 1400 mile land border with Russia. The U.S. government under administrations since Bill Clinton's has sought to integrate Ukraine into the anti-Russian NATO military alliance. ..."
"... NATO forces were never deployed against Soviet or Warsaw Pact forces during the Cold War. But Clinton (prompted by bellicose Hillary) used them to pound Serbian positions in Bosnia in the 1990s and to bomb Belgrade during the 1999 war to sever Kosovo from Serbia and convert it into a NATO base. ..."
"... For NATO strategists and supporters, Ukraine is the ultimate prize. ..."
"... After the coup of February 18-21, 2014, Aseniy Yatsenyuk, handpicked by Nuland, became prime minister ..."
"... After the February 2014 coup (depicted in the western press as a "revolution" toppling a "pro-Russian" leader), Ukraine informally joined the U.S. imperialist camp ..."
"... There is, in fact, no formal alliance, but Ukraine is now depicted as an ally, indeed one in desperate need of U.S. arms to resist the Russian invasion. ..."
Ukraine is the largest nation in Europe, with a 1400 mile land border with Russia. The U.S. government under administrations
since Bill Clinton's has sought to integrate Ukraine into the anti-Russian NATO military alliance.
NATO is an artifact of the early Cold War and the Truman Doctrine, vowing any means necessary to stop the spread of Communism.
Founded in 1949, when the U.S. ruled most of the world, it included most of the countries of Europe except for those liberated
from Nazism by the Soviets, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, and Yugoslavia and Albania where
anti-fascist partisans seized power.
After the dissolution of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact (a defense alliance formed in 1956 after West Germany was included in
NATO) in 1990, and the full restoration of capitalism to the countries of the former Soviet Union, there was no ideological east-west
conflict or another rationale to maintain the NATO alliance. It gradually redefined its mission as "maintaining stability" in
the post-Soviet era, in the wake of ethnic conflicts across Eurasia, and "counter-terrorism." Later "humanitarian" missions were
added.
In 1989 President George W. Bush promised Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev that, following the reunification of
Germany with Moscow's assent, NATO would not "move one inch" eastwards. But while Bill Clinton was president in 1999, Poland,
Hungary and Czechoslovakia joined the alliance. Under Bush's son, in 2004, the list grew: Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria,
Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia all joined. NATO now bordered Russia itself. Obama added Albania and Croatia. Under Trump, Montenegro
joined and North Macedonian entry is in the cards. The U.S. is obviously trying to incorporate every European nation possible
into an anti-Russian coalition for future deployment.
NATO forces were never deployed against Soviet or Warsaw Pact forces during the Cold War. But Clinton (prompted by bellicose
Hillary) used them to pound Serbian positions in Bosnia in the 1990s and to bomb Belgrade during the 1999 war to sever Kosovo
from Serbia and convert it into a NATO base. (In both instances Clinton claimed "humanitarian" motives.) They were used too
in Afghanistan and Libya, far away from the North Atlantic, at U.S. direction to topple the Taliban, thereby producing an ongoing
insurgency, and to destroy Gadhafi's modern state of Libya. They are not a force of good in the world.
Russia has responded, angrily but cautiously, to NATO's incessant, inexplicable expansion. The three crucial moments have
been in 1999, when Russian troops rushed to Pristina Airport in Kosovo to preserve some national pride following the expansion
of NATO and the U.S. humiliation of the Serbs; in 2008 when Russia briefly invaded Georgia to punish it for attacks on South Ossetia
(and its just announced pursuit of NATO membership); and in 2014 when in response to the U.S.-backed Kiev putsch Moscow moved
to secure ongoing control of the Crimean Peninsula. These were obviously moves to discourage NATO expansion.
For NATO strategists and supporters, Ukraine is the ultimate prize. (Thereafter only Belarus and Georgia need absorption.)
It is still slated for NATO membership; this year its Secretary General Jens Soltenberg reiterated this commitment in Kiev. It
remains the position of the U.S. that both Ukraine and Georgia should join NATO. The German government on the other hand, far
more sensitive to the historical issues involved, notes that Ukrainian or Georgian membership would "cross a red line" with Russia.
The Ukrainian people are divided on the issue. It is good if the Germans and others can block bloc expansion.
From February 2010 to February 2014, Ukraine was headed by a democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, who opposed
NATO membership . He had been elected despite routine U.S. election meddling. He has been depicted in the U.S. press as "pro-Russian"
and opposed to Ukraine's membership in the European Union. In fact, he sought entry into the EU, using his U.S. aide Paul Manafort
towards that end, and backed out of an agreement after realizing the political costs of the austerity program required. He was
"pro-Russian" in that he is ethnic Russian in a multi-ethnic country, and was while in power inclined to maintain good relations
with the northern neighbor. He was targeted by Hillary Clinton appointee Victoria Nuland (wife of neocon warmonger Robert Kagan)
for removal. He was charged with denying the Ukrainian people's "European aspirations" -- meaning, he was resisting an association
with the EU (and NATO).
He was indeed overthrown, succeeded by an new regime that provoked revolt among the ethnic Russians in the east from the outset.
The U.S. attempt to install a regime that could quickly align with the west, joining the EU and NATO as the usual package, resulted
in civil conflict and the Russian re-annexation of Crimea. Finally, the NATO effort to dominate Eurasia met a snag when the Russians
said: No way we'll concede to you the base port of the Black Sea Fleet since Empress Catherine's time, in 1785.
After the coup of February 18-21, 2014, Aseniy Yatsenyuk, handpicked by Nuland, became prime minister. Russia refused
to recognize the government he headed, stacked with NATO supporters. Only when Ukraine held a presidential election, and a candidate
acceptable to Moscow, Petro Poroshenko, was elected, did the Russians actively engage in diplomacy with Kiev. The result is the
Minsk Accords and an ongoing process of negotiations between Kiev, the Donbas separatists, Moscow, Germany and France. The key
issue of Donbas autonomy as a precondition for peace has met with opposition in the parliament but since the election of Volodomir
Zelensky, there have been concrete moves towards peace. Not that there has been much heavy fighting since 2015. Russia and Ukraine
are working with Europe to find a solution. It would be good for the U.S. to avoid interfering.
After the February 2014 coup (depicted in the western press as a "revolution" toppling a "pro-Russian" leader), Ukraine
informally joined the U.S. imperialist camp. There is, in fact, no formal alliance, but Ukraine is now depicted as an
ally, indeed one in desperate need of U.S. arms to resist the Russian invasion. But there has been no real Russian invasion,
just lots of hype; nowadays the talking heads refer to "Russian-backed" forces in Ukraine, referring to ethnic Russian-Ukrainians;
they exploit the general ignorance of people in this country about history and geography and fudge Russians with Russian-Ukrainians
(or sometimes any Slavs). And the annexation of Crimea was bloodless and popularly supported. The provision of $ 380 million in
Javelin anti-tank missiles and other weaponry to the Kiev government is unlikely to contribute to a settlement of the Donbas problem.
***
Amidst all the attention to detail, to phone calls and transcripts and secret visits, those pressing for Trump's impeachment (on
bribery grounds) never discuss the context of this little scandal.
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.
Please enter a valid
email Thank you for subscribing!Something went wrong. Please refresh and try again.
The fact that Ukraine has been hopelessly corrupt since it became independent with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991;
the fact that the U.S. underwrote the 2014 coup;
the fact that Hunter Biden was hired by Burisma Holdings two months after the coup (while his father was the Obama team's
point man on Ukrainian corruption) and served to April 2019;
and most of all, the fact that the U.S. wants to get Ukraine into NATO, surrounding European Russia and grabbing Crimea for
itself.
Trying to acquire dirt on the Bidens by strong-arming a foreign leader, threatening an arms supply cut-off, is bad I suppose,
by definition. But providing arms to stoke a conflict ignited by U.S. interference in Ukraine is worse. Had the U.S. not spent $
5 billion (Nuland's figure) to "support the Ukrainian people's European aspirations;" had John McCain and Lesley Graham not passed
out cookies with Nuland in Maidan; had NATO not declared its intention to include Kiev in the alliance, the east would be quiet as
usual. The coup and immediate rescinding of the law respecting Russian speakers' linguistic rights provoked rebellion.
The Ukraine scandal could be a teaching opportunity: this is where U.S. aggression leads. You provoke Russia again and again,
with each new admission into NATO. At some point, Russia has to take action. It cannot let a Texas-size country on its southern flank
join a military alliance directed at itself. Especially it cannot accept loss of control of the Crimean Peninsula.
That Nuland in the days before the planned coup did not anticipate this Russian reaction is puzzling. Did she really think the
conquest of Ukraine would be so easy? Or did she expect the Russian counter-moves, thinking that once Ukraine was in NATO Russia
would have to back off? Is that still the dominant assumption in the State Department?
Now a president with zero concern about Ukraine and its people is accused of a shocking reluctance to deliver weapons to a country
invaded by Russia, "our greatest adversary" according to cable anchors.
May he be impeached, of course! But if he falls, replaced by leadership more bent on provoking Russia by NATO expansion, the world
will be more dangerous than it is now under Trump.
When wall in Berlin felt down in 1989 some regions in USSR took step ahead and asked Highest soviet to be recognized as autonomous
region (oblast) of USSR instead of being homogenous part of Soviet Republics: Crimea, Karabakh, S Osetia, Podnestria. Reason for
it was that in those regions lived mostly Russians as USSR was developing since 1917. For example Poroshenko's dady was head of
steel mill in Podnestria.
Everything went smooth even thru transformation of USSR to CIS. Belovezha accord was dealing with this issue and all agreed
that they will recognize current status of those regions as Autono omous oblast of USSR until referendum in those regions about
selfdeclaration where they want to be.
But all this were just sweet words that later turned into conflicts because those guys did not keep their words.
As A US citizen who spends about half his time in Ukraine (and I was there during the fictitious "Russian Invasion" of Lugansk
in April 2014) I can attest that every point made in this article is true.
"Massive Pay-For-Play" Soros-Ukraine Scheme Facilitated By US Diplomats
They took all the corruption cases away from the prosecutor general, they gave it to the anti-corruption bureau, and they got
rid of all the cases that offended Soros, and they included all the cases against Soros' enemies
All plans were cooked under obama and continue under hillary. Never thought The Donald will win and nothing but troubles to
the easy massive wealth coming.
This impeachment is becoming a blessing to expose the mob corruption.
7. Ukraine is the ultimate prize...because it allows the spoiled children of Pelosi and Biden and Kerry to redirect US "Aid"
back into the financial interests of their families.
Otherwise, Ukraine is of negative value. Hence, Macron has ruled out Ukraine being brought into the EU until such time as the
EU has solved all of its many issues (ie never).
When actually seeing the historical crime line of the giant octopus absorbtion of countries into NATO..... The conspricy "
theory is fact.
Proof positive of the restructuring of a one world military not ruled by souverign countries but a conglomerate of " untied
Nations" run by ..... Ummmm hold, hold, hold ... Drum roll....
INTERNATIONAL BANKERS:
Who are the ONLY ones who profit from war or "maintaining stabilizers" who stir the pot on both sides for perpetual arms deals
( while urging individual non gun legislatiin for citizens) and weapons manufacturing and of course cyber internet control by
Google search engines.
Author glosses over the UKR Separatists' Declarations of Independence as LNR, DNR, and the Republic of Crimea; and the 3 Breakaway
States' requests to Join the Russian Federation.
Author also forgets to mention Crimea being of Russia until Kruschev's Reassignment; and Clarifying Sevastopolis always being
a Naval Base and City for Moscow.
RUS Annexation of Crimea occured AFTER the Secession and Reunification Votes by Resident Crimeans.
*****Conclusion:
**** Troll Article written by an USA/NATO/EU/UKR Apologist.
The provision of $ 380 million in Javelin anti-tank missiles and other weaponry to the Kiev government is
..likely to lead to Javelin atms and other ending up enriching corrupt Ukrainians and their partners Stateside and in the hands
of 3rd world dictators and or America's Muslim Jihadist legions anywhere there's an uncooperative government.
Trying to acquire dirt on the Bidens by strong-arming a foreign leader, threatening an arms supply cut-off, is bad I suppose,
by definition.
I stopped reading right there.
Biden admitted to threatening Ukraine with his own damn mouth. Four (4) DNC hacks have kids getting insane paychecks from Ukraine
for basically nothing more than a skim/bribery flowchart.
Hunter Biden is a crackhead, his father is useless but thinks he will be the next President. What a joke..
No mention, because it has now become irrelevant. Nordstream 2 and Turkstream will deprive the Ukranian government of the several
billion dollars per year in revenue. Of course, the American taxpayer will be asked to make that money up. Dead weight.
And by the way, if they had any gas reserves, they wouldn't be depending on the Russian Federation to pay them transit fees.
They've got that black, productive soil. I'll give them that. But France has pretty productive soil too. No mention of the French
farmer's protest on not being able to sell their crops to the Russian Federation, either.
This is ******* brilliant. Trump is daring the loser Democrats to impeach him so the
Republicans in charge of the senate can hold their own propaganda filled media campaign.
This one will have 2 huge differences from the senate.
This is ******* brilliant. Trump is daring the loser Democrats to impeach him so the
Republicans in charge of the senate can hold their own propaganda filled media campaign.
This one will have 2 huge differences from the senate.
Trump knows more about politics than all of the Democrats and Republicans combined. Who
else could have
Won the presidency while being outspent over 2 to 1
Prospered while the Deep State and Democrats throw a myriad of smears against him.
Prospered while MSM has 90% coverage against him.
It's the Democrats who know nothing about politics. Otherwise they would have never
started the impeachment nonsense which has only energized Trumps base and ensured his
landslide victory in 2020.
Sometimes you need to call a spade a spade, and Tuesday's testimony before Adam's Schiff
Show by former NSC official Tim Morrison is just such an occasion. In spades!
In his opening statement, this paranoid moron uttered the following lunacy, and it's all you
need to know about what is really going on down in the Imperial City.
"I continue to believe Ukraine is on the
front lines
of a strategic
competition between the West and Vladimir Putin's
revanchist Russia
. Russia is
a failing power, but it is still a dangerous one.
The United States aids Ukraine and her
people so they can fight Russia over there and we don't have to fight Russia here.
Folks, that just plain whacko.
The Trump-hating Dems are so feverishly set on a
POTUS kill that they have enlisted a veritable posse of Russophobic, right-wing neocon cretins –
Morrison, Taylor, Kent, Vindman, among others – to finish off the Donald.
But in so doing they have made official Washington's real beef against Trump crystal clear; and
it's not about the rule of law or abuse of presidential power or an impeachable dereliction of
duty.
To be sure, foolish politicians like Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler and the Clintonista
apparatus at the center of the Dem party are so overcome with inconsolable grief and anger about
losing the 2016 election to Trump that their sole purpose in life is to drive the Donald from
office. But that just makes them "useful idiots" or compliant handmaids of the Deep State, which
has a far more encompassing and consequential motivation.
To wit, whether out of naiveté, contrariness or just plain common sense, the Donald has declined
to embrace the War Party's Russian bogeyman and demonization of Putin. He thereby threatens the
Empire's raison d'être to the very core.
Indeed, that's the real reason for the whole concerted attack on Trump from the Russian
Collusion hoax, through the Mueller Investigation farce to the present UkraineGate and impeachment
inquisition. The Deep State deeply and profoundly fears that if Trump remains in office – and
especially if he is elected with a new mandate in 2020 – he might actually make peace with Russia
and Putin.
So in Part 1 we advert to the basics. Without the demonization of Russia, Ukraine
would be the no count failed state and cesspool of corruption it actually is, and not a purported
"front line" buffer against Russian aggression.
Likewise, it would not have been a recipient of vast US and western military and economic aid –
a condition that turned it into a honeypot for the kind of Washington influence peddling which
ensnared the Bidens, induced its officials to meddle in the 2016 US election, and, in return,
incited Trump's justifiable quest to get to the bottom of the malignancy that has ensued.
So the starting point is to identify Russia for what it actually is: Namely, a kleptocratic
state sitting atop an aging, Vodka-chugging population and third-rate economy with virtually zero
capacity to project 21st century offensive military power beyond its own borders.
That truth, of course, shatters the whole foundation of the Warfare State. It renders
NATO an obsolete relic and eviscerates the case for America's absurd $900 billion defense and
national security budget. And with the latter's demise, the fairest part of Washington's imperial
self-importance and unseemly national security spending-based prosperity would also crumble.
But in their frenzied pursuit of the Donald's political scalp, the Dems may be inadvertently
sabotaging their Deep State masters. That's because the neocon knuckleheads they are dragging out
of the NSC and State Department woodwork are such bellicose simpletons – just maybe their utterly
preposterous testimony about the Russkie threat and Ukrainian "front line" will wake up the
somnolent American public to the absurdity of the entire Cold War 2.0 campaign.
Indeed, you almost have to ask whether the bit about fighting the Russkies in the Donbas rather
than on the shores of New Jersey from Morrison's opening statement quoted above was reprinted in
the
New York Times
or
The
Onion
?
The fact is, the fearsome Russian bogeyman cited by Morrison yesterday – and Ambassador
Taylor, George Kent and Lt. Colonel Vindman previously – is a complete chimera;
and the
notion that the cesspool of corruption in Ukraine is a strategic buffer against Russian aggression
is just plain idiocy.
Russia is actually an economic and industrial midget transformed beyond recognition by
relentless Warfare State propaganda. It is actually no more threatening to America's homeland
security than the Siberian land mass that Sarah Palin once espied from her front porch in Alaska a
decade ago.
After all, how could it be? The the GDP of the New York City metro area alone is about $1.8
trillion, which is well more than Russia's 2018 GDP of $1.66 trillion. And that, in turn, is just
8% of America's total GDP of $21.5 trillion.
Moreover, Russia' dwarf economy is composed largely of a vast oil and gas patch; a multitude of
nickel, copper, bauxite and vanadium mines; and some very large swatches of wheat fields. That's
not exactly the kind of high tech industrial platform on which a war machine capable of threatening
the good folks in Lincoln NE or Worchester MA is likely to be erected.
And especially not when the Russian economy has been heading sharply south in dollar purchasing
terms for several years running.
GDP of Russia In Millions of USD
Indeed, in terms of manufacturing output, the comparison is just as stark. Russia's annual
manufacturing value added is currently about
$200 billion
compared to
$2.2
trillion
for the US economy.
And that's not the half of it. Not only are Russia's vast hydrocarbon deposits and mines likely
to give out in the years ahead, but so are the livers of its Vodka-chugging work force. That's a
problem because according to a recent Brookings study, Russia's working age population – even
supplemented by substantial in-migration and guest worker programs – is heading south as far into
the future as the eye can see.
Even in the Brookings medium case projection shown below, Russia's working age population will
be nearly 20% smaller than today by 2050. Yet today's figure of about 85 million is already just a
fraction of the US working age population of 255 million.
Russia's Shrinking Work Force
Not surprisingly, Russia's pint-sized economy can not support a military establishment anywhere
near to that of Imperial Washington. To wit, its
$61 billion
of military
outlays in 2018 amounted to less than
32 days
of Washington's current
$750 billion of expenditures for defense.
Indeed, it might well be asked how Russia could remotely threaten homeland security in America
short of what would be a suicidal nuclear first strike.
That's because the 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons on each side represent a continuation of
mutual deterrence (MAD) – the arrangement by which we we got through 45-years of cold war when the
Kremlin was run by a totalitarian oligarchy committed to a hostile ideology; and during which time
it had been armed to the teeth via a forced-draft allocation of upwards of 40% of the GDP of the
Soviet empire to the military.
By comparison, the Russian defense budget currently amounts to less than 4% of the country's
anemic present day economy – one shorn of the vast territories and populations of Belarus, Ukraine,
Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and all the Asian "stans" among others. Yet given those realities
we are supposed to believe that the self-evidently calculating and cautious kleptomaniac who runs
the Kremlin is going to go mad, defy MAD and trigger a nuclear Armageddon?
Indeed, the idea that Russia presents a national security threat to America is laughable. Not
only would Putin never risk nuclear suicide, but even that fantasy is the extent of what he's got.
That is, Russia's conventional capacity to project force to the North American continent is
nonexistent – or at best, lies somewhere between nichts and nothing.
For example, in today's world you do not invade any foreign continent without massive sea power
projection capacity in the form of aircraft carrier strike groups. These units consist of an armada
of lethal escort ships, a fleet of aircraft, massive suites of electronics warfare capability and
the ability to launch hundreds of cruise missiles and other smart weapons.
Each US aircraft carrier based strike group, in fact, is composed of roughly 7,500 personnel, at
least one cruiser, a squadron of destroyers and/or frigates, and a carrier air wing of 65 to 70
aircraft. A carrier strike group also sometimes includes submarines and attached logistics ships.
The US has
eleven
such carrier strike groups. Russia has
zero
modern
carrier strike groups and one beat-up, smoky old (diesel) aircraft carrier that the Israeli paper,
Haaretz, described as follows when it recently entered the Mediterranean:
Russia's only aircraft carrier, a leftover from the days of Soviet power, carries a long
history of mishaps, at sea and in port, and diesel engines which were built for Russia's cold
waters – as shown by the column of black smoke raising above it. It needs frequent refueling and
resupplies and has never been operationally tested.
Indeed, from our 19th floor apartment on the East River in NYC, even we could see this smoke
belcher coming up Long Island Sound with an unaided eye – with no help needed at all from the high
tech spyware of the nation's $80 billion intelligence apparatus.
Yet Morrison had the audacity to say before a committee of the U.S. House that we are
aiding Ukraine so we don't have to fight Russians on the banks of the East River or the Potomac!
For want of doubt, just compare the above image of the Admiral Kuznetsov belching smoke in the
Mediterranean with that of the Gerald R. Ford CVN 48 next below.
The latter is the US Navy's new $13 billion aircraft carrier and is the most technologically
advanced warship ever built.
The contrast shown below serves as a proxy for the vastly inferior capability of the
limited number of ships and planes in Russia's conventional force. What it does have numerical
superiority in is tanks – but alas they are not amphibious nor ocean-capable!
Likewise, nobody invades anybody without massive airpower and the ability to project it across
thousands of miles of oceans via vast logistics and air-refueling capabilities.
On that score, the US has 6,100 helicopters to Russia's 1,200 and 6,000 fixed wing fighter and
attack aircraft versus Russia's 2,100. More importantly, the US has 5,700 transport and airlift
aircraft compared to just 1,100 for Russia.
In short, the idea that Russia is a military threat to the US homeland is ludicrous. Russia is
essentially a landlocked military shadow of the former Soviet war machine. Indeed, for the world's
only globe-spanning imperial power to remonstrate about an aggressive threat from Moscow is a prime
facie case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Moreover, the canard that Washington's massive conventional armada is needed to defend
Europe is risible nonsense. Europe can and should take care of its own security and relationship
with its neighbor on the Eurasian continent.
After all, the GDP of NATO Europe is $18 trillion or 12X greater than that of Russia, and the
current military budgets of European NATO members total about $280 billion or 4X more than that of
Russia.
More importantly, the European nations and people really do not have any quarrel with Putin's
Russia, nor is their security and safety threatened by the latter. All of the tensions that do
exist and have come to a head since the illegal coup in Kiev in February 2014 were fomented by
Imperial Washington and its European subalterns in the NATO machinery.
Then again, the latter is absolutely the most useless, obsolete, wasteful and dangerous
multilateral institution in the present world. But like the proverbial clothes-less emperor, NATO
doesn't dare risk having the purportedly "uninformed" amateur in the Oval Office pointing out its
buck naked behind.
So the NATO subservient think tanks and establishment policy apparatchiks are harrumphing up a
storm, but for crying out loud most of Europe's elected politicians are in on the joke. They are
fiscally swamped paying for their Welfare States and are not about to squeeze their budgets or
taxpayers to fund military muscle against a nonexistent threat.
Finally an American president has woken up to the fact that World War II, not to
mention the cold war, is over: there's no need for US troops to occupy Germany.
Vladimir Putin isn't going to march into Berlin in a reenactment of the Red Army
taking the Fuehrer-bunker – but even if he were so inclined, why won't Germany defend itself?
Exactly. If their history proves anything, Germans are not a nation of pacifists, meekly willing
to bend-over in the face of real aggressors. Yet they spent the paltry sum of
$43
billion
on defense during 2018, or barely 1.1% of Germany's $4.0 trillion GDP, which
happens to be roughly three times bigger than Russia's.
In short, the policy action of the German government tells you they don't think Putin is
about to invade the Rhineland or retake the Brandenburg Gate.
And this live action testimonial also trumps, as it were, all of the risible alarms that have
emanated from the beltway think tanks and the 4,000 NATO bureaucrats talking their own book in
behalf of their plush Brussels sinecures.
And as we will outline in Part 2, that's what Washington's Ukraine intervention is all
about, and why the Donald's efforts to get to the bottom of that cesspool has brought on the final
Deep State assault against his presidency.
Part 2 -
Democrats Empower a Pack of Paranoid Neocon Morons
Yet his related claim that Ukraine is a victim of Russian aggression is even more ludicrous. The
actual aggression in that godforsaken corner of the planet came from Washington when it instigated,
funded, engineered and recognized the putsch on the streets of Kiev during February 2014, which
illegally overthrew the duly elected President of Ukraine on the grounds that he was too friendly
with Moscow.
Thus, Morrison risibly asserted that,
Support for Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty has been a bipartisan
objective since
Russia's military invasion in 2014
. It must continue to be.
The fact is, when the Maidan uprising occurred in February that year there were no
uninvited Russian troops anywhere in Ukraine.
Putin was actually sitting in his box on the
viewing stand, presiding over the Winter Olympics in Sochi and basking in the limelight of global
attention that they commanded.
It was only weeks later – when the Washington-installed ultra-nationalist government
with its neo-Nazi vanguard threatened the Russian-speaking populations of Crimea and the Donbas –
that Putin moved to defend Russian interests on his own doorstep.
And those interests
included Russia's primary national security asset – the naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea which
had been the homeport of the Russian Black Sea Fleet for centuries under czars and commissars
alike, and on which Russia had a long-term lease.
We untangle the truth of the crucial events which surrounded the Kiev putsch in greater detail
below, but suffice it here to note the whole gang of neocon apparatchiks which have been paraded
before the Schiff Show have proffered the same Big Lie as did Morrison in the "invasion" quote
cited above.
As the ever perspicacious Robert Merry observed regarding the previous testimony of Ambassador
Bill Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, the Washington rendition of the
Maidan coup and its aftermath amounts to a blatant falsehood:
The Taylor/Kent outlook stems from the widespread demonization of Russia that dominates
thinking within elite circles. Taylor's rendition of recent events in Ukraine was so one-sided
and
selective as to amount to a falsehood.
As he had it, Ukraine's turn to the West after 2009 (when he left the country after his
first diplomatic tour there) threatened Russia's Vladimir Putin to such an extent that he tried
to "bribe" Ukraine's president with inducements to resist Western influence, whereupon protests
emerged in Kyiv that drove the Ukrainian president to flee the country in 2014. Then Putin
invaded Crimea, holding a "sham referendum at the point of Russian army rifles." Putin sent
military forces into eastern Ukraine "to generate illegal armed formations and puppet
governments." And so the West extended military assistance to Ukraine.
"It is this security assistance," he said, "that is at the heart of the [impeachment]
controversy that we are discussing today."
Taylor's right that this narrative is at the center of UkraineGate, but there is not a shred of
truth to it. Nevertheless, defense of this false narrative, and the inappropriate military and
economic aid to Ukraine which flowed from it, is the real reason this posse of neocon stooges took
exception to the Donald's legitimate interest in investigating the Bidens and the events of 2016.
As Morrison put it Tuesday and Vindman said last week, their interest was in protecting not the
constitution and the rule of law, but the
bipartisan political consensus
on
Capitol Hill in favor of their proxy war on Putin and the Ukraine aid package through which it was
being prosecuted.
As I stated during my deposition, I feared at the time of the call on July 25 how its
disclosure would play in Washington's political climate. My fears have been realized.
Not surprisingly, the entire Washington establishment has been sucked into this scam. For
instance, the insufferably sanctimonious Peggy Noonan used her
Wall Street Journal
platform
to idolize these liars.
As she portrayed it, bow-tie bedecked George P. Kent appeared to be the very picture of
the old-school American foreign service official. And West Pointer Bill Taylor – with a military
career going back to (dubious) Vietnam heroism – was redolent of the blunt-spoken American military
men who won WW II and the cold war which followed.
As Robert Merry further noted,
She saw them as "the old America reasserting itself." They demonstrated "stature and
command of their subject matter."
They evinced "capability and integrity."
Oh, puleeze!
What they evinced was nothing more than the self-serving groupthink that has turned Ukraine into
a beltway goldmine. That is, a cornucopia of funding for all the think tanks, NGOs, foreign policy
experts, national security contractors and Warfare State agencies – from DOD through the State
Department, AID, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Board for International Broadcasting and
countless more – which ply their trade in the Imperial City.
But Robert Merry got it right. These cats are not noble public servants and heroes; they're
apparatchiks and payrollers aggrandizing their own power and pelf – even as they lead the nation to
the brink of disaster:
But these men embrace a geopolitical outlook that is simplistic, foolhardy, and
dangerous.
Perhaps no serious blame should accrue to them, since it is the same
geopolitical outlook embraced and enforced by pretty much the entire foreign policy
establishment, of which these men are mere loyal apparatchiks. And yet they are playing their
part in pushing a foreign policy that is directing America towards a very possible disaster.
Neither man manifested even an inkling of an understanding of what kind of game the
United States in playing with Ukraine. Neither gave even a nod to the long, complex relationship
between Ukraine and Russia. Neither seemed to understand either the substance or the intensity
of Russia's geopolitical interests along its own borders or the likely consequences of
increasing U.S. meddling in what for centuries has been part of Russia's sphere of influence.
They obviously didn't get it, but we must. So let us summarize the true Ukraine story, starting
with the utterly stupid and historically ignorant reason for Washington's February 2014 coup.
Namely, it objected to the decision of Ukraine's prior government in late 2013 to align itself
economically and politically with its historic hegemon in Moscow rather than the European Union and
NATO. Yet the fairly elected and constitutionally legitimate government of Ukraine then led by
Viktor Yanukovych had gone that route mainly because it got a better deal from Moscow than was
being demanded by the fiscal torture artists of the IMF.
Needless to say, the ensuing US sponsored putsch arising from the mobs on the street of Kiev
reopened deep national wounds. Ukraine's bitter divide between Russian-speakers in the east and
Ukrainian nationalists elsewhere dates back to Stalin's brutal rein in Ukraine during the 1930s and
Ukrainian collusion with Hitler's Wehrmacht on its way to Stalingrad and back during the 1940s.
It was the memory of the latter nightmare, in fact, which triggered the fear-driven outbreak of
Russian separatism in the Donbas and the 96% referendum vote in Crimea in March 2014 to formally
re-affiliate
with Mother Russia.
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of
must-read stories.
Please enter a valid email
Thank you for subscribing!
Something went wrong. Please refresh and try
again.
In this context, even a passing familiarity with Russian history and geography would remind that
Ukraine and Crimea are Moscow's business, not Washington's.
In the first place, there is nothing at stake in the Ukraine that matters. During the
last 800 years it has been a meandering set of borders in search of a country.
In fact, the intervals in which the Ukraine existed as an independent nation have been few and
far between. Invariably, its rulers, petty potentates and corrupt politicians made deals with or
surrendered to every outside power that came along.
These included the Lithuanians, Poles, Ruthenians (eastern Slavs), Tartars, Turks, Muscovites,
Austrians and Czars, among manifold others.
At the beginning of the 16th century, for instance, the territory of today's Ukraine was
scattered largely among the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Ruthenia (light brown area), the Kingdom
of Poland (dark brown area), Muscovy (bright yellow area) the Crimean Khanate (light yellow area).
The latter was the entity which emerged when some clans of the Golden Horde (Tartars) ceased
their nomadic life on the Asian steppes and occupied the light yellow stripped areas of the map
north of the Black Sea as their Yurt (homeland).
From that cold start, the tiny Cossack principality of Ukraine (blue area below), which had
emerged by 1654, grew significantly over the subsequent three centuries. But as the map also makes
clear, this did not reflect the organic congealment of a nation of kindred volk sharing common
linguistic and ethnic roots, but the machinations of Czars and Commissars for the administrative
convenience of efficiently ruling their conquests and vassals.
Thus, much of modern Ukraine was incorporated by the Russian Czars between 1654 and 1917 per the
yellow area of the map and functioned as vassal states. These territories were amalgamated by
absolute monarchs who ruled by the mandate of God and the often brutal sword of their own armies.
In particular, much of the purple area was known as "Novo Russia" (Novorossiya) during the 18th
and 19th century owing to the Czarist policy of relocating
Russian populations
to
the north of the Black Sea as a bulwark against the Ottomans. But after Lenin seized power in St.
Petersburg in November 1917 amidst the wreckage of Czarist Russia, an ensuing civil war between the
so-called White Russians and the Red Bolsheviks raged for several years in these territories and
elsewhere in the chaotic regions of the former western Russian Empire.
At length, Lenin won the civil war as the French, British, Polish and American contingents
vacated the postwar struggle for power in Russia. Accordingly, in 1922 the new Communist rulers
proclaimed the Union of Soviet Social Republics (USSR) and incorporated Novo Russia into one of its
four constituent units as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) – along with the Russian,
Belarus and Transcaucasian SSRs.
Thereafter the border and political status of Ukraine remained unchanged until the infamous
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between the USSR and Nazi Germany. Pursuant thereto the Red Army
and Nazi Germany invaded and dismembered Poland, with Stalin getting the blue areas (Volhynia and
parts of Galicia) as consolation prizes, which where then incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR.
Finally, when Uncle Joe Stalin died and Nikita Khrushchev won the bloody succession struggle in
1954, he transferred Crimea (red area) to the Ukraine SSR as a reward to his supporters in Kiev.
That, of course, was the arbitrary writ of the Soviet Presidium, given that precious few Ukrainians
actually lived in what had been a integral part of Czarist Russia after it was purchased by
Catherine the Great from the Turks in 1783.
In a word, the borders of modern Ukraine are the handiwork of Czarist emperors and
Communist butchers.
The so-called international rule of law had absolutely nothing to
do with its gestation and upbringing.
It's a pity, therefore, that none of the so-called conservative Republicans attending Adam's
Schiff Show saw fit to ask young Tim Morrison the obvious question.
To wit, exactly why is he (and most of the Washington foreign policy establishment) so
keen on expending American treasure, weapons and even blood in behalf of the "territorial integrity
and sovereignty" of this happenstance amalgamation of people subdued by some of history's most
despicable tyrants?
Needless to say, owing to this very history, the linguistic/ethnic composition of today's
Ukraine does not reflect the congealment of a "nation" in the historic sense.
To the contrary, central and western Ukraine is populated by ethnic Ukrainians who speak
Ukrainian (dark red area), whereas the two parts of the country allegedly the victim of Russian
aggression and occupation – Crimea (brown area) and the eastern Donbas region (yellow area with
brown strips) – are comprised of ethnic Russians who speak Russian and ethnic Ukrainians who
predominately speak-Russian, respectively.
And much of the rest of the territory consists of admixtures and various Romanian, Moldovan,
Hungarian and Bulgarian minorities.
Did the Washington neocons – led by Senator McCain and Assistant Secretary Victoria
Nuland – who triggered the Ukrainian civil war with their coup on the streets of Kiev in February
2014 consider the implications of the map below and its embedded, and often bloody, history?
Quite surely, they did not.
Nor did they consider the rest of the map. That is, the enveloping Russian state all around to
which the parts and pieces of Ukraine – especially the Donbas and Crimea – have been intimately
connected for centuries. Robert Merry thus further noted,
As Nikolas K. Gvosdev of the US Naval War College has written, Russia and Ukraine share a
1,500-mile border where Ukraine "nestles up against the soft underbelly of the Russian
Federation." Gvosdev elaborates: "The worst nightmare of the Russian General Staff would be NATO
forces deployed all along this frontier, which would put the core of Russia's population and
industrial capacity at risk of being quickly and suddenly overrun in the event of any conflict."
Beyond that crucial strategic concern, the two countries share strong economic, trade, cultural,
ethnic, and language ties going back centuries. No Russian leader of any stripe would survive as
leader if he or she were to allow Ukraine to be wrested fully from Russia's sphere of influence.
And yet America, in furtherance of the ultimate aim of pulling Ukraine away from Russia,
spent some $5 billion in a campaign to gin up pro-Western sentiment there, according to former
assistant secretary of state for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who spearheaded much of this
effort during the Obama administration. It was clearly a blatant effort to interfere in the
domestic politics of a foreign nation – and a nation residing in a delicate and easily inflamed
part of the world.
Indeed, Ukraine is a tragically divided country and fissured simulacrum of a nation.
Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard called Ukraine "a cleft country, with two distinct cultures"
causing Robert Merry to rightly observe that,
Contrary to Taylor's false portrayal of an aggressive Russia trampling on eastern
Ukrainians by setting up puppet governments and manufacturing a bogus referendum in Crimea, the
reality is that large numbers of Ukrainians there favor Russia and feel loyalty to what they
consider their Russian heritage. The Crimean public is 70 percent Russian, and its Parliament in
1992 actually voted to declare independence from Ukraine for fear that the national leadership
would nudge the country toward the West. (The vote was later rescinded to avoid a violent
national confrontation.) In 1994, Crimea elected a president who had campaigned on a platform of
"unity with Russia."
In short, in modern times Ukraine largely functioned as an integral part of Mother Russia,
serving as its breadbasket and iron and steel crucible under czars and commissars alike.
Given this history, the idea that Ukraine should be actively and aggressively induced to join NATO
was just plain nuts,
as we will amplify further in Part 3 (to come).
Tags
"In short, in modern times Ukraine largely functioned as an
integral part of Mother Russia, serving as its breadbasket and
iron and steel crucible under czars and commissars alike.
Given
this history, the idea that Ukraine should be actively and
aggressively induced to join NATO was just plain nuts,
as we
will amplify further in Part 3 (to come)."
This seemed like a sensible column until I got to this:
"... identify Russia for what it actually is: Namely, a
kleptocratic state sitting atop an aging, Vodka-chugging
population and third-rate economy with virtually zero capacity to
project 21st century offensive military power beyond its own
borders."
So the starting point is to identify Russia for what it
actually is: Namely, a kleptocratic state sitting atop an
aging, Vodka-chugging population and third-rate economy
Maybe the Russians are normal, intelligent people just trying
to improve themselves and their country. And are interested in
commerce not conquest no matter what their GDP.
Agree with Stockman that the Russian "threat" is a red herring.
But it's not because Russia is the pathological, bankrupt society
that he claims it to be.
Stockman is leftover reaganomics and we all know what that ****
turned out along with Thatcherite **** and Pinochet ****.
Trickle down economics.....but blood and not oligarch's piss
for the thirsting masses that clowns like Stockman and co.
despises..
Deluded as ever imaginging that USSA isn't burned
to the bone.
Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in "business as usual"
is lost.
Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that "the market shall
provide" is lost.
Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that "the government will
take care of you" is lost.
Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that "your people will take
care of you" is lost.
Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in "the goodness of humanity"
is lost.
Stockman writes the Russia has "virtually zero capacity to project
21st century offensive military power beyond its own borders."
Tell that to the tens of thousands of dead and defeated head
choppers in Syria.
Tell that to the tens of thousands of dead and defeated
head choppers in Syria.
The "head choppers" in Syria were Sunni jihadist lunatics
funded by the United States. The U.S. shoveled thousands of
tons of weapons to those cutthroats. For Washington, regime
change trumped the "collateral damage" slaughter of the Shia,
Alawite, Christian, Druze and Kurdish populations in Syria by
the U.S. proxy Sunni goons.
Here are some Christian communities in Syria celebrating
their holy days after they had been liberated from the U.S.
backed terrorists by the Syrian Army and the Russians:
The Russians are accustomed to survive, they went through too
many wars, their weapons are created for war and to kill. They
are nationalists (although not like the Chinese - without
extremes) and are very attached to their country. Mother Russia
- says a lot. The Americans suffered the last time in
1861-1865, in United States now clan-corporate "capitalism"
with the suppression of free markets and the dominance of
lobbyists whose interests do not coincide with the national
interests of the United States. That's why I stopped respecting
Americans. The irony of fate is that Russians are capitalists
now, and the Americans are now ******* USSR version 2.0.
To which the hunt for the bogeyman will bankrupt us whether it
be Putin, Xi, Kim, Assad buying all these toys many of which
haven't proven to be as reliable as the Russian stuff. Looking
at the Russian GDP cart you see the big fall after the seizure
of Crimea and the subsequent sanctions. Russian as now turned
inward and produces a lot of what was imported from Europe and
those markets will never return to the Europeans. Merkel's
business people are SCREAMING to lift the sanctions as their
economy flounders. Same with many other countries. The trade
war with China has irrevocably hurt our farmers. Russia and
their Jon Deere look-a like combines are now cranking out food
for the world.
The don't have to be huge, they have to be
within budget. Trust me, Russia hasn't found half the minerals
in their lands.
Israel's Secret Plan for a
Second Israel in Ukraine
A secret report provided to the Israeli government by a select
panel of scholars of Jewish history drawn from academia and other
research centers, concluded that that European Jews are in fact
descended from Khazars - Datelined Jerusalem and Zhitomir,
Ukraine, March 16, 2014
One of the main reasons why Ukrainian Jewish billionaire tycoon
Ihor
Kolomoisky
[Zelenskiy's main sponsor], the governor of
Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk province and citizen of Ukraine, Israel,
and Cyprus, is spending tens of millions of dollars on the
recruitment of right-wing Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis
from other parts of Europe to fight against the Russian-speaking
majority in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, is a fear that
plans to turn Ukraine into a second Israel
will be
derailed.
Russia's protective measures for the Donbass, as well as its
incorporation by referendum of Crimea, the latter prized by the
resurgent Khazarian Jewish nationalists, threaten the
transformation of Ukraine into a second homeland for Ashkenazi
Jews who are finding their hold on Israel prime tenuous, at best."
The Russian economy is based on the ruble, not the dollar.
Therefore, at purchasing power parity, IMF data, 2017 USD
1 PRC 23208
2 USA 19485
3 India 9474
4 Japan 5443
5 Germany 4199
6 Russia 4016
7 Indonesia 3250
8 Brazil 3247
9 United Kingdom 2925 As a result, the growth of the US economy
by 3% is 600 mln. dollars., and debt 1,2trl. dale so what is
growing in an economy like the US?
When I am in Australia, my weekly shopping for food costs me
US$150. In Ukraine or Russia, it is more like US$40. That suggests
that the GDP figures above should be multiplied by 3-5.
In an interview with Associated Press, US Attorney General William Barr put all conspiracy
theories to rest once and for all by assuring the world that alleged sex trafficker and alleged
billionaire Jeffrey Epstein's death was simply the result of a very, very, very long series of
unfortunate coincidences.
"I can understand people who immediately, whose minds went to sort of the worst-case
scenario because it was a perfect storm of screw-ups," Barr told AP on Thursday .
This perfect storm of unlucky oopsies include:
Epstein being
taken off suicide watch not long after a previous suicide attempt and shortly before his
successful suicide,
suggestions
that the first attempt may have actually been an assault via attempted strangulation
inflicted by someone else,
"... She looked to be a most convincing and dignified victim but it was difficult to work out quite what she'd been a victim of. ..."
"... I think our closest equivalent over here would be Lady Ashton, who headed up the pre-coup European negotiations with the Ukraine. It was Lady Ashton who gave the most famous diplomatic response in modern history, when she was told that the snipers might be provocateurs. "Gosh." ..."
"... And Chairman Schiff looked as scary as usual. If I could open my eyes that wide I'd make a fortune in horror movies. Which I suppose is more or less what he does. ..."
"... Colonel, your description of Ambassador Yovanovitch as "a secular nun" is spot on. Congratulations ! On the other hand, why is a nun continuing a civil war with 1% predatory oligarchs and Bandera thugs on our side, versus 99% of un-armed local nobodies who want a return to normalcy? ..."
"... Lastly, note that Representative Stefanik caught Ambassador Marie in a lie about Hunter Biden and Burisma. Marie claimed under oath that she had never encountered the issue pre-arrival in the Ukraine, while she had admitted earlier that Obama staff coached her about Hunter / Burisma responses for her Senate Confirmation Hearings. ..."
... She seems to live alone, alone with her work. She tried living with her 88 year old mother
three years ago but that did not last. What would the old girl have done with herself in Kiev
with her daughter working all the time?
So, the maman went home to the States. Marie is still employed as a Career Ambassador
(a high rank) in the Foreign Service of of the United States She is currently assigned at
Georgetown U.
That's the first time I've seen "winsome" used with an edge.
I watched her for some time and didn't know what on earth to make of her. She looked to
be a most convincing and dignified victim but it was difficult to work out quite what she'd
been a victim of.
I think our closest equivalent over here would be Lady Ashton, who headed up the
pre-coup European negotiations with the Ukraine. It was Lady Ashton who gave the most famous
diplomatic response in modern history, when she was told that the snipers might be
provocateurs. "Gosh."
A very safe pair of hands, is what would be said of both and almost certainly often
is.
I did know what to make of the histrionics just before the recess. They looked false. That
man wasn't really crying. And Chairman Schiff looked as scary as usual. If I could open my
eyes that wide I'd make a fortune in horror movies. Which I suppose is more or less what he
does.
EO,
Zelensky did not like her and suggested that she was involved with corrupt people and
undermining the President. I don't understand how Trump gets all of the blame for her being
relieved of her position.
Marie IMO was always the second best looking girl in the class but maybe teacher's pet,
and has never had anyone take anything away from her before. "Gosh." She doesn't look like
someone you could safely make a pass at unless you had an awful lot of rank.
Colonel, your description of Ambassador Yovanovitch as "a secular nun" is spot on.
Congratulations ! On the other hand, why is a nun continuing a civil war with 1% predatory
oligarchs and Bandera thugs on our side, versus 99% of un-armed local nobodies who want a
return to normalcy?
Then again, since when does a Presidential emissary not only criticize him and the
President of her host country, but also instruct local law enforcement on which oligarchs he
may investigate and which oligarch's (admittedly ours) he may not.
Lastly, note that Representative Stefanik caught Ambassador Marie in a lie about Hunter
Biden and Burisma. Marie claimed under oath that she had never encountered the issue
pre-arrival in the Ukraine, while she had admitted earlier that Obama staff coached her about
Hunter / Burisma responses for her Senate Confirmation Hearings.
To take your cue, Ambassador Marie is a secular nun with very bad ideas, who wandered to a
profession she is not at all suited.
... I did know what to make of the histrionics just before the recess. They looked false.
That man wasn't really crying. And Chairman Schiff looked as scary as usual. If I could open
my eyes that wide I'd make a fortune in horror movies. Which I suppose is more or less what he
does.Reply 16 November 2019 at 03:35 PM
"... Is it not possible to have an article on Ukraine without all the N@ZI references? Might have been a non-biased article, but many of us will never know... ..."
"... They certainly aren't National Socialists, and arguably not nationalists. Nationalists are open to what is best for "the nation" regardless of where it lies on the political spectrum. Since they don't consider the people in Donbas to be part of "the nation", that means, if anything, they are useful idiots of Zionism. ..."
In my July 25th article " Zelenskii's dilemma " I pointed
out the fundamental asymmetry of the Ukrainian power configuration following Zelenskii's crushing victory over Poroshenko: while
a vast majority of the Ukrainian people clearly voted to stop the war and restore some kind of peace to the Ukraine, the real levers
of power in the post-Maidan Banderastan are all held by all sorts of very powerful, if also small, minority groups including:
The various "oligarchs" (Kolomoiskii, Akhmetov, etc.) and/or mobsters Arsen Avakov's internal security forces including some "legalized"
Nazi death squads The various non-official Nazi deathsquads (Parubii) The various western intelligence agencies who run various groups
inside the Ukraine The various western financial/political sponsors who run various groups inside the Ukraine The so-called "Sorosites"
(соросята) i.e. Soros and Soros-like sponsored political figures The many folks who want to milk the Ukraine down to the last drop
of Ukrainian blood and then run
These various groups all acted in unison, at least originally, during and after the Euromaidan. This has now dramatically changed
and these groups are now all fighting each other. This is what always happens when things begin to turn south and the remaining loot
shrinks with every passing day,
Whether Zelenskii ever had a chance to use the strong mandate he received from the people to take the real power back from these
groups or not is now a moot point: It did not happen and the first weeks of Zelenskii's presidency clearly showed that Zelenskii
was, indeed, in " free fall ": instead of becoming
a "Ukrainian Putin" Zelenskii became a "Ukrainian Trump" – a weak and, frankly, clueless leader, completely outside his normal element,
whose only "policy" towards all the various extremist minorities was to try to appease them, then appease them some more, and then
even more than that. As a result, a lot of Ukrainians are already speaking about "Ze" being little more than a "Poroshenko 2.0".
More importantly, pretty much everybody is frustrated and even angry at Zelenskii whose popularity is steadily declining.
... ... ...
Another major problem for Zelenskii are two competing narratives: the Ukronazi one and, shall we say, the "Russian" one. I have
outlined the Ukronazi one just above and now I will mention the competing Russian one which goes something like this:
The Euromaidan was a completely illegal violent coup against the democratically elected President of the Ukraine, whose legitimacy
nobody contested, least of all the countries which served as mediators between Poroshenko and the rioters and who betrayed their
word in less than 24 hours (a kind of a record for western politicians and promises of support!).
... ... ...
Some of the threats made by these Ukronazis are dead serious and the only person who, as of now, kinda can keep the Ukrainian
version of the Rwandan " Interahamwe " under control would probably be Arsen Avakov, but since he himself is a hardcore
Nazi nutcase, his attitude is ambiguous and unpredictable. He probably has more firepower than anybody else, but he was a pure "
Porokhobot " (Poroshenko-robot) who, in many ways, controlled Poroshenko more than Poroshenko controlled him. The best move
for Zelenskii would be to arrest the whole lot of them overnight (Poroshenko himself, but also Avakov, Parubii, Iarosh, Farion, Liashko,
Tiagnibok, etc.) and place a man he totally trusts as Minister of the Interior. Next, Zelenskii should either travel to Donetsk or,
at least, meet with the leaders of the LDNR and work with them to implement the Minsk Agreements. That would alienate the Ukronazis
for sure, but it would give Zelenskii a lot of popular support.
Needless to say, that is not going to happen. While Zelenskii's puppet master Kolomoiskii would love to stick this entire gang
in jail and replace them with his own men, it is an open secret that powerful interest groups in the US have told Zelenskii "don't
you dare touch them". Which is fine, except that this also means "don't you dare change their political course either".
...are going through the famous Kübler-Ross stages of griefs: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance: currently,
most of them are zig-zagging between bargaining and depression; acceptance is still far beyond their – very near – horizon. Except
that Zelenskii has nothing left to bargain with.
Thank you for a rational article about Ukraine. The sad thing is that it might take years to reach the "acceptance" phase.
It would take someone like Hitler to clean out the stables. Arrest is not a viable option as they will bribe their way out.
These people need to be put down like rabid dogs. That is the only way to put an end to their mischief and it would be a deterrent
to their replacements.
Personally, I suspect that the Ukraine is being deliberately depopulated to make way for waves of "refugees" from Israel. Another
country that is still in the "denial" phase. Its military and political leaders know full-well that their strategic aims have
all failed. The boot is now firmly on the other foot.
I suspect that Crimea was their preferred destination and hence the massive non-stop propaganda against Russia on that score.
To give you an idea of how ridiculous it has all become, the UK no longer accepts medical degrees awarded by universities in Crimea.
Is it not possible to have an article on Ukraine without all the N@ZI references? Might have been a non-biased article, but
many of us will never know...
I suspect that the Ukraine is being deliberately depopulated to make way for waves of "refugees" from Israel.
You got that right – what it's all about is building a New Khazaria. But they're neither giving up on their Greater Israel
project between the two rivers, and hence more wars, conflict and chaos to drive out the native Arabs from the Middle East.
I suspect that Crimea was their preferred destination and hence the massive non-stop propaganda against Russia on that score.
@AWMThey certainly aren't National Socialists, and arguably not nationalists. Nationalists are open to what is best for
"the nation" regardless of where it lies on the political spectrum. Since they don't consider the people in Donbas to be part
of "the nation", that means, if anything, they are useful idiots of Zionism.
@bob sykes Kolomoiskii is the real hidden owner/controller of the company that bribed the Bidens. He has a finger in lots
of pies. His pretense to leaning towards Russia is his way to try to get the Americans to stop attempts to get at the many millions
that he stole from his own Ukrainians bank – fake loans to his companies.
Of course, the Russians understand all of that. This theater is aimed at the Americans – not at the Russians.
For the Ukrainian state to break up, there need to be some forces interested in a break-up. You won't find such forces inside
the Ukraine.
What is Ukrainian South-East? In pure political terms, "South-East" is a bunch of oligarchs, who are all integrated into Ukrainian
system, and have no reason to seek independence from Kiev, especially if it means getting slapped with Western sanctions.
Even the Kremlin doesn't show much interest in breaking up the Ukraine, so why the hell would it break up?
It's worth pointing out that the so-called "Novorossia movement" started out as Akhmetov's project to win concessions from
new Kiev regime. It was then quickly hijacked by Strelkov, a man who actually wanted to break up the Ukraine, and it is because
of Strelkov, that Donetsk and Lugansk are now de-facto independent. Without similar figures to lead secessionist movements elsewhere
in the Ukraine, this break-up that Saker keeps talking about will never happen.
His ratings must be sky-high, because otherwise I cannot imagine why Fox would allow him to continue to use their network as
a medium to broadcast common sense.
Of course the Dems are making it so easy.
Schiff, Kent, Taylor, Yanovitch -- what a pathetic, nauseating crew.
"... She looked to be a most convincing and dignified victim but it was difficult to work out quite what she'd been a victim of. ..."
"... I think our closest equivalent over here would be Lady Ashton, who headed up the pre-coup European negotiations with the Ukraine. It was Lady Ashton who gave the most famous diplomatic response in modern history, when she was told that the snipers might be provocateurs. "Gosh." ..."
"... And Chairman Schiff looked as scary as usual. If I could open my eyes that wide I'd make a fortune in horror movies. Which I suppose is more or less what he does. ..."
"... Colonel, your description of Ambassador Yovanovitch as "a secular nun" is spot on. Congratulations ! On the other hand, why is a nun continuing a civil war with 1% predatory oligarchs and Bandera thugs on our side, versus 99% of un-armed local nobodies who want a return to normalcy? ..."
"... Lastly, note that Representative Stefanik caught Ambassador Marie in a lie about Hunter Biden and Burisma. Marie claimed under oath that she had never encountered the issue pre-arrival in the Ukraine, while she had admitted earlier that Obama staff coached her about Hunter / Burisma responses for her Senate Confirmation Hearings. ..."
... She seems to live alone, alone with her work. She tried living with her 88 year old mother
three years ago but that did not last. What would the old girl have done with herself in Kiev
with her daughter working all the time?
So, the maman went home to the States. Marie is still employed as a Career Ambassador
(a high rank) in the Foreign Service of of the United States She is currently assigned at
Georgetown U.
That's the first time I've seen "winsome" used with an edge.
I watched her for some time and didn't know what on earth to make of her. She looked to
be a most convincing and dignified victim but it was difficult to work out quite what she'd
been a victim of.
I think our closest equivalent over here would be Lady Ashton, who headed up the
pre-coup European negotiations with the Ukraine. It was Lady Ashton who gave the most famous
diplomatic response in modern history, when she was told that the snipers might be
provocateurs. "Gosh."
A very safe pair of hands, is what would be said of both and almost certainly often
is.
I did know what to make of the histrionics just before the recess. They looked false. That
man wasn't really crying. And Chairman Schiff looked as scary as usual. If I could open my
eyes that wide I'd make a fortune in horror movies. Which I suppose is more or less what he
does.
EO,
Zelensky did not like her and suggested that she was involved with corrupt people and
undermining the President. I don't understand how Trump gets all of the blame for her being
relieved of her position.
Marie IMO was always the second best looking girl in the class but maybe teacher's pet,
and has never had anyone take anything away from her before. "Gosh." She doesn't look like
someone you could safely make a pass at unless you had an awful lot of rank.
Colonel, your description of Ambassador Yovanovitch as "a secular nun" is spot on.
Congratulations ! On the other hand, why is a nun continuing a civil war with 1% predatory
oligarchs and Bandera thugs on our side, versus 99% of un-armed local nobodies who want a
return to normalcy?
Then again, since when does a Presidential emissary not only criticize him and the
President of her host country, but also instruct local law enforcement on which oligarchs he
may investigate and which oligarch's (admittedly ours) he may not.
Lastly, note that Representative Stefanik caught Ambassador Marie in a lie about Hunter
Biden and Burisma. Marie claimed under oath that she had never encountered the issue
pre-arrival in the Ukraine, while she had admitted earlier that Obama staff coached her about
Hunter / Burisma responses for her Senate Confirmation Hearings.
To take your cue, Ambassador Marie is a secular nun with very bad ideas, who wandered to a
profession she is not at all suited.
Will IG Horowitz Drop the Hammer on the FBI For FISA Abuse? by Larry C Johnson
There is great impatience, even frustration, over the slow roll out of the results of
Inspector General Horowitz's investigation of the FBI's use of FISA. From what we already know
from the public record, there was clear abuse and even criminal conduct by former FBI Director
Jim Comey and his Deputy, Andy McCabe. They claimed in a filing with the FISA court that the
Steele Dossier was verified. Yet, Jim Comey subsequently testified under oath before Congress
that the so-called Dossier was "unverified." Okay Jimmy, which is it?
We have some clues that Horowitz is not doing a whitewash. Reports last week, based in part
on the whining of people reportedly linked to Comey and McCabe and others at the FBI and DOJ,
stated that persons substantively discussed in the report were given the chance to review their
portion of the report but they had to do so after signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement and were
not permitted to submit written responses.
Then we have Attorney General Barr's speech last Friday to the Federalist Society. You can
read the full transcript at
The Conservative Treehouse . It is magnificent. Barr understands that there has been an
attempted coup against the Presidency of Donald Trump. Here are some key excerpts:
As I have said, the Framers fully expected intense pulling and hauling between the Congress
and the President. Unfortunately, just in the past few years, we have seen these conflicts take
on an entirely new character.
Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called "The
Resistance," and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver
available to sabotage the functioning of his Administration. Now, "resistance" is the language
used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously
connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous – indeed
incendiary – notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic. What it means
is that, instead of viewing themselves as the "loyal opposition," as opposing parties have done
in the past, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means
necessary, a duly elected government.
A prime example of this is the Senate's unprecedented abuse of the advice-and-consent
process. The Senate is free to exercise that power to reject unqualified nominees, but that
power was never intended to allow the Senate to systematically oppose and draw out the approval
process for every appointee so as to prevent the President from building a functional
government.
Yet that is precisely what the Senate minority has done from his very first days in office.
As of September of this year, the Senate had been forced to invoke cloture on 236 Trump
nominees -- each of those representing its own massive consumption of legislative time meant
only to delay an inevitable confirmation. How many times was cloture invoked on nominees during
President Obama's first term? 17 times. The Second President Bush's first term? Four times. It
is reasonable to wonder whether a future President will actually be able to form a functioning
administration if his or her party does not hold the Senate. . . .
The costs of this constant harassment are real. For example, we all understand that
confidential communications and a private, internal deliberative process are essential for all
of our branches of government to properly function. Congress and the Judiciary know this well,
as both have taken great pains to shield their own internal communications from public
inspection. There is no FOIA for Congress or the Courts. Yet Congress has happily created a
regime that allows the public to seek whatever documents it wants from the Executive Branch at
the same time that individual congressional committees spend their days trying to publicize the
Executive's internal decisional process. That process cannot function properly if it is public,
nor is it productive to have our government devoting enormous resources to squabbling about
what becomes public and when, rather than doing the work of the people. . . .
One of the ironies of today is that those who oppose this President constantly accuse this
Administration of "shredding" constitutional norms and waging a war on the rule of law. When I
ask my friends on the other side, what exactly are you referring to? I get vacuous stares,
followed by sputtering about the Travel Ban or some such thing. While the President has
certainly thrown out the traditional Beltway playbook, he was upfront about that beforehand,
and the people voted for him. What I am talking about today are fundamental constitutional
precepts. The fact is that this Administration's policy initiatives and proposed rules,
including the Travel Ban, have transgressed neither constitutional, nor traditional, norms, and
have been amply supported by the law and patiently litigated through the Court system to
vindication.
Indeed, measures undertaken by this Administration seem a bit tame when compared to some of
the unprecedented steps taken by the Obama Administration's aggressive exercises of Executive
power – such as, under its DACA program, refusing to enforce broad swathes of immigration
law.
The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of
"Resistance" against this Administration, it is the Left that is engaged in the systematic
shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law. This highlights a basic disadvantage
that conservatives have always had in contesting the political issues of the day. It was
adverted to by the old, curmudgeonly Federalist, Fisher Ames, in an essay during the early
years of the Republic.
Bill Barr's speech is a reminder that we still have men and women of integrity and wisdom
battling in the public sphere to uphold the essence of our Republic. Barr's speech laid down a
very clear marker of how he sees this battle for the soul of America. He is a man grounded in
the law and committed to upholding it. He understands that justice must be blind and applied
without bias if the fabric of this country is to remain intact.
We will know in the coming weeks if Barr delivers. I think he will. I have bet a bottle of
fine bourbon with a wise hero of our Republic that high level people will be indicted. I hope
for the sake of our country I am right. And if I am right, I am still going to buy that hero a
bottle of fine bourbon.
It was a fine speech, but it was made to a private audience and not reported to any
significant degree by the media. I saw nothing in it to give me any hope that actual action
will be taken against those who are participating in the coup against the properly elected
president of this nation.
The size of the forum seems less important to me than the quality of audience members.
Were the founders of the US Republic many? Were they insignificant people? Were they
ignorant of their own faults and the likely faults of their interlocutors?
The reaction to Barr's comments will be telling in real time. Not TV or internet instant
demand reaction time. Cattle are not the only creatures which have to ruminate, I think. The
implications of Barr's remarks have to be digested by folks accustomed to being surrounded by
lackeys.
AG Barr's speech is definitely worth one's time to watch/listen or read. It's an excellent
history lesson not to mention a kick in the radical Left's derriere.
It seems many in the alt news arena are placing bets on the IG's Report as well but I
haven't seen a fine bottle of bourbon as the prize...very classy. If I were to place a bet my
money would be on the IG fully exposing the entirety of this coup cooked up by Brennan
(approved by Obama), simmered by Comey and team then carried out by the Resistance cadre.
It's unimaginable to believe Horowitz, let alone Barr, would whitewash or go half way when
detailing such an extremely significant political event in our countries history. It's also
impossible to right any of this mess without full disclosure which then must lead to holding
accountable those who deliberately intended to harm this country and The President.
Here's to hoping Barr/Horowitz and team adhere to the DOJ/FBI's motto - Fidelity, Bravery,
Integrity...
Yes, you are quite right. And very nicely put. I have had a grubby kind of adult life keeping
one eye out for cheap, acceptable booze. So I emitted a kind of inadvertent Rorshach.
Besides, I think the fiery, precious Kaintuck will be shared among a group of very smart,
worldly wise, and hard old spooky guv'mint guys, sometime after Thanksgiving. Like a meeting
of the Norwegian Resistance. To be a fly on the wall as to the toasts...
Altho multiple bets are possible, I agree with tidewater -
"I have a side bet with a friend. I no longer believe that the duopoly of parties in the
US will indict anyone over the matter of this article.
I hope I lose the bet." pl (Nov 17 2019)
"I have bet a bottle of fine bourbon with a wise hero of our Republic that high level
people will be indicted. " - LJ (Nov 19 2019)
I will be 78 on the 31st. I attribute my longevity to; the right genes. a robust outdoor
life in youth, and a steady regime of cigars, bourbon and red meat. pl (May 25 2018)
However a commenter named Jack did once mention getting Pappy's for his birthday.
However, your memory is correct, I did receive a bottle of Pappy's for my birthday some
moons ago before it went cult. SWMBO paid $95 for it then. As you can see from Tidewater's
comment the price has escalated significantly if you can even snag one from a retailer that
can get an allocation from the wholesaler. It sure is a fine bourbon. Craft spirits have
definitely pushed the envelope on quality and there are now many fine spirits available.
Ah so!, as Mr. Moto would say. I see. "How do you know that?" A question oft asked in one
of the past vocations, as I recall. Well, I didn't know, actually. Careless. (Was this a
little lesson in close reading?) And there was one glitch in the profile that did puzzle me
and should have been a caution. Though I was bedazzled by a lot of surprising insights into
the amber which I knew as Rebel Yell or Virginia Gentleman (from A. Smith Bowman who I just
found out had the first name of Abram) from the time that I never had hangovers, till the
time that I did, when I had to give bourbon up, switch to Scotch, and then had to give that
up too, move on to the grape, where I should have been to begin with. (Though it always took
me three glasses of jug wine and a little gagging before I got right with it. And then one
day the wine in the groceries, like the peanuts, and the cheese, got a lot better.)
It was the Kaintuck angle that I should have noticed. That was not in the profile as
developed. Still the glitch could be overlooked as a kind of grunt-ish foible, maybe. Or
would have to do with the more er rambunctious LJ than his SST pix indicates, or perhaps the
old stomping grounds. Appropriately symbolic, too. Camp on the Watauga, Hannah's Cowpens,
King's Mountain, the Presbyterian invention of the pew (to slide out of in a hurry), the
origin of the Rangers, the steady Overhill militia at Guilford Court House with homemade
rifles lined up on the lowest rail of the split rail fence. And bourbon went there with them,
I think that is certain enough.
Still, what the profile suggested to me was that it should have been a bet about
something, say, from the Haut Medoc, perhaps a bottle of Chateau Petrus from Pomerol
(Bordeux) maybe about 2012, and not the 1945 (a new Mercedes), just something more reasonable
I see knocked down at $2499.99 at one loci. Or a Domaine Leroy Chambertin Grand Cru Cote de
Nuits (Burgundy) for $1400.00. That could be considered gruntish, too. Napoleon is said to
have drunk Chambertin every day. If he wasn't allowed to get it shipped in to him on St.
Helena it wasn't the intense humidity of the rainy island climate on the arsenic in the
wallpaper that did for him. And that would be really perfidious. Though thinking about it, I
can see his jailors finding the steady predictable arrival of the Chambertin by mail packet
like from Chewy.com a good thing for one and all...
Maybe I am right about this one, though: Someone here has a bet with Mr. William
Binney.
Napoleon either did a lot of entertaining on St Helena or he hit the bottle seriously hard.
He had hogsheads of Constantia wine delivered from nearby Groot Constantia to the amount of
thirty bottles a month. Other sources say two or three bottles a day. "A floral desert wine
that, 200 years ago, was one of the most sought after of its day. Crates were shipped to the
royal courts of Europe". (Alex Perry, "The Rift".)
The sales pitch quotes Jane Austen as warranting its "healing powers on a disappointed
heart" but I reckon those healing powers would have to be quite something to make up for that
final cry of "La Garde Recule!"
I liked your alcoholic Odyssey above. May it long continue.
For a bit there I thought Groot Constantia was an island near St. Helena that I had never
heard of! I looked up Cape Town--Constantia on Wiki and got the picture. So the Dutch were
making a good wine in Constantia by the mid-seventeenth century. Nineteen hundred miles seems
to me not nearby, though I admit it is a routine passage for a sailing ship. Lot of sugar in
a dessert wine. Thank you for your comments.
Did you ever hear the story that the Napoleon at St. Helena out there in the Atlantic off
the Namibia coast was a double? The real Napoleon made his escape to the other St. Helena
Island, in Beaufort County, South Carolina, according to Gullah legend.
I doubt that on the grounds that if he'd made it to the States the US would now stretch from
Siberia to Tierra del Fuego. A great captain, Napoleon, and had rotten luck at Waterloo. A
damn close run thing indeed.
Trouble is he was also a complete bastard and very light on the touchy-feely stuff. You
get that sort on the Continent every now and again so we have to go over regularly and sort
them out. Gets to be a bore but Noblesse Oblige and all that.
Put that last in in case Vig, who may just possibly be LeaNder though the style's
slightly different, wants some English Exceptionalism to knock.
On the drinks front I have to confess to being a complete fraud, from the viewpoint of the
average SSTer with his or her well stocked cellar. At present I'm occupied with palming off
some decidedly weird home brewed cider on unsuspecting guests. Not always successfully. My
home brewed beer's OK though. Compares well with German beer, which is for me the Gold
Standard. A decent Single Malt every now and again and that's about it.
So I can admire your Odyssey, and the recollections that go with it, but not emulate
it.
The proof will be in the pudding. It seems the IG report will be released after
Thanksgiving. Considering the previous report that Horowitz issued where the executive
summary said something similar to Comey's exoneration of Hillary, it will be interesting to
see the tone of this report.
Barr made a fine speech but talk is cheap. What has he done to clean up his own
department? Roger Stone was arrested by a SWAT team in a dramatic made for TV show and has
now been convicted of lying. Why hasn't the same standard been applied to all the muckety
mucks in DC?
I don't think I've ever seen such an impressive overview of the constitutional background
before. It applies to both sides of the Atlantic but more chance of it resulting in something
concrete on yours. The video contains some interesting asides that are not in the printed
transcript, in particular a reference to Trump's style of leadership and a dig at the
convoluted legislation that sometimes emerges from Congress.
I was more interested in the constitutional implications of the lecture, but your article
above poses the urgent question arising from it. AG Barr has nailed his colours to the mast
and cleared the decks for action. Is that all, or will action follow?
Obama perfected Cloward-Pivens strategies to get what he wanted starting back in 2008.
Obama storm-troopers would over-whelm local elections offices flooding them the voter
registration requests they knew included fake registrations, just in order to prevent proper
vetting of each registrant which allowed a lot of fraudulent voters to get a free pass.
Cloward-Pivens is intended to overwhelm a system "legally" to render it ineffectual. They
are doing the same now with "expanded" voting rights like vote-harvesting and same day
registration.
Just one more part of the Democrats use of Saul Alinksy Rules for Radicals. Glad Barr
pointed all of this intentionally obstructionist out in such direct and data backed terms. We
indeed are a fragile republic - losing a shared ethical common denominator every day -
diversity is not our strength - in fact, it exposes our endemic weaknesses the more we move
from the Founders values into third world values.
Probably. Colonel, that guess results from putting two and two together about a bet you also
made a little while ago, the one you are hoping to lose. I wouldn't say that constitutes
proof but there's definitely a smoking gun there.
'If' the 'Establishment' [aka Deep state] decided to prosecute its own, it would have been
setting a dangerous precedence for themselves, and I fear that is the reason for the slow,
s-l-o-w roll out, instead of prompt arrest, jail, prosecute, and upon conviction they become
Bubb'a shower soap.
I hate to say it, but I fear that the Colonel is right, nothing will be done with all
this. It's all circus meant to distract us and get our hopes up.
I hope you win your bet Larry. Without enforcement, what good are laws?
And I swear, if the malefactors get away with what they've done, at the very least I'll
join others to march on Washington in protest. Wars aside, this is THE worst political
scandal of my lifetime - a nightmare come true of the US government at its most corrupt and
tyrannical.
"The ICA's blockbuster finding was presented to the public as the consensus view of the
nation's intelligence community. As events have unfolded, however, it now seems apparent that
the report was largely the work of one agency, the CIA, and overseen by one man, then-Director
John Brennan, who closely directed its drafting and publication with a small group of
hand-picked analysts.
Nearly three years later, as the public awaits answers from two Justice Department inquiries
into the Trump-Russia probe's origins, and as impeachment hearings catalyzed by a Brennan-hired
anti-Trump CIA analyst unfold in Congress, it is clear that Brennan's role in propagating the
collusion narrative went far beyond his work on the ICA. A close review of facts that have
slowly come to light reveals that he was a central architect and promoter of the conspiracy
theory from its inception. The record shows that:
Contrary to a general impression that the FBI launched the Trump-Russia conspiracy probe,
Brennan pushed it to the bureau – breaking with CIA tradition by intruding into
domestic politics: the 2016 presidential election. He also supplied suggestive but ultimately
false information to counterintelligence investigators and other U.S. officials.
Leveraging his close proximity to President Obama, Brennan sounded the alarm about
alleged Russian interference to the White House, and was tasked with managing the U.S.
intelligence community's response.
While some FBI officials expressed skepticism about the Trump/Russia narrative as they
hunted down investigative leads, Brennan stood out for insisting on its veracity.
To substantiate his claims, Brennan relied on a Kremlin informant who was later found to
be a mid-level official with limited access to Putin's inner circle.
Circumventing normal protocol for congressional briefings, Brennan supplied then-Senate
Minority Leader Harry Reid with incendiary Trump-Russia innuendo that Reid amplified in a
pair of public letters late in the election campaign.
After Trump's unexpected victory, Brennan oversaw the hasty production of the tenuous
Intelligence Community Assessment.
Departing from his predecessors' usual practice of staying above the political fray after
leaving office, Brennan has worked as a prominent analyst for MSNBC, where he has used his
authority as a former guardian of the nation's top secrets to launch vitriolic attacks on a
sitting president, accusing Trump of "treasonous" conduct."
realclearinvestigations
----------------
I know that Horowitz can't indict but he can forward recommendations to a prosecutor with
indictment authority. Would a Grand Jury in the Democratic Party stronghold of Washington, DC
actually indict Obama era conspirators? I doubt it.
The process should be moved to other venues.
I have a side bet with a friend. I no longer believe that the duopoly of parties in the US
will indict anyone over the matter of this article.
Here are transcripts by NSC personal where LTC Vindman 'judgement' is seriously
questioned. Was Vindman the NSC unauthorized/illegal leak? Will DoD take appropriate UCMJ
action against Vindman?
They sure got Flynn Cohen Manifort and Stone quickly.Giuliani associates were indicted to
open up another front.
Pity people that desperately need to be held accountable wil not be so.
That is how the rule of law fails.
Sorry to post twice, but, on a related note, George Elliason appears to show that the
so-called whistleblower inside information, upon which the impeachment is progressing, is
based on not even hearsay, but a Tweet:
Well, I am certainly saddened by this state of affairs.
It appears that the barn doors have been left totally opened for a complete free for all
for anyone who wants to to and has the money, the un-elected position, and the friends to
take over the workings of the U.S. government. Rule of law and rule of reason be damned.
Let's hope that by some miracle this coming election will be such that the people
recognize what has happened and will provide a strong message to those who feel they have a
right to rule from the offices of their unelected positions.
It'd sure be nice if we could get some MAGA candidates for congress going. Right now, Trump's
all alone in Washington; not much hope of getting any part of his agenda passed.
Any GOP candidate facing down the well-honed Democrat mean machine is a daunting prospect.
The well-calculated legacy of the Democrat ginned-up Kavanaugh hearings - we will do and
say anything to smear you, taint you and bring you down. Don't even think of going against us
because we will do the exact same thing to anyone Trump wants to bring on, or run in support
of his administration.
We see the Democrat mean machine in action a lot in California to the point we now have
increasingly "bye elections" where there is no opposition so the candidate does not even have
to face the voters and risk even a write-in opposition vote.
The system is rigged to quickly become a one-party hegemony. They say trends start in
California, so beware of the tricks they pulled out here and got away with it:
(1) term limits;
(2) jungle primaries;
(3) district elections and mandatory protected minority-majority districts;
(4) counting illegals as district resident numbers;
(5) bye election not facing a ballot;
(6) vote by mail lengthening the campaign season beyond all human endurance;
(7) vote- harvesting;
(8) same day voter registration;
(9) outlawing voter ID..
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
.........
You're correct.
The Republicrats in the swamp - when push comes to shove - have each other's backs.
One set of laws for them, another for the masses they rule and make no mistake - we are not
governed, we are ruled.
Seems everyone here is down. The Slime mold's job is to kill all virtuous passion in the
populace, and they do a damn good job.
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
Truer words...
If we don't arise like lions, a seriously dystopian future awaits. Which is an exceedingly
melancholy reality, considering we are on the cusp of a golden age driven by a Fusion Energy
new economic platform, a quantum upshift of productivity and energy-intensive industrial
applications. Ending global poverty. Ending the very reason for war.
"The Slime mold's job is to kill all virtuous passion in the populace, and they do a damn
good job."
Today this podcast appeared in my Inbox.
No Irony Alert was appended; apparently the discussants are serious in maintaining that the
will of the people expressed "through digital media " and by the electorate "threaten
democracy" and "fuel deadly conflict."
So there ARE armed militias under the control of "populists" and they have the financial
wherewithal to form an army and wage war?
"Populism attaches itself to whatever issue provokes fear and outrage [and] hate speech
leads to hate crime".
"Populist parties have risen up across Europe and beyond, galvanising electorates and
threatening the multilateral institutions needed to address transnational challenges like
globalisation, deadly conflict, digital transformations and the climate emergency.
". . .[X] and [Y] . . . discuss how populism works, why its appeal has grown in recent
years, and the threat it poses to European democracy. From its ideological
adaptability and the role of digital media in amplifying its message to its role in
fuelling deadly conflict, they examine what can be done to address the grievances that
these parties feed off.
It could be the trial of the century, no doubt. ...
Would the jury in such a case, in a Democratic Stronghold, as Washington DC, have to be
carefully selected according to some superimposed rule beyond the general jury selection
rules reigning access to classified knowledge?
Strictly there is by now enough expertise on jury selection, even specialists. In
Washington D.C., as suggested, maybe the ultimate challenge. Thus I am sure a lot of experts
would queue up.
Not that the result would satisfy everyone, but if you carefully select people that prove
they grasp the "national interest" or are able to carry its burdons. Why not?
The fact that even the disgraced former DDFBI Andy McCabe, who's four documented, acts of
Perjury, two of which were Recorded. Statements which involve a press leak, irrelevant to any
issue of the Russia-Trump collusion myth. Has still not been Indicted, should give us all
cause for alarm...
We appear to be on the Slippery slope toward Mob Rule over law and order...
This quote from Thursday's article in Politico, says it best.
"This is not a hard case," U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton said. "I was a good
prosecutor for a long time. Deciding whether or not you're going to charge someone with false
statements or perjury is not that hard, factually or legally -- maybe politically, but not
factually or legally."
Sundance suggests that FBI Inspector General Horowitz's report is really being delayed so
that the Deep State can push through FISC Court reauthorization -- before we have an
opportunity to learn how the current law has been so horribly abused with a multitude of 4th
Amendment violations and so on.
Unfortunately, much as Republicans regret Fisc abuses by Democrats, this illegitimate
maneuver is so cheap and tempting that even they don't really want to let it die. In short,
the DUOPOLY will ensure continuance.
"And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate -- but there is no competition --
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious."
Can the Constitution be refreshed without patriots' & tyrants' blood? Can the eye of
Mordor stop popular resistance?
Eliot was, of course, writing in England, at the outset of WWII.
"Can the Constitution be refreshed without patriots' & tyrants' blood? Can the eye of
Mordor stop popular resistance?"
You question here makes me shiver.
To me the "tyrant" is the oh-so-cool choom smoking Obama, whose minions have kept our
country in turmoil after he left office. I remember the Roman columns in my city after his
election. He had won with strong support from Soros' capital (the eye of Modor) and took
orders, it seemed to me, from the Bilderberg group of high rollers wanting power over the
world without concern for countries and their governments and their laws that might give
voice to lowly people.
I hope the MAGA hat wearing crowds (our form of Hibbits) grow and grow in number as the
election approaches so that the Democrats see that they will seem like spoiled toddlers who
only want what they want, no matter how absurd their wishes are. (That is unlikely, though,
because toddlers have little ability to see beyond their immediate desires--no
self-reflection.)
Have I interpreted your question correctly?
Who can be the elves and the dwarfs and the men who join the Hobbits? Does Trump have it
in him to be Gandalf?
Two weeks ago I thought I head a different tune. Why the change?
As I said then and say now: Bob Barr did not come to bury the Deep State, but to save
it.
The imperial republic is tottering, and the liberal dispensation of the past three hundred
years that informed it is collapsing, a victim of internal subversion and pathological
egalitarianism.
What will replace it? No one knows.
But the future will probably be like the past: tribal, ethnic, sectarian and vicious.
There is no going back. And the only way out is through.
So attack in two directions.
Shatter left-neoliberalism by provoking the worst ant-white and anti-Semitic tendencies
present in the emerging nonwhite left.
Liquidate its controlled opposition (AKA American conservatism) by attacking its fronts
men as the corporate golems and Zio-shills that they are.
The goal is to eliminate the middle ground and force the gutless middle to choose between
the globalists and us, and to make the price of an unwise choice steep, public, and
permanent.
I read the RCP article by Aaron Mate referenced above and while it was compelling, it
practically made the infamous Peter Strzok, in its brief mention of him, seem like an
innocent bystander. It focused on the CIA as though the FBI wasn't its eager and willing
partner, and yet it was the FBI that paid Christopher Steele, the FBI that obtained FISA
warrants to spy, the FBI that took out Gen. Flynn, the FBI that lied to the new POTUS, the
FBI that led to the appointment of SC Mueller, etc., etc.
Is the FBI playing dumb now as a defense, pretending it was duped by the CIA to engage in
so much nefarious activity?
sorry I am an outsider on this. ... Willmann may help, maybe? basic rules? ... I hardly
grasp my own countries juridical responsiblities, nevermind some venue curiosities. ...
last time I heard the argument concerning the US it didn't seem to be necessary based on
the outcome, at least in hindsight ...
You'll win the bet, but even if you lose, the indicted will be instantly catapulted into bona
fide "Hero of the Republic(R)" status as a result.
Just as the people who took the falls for the Clintons were, except 10x.
The chattering class really really detest Trump, and nothing else matters. They will happy
accept aid from perjurers, torturers and entrapment artists, as long as that gets them
Trump.
I detest Trump as well, but he won the election fair and square, and just because I detest
the man doesn't mean that I need to sink to the level of crackpot conspiracy theory if that
justifies his removal.
Where is the scorecard on Trump's Oct 2016 pre-election speech. Did he call it or what- time
for an accounting - three years later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2qIXXafxCQ
I personally will settle for two new Supreme Court Justices, 150 new federal court
justices and breaking up the liberal deadlock of the 9th Circuit. However, Trump's Oct 2016
shot across the bow against the deep state remains a work in progress. However, Trump did not
back off - it is clash of civilizations still going on, as we speak.
Retrospective is often the best perspective for current events.
I think it is important to note that the Real Clear Investigations piece which the Colonel
quotes from was written by Aaron Mate. Aaron Mate is part of the new breed of independent
lefty journalists that are taking on the establishment news media. He has an excellent show
on a youtube channel called The Grayzone.
His cohorts Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, Dan Cohen, and Anya Parampil have done excellent
reporting on Syria and Venezuela. They are part of a burgeoning new media ecosystem which
includes the other youtube channels 'The Hill' and 'The Jimmy Dore Show'.
Max Blumenthal has savaged the estimable Alison Weir, author of Against Our Better Judgment
and her years long campaign of speaking out against Israel's maltreatment of Palestinians.
Grayzone may go a bit further than establishment media, and perhaps a bit farther on
issues involving Palestine than, say, Phil Weiss at Mondoweiss, but there are still lines
that are not to be crossed by the reporters at Grayzone.
I don't think that Grayzone goes "a bit further" than establishment media. They go a lot
further.
This Grazyone video from a few days ago (Aaron Mate interviews Ali Abunimah of The
Electronic Intifada) is titled "Israel's relentless violence on Gaza met by global
silence": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o16CV4BTuU0
Or from the back cover of Blumenthal's book Goliath:
'As Blumenthal reveals, Israel has become a country where right-wing leaders like Avigdor
Lieberman and Bibi Netanyahu are sacrificing democracy on the altar of their power politics;
where the loyal opposition largely and passively stands aside and watches the organized
assault on civil liberties; where state-funded Orthodox rabbis publish books that provide
instructions on how and when to kill Gentiles; where half of Jewish youth declare their
refusal to sit in a classroom with an Arab; and where mob violence targets Palestinians and
African asylum seekers scapegoated by leading government officials as "demographic
threats."'
So Blumenthal is an anti-zionist, Alison Weir is a critic of Israeli government policy, and
Blumenthal is critical of Weir. Big deal.
The Colonel is critical of Bernie and I like Bernie - that doesn't mean that I have to
stop respecting the Colonel just because I disagree with him on some issues. One of the
lamentable shortcomings of some of those on the left is that they want to fight with each
other about relatively trivial disagreements. This only benefits the Borg.
And if I was thoroughly paranoid I would think that this whole Blumenthal vs Weir thing is
being amplified by an IO operation designed to sow discord among critics of Israel.
What is the point of indictments when the CIA/NSA/FBI can and will be perceived to be able to
blackmail each juror? The "chilling effect" is real and it will prevent successful
prosecution of any but sacrificial deep state actors.
After what has been done to Trump associates, he is politically radioactive. No one will
want to be part of his team and subject themselves to the tender ministrations of the
FBI.
The reward of the good life, is the good life itself all the sudden makes even more sense.
Picturing now J Edgar Hoover and LBJ laughing over secret files on every member of Congress
at the time. You do not exaggerate, walrus.
But how can we prevent this being only one-way Democrat street? Their manipulation of
language, repetition of talking points, media exclusives and ginned-up events have stunned me
of late. Luckily there in fact is more media transparency only because of the open internet.
Which is also closing in.
I have long wondered why MSM wanted to go to bed with the Democrats so eagerly - most
likely because the one-way street of inside gossip only flows from loose Democrat lips. .
Recent media interview with Jordan, who lambasted the ABC reporter who tried to box him
into a corner over a "secret hearing" transcript that had not been made public -and the
hearing was less than 24 hours prior. Democrat loose lips gave someone a free scoop for some
reason and luckily Jordan swatted this breach right back at her.
Quite honestly female reporters need gynocological swab testing before they go live with
any breaking news stories from now on. What did they do to get that story first.
What was done to Justice Gorsuch was politics by the left meant to keep him off the
supreme court, warn the republicans not to support others like him, and warn the rest of us
to stfu and do what we are told. Brennan and company are worse and may also include Obama and
a number of his backers in and out of his administration. And Epstein didn't kill
himself.
From RedState - DECEMBER 11 - MARK YOUR CALENDAR: The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a
hearing on Dec. 11 to examine the findings from a Justice Department inspector general's
investigation into the FBI's alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
during the Trump investigation, the committee said Monday.
Huber apparently has been assigned to investigate the Clinton Foundation- a report due
shortly too (which is badly bleeding red ink several years in a row after Clinton lost).
No wonder Clinton is hinting she will run again - anything to goose up re-newed donations
for her influence peddling scheme. No wonder she is in fact this time pimping out her
daughter in her latest book tour - the money will be safe with us, folks. Even if I get sent
to the slammer, Chelsea knows enough to carry on the family traditions.
Factotum mentioned Crowdstrike. Many are under the impression that the crowdstrike "server"
Trump mentioned in his typical fragmentary, herky-jerky style in the Zelensky call, must mean
the DNC email server. But I've heard it suggested he was actually referring to a different
Ukrainian server, also managed by Crowdstrike, related to another hokey Russian
hacking claim: a Ukrainian army missile system that was allegedly hacked by the Russians. See
"Fancy Bear" artillery hack. Not sure if that really was what Trump was talking about but
others out there might know.
No, colonel, not a'tall. Don't have a lazy bone in my body. BUT - I do have Extreme
challenges of the body, but less of the mind, (much, much slower organizing thoughts etc.)
but NO challenge regarding Spirit... it's not the dog in the fight, but the fight in the
dog.
No, I'm not a DAV, but I do consider myself a 'DAP' (disabled American Patriot - without
pay - but Cost aplenty) Quite like (but not There Yet) the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier... so
to speak.
I have sixty five years of Active Service... starting a the age of ten in Bristol, PA ...
and [it] will NOT end before I'm dead, down in the woods of central MS.
Alison Weir says "If Americans only Knew"... doesn't know the half of [it].
Don't drink the cool-aid and fo sho DON'T Breathe the Fort Detrick Bio-cocktail.
Thomas Paine could have put out several pamphlets in the time it took me to reply.
@Alfred I had the same thoughts. Zelenskii should show a similar coffin with the text
"This one is still empty" and then start rounding up the terrorists. He finally has a good
excuse.
Thank you Saker and Unz for the very interesting article .
I wonder what has been the role of Germany in the Ukrainian disaster . ...I have the
feeling , just the suspicion , that they contributed to the ucranian disaster out of their
genetic Drang nach Osten Nordic greed , is that right ?
Anyway since the Ukrainian disaster the cohesion of the EU is going going down . Germany
which was gifted with the german reunification , is less and less trusted spetially in south
Europe , and even less in the EU far west , in England which is going out of the EU .
Most of the people in the EU would like to keep collaborating with the US , of course ,
but also with Russia and with the rest of the world . Most of the people in the UE are scared
of the dark forces operating in Ukraine trying to provoke a war with Russia .
The stupid name-calling like the term "ukronazi" makes this article look like a rant like
North Korean communiques or the ravings of some Arab despot's propagandist. It is not better
than calling "The Saker" a "Moskal", "Sovok" or "Putler's stooge" etc. He should keep this
lingo to directly "debating" "Ukronazis" on twitter or youtube commentst etc. not for an
article that is supposed to be a serious analysis.
I understand that it is hard for a Russian nationalist to accept that the majority of
Ukrainians don't want to belong to their dream Russkiy Mir, they were seduced by the West,
which is more attractive with all its failings, because mostly of simple materialistic
reasons. Ukrainians happily go to EU countries that now allow them in as guest workers. The
fact, like it or not that majority of them chose the West over Russkiy Mir despite being very
close to Russians in culture, language, history etc. He is still in the first stage of grief
it seems.
All in all, Ukrainians are probably way above average in most human characteristics. The
area of Ukraine is by planetary standards one of the best available: arable land, great
rivers, Black see, pleasant and liveable.
But it is 2019 and life in Ukraine is barely better than it was 25-50 years ago,
population has actually dropped from its peak in early 1990's. Millions of Ukrainians live
abroad (I know some of them) and have – to be polite – at best an ambivalent
attitude towards their homeland. Almost all of them prefer to be somewhere else, even to
become someone else.
Now why is that? A normal society would have enough introspection to discuss this, to look
for answers. Throwing a temper-tantrum on a big square in Kiev every few years is not looking
for a solution. That is escapism, Orange-this, Maidan-that, 'Russians bad', 'we are going
West', 'golden toilets', and always 'Stalin did it'.
I don't agree with the facile name-calling that sees Nazis everywhere and exaggerates
throw-away symbolism. But Ukraine has not been functioning and it can't go like this much
longer. Not because it will collapse, it won't, but because during an era of general
prosperity Ukraine can't be a unstable exception (oh, I get it, they are better than Moldova,
good for them.)
Rebellions against geography are doomed. Projecting one's personal frustrations on
external enemies (Kremlin!) has never worked. Ukraine needs rationality – accepting
that they will not be in EU, that attempting to join Nato would destroy Ukraine, and that
they can't beat Russia in a war. And following advise of half-mad and half-ignorant
well-wishers from Washington or Brussels is a road to ruin. Nulands, Bidens and Tusks will
never live in Ukraine, they really deeply don't care about it. They have no skin in that
game, it is just entertainment for them.
Or alternatively you can pray that Russia collapses – good luck waiting for
that.
There is not much 'drang' left in Germany, so I think this is mostly fingers on the map
post dinner empty talk.
in 1945 the jewery asked Stalin to give Crimea to the jews , Stalin refused
Crimea is a jewel, but has one big problem: not enough water. But that's also true about
Izrael, maybe there is a deep genetic memory of coming out of a desert environment.
During WWII, Germany actually established settlements in Crimea. Think about it: there is
a massive war, you have like 1-2 years, short on transport and resources, and you start
sending settlers to Crimea – that's how much drang-nach-osten types wanted it.
And the Turks, etc This must be driving them absolutely nuts.
The mexicans are able to make fun of themselves , that`s a good thing . They have a joke
which aplies also to Ukraina ( and other countries )
The mexicans say : when God created Mexico He gave Mexico everything ; land , mountains ,
plains , tropical forests , deserts , two oceans , agriculture , gold , silver , oil . then
God saw how beautiful and perfect Mexico was and He though that He should also give something
bad to the country to prevent the sin of pride , and then he populated Mexico with pure
pendejos ,( idiots ) .
@AWM "Is it not possible to have an article on Ukraine without all the N@ZI references?
If you want a decent analysis of current events in the Ukraine, which is what The Saker
provides, I guess you'll just have to put up with his terminology.
The world won't miss a thing if Curmudgeon or AWM goes off in a huff, to sit on his toilet
and read the "one joke per dump" volume lodged on the tank and stops reading The Saker's very
thorough analysis as a protest action!
@Anon My experience is that Ukrainians individually are far from being pendejos .
But they are unable to act as a group or as a nation. (Well, they 'act', but it mostly
somehow fails.)
Maybe it is the relative shallow and heterogenous history of Ukraine. Or – and this
is what I have observed – a fundamental inner disloyalty to the Ukraine as a homeland.
When one observes the assorted Porkys, Timoshenkas, Yanuks, the oligarchs, but also the
crowds on Maidan, I get a sense that they are all about to leave Ukraine or are thinking
about leaving. Societies can't be built with one foot always at the airport, or in an old car
in a 5-km column waiting on the border of Poland. Or Russia.
Another good article – thanks – Yep, the US/EU NWO is not going to let their
"West Ukraine Isis" battalions and intel gang lose their funding , arms trafficking ops, or
terrorist reputation. This is a no win situation in Ukraine and the West knows it –
Even if NovoRossiya gets some independence, the Ukraine Isis will/can reek havoc and murder
for a long time along the border. The modern Cheka { Ukraine Isis } has been modified for the
security of the new Farmland owners – Monsanto, Cargill, DuPont and the rest of the
Globalist Corporations and their ports close to Odessa.
One point of contention since it wasn't made clear in this article – Novorussia
consists of Luhansk and Donetsk, but not Kharkov. While Kharkov has more Russians than most
other provinces of Ukraine do, it does not have a plurality like Donetsk and Luhansk.
All of Ukraine's doomsayers have been crying about Ukraine's demise for the lat 25
years, yet the fact is that it' s getting stronger and stronger every year,
USA diaspora keeps on delivering.
Shoutout to quarter/half Poles USA citizens LARPing as Ukrainian patriots in the
comments.
@Felix KeverichEven the Kremlin doesn't show much interest in breaking up the
Ukraine, so why the hell would it break up?
Follow the money my friend!
Some provinces send much more money to Kiev then they get back in "services". So long as
more loans from the EU, The USA and the IMF were forthcoming, that situation was not too bad.
Now, the spigot is being closed. Hence the sad face of Mr Z when he met Trump in
Washington.
This means that the provinces that are losing most from this internal transfer are going
to be strongly motivated to stop sending money to Kiev. Kiev will lose control and that will
fragment the country.
The Donbass was a big contributor to Kiev and got little in return – that was a
major reason for their dissatisfaction. Everyone there could see that Kiev sent the money
west and kept much for itself.
If the French provinces were to stop sending money to Paris, the Yellow movement would be
totally unnecessary.
@awry About 2.5 million Ukrainians have "emigrated" (you could also say "fled") to the RF
since 2014.
Per Bloomberg most of the outflow not to Russia has been to countries of Eastern Europe, esp.
Poland.
@AP "Ukraine was historically a marsh of Poland for centuries before it was a historical
marsh of Russia"
That was mostly Galicia and Volhynia. It is a tiny part of today's the Ukraine. In these
areas, the Poles were landowners, the Jews their rent/tax collectors and the peasants were
Ukrainian-speaking Slavs. Now, they are planning to sell the best farmland to "foreigners"
(i.e. Jews) and the Slavs will become serfs once again.
@Mr. Hack The problem with your argument is that the 'war' in the east was entirely
predicable. So was Crimea leaving and joining Russia. The people in charge in Kiev –
presumably with 3-digit IQ – would think about it, plan for it, etc They obviously
didn't. Instead they provided a needed catalyst to make it worse by voting in February 2014
to ban Russian language in official use, and the idiotic attacks on Russian speakers like in
Odessa, that were neither prevented nor punished. The other side – in this case Russia
and Russian speakers living in Donbas and Crimea – rationally took care of their own
interests. Post-Maidan Kiev handed them all they could on a silver platter while busying
themselves with silly slogans and videos of golden saunas.
Russia is actually one of the least susceptible countries to an economic collapse in the
world – it is largely self-sufficient, has enormous resources that others will always
buy, and has a very minimal percentage of its economy that deals with foreign trade. What
they are susceptible to is the loss of value for their currency – and that has already
largely happened since 2014. When it comes to energy, the countries that are low-cost
producers are least impacted – who you should worry about are the numerous higher-cost
producers like US shale, coal miners, or LNG gas that have huge upfront fixed costs and
built-in high transportation costs. Russia and Saudis will be fine.
Back to the drawing board, what exactly is the plan in Kiev? If they know that having a
war costs them investments, how do they end that war? It is highly unlikely that it would end
with a victorious Kiev army conquering Donetsk (or Crimea). So what's the plan?
It's amazing how spectacularly inept all these interventions over the last decades have been.
Iraq, Lybia, Syria, Yemen, the coup in Turkey but also Ukraine.
And I know that in the ME, the Isrseli policy, as iterated by Michael Orin is to let all
sides bleed each other to death, and that part has been relatively successful until
recently.
But in Ukraine, they were going to consolidate their control over the country from Kiev
and force-march the Russians out of Sevastopol. And that part didn't work at all, except as
leverage to impose sanctions on Russia; but the long term goal of using Ukraine to overthrow
Putin is now stuck in the Donbas.
My point being that it is the great fortune of the world that these criminal nitwits and
fools in the State (War) Department and their helpers in the "intelligence" community are so
arrogant and incompetent.
@Anon Merkel (who herself was studying in Donetsk for few months) definitely has a hand
in ze EuroUkrainian mess.
Afterall she met with Right Sector representatives one dayt before the final, bloody part
of the coup started. And that meeting of "reporting on delivering at our commitments and
asking Merkel about her delivery of her commitments" both with the next day start of "offence
at the government" was announced by Right Sector yet another day before, 16 February
2014.
However i have reservations about Merkel representing German peoples, especially some
alleged "genetical" trend of them to invade eastwards.
It was public, that Merkel's everything including public phone is spied upon by USA
"intelligence community", and Merkel considered it normal and proper.
So it is clearly stated what she considers her allegiance and whom she considers her
employees. Not citizens of Germany.
"Each of these countries is as inorganic and disunited as Ukraine, or worse, made up as they
are of various racial and ethnic groups who don't identify with each other."
I am dubious about this suggestion. But more importantly, Ukraine or the Ukraine has had a
violent revolution about every ten years. You simply cannot develop a stable government,
economy or safe social system if you you overturn the the government via violence every ten
tears.
That is the key differences and essential to any successful government, and more so for a
democracy that holds as innate belief, a tolerance for difference even competing ideas held
by its population. It is as if the only the only we are exporting is revolution as solution
to differences.
@Mr. Hack > Russia has never been able to lead with a carrot, but only with a stick.
Russia offered dozen billions of loans and years ahead orders for Ukrainian industries.
Those that Yatzenyuk begged to be re-started when he destroyed democratic government of
Ukraine.
EuroMaidan tried to stole the carrot from Ukraine, and while it succeeded in stealing what
Ukraine already picked, about 10%, the rest was kept safe of usurpers' reach, and so they
started looting Ukrainian economy instead. Hrivna fallen 3-fold – more than ruble.
> Positive outside influence into Ukraine's internal development in the form of
investments and economic development
EuroMaidan usurpers stopped real and ongoing investments from China and Russia by looting
what investments arrived into Ukraine already. But at least they got $5 billions of
investments from Nulland.
I like how "economic development" is listed as "outside influence". I thought that any
state or nation would claim being capable of their own economic development, but for
EuroMaidania it is quoted as some miracle that can only be given from outside.
> foreign investments being delayed until the war in the east is resolved
And that was why EuroMaidan usurpers invaded Donbass and started the war. To preclude
investments from the West after they stopped investments form China and Russia.
> create a chaotic situations
EuroMaidan proponent blaming chaotic situations. Precious. "Bees against honey"
movement.
> Since the West changed the dynamics of the energy game around the world
Did it? how exactly? By making Ukrainian pipelines liability no one wants to touch with a
pole?
> It's learned to better feed itself, and that's about it
But that is exactly what Ukraine knew how to do, and what EuroMaidania can not do.
While Russia is gaining this experience – EuroMaidania was and is destroying it, for
the sake of being "not like Russia". Way to go!
> One more jolt like in 2014
You mean the one when rouble fallen two-fold and hrivna three-fold?
Guess if the West could do it again – they would. But they can't.
> where are Russia's automobiles, televisions, medical equipment, computers,
pharmaceuticals etc; within the world markeplace?
Russia is not packaging consumer goods. Russia is sending technologies, which others pack
as consumer goods.
Ukraine could become one of those salesmen, packing Russian technologies into pretty wraps
and selling around.
EuroMaidan usurpers feared that and prevented that.
EuroMaidan even destroyed Antonov company, which was one of just 4 companies in the world
capable of building large airframes. Ensuring AirBus+Boeing+Tupolev/Ilyushin would have one
competitor less. And as Antonov was el-cheapo vendor with strategy based on dumping –
it was especially dangerous for Russian company, of the three. Thank you, guys, for removing
this riddance out of Russian pathway. You did great service!
@Hapalong Cassidy Beckow> the crowds on Maidan, I get a sense that they are all about
to leave Ukraine or are thinking about leaving.
You do not need to "have a feeling"
The promise of "visa-less living and working in EU" was exactly what EuroMaidan crowd
paraded as their aim and treasure, somehow magically warranted by the "Deep Association" that
Yatzenyuk and Poroshenko later dragged feet for months, trying to delay signing of this
economy suicide pact.
They were very public and honest about it. They claimed Yanukovich was somehow putting
ball and chain on them all by giving the second thought to orders from Brussels. Aid in
leaving Ukraine was the price they sold Ukrainian economy for. Ther were never shy in 2014 to
speak about it.
Hapalong Cassidy> While Kharkov has more Russians than most other provinces of Ukraine
do, it does not have a plurality like Donetsk and Luhansk.
There is a point. Kharkov in North-East and Odessa in South-West were trading cities,
routing the official and smuggled goods streams and hosting the largest foreign goods
markets. This clearly had impact upon mindsets of citizens and even more of cities
elites.
People in Kharkov went to the streets right after the coup commited and without support
they were at least equally numerous to all-Ukraine sponsored gathering of EuroMaidan #2.
But their leaders did not seek for independence, Kharkov city mayor Kernes openly shook hands
with Andrey "White Fuhrer" Byletsky and expressed his care about his (not Kharkov citizens)
safety in the night of Rymarskaya street murders, 2014 March 14th AFAIR.
People in Kharkov went against nazi from westernmost Ukraine regions (and even policemen)
and stormed those out of their district government building. Who else did then?
They had a huge impulse, but they also focused the most efforts from usurpers to deflect
and dissipate it. And little free resources the usurpers had back then.
Month later, in April, Kharkov was exhausted and pacified. But other regions of Ukraine were
overlooked those two months.
However, it was that first month which gave people in Donetsk and Lugansk both time and
examples to understand what is really going on (it was almost unbelievable that something
like that can actually happen in XXI century in Europe, wasn't it?) and learn their Ukrainian
elites are prostituting them, and then find some other leaders which would have enough skin
in the game to not sell them out.
You may rightly say Kharkov citizens did not resist for long. But have to admit the
resistance of Donbass and Lugansk was in significant part based upon time Kharkov bought them
in March and April 2014, and upon self-exposing that Kharkov's fleeting but furious
resistance forced EuroMaidan usurpers into.
"All, repeat, ALL the steps taken to sever crucial economic and cultural links between Russia
and the Ukraine were decided upon by Ukrainian leaders, never by Russia who only replied
symmetrically when needed.
Even with international sanctions directed at her, Russia successfully survived both the
severance of ties with the Ukraine and the AngloZionist attempts at hurting the Russian
economy. In contrast, severing economic ties with Russia was a death-sentence for the
Ukrainian economy which has now become completely deindustrialized."
No wonder saker deletes posts to his website containing info like these:
The top trade partner of *the* Ukraine is Russia. So his thesis is a little 'shoddy math'
ish. The links have not been severed as he pretends.
" the severance of ties with Russia " The Ukraine is more tied to Russia than any other
country, by recent trade volumes (as well as in traditional culture). Saker doesn't like
these facts to muddy up his thesis.
This means that the provinces that are losing most from this internal transfer are going
to be strongly motivated to stop sending money to Kiev.
You don't get it. Ukraine's South-Eastern provinces are inanimate objects . They
have no consciousness, no self-interest or free will. They don't decide anything.
Donbass never decided to break away from the Ukraine. That choice was made for it by
Strelkov, when he and his men occupied Slovyansk and began an armed confrontation.
@Anon The Ukraine used to export something like $20 billion worth of goods to Russia
annually. It's now closer to $5 billion, and Ukrainians are a lot poorer as a result.
@Felix Keverich The point is saker maintains it is completely de-industrialized. It is
'dead'. Total trade of >40 B all partners, isn't dead by a long shot. See what he says?
'Death sentence'. Far from it. A decrease isn't death. No doubt there has been a plunge. But
saker is over stating it. Russia is still a center of gravity for the Ukraine.
I am so sick and tired of hearing the term nazi this and nazi that when referring to the
situation in the Ukraine. The term nazi died in 1945 and should be left dead and buried. It
was a stupid word created by the British during the war because of their inability to
pronounce the German name for the NSDAP. The British and American media have a fetish for the
word and will call any "right-wing" movement "nazi" if given any opportunity. This shows
their total lack of creativity to come up with anything new and their deep obsession with
anything to do with Hitler which borders on religious worship. I say get rid of the usage of
the word on this site unless one is referring to the actual NSDAP party that existed until
1945.
@AWM You are an absurd cretin. Of course referring to current Ukraine as being controlled
by Nazi's is 100% accurate.
Ukronazis and Hitler Nazi's have many alignments with eachother:
1. Bizarre, fundamentally paganist usage of ahistoric/religious images from a millenia ago
as national symbols that should have had no connection to national identity of either state
in the 1930's or now ( swastika and Tryzub) even the UPA flag has more sense about it to any
"Ukrainian " state
2. Mass arrests and persecution of political opponents I'm fairly sure that Ukronazi's
have arrested ( and maybe even killed) far more people in their first 5 years, that the
Nazi's ever did in their 6 year, pre-war time in charge
3. Mass killing and torture of the people of the Donbass- now take on board this is with
Russia fighting the war of fighting the war that they are not even there and Russia/DNR/LNR
basically conducting huge talks with west/Banderastan and making huge concessions every time
they have been in a a hugely advantageous position or made a big breakthrough in the war.
Even Nazi's wouldn't have used such a lousy pretext for instigating war against the people of
Donbass – although at least the Nazi's could govern their state ukrops can't govern f
** k all without it descending into farce
4. Above average representation of freaks and/or highly camp idiots Goebbels, Goering and
Ribbentrop versus Avakov, "Yats" the yid, Poroshenko, Turchynov and many more – a
lamentable contest
5. Neither would have got off the ground without Anglo-American funding
Just because the Nazi's in the 30's and 40's were more competent does not take away the
similarities
Structural bottlenecks and slow reform progress lead to anemic growth in Ukraine
The rate of economic growth in Ukraine remains too low to reduce poverty and reach income
levels of neighboring European countries. Following the 16 percent cumulative contraction of
the economy in 2014-15, economic growth has recovered to 2.4 percent in 2016-17 and 3.3
percent in 2018. Faster economic growth for a sustained period of time is needed to reduce
poverty which remains above pre-crisis levels. More needs to be done if Ukraine's aspiration
is to become a high-income country and to close the income gap with advanced economies. Today
Ukraine is far from that goal. In terms of GDP-per-capita, Ukraine remains one of the poorest
countries in the region -- at levels of Moldova, Armenia and Georgia. Ukraine's GDP per
capita in purchasing power parity terms is about three times lower than in Poland, despite
having similar income levels in 1990.
At the growth rate of recent years, it will take Ukraine more than 50 years to reach income
levels of today's Poland. If Ukraine's productivity growth and investment rate remains at the
low levels observed in recent years, overt the medium-term the growth rate will converge to
almost zero per annum -- productivity growth is offset by declining contribution of labor as
Ukraine undergoes the demographic transition. Boosting total factor productivity growth to 3
percent per year and investment to 30 percent of GDP would result in sustained growth of
about 4 percent per year over the medium- to long-term. Given declining total population this
translates to GDP per capita growth of about 4.5 percent per year. These trends will not
improve on their own, they can happen only through the implementation of appropriate policies
that boost productivity and increase the returns on factors of production.
1. It does not split trade to industries. Hi-tech big added value and lo-tech slim added
value – falls into the same "total"
2. It only shows one snapshot, not YoY dynamics.
3. The column "Export Product" shows exactly the same value – literally, 100% –
for ALL the countries, all the rows. I wonder what we should deduce from it
2012 – $19,8B
2013 – $17,6B – the start of the coup
2014 – $15B – the coup won power but did not entrenched yet and did not had time
yet to enforce its ideals
2015 – $9.8B – the work started
2016 – $4.8B – 80% of 2012 exports are cut off, EuroMaidan means business
2017 – $3.6B – 82% of 2013 exports are cut off, coming to plateau ?
2018 – $3,9B – a slight rebound, plateau reached
@bob sykes I'd dismiss this, as Putin is apparently doing. Kolomoisky is looking who else
would provide money that he can steal. He, Porky, and others of their ilk stole Western loans
so blatantly, that even US-controlled IMF is balking at giving Ukraine more money. So,
Kolomoisky hopes that Russia will, so that he has more to steal. I hope that his hopes are in
vain.
The entire Ukraine farce can be explained as a simple project
Khazaria 2.0.
I met a Jew (American) in Ukraine over 20 years ago.
He told me the plan Jews were returning to historically Jewish cities in Ukraine by the
hundreds buying up for kopecki on the Gryvnia anything they could.
Media outlets, banks, factories, beachfront land, farmland, apartments, etc.
The idea? Make Ukraine the next EU Country, and benefit from the huge potential of
Ukraine.
I agreed with him at the time, that Ukraine had huge potential, I was there as an engineer
working for German companies but his lust for what could be 'looted' disgusted me.
This is a standard CIA scenario, used in Sarajevo and Deraa before Kiev. So, Ukrainians
bought an old stale show, swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
But the Georgian snipers brought in 2014 to Kiev by Saakashvili started dying in
suspicious circumstances, so those who are still alive rushed to Belarus and started deposing
their testimony. They implicated a lot of Ukies, including former speaker Parubii, former MP
Pashinsky, etc. It was well known (to those who did not keep their eyes wide shut for
political reasons) that the sniper fire in 2014 on Maidan was from the building controlled by
the coup leaders, who later tried to blame Yanuk for it. That's why post-coup Ukrainian
authorities got rid of the trees on Maidan: bullet holes in those trees indicated where the
fire was coming from. But this recent testimony implicated particular people, who (surprise,
surprise!) happened to be among the coup leaders.
@Truth3 The truth is that you are absolutely right. 'Ukrainians' boasted that they are
the 'Khazars' since Mazeppa and Orlyk of the 'Constitution of Bendery' fame, while parading a
distaste for 'the adherents of deceitful Judaism' and noisy adherence to Orthodoxy.
Look at this entry of the http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com and see if
anything changed:
"After Mazepa's death, on 16 April 1710, Orlyk was elected hetman, with the backing of
Charles XII of Sweden, in Bendery. The chief author of the Constitution of Bendery, he
pursued policies aimed at liberating Ukraine from Russian rule. He gained the support of the
Zaporozhian Host, concluded a treaty with Charles XII* in May 1710, and sought to make the
Ukrainian question a matter of international concern by continuing Mazepa's attempts at
establishing an anti-Russian coalition ** . Orlyk signed a treaty with the Crimean khan
Devlet-Girei in February 1711, negotiated with the Ottoman Porte, which formally recognized
his authority over Right-Bank Ukraine and the Zaporizhia in 1712, conducted talks with the
Don Cossack participants in Kondratii Bulavin's revolt who had fled to the Kuban, and even
contacted the Kazan Tatars and the Bashkirs. In 1711–14 he led Cossack campaigns
against the Russians in Right-Bank Ukraine. Despite initial victories they ultimately failed,
because of Turkish vacillation and because the pillaging, raping, and taking of many civilian
captives by Orlyk's Crimean Tatar allies resulted in the loss of public and military support
on the Right Bank".
Nowhere does the 'first "European" constitution' speak about 'ukrainians', but of 'Exercitu
Zaporoviensi genteque Rossiaca" (Zaporozhian Host and the Ruthenian people) living in
"Parva Rossia"/Little Russia.
* putting Ukraine under the protection of the King of Sweden.
** an plot of 'European' and Islamic powers with an intense 'Masonic-Kabbalistic' coloring
(and Jewish financial support) against Russian 'Tsardom' and 'Patriarchal' Church. 'Ukraine'
was an anti-Russian project from the get go. Brzezinski's quip: "Ukraine, a new and important
space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an
independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a
Eurasian empire" reflects only the revival of the old plan in new circumstances.
@Seraphim " Brzezinski's quip: "Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian
chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot "
Old Zbieg was as lunatic as Pole can be and as cunning as Jew can be (was he?).
The Poles were so desiring to became Slavic superpower, and on the height of their might
in 15th century – they could become. They occupied Russian lands – oh, that
mythical Kievan Rus oppressed by Moscow for centuries. And they even occupied Moscow for few
months – more than unified Europe managed to do under both Napoleon and Hitler
combined! Polska was really stronk then.
.well, they ate themselves from inside and sold their statehood to all the foreign bidders
while boasting about Polish pride. Like ukropeans do today. They lost their strength, they
lost their eastern colony, and for a while they even lost Poland itself.
They could never move over it.
Zbieg – coming from Galicia, the last shrink of Poland-occupied lands – had
this specifically Polish resentment burning in him. And he managed to make USA fight Polish
fights. Managed to use American incompetence in history and geography to sell them that idea
that the Ukraine – the borderlands between Poland and Russia have "geopolitical"
importance. For USA, no less. Wow!
Okay, USA invested at very least $5B into buying Ukrainian warchiefs, and we don't know
how much more was added by EU and Germany. They now have this "geopolitical asset" as Zbieg
urged them to do. What are they gonna do with it now? How do they gonna make Ukrainians pay
back the money they spent? Old Zbieg preached about the world "paid by Russia to fight
against Russia". This is that very "Russia, occupy the Ukraine finally, we are tired of
fruitless waiting!" whining they repeat again and again. But if this won't work, just like it
did not work yet, how do they think to make Ukrainians pay for it? Or whom else? I wonder
@Arioch "> My point is the ukraine isn't dead. It isn't dying.
In which quality? As a swath of land inhabited by few peasants here and there – it
surely will remain.
As an economically vibrant country, one of UN founders, with economy larger than German and
closing on France – what it used to be – it is dead.
As a laws-bound polity it is dead since 2014, though was dying even before.
As STEM engineering and education stronghold it was in USSR – it is dead.
As one in just four in the whole world producers of really large airplanes – it is
dead.
As one of the few ICBM producers – it is dead, know-how sold to Saudi.
As one of the few turbojet engines producers – it is dead, know-how sold to China.
As one of the reliable and well known tanks and APCs producer – it is dead, even
USA-occupied Iraq does not buy this trash.
As the country, living from the geographic rent, just providing roads and hotels for cargo
traffic, it is almost dead. Bridges are collapsing, roads – neither for cars nor
railways – are not maintained."
Bravado, anyone can see.
Dead countries don't produce electricity. Real economists look at things like this. Not
just at industrial reorganization. That is the only point you have. Industrial
reorganization. Not death of industry.
@Anon BTW, most *live* countries of the world do not produce ICBMs, nor jet engines, nor
APCs etc, nor super heavy aircraft. The military industrial complex remnants from the SU are
not industries that most of the planet's countries have. Specialties. Those can not be
measures of whether a country is living or dead. Use some real measures.
@Anon Actually a good point. Mass cargo logistics and energy generation. Indeed.
The thing here is, that as of now the Ukraine is enjoying its privileged position from
times Ukrainians ruled USSR (IOW, after Stalin died in 1953 and of few coup leaders Khruschev
became top dog in 1956). The Ukraine is reeking with then top-tech nuclear power plants, that
very few of other USSR republics had (one in Ignalina in Baltics, one in Armenia, and dozen
in Russia, that is all. Ukraine was #2 with huge gap).
There is a switch, though. What do you do with electricity you produced?
And, what kind of electricity you produce?
The second question is tangential to "green energy" fad.
The generation is split to "base" generation, which covers required minimum and should be
steadily generating around the clock, and "maneuvering" generation which can be turned on and
off in a matter of few minutes, to accommodate with daytime traits, like "people awoke in
between 7-8am, took shower, cooked breakfast and departed to school/work".
In general, base generation is predictable, thus does not need big reserves, can use economy
of scales and cut costs. Maneuvering one has to increase costs, dealing with unpredictable
mode changes and extra wearing it puts on the equipment and employees.
The first question, as you can not pour electricity into a tank and keep it for months
there, can be roughly split to
1) use at home, for things like washing, cleaning, entertaining (TV, computers), air
conditioning in summer and heating in winter.
2) use in industries, this is perhaps what "real economists" look for. Those should had less
daily spikes, they might even have near constant consumption around the clock.
3) export to the countries, who need it, but does not want to build their own power
plants
The export is significant thing. There is so called Byrshtyn Island, a constellation of
power plants in Western Ukraine, that was cut off from Ukrainian grid and plugged to Polish
grid, to act as maneuvering damper for Polish citizens' daylight cycles.
You chart shows that between 2014 and 2015 there was strong (about 2000 GWH) decrease in
production, which remained more or less stable after that. It also shows huge seasonal
variation.
It probably means Ukrainian industries and households enjoy a lot of winter-time heating, but
very little of summer-time AC. Just like it was built during USSR times.
Ukrainian electricity export seems rising. Were there new power plants put to service? I
did not heard. Then it means that domestic consumption shrunk.
There was also a streak of Nuclear Power Plants accidents in the news of 2017-2019.
This can stem from two factors:
1) increased reliance on NPP as other power plants go belly-up, especially forcing those
giant NPPs into maneuvering modes, which they were not designed for. You can find news
sources that Ukrainian NPPs were being tested to 105% of normative capacity and to
maneuvering modes, the modes that just do not make sense when together.
2) decreased maintenance
Anyway, those NPPs are of old Soviet design of 1980-s, they are closing to end of life.
We'll see if new ones will be built. Or if they will just be used regardless of aging until
some hard failure, "run to the ground". And what will come after.
Of course, as long as they operate – no mater how harmful to locals – EU will
buy cheap energy.
And since EuroMaidan government is living on debts, it will have no choice than to sell. Even
if domestic power consumption will get zero, the EU will buy the power.
But I do not think EU would invest into building new power plants there when Soviet ones
finally crack.
@Anon Indeed, only Airbus and Boeing can produce super-heavy aircrafts.
China and Russia are contenders. Ukraine used to be, but stepped out.
Does it mean, USA and France are hell-bent over their military industrial complex?
Maybe.
Does it make them run worse?
Bombardier and EmBraer factories are bought by Airbus and Boeing, not vice versa.
Avro of Canada once used to be a pillar, now is memory.
And all the other countries have to kiss up to political powers that allow them purchasing
Boeing and Airbus jets and maintenance as a privilege for their lapdogging.
Iran wanted to buy Airbus badly, how did it work out?
So, yeah, specialties. Those specialties that can not be replaced – for master
races.
And those that can easily – for lapdogs.
New Zealand can produce good beef. But so can Brazil and Argentina. And Ukraine too.
But Brazil can not produce irreplaceable large cargo aircrafts. And even mid-size they can
not produce independently.
All nations are completely artificial along with the gods, ideologies, fiat money & all
the rest if the human fictions. If humans went extinct overnight would the US, Russia et al
still exist? No, nor would their thousands of gods.
That little trick with the maps can be done with many countries. The US is a fine example.
1st map = 13 colonies – keep adding new maps for every new state they added after
France paid for & won US independence & include the theft/conquest of Mexican
territory & Hawaii.
The Ukraine is a huge basket case made much worse by the US, but your (Orlov too) Rabid
Russian nationalism blinds you. IOW, like the empires propagandists, you too are spinning a
narrative, albeit more truthful than empires, but a narrative (emotional) nonetheless.
@Dr Scanlon Maybe we just compare real Ukraine with what it was promised to become?
Michael Saakashvili, 2014-08-26, "Exactly one year from today Ukraine would send
humanitarian aid to Russia. Mark my words.". I am still trying to find that aid around me, no
luck
There also was a much more extended timetable, year by year, how Ukraine would rocket to
the future and how Russia would fall down to middle ages. Wanted to re-read it but could not
find.
@Anon Or yea, sure. Even Ukrainian statistics (which in terms of reliability might be
somewhat better than Nostradamus, at least sometimes) report 53 births for 100 deaths, with
the population shrinking due to this differential alone by more than 200,000 per year. If you
count in emigration, the picture becomes very bleak. Millions work in Russia, Poland, and
elsewhere. Mind you, temporary emigration for work easily becomes permanent. For example, I
have a cousin who used to live in Lvov. He worked in Russia for 20+ years, and since 2014
never visited Ukraine. I guess he is still counted, as he remains a Ukrainian citizen.
@Mr. Hack OK, let's go to the original of the constitution 'ratified' by "His Majesty the
King of Sweden" (cum consensu S-ae R-ae Maiestatis Sueciae, Protectoris Nostri/with the
consent of His Majesty the King of Sweden, our protector):
"It is no secret that Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky of glorious memory, with the
Zaporozhian Host, took up arms and began a just war against the Polish Commonwealth for no
other reason (apart from rights and liberties) except their Orthodox faith, which had been
forced as a result of various encumbrances placed on it by the Polish authorities into union
with the Roman church. Similarly, after the alien new Roman religion had been eradicated
from our fatherland, he with the said Zaporozhian Host and Ruthenian [Rossiaca] people,
sought and submitted himself to the protection of the Muscovite tsardom for no other
reason than "that it shared the same Orthodox religion". Therefore, if God our Lord, strong
and mighty in battle, should assist the victorious armies of His Royal Majesty the King of
Sweden to liberate our fatherland from the Muscovite yoke of slavery, the present newly
elected Hetman will be bound by duty and put under obligation to take special care that no
alien religion is introduced into our Ruthenian [Rossiacam] fatherland. Should one, however,
appear anywhere, either secretly or openly, he will be bound to extirpate it through his
authority, not allow it to be preached or disseminated, and not permit any dissenters,
MOST OF ALL THE ADHERENTS OF DECEITFUL JUDAISM, to live in Ukraine, and will be bound to make
every possible effort that only the Orthodox faith of the Eastern confession, under
obedience to the Holy Apostolic See of Constantinople, be established firmly for ever
and be allowed to expand and to flourish, like a rose among thorns, among the neighbouring
countries following alien religions, for the greater glory of God, the building of churches,
and the instruction of Ruthenian [Rossiacis] sons in the liberal arts. And for the greater
authority of the Kievan metropolitan see, which is foremost in Little Russia [Parva Rossia],
and for a more efficient administration of spiritual matters, His Grace the Hetman should,
after the liberation of our fatherland from the Muscovite yoke, obtain from the Apostolic See
of Constantinople the original power of an exarch in order thereby to renew relationship with
and filial obedience to the aforementioned Apostolic See of Constantinople, from which
it , was privileged to have been enlightened in the holy Catholic faith by the preaching of
the Gospel".
"neque ignotum est, gloriosae memoriae Ducem Theodatum Chmielniccium cum Exercitu
Zaporoviensi non ob aliam causam praeter iura libertatis commotum fuisse iustaque contra
Rempublicam Polonam arma arripuisse, solum pro Fide sua Orthodoxa, quae variorum
gravaminum compulsu a potestate Polonorum coacta fuerat ad unionem cum Ecclesia Romana;
post extirpatam quoque e patria Neoromanam exoticam Religionem, non alio motivo cum eodem
Exercitu Zaporoviensi genteque Rossiaca protectione Imperii Moscovitici dedisse et libere se
subdidisse, solum ob Religionis Orthodoxae unionem. Igitur modernus neoelectus lllustrissimus
Dux, quando Dominus Deus fortis et potens in praeliis iuvabit felicia sacrae S-ae R-ae
Maiestatis Sueciae arma ad vindicandam patriam nostram de servitutis iugo Moscovitico
tenebitur et debito iure obstringetur singularem volvere curam fortiterque obstare, ut nulla
exotica Religio in patriam nostram Rossiacam introducatur, quae si alicubi clamve , palamve
apparuerit, tune activitatem suam extirpandae ipsi debebit, praedicari ampliarique non
permittet, asseclis eiusdem, PRAESERTIM VERO PRAESTIGIOSO IUDAISMO cohabitationem in Ucraina
non concedet et omni virium conatu sollicitam impendet curam, ut sola et una Orthodoxa Fides
Orientalis Confessionis sub obedienta S-tae Apostoiicae sedis Constantinopolitanae in
perpetuum sit firmanda, atque cum amplianda gloria Divina, erigendis ecclesiis exercendisque
in artibus liberalibus filiis Rossiacis dilatetur, ac tanquam rosa inter spinas, inter vicina
exoticae Religionis Dominia virescat et florescat. Propter vero majorem authoritatem
primariae in Parva Rossia sedis Metropolitanae Kiiovensis faciliorique in Spiritualibus
regimine, impositam sibi idem Illustrissimus Dux vindicata patria nostra de iugo Moscovitico
geret provinciam circa procurandam et impertiendam a sede Apostolica Constantinopolitana
Exarchicam primitivam potestatem, ut hoc actu renovetur relatio et filialis patriae nostrae
obedientia ad praefatam Apostolicam sedem Constantinopolitanam, cuius praedicatione Evangelii
in Fide Sancta Catholica illuminari firmarique dignata est".
ТHЕ PYLYP ORLYK CONSTITUTION,
1710@http://www.lucorg.com/block.php/block_id/26
@Anon > Also, check construction spending – click on 10 year
.now how can i account there for the fact, that UAH in 2013 costed three times more than
UAH in 2015 ?
> Farming is an industry.
Grain industry – is low added value one, it is highly competitive market because
grain from any country on Earth is just grain.
USSR used to buy grain, as it sponsored bread production and peasants all around were
buying bead to feed their hens, goats, pigs, etc. Official meat production was large too.
It is definitely better to export at least something than nothing. But it also is better
to export high added value goods.
Before WW1 a minister of Russian Empire said "Let our peasants starve but we will export
all the grains we contracted" – few years later Russian Empire ceased to exist.
In 1931 and 1932 Stalin tenfold decreased then banned grains export breaking the
contracts. 15 years later USSR won WW2.
Franlky, it is just weird that Ukraine and Russia together produce most world's traded
grain, like there is no other fertile soil on Earth. Also Russia and Ukraine are both to the
north from USA, so USA should be able to produce more grains in its warmer climate. Why isn't
USA world #1 grains exporter?
and EU just whimsically bans Ukrainian meat beyond some arbitrary quota.
EU will easily find where to buy meet.
Can Ukraine reciprocate by banning Airbus or Boeing purchases? I wonder
EU can pressure Ukrainian government, and Ukraine can do little in defense.
... I did know what to make of the histrionics just before the recess. They looked false.
That man wasn't really crying. And Chairman Schiff looked as scary as usual. If I could open
my eyes that wide I'd make a fortune in horror movies. Which I suppose is more or less what he
does.Reply 16 November 2019 at 03:35 PM
"... I tend to agree and suspect Team Trump is keeping its powder dry for a potential/inevitable Senate trial. The patent illegality of the original complaint, as accurately described here, will be just one of many bombshells dropped I expect. Trump is a master at giving his enemies enough rope to hang themselves and the Pelosi-Schiff show appears to me to be a classic example. My hope is the fire is lit while the witch hunters are still busying themselves atop the fagot pile. ..."
You don't get it. IMO the present impeachment inquiry is illegal because the
whistleblower's complaint should not have bben allowed under the statute. If an impeachment
arrives in the senate it can be thrown out on that basis.
I do get your point, and agree, however the the legislation is deficient in that while the
whistle-blower can, and should, highlight questionable behaviour in his/her department it
does not seem to offer adequate cover against retribution from said department.
viz.
"ICWPA doesn't prohibit employment-related retaliation and it provides no mechanism, such as
access to a court or administrative body, for challenging retaliation that may occur as a
result of having made a disclosure"
In this case his/her gripe does not fall within the scope of the act.
If your, or my, government is breaking its own laws I would like to see a clear route for
those in the know to report same to some body with the authority to act. They should be
independent of the department, have the power to investigate and protect the source. Better
that then dump it on Wikileaks and hope to stay anonymous.
On a separate point, is or should there be any restrictions on IGIC's authority to change the
scope of evidence to include hearsay, given the evidently limited intent of the whistleblower
legislation / directives?
You are referring to the change in the complaint form where the prior form required the
whistleblower to have direct knowledge of the issue complained about while the latest version
allows the whistleblower to blow the whistle using information obtained from someone else
(hearsay). The statute itself neither allowed not disallowed hearsay information. I believe
that the prior form should not have excluded hearsay. For example, if a foreign agent said
"I'm a foreign agent and taking photos of this top secret information" to a DNI employee,
that is a hearsay statement and could not be reported to the IG using the prior form. To me,
that's wrong.
Exactly right. Here is a link to the statute, 50 USC section 3033. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3033
The statute allows for the appointment of an Inspector General who reports to and has the
authority to investigate any activity that falls under the authority of the Director of
National Intelligence.
While I agree that Trump's phone call does not fall under the definition of an urgent
matter that can be reported to Congress, what's worse is that because the President's
activities cannot be investigated under this statute because the President is not under the
authority of nor supervised by the DNI. Thus, the intelligence Inspector General has no
authority to consider the complaint against Trump. Congress created the IG statute and placed
the IG under the supervision of the DNI because under the law the IG is to investigate only
problems that the DNI has the ability to rectify.
As the President of the United States is not supervised by the DNI, the IG has no
authority under this law to investigate the President's activities under this statute. The
complaint and the involvement of the IG in this matter was illegal from the start.
Never forget this particular "whistleblower" statute was changed at the 11th hour to suddenly
allow 2nd hand reports instead of the prior first hand report requirement.
It stunk from day one. Throw the book at the whole pack because they did not take out the
penalty part of the statute for filing false reports. Go get 'em FBI.
Right. The entire purpose of the phony and improper IG complaint was to manufacture an excuse
to have the matter reported to Congress where it would then be leaked to the public. It never
was a proper IG complaint, but the bell cannot be unrung.
Only way out is to call for the impeachment, have a vote and either lick their wounds if
they lose (mainly Schiff and Nadler get sacrificed - Fancy Nancy has been dancing on a tight
rope so she gets a pass); or vote to pass articles of impeachment and finally send this
turkey on to the senate.
Wild card, how many Democrats not engaged in this blatant publicity stunt also want no
part in it. What will be the FBI investigation of Ciaramella - there are penalties for filing
false complaints and it appears he was acting well out side the confines of the
whistle-blower law.
Ergo, the FBI is duty bound to hold Ciaramella accountable for filing a false complaint. Only
if charges get filed can his action under this law be deemed irrelevant.
Otherwise, all you have are the opening opinion statements in tonights DNC debate, sneered
out by Rachael Maddow, picked up with even more sneers by Kamala Harris and echoed by every
single DNC candidate as already a fait accompli.
The unocntested party line tonight is this "whistle blower" busted Trump wide open as a
crook and a self-confessed crook at that.
That political message flowing from this "irrelevant complaint "is hard to overcome as the
DNC debate crowd cheered, unless the perpetrator is brought to justice under the relevance of
this law. We shall wait patiently for that moment. As the Democrats all stated tonight - 2020
election is all about JUSTICE AND NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.
I do, which is what I meant by
"In this case his/her gripe does not fall within the scope of the act."
The point I was making is that, as drafted, there is in adequate redress/protection for
those who witness acts which are clearly covered. This is not conducive to keeping government
on the straight and narrow. The reliability of the Steele document seems to have been
massively oversold to the FISA court. Had someone in the know acted as Whistle-blower and
saved us all that has followed they should not get crucified for it, it is part of their job
isn't it?
The complaint was a vehicle to carry out the Democrats politics of personal destruction.
While all on the DNC debate stage tonight, each candidate asked (without a hint of irony)
to be the one candidate who can "bring the country together again" after Trump alone has torn
it asunder.
Exactly right. If I were Trump, I would have fired this guy for accepting a whistleblower
complaint that was not allowed under the statute because it did not concern an intelligence
activity or anything else supervised by the DNI as the statute requires.
Conceptually, it is the same as the Intelligence IG accepting and investigating complaints
about slow mail service, mine safety, or TSA agents stealing when they inspect luggage at the
airport. His jurisdiction is limited and he grossly exceeded it.
The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) is Michael K Atkinson. ICIG Atkinson is
the official who accepted the ridiculous premise of a hearsay 'whistle-blower' complaint; an
intelligence whistleblower who was "blowing-the-whistle" based on second hand information of
a phone call without any direct personal knowledge, ie 'hearsay'.
The center of the Lawfare Alliance influence was/is the Department of Justice National
Security Division, DOJ-NSD. It was the DOJ-NSD running the Main Justice side of the 2016
operations to support Operation Crossfire Hurricane and FBI agent Peter Strzok. It was also
the DOJ-NSD where the sketchy legal theories around FARA violations (Sec. 901)
originated.
Michael K Atkinson was previously the Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General of
the National Security Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ-NSD) in 2016. That makes
Atkinson senior legal counsel to John Carlin and Mary McCord who were the former heads of the
DOJ-NSD in 2016 when the stop Trump operation was underway.
Michael Atkinson was the lawyer for the same DOJ-NSD players who: (1) lied to the FISA
court (Judge Rosemary Collyer) about the 80% non compliant NSA database abuse using FBI
contractors; (2) filed the FISA application against Carter Page; and (3) used FARA violations
as tools for political surveillance and political targeting.
Yes, that means Michael Atkinson was Senior Counsel for the DOJ-NSD, at the very epicenter
of the political weaponization and FISA abuse.
It seems to me that if Trump is serious about taking on the swamp, now might be a good time
to strike. Surely in this whole mess, there has to be one clear cut case that he could use an
excuse for strong action. Something so egregious, so requiring, dare I say, a righteous
response- one involving a highly public perp walk or something similar.
It is time to put the fear of a jury finding followed by a certain and just punishment,
perhaps a stay at Epstein's prison as a starter while awaiting a no bail trial.
I believe we are talking about the "Fruit of the poisonous tree" objection. That evidence
obtained illegally cannot be used and anything gained (the "fruit") from it is tainted as
well.
Two questions: Was the whistle blower action illegal or just "improper"?
And if illegal, does the "attenuation doctrine" apply here?
"For example, a witness who freely and voluntarily testifies is enough of an independent
intervening factor to sufficiently "attenuate" the connection between the government's
illegal discovery of the witness and the witness's voluntary testimony itself. (United States
v. Ceccolini, 435 U.S. 268 (1978))"
Most likely, if this case were being heard in a court of law, it would be thrown out as fruit
of the poisoned tree doctrine. However, the problem here is there are no judges with the
authority to issue a ruling ordering Congress to stop these hearings.
However, it is certain that if Congress votes for impeachment, the Senate, same as the
House, can also do what it wants and the GOP majority may vote to throw the case out on the
grounds of fruit of the poisoned tree. However, I believe a full trial with witnesses
favorable to the president testifying and focusing on Biden corruption would show the
American people the impeachment process was bogus from the beginning and thus be more
favorable to Trump. In any event, it is highly unlikely that the GOP majority Senate will
provide the 67 votes necessary for impeachment.. So, at then end of the day, this is one big
show trial where the end result will be Trump serving out his elected term or terms.
I tend to agree and suspect Team Trump is keeping its powder dry for a potential/inevitable
Senate trial. The patent illegality of the original complaint, as accurately described here,
will be just one of many bombshells dropped I expect. Trump is a master at giving his enemies
enough rope to hang themselves and the Pelosi-Schiff show appears to me to be a classic
example. My hope is the fire is lit while the witch hunters are still busying themselves atop
the fagot pile.
Hill, in advanced testimony Thursday, warned lawmakers against believing a "fictional
narrative" that it was Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential
election.
"This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian
security services themselves," Hill said in prepared remarks.
"The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked
our democratic institutions in 2016 . This is the public conclusion of our intelligence
agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some
of the underlying details must remain classified."
Hill emphasized that she is a nonpartisan foreign policy expert, who has served under three
different Republican and Democratic presidents and that she has "no interest in advancing the
outcome of your inquiry in any particular direction, except toward the truth."
She warned that U.S. national security has been harmed by the politicization of support for
Ukraine.
"The Russian government's goal is to weaken our country -- to diminish America's global
role and to neutralize a perceived U.S. threat to Russian interests," she said.
"President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter U.S. foreign policy
objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine, where Moscow wishes to reassert political and
economic dominance."
Hill added, "I respect the work that this Congress does in carrying out its constitutional
responsibilities, including in this inquiry, and I am here to help you to the best of my
ability. I f the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the
United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than
worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending
ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm."
Holmes testified behind closed doors earlier this month that he heard U.S. Ambassador to the
European Union Gordon Sondland telling President Trump over a phone conversation that Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky "loves your ass."
As an open-minded, astute observer, I'd say the Dems already had their impeachment
narrative in place before the hearings, then used the hearings to build supportive evidence
of conjecture, hearsay and supposition to come to their "guilty" conclusion.
What happens when 90% of the media is controlled/owned by (6) corporations?
What happens when those same corporations are operated and controlled by a political
ideology?
What happens when the news is no longer free from bias?
What happens when the news is no longer reliable and independent?
What happens when the news is no longer trustworthy?
What happens when the news simply becomes an extension/arm of a political party?
Fact becomes fiction?
Fiction becomes fact?
When does news become propaganda?
Identity creation?
How does the average person, who is under constant financial stress (by design), find time to
research and discern fact v fiction?
Majority of people more prone to believe someone in power sitting behind a big brand 'news'
name?
Do people [human psyche] tend to follow the 'majority/mainstream viewpoint' in fear of being
isolated and/or shunned?
'Mainstream' is used for a reason [dominate trend in opinion] .
[If majority of people believe 'x' then 'x' must be validated / true]
Why do 'mainstream' media heads, within different orgs, always use the same keywords and/or
catch phrases?
Coordinated? By who? Outside entity providing instructions?
Do they count on the fact that people [human psyche] are more prone to believe something if
heard over-and-over again by different 'trusted' sources?
Do 'echo chamber' tactics provide validation / credibility to the topic/point being
discussed?
Threat to intellectual freedom?
Would control over [of] these institutions/organizations allow for the mass control of a
populations viewpoint re: a desired topic?
Read again – digest.
Would control over [of] these institutions/organizations allow for the mass control of a
populations viewpoint re: a desired topic?
Logical thinking.
Why, after the election of 2016, did [D] 's and media corps jumpstart a [coordinated &
planned] divisive blitz intended to create falsehoods re: illegitimacy of election, character
assassination of POTUS through sexism, racism, every other 'ism'?
Pre/post 2016 election?
Why were violent [masked] terror orgs such as Antifa immediately created/funded?
Why were these orgs tasked w/ immediate intimidation/shut down of any pro-POTUS rally [s]
and/or events?
Why were marches immediately organized to counter and silence pro-POTUS rally [s] and/or
events?
Why were marches immediately organized which divided people into sex/gender, race, [ism]
?
When you control the levers of news dissemination, you control the narrative.
Control of the narrative = power
When you are blind, what do you see?
They want you divided.
Divided by religion.
Divided by sex.
Divided by political affiliation.
Divided by class.
When you are divided, and angry, and controlled, you target those 'different' from you, not
those responsible [controllers] .
Divided you are weak.
Divided you pose no threat to their control.
When 'non-dogmatic' information becomes FREE & TRANSPARENT it becomes a threat to those
who attempt to control the narrative and/or stable [livestock kept – sheep] .
When you are awake, you stand on the outside of the stable ('group-think' collective), and
have 'free thought'.
"Free thought" is a philosophical viewpoint which holds that positions regarding truth should
be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism, rather than authority, tradition,
revelation, or dogma.
Q
Money quote: "I am now convinced that laws, justice, truth and honor don't amount to a hill
of beans in The Swamp. It's all wanton and vicious politics and power plays all the time. Then
mountains of BS, shoveled out by an allied scurrilous media machine to try to keep the public
buying into the Machiavellian machinations of the Swamp dwellers. "
"The Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 ,
[1] amending the Central Intelligence Agency
Act of 1949 and the Inspector General Act of 1978
, sets forth a procedure for employees and contractors of specified federal intelligence
agencies to report complaints or information to Congress about serious problems involving
intelligence activities.
Under the ICWPA, an intelligence employee or contractor who intends to report to Congress a
complaint or information of "urgent concern" involving an intelligence activity may report the
complaint or information to their agency's inspector general or the Inspector
General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG). Within a 14-day period, the IG must determine
"whether the complaint or information appears credible," and upon finding the information to be
credible, thereafter transfer the information to the head of the agency. The law then requires
the DNI (or the relevant agency head) to forward the complaint to the congressional
intelligence committees, along with any comments he wishes to make about the complaint, within
seven days. If the IG does not deem the complaint or information to be credible or does not
transmit the information to the head of the agency, the employee may provide the information
directly to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. However, the employee must first
inform the IG of his or her intention to contact the intelligence committees directly and must
follow the procedures specified in the Act.
The Act defines a matter of "urgent concern" as:
[2]
a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law or Executive order , or
deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operations of an intelligence activity
involving classified
information , but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy
matters;
A false statement to Congress, or a willful withholding from Congress, on an issue of
material fact relating to the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence
activity; or
An action constituting reprisal or threat of reprisal in response to an employee's
reporting an urgent concern.
ICWPA doesn't prohibit employment-related retaliation and it provides no mechanism, such as
access to a court or administrative body, for challenging retaliation that may occur as a
result of having made a disclosure.
[3] In 2006 Thomas Gimble, Acting Inspector General, Department of Defense ,
stated before the House Committee on
Government Reform that the ICWPA is a ' misnomer ' and that more properly the Act protects
the communication of classified information to Congress .
[4] According to Michael German with the Brennan Center for Justice , the
ICWPA, "provides a right to report internally but no remedy when that right is infringed, which
means that there is no right at all."
[3]
According to the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence , from 1999-2009, 10 complaints/disclosures were filed under this
law, four of which were found to be credible by the relevant Inspector General. In three of
these ten cases the whistleblower claimed that s/he was retaliated against: two CIA cases and one
DOJ case. Subsequent
investigations by the CIA and DOJ failed to find evidence of retaliation in any of these cases.
[3]
[5]
This law provides an intelligence official with a legal means within which to report
misdeeds in the world of intelligence operation, funding, etc. It has nothing to do with
government activities that are not intelligence activities. There was nothing in the now famous
25 July call between Trump and Zelensky that was intelligence business. None. Remember - the
two presidents ARE NOT intelligence officials.
IMO the complaint was and is invalid and should not have been entertained at all by the IC
IG. The original opinion by DoJ on this matter was correct. pl
Jack ,
Sir,
The Democrats are intent on impeaching Trump. As they have shown with the vote to launch
the impeachment inquiry, they're quite happy to do it on a purely partisan party line vote.
And they have the full support of the mainstream media and many in the bureaucracy including
serving officers in the military. The only question IMO, is how many Republican senators will
either abstain or vote to convict in the Senate trial?
The Resistance as Barr has called them are so blind with hatred for Trump that they can't
see beyond their nose. They will now create a precedent where a House majority of one party
can impeach at will the President of the opposing party while using a kangaroo court inquiry.
This must lead to complete chaos for our political system that each of our adversaries would
love. IMO, only the American voter can change this by stopping to vote the lesser evil and
electing candidates outside the duopoly. Of course that ain't happening in my life time as
most Americans are consumed with partisan warfare on the side of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle
Dum.
prawnik ,
The law doesn't matter. The IC and courts will interpret the laws however they wish.
This is the flip side of the fundamental problem in Sir Thomas More's famous formulation
of the law in "A Man for All Seasons". The laws of England or any other law are of no
protection to anyone if he cannot enforce them.
Similarly, even if the laws clearly condemn a action, even if the action is wrongful, that
is of no matter, if the people with power have decided that the law is to protect that action
regardless of what is written.
Moral: there is no such thing as law. There is only context.
K -> prawnik... ,
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your take (and I always appreciate a Thomas More
reference). However, I think where there is a widespread agreement amongst the population
that the law is just and that it is generally applied fairly to all--in that society you
empower leading voices to defend the law against would-be attackers (from either top or
bottom). But today we do not have that consensus in popular opinion, not all of us believe
the law is fair or evenly applied, and voices shouting for it to be abrogated are loud and
growing bolder.
Now, your moral is properly situated in its historical context.
Factotum ,
The favor was for Ukraine to investigate Crowdstrike and the 2016 DNC computer breach.
Reliance on Crowdstrike to investigate the DNC computer, and not an independent FBI
investigation, was tied very closely to the years long anti-Trump Russiagate hoax and waste
of US taxpayer time and money.
Why is this issue ignored by both the media and the Democrats. The ladies doth protest far
too much.
Isn't the ICIG another swamp careerist?
These swamp creatures are of one ilk (NOT a big deer):
They live in the same neighborhoods, their kids go to the same schools, they go to the same
Delaware beaches.
They will NEVER seriously investigate, much less bring down, a fellow swamp creature.
I am now convinced that laws, justice, truth and honor don't amount to a hill of beans in The
Swamp. It's all wanton and vicious politics and power plays all the time. Then mountains of
BS, shoveled out by an allied scurrilous media machine to try to keep the public buying into
the Machiavellian machinations of the Swamp dwellers.
Members of the "in crowd" can do whatever they want without repercussion. If any of them
ever faces consequences it's because they fell from favor for secret reasons as opposed to
the publicly announced reason, or they got sleepy and were gunned down by a newer more
ambitious usurper.
The deep state exists to perpetuate itself. When 95% of all 2016 political contributions from
the deep state went to Clinton, trump's election created and existential crisis.
Trump promised he would expose and cleag out the deep state - look at his major2016
campaign video speech. Those were his very first words.
Deep state was put on notice even before the was elected. Apoplectic can be their only
response. Frog brains were engaged and we have these three long awful years of deep state
inflicted chaos.
Deep state = Democrats = big public sector unions How can you have $800 billion tax
dollars going to teachers union members nationwide without the teachers union deep state
doing all they can to bring Trump down. Including using K-12 students as front line storm
troopers.
"
Lang cites numerous examples of "incompetence and malfeasance in the leadership of the 17
agencies of the Intelligence Community and the Federal Bureau of Investigation," to include the
examples cited above plus the failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the
domestic front, he cites his personal observation of efforts by the Department of Justice and
the FBI to corruptly "frame" people tried in federal courts on national security issues as well
as the intelligence/law enforcement community conspiracy to "get Trump."
Colonel Lang asks "Tell me, pilgrims, why should we put up with such nonsense? Why should we
pay the leaders of these agencies for the privilege of having them abuse us? We are free men
and women. Let us send these swine to their just deserts in a world where they have to work
hard for whatever money they earn." He then recommends stripping CIA of its responsibility for
being the lead agency in spying as well as in covert action, which is a legacy of the Cold War
and the area in which it has demonstrated a particular incompetence. As for the FBI, it was
created by J. Edgar Hoover to maintain dossiers on politicians and it is time that it be
replaced by a body that operates in a fashion "more reflective of our collective nation[al]
values."" Giraldi
Political theorist Wendy Brown's latest book, In the Ruins of
Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West , traces the intellectual
roots of neoliberalism and reveals how an anti-democratic project unleashed monsters –
from plutocrats to neo-fascists – that its mid-20 th century visionaries
failed to anticipate. She joins the Institute for New Economic Thinking to discuss how the
flawed blueprint for markets and the less-discussed focus on morality gave rise to threats to
democracy and society that are distinct from what has come before.
Lynn Parramore: To many people, neoliberalism is about economic agendas. But your book
explores what you describe as the moral aspect of the neoliberal project. Why is this
significant?
Wendy Brown: Most critical engagement with neoliberalism focuses on economic policy
– deregulation, privatization, regressive taxation, union busting and the extreme
inequality and instability these generate. However, there is another aspect to neoliberalism,
apparent both in its intellectual foundations and its actual roll-out, that mirrors these moves
in the sphere of traditional morality. All the early schools of neoliberalism (Chicago,
Austrian, Freiburg, Virginia) affirmed markets and the importance of states supporting without
intervening in them.
But they also all affirmed the importance of traditional morality (centered in the
patriarchal family and private property) and the importance of states supporting without
intervening in it. They all supported expanding its reach from the private into the civic
sphere and rolling back social justice previsions that conflict with it. Neoliberalism thus
aims to de-regulate the social sphere in a way that parallels the de-regulation of markets.
Concretely this means challenging, in the name of freedom, not only regulatory and
redistributive economic policy but policies aimed at gender, sexual and racial equality. It
means legitimating assertions of personal freedom against equality mandates (and when
corporations are identified as persons, they too are empowered to assert such freedom). Because
neoliberalism has everywhere carried this moral project in addition to its economic one, and
because it has everywhere opposed freedom to state imposed social justice or social protection
of the vulnerable, the meaning of liberalism has been fundamentally altered in the past four
decades.
That's how it is possible to be simultaneously libertarian, ethnonationalist and patriarchal
today: The right's contemporary attack on "social justice warriors" is straight out of
Hayek.
LP: You discuss economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek at length in your book.
How would you distribute responsibility to him compared to other champions of conservative
formulations for how neoliberalism has played out? What were his blind spots, which seem
evidenced today in the rise of right-wing forces and angry populations around the world?
WB: Margaret Thatcher thumped Hayek's The Constitution of
Liberty and declared it the bible of her project. She studied it, believed it, and
sought to realize it. Reagan imbibed a lot of Thatcherism. Both aimed to implement the Hayekian
view of markets, morals and undemocratic statism. Both accepted his demonization of society
(Thatcher famously quotes him, "there's no such thing") and his view that state policies aimed
at the good for society are already on the road to totalitarianism. Both affirmed traditional
morality in combination with deregulated markets and attacks on organized labor.
I am not arguing that Hayek is the dominant influence for all times and places of
neoliberalization over the past four decades -- obviously the Chicago Boys [Chilean economists of the '70s
and '80s trained at the University of Chicago] were key in Latin America while Ordoliberalism [a German
approach to liberalism] has been a major influence in the European Union's management of the
post-2008 crises. "Progressive neoliberals" and neoliberalized institutions hauled the project
in their own direction. But Hayek's influence is critical to governing rationality of
neoliberalism in the North and he also happens to be a rich and complex thinker with a fairly
comprehensive worldview, one comprising law, family, morality, state, economy, liberty,
equality, democracy and more.
The limitations? Hayek really believed that markets and traditional morality were both
spontaneous orders of action and cooperation, while political life would always overreach and
thus required tight constraints to prevent its interventions in morality or markets. It also
needed to be insulated from instrumentalism by concentrated economic interests, from aspiring
plutocrats to the masses. The solution, for him, was de-democratizing the state itself. He was,
more generally, opposed to robust democracy and indeed to a democratic state. A thriving order
in his understanding would feature substantial hierarchy and inequality, and it could tolerate
authoritarian uses of political power if they respected liberalism, free markets and
individual freedom.
We face an ugly, bowdlerized version of this today on the right. It is not exactly what
Hayek had in mind, and he would have loathed the plutocrats, demagogues and neo-fascist masses,
but his fingerprints are on it.
LP: You argue that there is now arising something distinct from past forms of fascism,
authoritarianism, plutocracy, and conservatism. We see things like images of Italian right groups giving Fascist
salutes that have been widely published. Is that merely atavism? What is different?
WB: Of course, the hard right traffics in prior fascist and ultra-racist iconography,
including Nazism and the Klan. However, the distinctiveness of the present is better read from
the quotidian right than the alt-right.
We need to understand why reaction to the neoliberal economic sinking of the middle and
working class has taken such a profoundly anti-democratic form. Why so much rage against
democracy and in favor of authoritarian statism while continuing to demand individual freedom?
What is the unique blend of ethno-nationalism and libertarianism afoot today? Why the
resentment of social welfare policy but not the plutocrats? Why the uproar over [American
football player and political activist] Colin Kaepernick but not the Panama Papers [a massive
document leak pointing to fraud and tax evasion among the wealthy]? Why don't bankrupt workers
want national healthcare or controls on the pharmaceutical industry? Why are those sickened
from industrial effluent in their water and soil supporting a regime that wants to roll back
environmental and health regulations?
Answers to these questions are mostly found within the frame of neoliberal reason, though
they also pertain to racialized rancor (fanned by opportunistic demagogues and our mess of an
unaccountable media), the dethronement of white masculinity from absolute rather than relative
entitlement, and an intensification of nihilism itself amplified by neoliberal
economization.
These contributing factors do not run along separate tracks. Rather, neoliberalism's aim to
displace democracy with markets, morals and liberal authoritarian statism legitimates a white
masculinist backlash against equality and inclusion mandates. Privatization of the nation
legitimates "nativist" exclusions. Individual freedom in a world of winners and losers assaults
the place of equality, access and inclusion in understandings of justice.
LP: Despite your view of democratized capitalism as an "oxymoron," you also observe that
capitalism can be modulated in order to promote equality among citizens. How is this feasible
given the influence of money in politics? What can we do to mitigate the corruption of
wealth?
WB: Citizens United certainly set
back the project of achieving the political equality required by and for democracy. I
wrote about this in a previous book, Undoing the Demos , and Timothy
Kuhner offers a superb account of the significance of wealth in politics in Capitalism V. Democracy: Money in Politics
and the Free Market Constitution. Both of us argue that the Citizens
United decision, and the several important campaign finance and campaign speech decisions
that preceded it, are themselves the result of a neoliberalized jurisprudence. That is,
corporate dominance of elections becomes possible when political life as a whole is cast as a
marketplace rather than a distinctive sphere in which humans attempt to set the values and
possibilities of common life. Identifying elections as political marketplaces is at the heart
of Citizens United.
So does a future for democracy in the United States depend on overturning that decision?
Hardly. Democracy is a practice, an ideal, an imaginary, a struggle, not an achieved state.
It is always incomplete, or better, always aspirational. There is plenty of that aspiration
afoot these days -- in social movements and in statehouses big and small. This doesn't make the
future of democracy rosy. It is challenged from a dozen directions – divestment
from public higher education, the trashing of truth and facticity, the unaccountability of
media platforms, both corporate and social, external influence and trolling, active voter
suppression and gerrymandering, and the neoliberal assault on the very value of democracy we've
been discussing. So the winds are hardly at democracy's back.
I think Milton Friedman was vastly more important than Hayek is shaping the worldview of
American conservatives on economic policy. Until Hayek won the Nobel he was virtually
forgotten in the US. Don't know about the UK, but his leaving the London School of Economics
undoubtedly reduced his influence there. Hayek was very isolated at the University of Chicago
even from the libertarians at the Department of Economics, largely due to methodological
issues. The Chicago economists thought was really more of as philosopher, not a real
economist like them.
Friedman was working for Hayek, in the sense that Hayek instigated the program that
Friedman fronted.
I was amused by a BBC radio piece a couple of years ago in which some City economist was
trying to convince us that Hayek was a forgotten genius who we ought to dig up and worship,
as if he doesn't already rule the World from his seat at God's right hand.
Citizens United: The conservative originalists keep whining about activist judges making
up rights, like the "right to privacy" in Roe v. Wade. Yet they were able to come up with
Citizens United that gave a whole new class of rights to corporations to effectively give
them the rights of individuals (the People that show up regularly in the Constitution,
including the opening phrase). If you search the Constitution, "company", "corporation" etc.
don't even show up as included in the Constitution. "Commerce" shows up a couple of times,
specifically as something regulated by Congress. Citizens United effectively flips the script
of the Constitution in giving the companies doing Commerce the ability to regulate Congress.
I think Citizen's United is the least conservative ruling that the conservative court could
have come up with, bordering on fascism instead of the principles clearly enunciated
throughout the Constitution. It is likely to be the "Dred Scott" decision of the 21st
century.
2. Neo-liberalism is like Marxism and a bunch of other isms, where the principles look
fine on paper until you apply them to real-world people and societies. This is the difference
between Thaler's "econs" vs "humans". It works in theory, but not in practice because people
are not purely rational and the behavioral aspects of the people and societies throw things
out of kilter very quickly. That is a primary purpose of regulation, to be a rational
fly-wheel keeping things from spinning out of control to the right or left. Marxism quickly
turned into Stalinism in Russia while Friedman quickly turned into massive inequality and
Donald Trump in the US. The word "regulate" shows up more frequently in the Constitution than
"commerce", or "freedom" (only shows up in First Amendment), or "liberty" (deprivation of
liberty has to follow due process of law which is a form of regulation). So the Constitution
never conceived of a self-regulating society in the way Hayek and Friedman think things
should naturally work – writing court rulings on the neo-liberal approach is a radical
activist departure from the Constitution.
The foundation was laid for Citizens United long before, I think, when the Supreme
Court decided that corporations were essentially people, and that money was essentially
speech. It would be nice if some justice started hacking away at those erroneous decisions
(along with what they did with the 2nd Amendment in D.C. v Heller .)
I honestly think the corporations are people was good and the money is speech is terrible.
If most of the big corporations were actually treated like people those people would be in
jail. They are treated better than people are now. Poor people, anyway. When your corporation
is too big not to commit crimes, it's too big and should go in time out at least.
My understanding is that corporate personhood arose as a convenience to allow a
corporation to be named as a single entity in legal actions, rather than having to name every
last stockholder, officer, employee etc. Unfortunately the concept was gradually expanded far
past its usefulness for the rest of us.
"If most of the big corporations were actually treated like people those people would be
in jail."
Thats part of the problem: Corporations CANNOT be put in jail because they are
organizations, not people, but they are given the same 'rights' as people. That is
fundamentally part of the problem.
True, but corporations are directed by people who *can* be jailed. Often they are
compensated as if they were taking full liability when in fact they face none. I think its
long past time to revisit the concept of limited liability.
"Limited Liability" is basic to the concept of the corporation. How about some "limited
liability" for individuals? The whole point of neo-liberalism is "lawlessness" or the "Law of
the Jungle" in unfettered markets. The idea is to rationalize raw power, both over society
and the family, the last stand of male dominance, the patriarchy. The women who succeed in
this eco-system, eschew the nurturing feminine and espouse the predatory masculine. "We came,
we saw, he died." Psychopaths all!
The executives need to go to jail. Until then, corporate fines are just a cost of doing
business and white collar lawbreaking will continue. Blowing up the world's financial system
has less legal consequence than doing 80 in a 65 mph zone. Even if they just did civil asset
forfeiture on executives based on them having likely committed a crime while in their house
and using their money would go along ways to cleaning things up.
The whittling away of white collar crime by need to demonstrate intent beyond reasonable
doubt means the executives can just plead incompetence or inattention (while collecting their
$20 million after acquittal). Meanwhile, a poor person with a baggie of marijuana in the
trunk of their car goes to jail for "possession" where intent does not need to be shown, mere
presence of the substance. If they used the same standard of the mere presence of a fraud to
be sufficient to jail white collar criminals, there wouldn't be room in the prisons for poor
people picked up for little baggies of weed.
Actually, if you research the history, the court DID NOT decide that corporations are
people. The decision was made by the secretary to the court, who included the ruling in the
headnote to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 1886. The concept was not
considered in the case itself nor in the ruling the judges made. However, it was so
convenient for making money that judges and even at least one justice on the supreme court
publicized the ruling as if it were an actual legal precedent and have followed it ever
since. I am not a lawyer, but I think that ruling could be changed by a statute, whereas
Citizens United is going to require an amendment to the constitution. On the other hand, who
knows? Maybe the five old, rich, Republican, Catholic Men will rule that it is embedded in
the constitution after all. I think it would be worth a try.
"Neo-liberalism is like Marxism and a bunch of other isms, where the principles look fine
on paper until you apply them to real-world people and societies."
Marx analysed 19th Century capitalism; he wrote very little on what type of system should
succeed capitalism. This is in distinct contrast to neo-liberalism which had a well plotted
path to follow (Mirowski covers this very well). Marxism did not turn into Stalinism; Tsarism
turned into Leninism which turned into Stalinism. Marx had an awful lot less to do with it
than Tsar Nicholas II.
+1000. I think it was Tsar Nicholas II who said, L'etat, c'est moi"./s; Lenin just
appropriated this concept to implement his idea of "the dictatorship of the proletariat."
"Neo-liberalism is like Marxism and a bunch of other isms, where the principles look fine
on paper until you apply them to real-world people and societies."
I'm sorry, but this is fundamentally intellectually lazy. Marxism isn't so much a way to
structure the world, like Neoliberalism is, but a method of understanding Capitalism and
class relations to capitalism.
Edit: I wrote this before I saw New Wafer Army's post since I hadnt refreshed the page
since I opened it. They said pretty much what I wanted to say, so kudos to them.
These critiques of neoliberalism are always welcome, but they inevitably leave me with
irritated and dissatisfied with their failure or unwillingness to mention the political
philosophy of republicanism as an alternative, or even a contrast.
The key is found in Brown's statement " It also needed to be insulated from
instrumentalism by concentrated economic interests, from aspiring plutocrats to the masses.
The solution, for him [von Hayek], was de-democratizing the state itself. He was, more
generally, opposed to robust democracy and indeed to a democratic state."
Contrast this to Federalist Paper No. 10, Madison's famous discourse on factions.
Madison writes that 1) factions always arise from economic interests ["But the most common
and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property."],
and 2) therefore the most important function of government is to REGULATE the clash of these
factions ["The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task
of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and
ordinary operations of the government."
In a very real sense, neoliberalism is an assault on the founding principles of the
American republic.
Which should not really surprise anyone, since von Hayek was trained as a functionary of
the Austro-Hungarian empire. And who was the first secretary of the Mont Pelerin Society that
von Hayen founded to promote neoliberalist doctrine and propaganda? Non other than Max Thurn,
of the reactionary Bavarian Thurn und Taxis royal family.
Madison's Federalist 10 is much like Aristotle's Politics and the better Roman historians
in correctly tracing back the fundamental tensions in any political community to questions of
property and class.
And, much like Aristotle's "mixed regime," Madison proposes that the best way of
overcoming these tensions is to institutionalize organs of government broadly representative
of the two basic contesting political classes–democratic and oligarchic–and let
them hash things out in a way that both are forced to deal with the other. This is a
simplification but not a terribly inaccurate one.
The problem though so far as I can tell is that it almost always happens that the
arrangement is set up in a way that structurally privileges existing property rights
(oligarchy) over social freedoms (democracy) such that the oligarchic class quickly comes to
dominate even those governmental organs designed to be "democratic". In other words, I have
never seen a theorized republic that upon closer inspection was not an oligarchy in
practice.
1) Support welfare for the banks (e.g. deposit guarantees) and the rich (e.g. non-negative
yields and interest on the inherently risk-free debt of monetary sovereigns).
2) Seek to regulate the thievery inherent in 1).
3) Bemoan the inevitable rat-race to the bottom when 2) inevitably fails because of
unenforceable laws, such as bans on insider trading, red-lining, etc.
Shorter: Progressives ENABLE the injustice they profess, no doubt sincerely at least in
some cases, to oppose.
Rather stupid from an engineering perspective, I'd say. Or more kindly, blind.
I'm fine with the federal government providing basic banking services (which would
inherently protect depositors) but your initial post didn't say anything about that. If we
continue with a private banking system I want deposit guarantees even if they somehow
privilege the banks better than nothing
I have read that originally conservatives (including many bankers) opposed deposit
insurance because it would lead people to be less careful when they evaluated the banking
institution they would entrust with their money. They did not seem to notice that however
much diligence depositors used, they ended up losing their life's savings over and over. Just
as they do not seem to notice that despite having employer-provided insurance tens of
thousands of people every year go bankrupt because of medical bills. Funny how that
works.
Adding that rather than deposit guarantees, the US government could have expanded the
Postal Savings Service to provide the population with what private banks had so miserably
failed to provide – the safe storage of their fiat.
The banking system was failing in 1932, as was the financial system in 2008, not
necessarily because of any lack of solvency of an individual business although some were, but
because of the lack of faith in the whole system; bank panics meant that every depositor was
trying to get their money out at the same time. People lost everything. It is only the faith
in the system that enables the use of bits of paper and plastic to work. So having a
guarantee in big, bold letters of people's savings is a good idea.
Personally, I see little distance between the Neo Liberal treatment of Market and Naked
Greed, coupled with a complete rejection of Rule of Law for the Common Good.
" It means legitimating assertions of personal freedom against equality mandates (and when
corporations are identified as persons, they too are empowered to assert such freedom)."
"We need to understand why reaction to the neoliberal economic sinking of the middle and
working class has taken such a profoundly anti-democratic form." Really? Does anybody here
believe that? This reads like another clumsy attempt to dismiss actual popular anger against
neoliberalism in favour of pearl-clutching progressive angst, by associating this anger with
the latest target for liberal hate, in this case blah blah patriarchy blah blah. The reality
is that liberalism has always been about promoting the freedom of the rich and the strong to
do whatever they feel like, whilst keeping the ordinary people divided and under control.
That's why Liberals have always hated socialists, who think of the good of the community
rather than of the "freedom" of the rich, powerful and well connected.
The "democracy" that is being defended here is traditional elite liberal democracy, full of
abstract "rights" that only the powerful can exert, dominated by elite political parties with
little to choose between them, and indifferent or hostile to actual freedoms that ordinary
people want in their daily lives. Neoliberalism is simply a label for its economic views
(that haven't changed much over the centuries) whereas social justice is the label for its
social wing (ditto).
I think of this every time I wall home through the local high street, where within thirty
metres I pass two elderly eastern European men aggressively begging. (It varies in France,
but this is slightly closer than the average for a city). I reflect that twenty years of
neoliberal policies in France have given these people freedom of movement, and the freedom to
sit there in the rain with no home, no job and no prospects. Oh, and now of course they are
free to marry each other.
I agree with your analysis and assessment of Wendy Brown, as she is portrayed in her
statements in this post. However I quibble your assertion: "Neoliberalism is simply a label
for its economic views (that haven't changed much over the centuries) whereas social justice
is the label for its social wing (ditto)." The word "Neoliberalism" is indeed commonly used
as a label as you assert but Neoliberalism as a philosophy is obscured in that common
usage.
At its heart I believe Neoliberalism might best be characterized as an epistemology based
on the Market operating as the all knowing arbiter of Truth. Hayek exercises notions of
'freedom' in his writing but I believe freedom is a secondary concern once it is defined in
terms of its relation to the decisions of the Market. This notion of the Market as
epistemology is completely absent from Wendy Brown's discussion of her work in this post.
Her assertion that "neoliberalism's aim [is] to displace democracy with markets, morals
and liberal authoritarian statism legitimates a white masculinist backlash against equality
and inclusion mandates" collapses once the Market is introduced as epistemology.
Neoliberalism does not care one way or another about any of Wendy Brown's concerns. Once the
Market decides -- Truth is known. As a political theorist I am surprised there is no analysis
of Neoliberalism as a tool the Elite have used to work their will on society. I am surprised
there is no analysis of how the Elites have allowed themselves to be controlled within and
even displaced by the Corporate Entities they created and empowered using their tool. I am
surprised there is no analysis of the way the Corporate Entities and their Elite have worked
to use Neoliberalism to subordinate nation states under a hierarchy driven by the decisions
of the World Market.
[I admit I lack the stomach to read Hayek -- so I am basing my opinions on what I
understand of Phillip Mirowski's analysis of Neoliberalism.]
I don't disagree with you: I suppose that having been involved in practical politics
rather than being a political theorist (which I have no pretensions to being) I am more
interested of the reality of some of these ideas than their theoretical underpinnings. I have
managed to slog my way through Slobodian's book, and I think your presentation of Hayek's
writing is quite fair: I simply wonder how far it is actually at the origin of the
destruction we see around us. I would suggest in fact that, once you have a political
philosophy based on the value-maximising individual, rather than traditional considerations
of the good of society as a whole, you eventually wind up where we are now, once the
constraints of religious belief, fear of popular uprisings , fear of Communism etc. have been
progressively removed. It's for that reason that I argue that neoliberalism isn't really new:
it represents the essential form of liberalism unconstrained by outside forces – almost
a teleological phenomenon which, as its first critics feared, has wound up destroying
community, family, industries, social bonds and even – as you suggest – entire
nation states.
Your response to my comment, in particular your assertion "neoliberalism isn't really new"
coupled with your assertion apparently equating Neoliberalism with just another general
purpose label for a "political philosophy based on the value-maximizing individual, rather
than traditional ", is troubling. When I put your assertions with Jerry B's assertion at 6:58
pm:
" many people over focus on a word or the use of a word and ascribe way to literal view of a
word. I tend to view words more symbolically and contextually."
I am left wondering what is left to debate or discuss. If Neoliberalism has no particular
meaning then perhaps we should discuss the properties of political philosophies based on the
value-maximizing-individual, and even that construct only has meaning symbolically and
contextually, which is somehow different than the usual notion of meaning as a denotation
coupled with a connotation which is shared by those using a term in their discussion -- and
there I become lost from the discussion. I suppose I am too pedantic to deviate from the
common usages of words, especially technical words like Neoliberalism.
Considering how elites throughout history have used religion as a bulwark to guard their
privileges, it should be of no surprise that they are building a new one, only this time they
are building one that appeals to the religious and secular alike. Neoliberalism will be very
difficult to dismantle.
But what ironies we create. Citizens United effectively gave political control to the big
corporations. In a time when society has already evolved lots of legislation to limit the
power and control of any group and especially in commercial/monopoly cases. So that what CU
created was a new kind of "means of production" because what gets "produced" these days is at
least 75% imported. The means of production is coming to indicate the means of political
control. And that is fitting because ordinary people have become the commodity. Like
livestock. So in that sense Marx's view of power relationships is accurate although
civilization has morphed. Politics is, more and more, the means of production. The means of
finance. Just another reason why we would achieve nothing in this world trying to take over
the factories. What society must have now is fiscal control. It will be the new means of
production. I'm a dummy. I knew fiscal control was the most important thing, but I didn't
quite see the twists and turns that keep the fundamental idea right where it started.
Exactly. The writer seems determined to tie in neoliberalism with a broader conservative
opposition to modern social justice movements, when in reality neoliberalism (the 'neo' part
anyway) was more than happy to co-opt feminism, anti-racism, etc., into its narrative. The
more the merrier, as 'rights' became associated entirely with social issues, and not economic
rights.
The co-optation neoliberalism has exacted on rights movements has dovetailed nicely with
postmodernism's social-constructivism, an anti-materialist stance that posits discourse as
shaping the world and one that therefore privileges subjectivity over material reality.
What this means in practice is that "identity" is now a marketplace too, in which
individuals are naming their identities as a form of personal corporate branding. That's why
we have people labeling themselves like this: demisexual queer femme, on the spectrum, saying
hell no to my tradcath roots, into light BDSM, pronouns they/them.
And to prove this identity, the person must purchase various consumer products to garb and
decorate themselves accordingly.
So the idea of civil rights has now become utterly consumerist and about awarding those
rights based on subjective feelings rather than anything to do with actual material
exploitation.
The clue is in the way the words "oppression" and "privilege" are used. Under those words,
exploitation, discrimination, disadvantage, and simple dislike are conflated, though they're
very different and involve very different remedies.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under
bridges and stealing bread = classical Liberalism.
The bizarre thing is to meet younger neoliberal middle class people whom neoliberalism has
priced out of major cities, who have hardly any real savings, and who still are on board with
the project. The dream dies hard.
David – I enjoy reading your comments on NC as they are well reasoned and develop an
argument or counter argument. The above comment reads more like a rant. I do not disagree
with most of your comment. From my experience with Wendy Brown's writing your statement below
is not off base.:
This reads like another clumsy attempt to dismiss actual popular anger against
neoliberalism in favour of pearl-clutching progressive angst, by associating this anger with
the latest target for liberal hate, in this case blah blah patriarchy blah blah
However, in reading Wendy Brown's comments I did not have the same emotional reaction that
comes across in your comment. I have read the post twice to make sure I understand the points
Wendy Brown is trying to make and IMO she is "not wrong" either. . I would advise you to not
"throw out the baby with the bathwater".
As KLG mentions below, WB is a very successful academic at Berkeley who worked with
Sheldon Wolin as a graduate student IIRC (Sheldon Wolin wrote a terrific book entitled
Democracy Incorporated), so she is not just some random journalist.
Much of WB's writing has gender themes in it and there are times I think she goes over the
top, BUT, IMO there is also some truth to what she is saying. Much of the political power and
economic power in the US and the world is held by men so that may be where WB's reference to
patriarchy comes in.
How could there be patriarchy with men begging in the streets is a valid point. And that
is where I divert with WB, in that the term patriarchy paints with too broad a brush. But
speaking specifically to neo-liberalism and not liberalism as you refer to it, that is where
WB's reference to patriarchy may have some merit. Yes, there are many exceptions to the
neoliberalism and patriarchy connection such as Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, etc., so
again maybe painting with too broad a brush, but it would be wise not to give some value.
The sociologist Raewyn Connell has written about the connection between neoliberalism and
version of a certain type of masculinity embedded with neoliberalism. Like Wendy Brown,
Connell seems to gloss over the examples of Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, and the class
based elite bourgeois feminism as counterpoints to neoliberal patriarchy. There are
exceptions to every rule.
Women have made enormous strides in politics and the boardroom. But in the halls of political
and economic power the majority of the power is still held by men, and until women become
close to 50% or more of the seats of power, to ignore the influence of patriarchy/oligarch
version of masculinity(or whatever term a person is comfortable with) on neoliberalism would
be foolish.
Neoliberalism is simply a label for its economic views (that haven't changed much over
the centuries) whereas social justice is the label for its social wing (ditto).
I disagree. IMO, neoliberalism is a different animal than the "traditional elite liberal
democracy", and neoliberalism is much darker and as WB mentions "Neoliberalism thus aims to
de-regulate the social sphere in a way that parallels the de-regulation of markets".
If you have not I would highly recommend reading Sheldon Wolin's Democracy Incorporated:
Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism It is an excellent book.
I haven't read that book by Wolin, though his Politics and Vision is in the bookcase next
to me. I'll try to get hold of it. I didn't know she was his student either.
I think the issues she raises about gender are a different question from neoliberalism
itself, and that it's not helpful to believe that you can fight neoliberalism by
"legitimating assertions of personal freedom against equality mandates" whatever that means.
Likewise, it's misleading to suggest that "Privatization of the nation legitimates "nativist"
exclusions", since the actual result is the opposite, as you will realise when you see that
London buses have the same logo as the ones in Paris, and electricity in the UK is often
supplied by a French company, EDF. Indeed, to the extent that there is a connection with
"nativism" it is that privatisation has enabled an international network of distant and
unaccountable private companies to take away management of national resources and assets from
the people. Likewise, neoliberalism is entirely happy to trample over traditional gender
roles in the name of efficiency and increasing the number of workers chasing the same
job.
In other words, I was irritated (and sorry if I ranted a bit, I try not to) with what I saw
as someone who already knows what the answer is, independent of what the question may be. I
suspect her analysis of, say, Brexit, would be very similar. I think that kind of person is
potentially dangerous.
==I think the issues she raises about gender are a different question from neoliberalism
itself==
Again as I said in my comment I would agree in a theoretical sense that gender and
neoliberalism are different issues but again I believe there is a thread of gender, i.e.
oligarchic patriarchy, of the type of neoliberalism that WB talks about.
===not helpful to believe that you can fight neoliberalism by "legitimating assertions of
personal freedom against equality mandates" whatever that means===
What I think that means is the more libertarian version of neoliberalism. That maybe where
our differences lie, in that my sense is WB is talking about a specific form of neoliberalism
and your view is broader.
===it's misleading to suggest that "Privatization of the nation legitimates "nativist"
exclusions"===
On this I see your disagreement with WB and understand your reference to "that
privatisation has enabled an international network of distant and unaccountable private
companies to take away management of national resources and assets from the people".
Where I think WB is coming from is the more nationalistic, Anglosphere that the Trump
administration is pushing with his border wall, etc. In this WB does expose her far left
priors but again there is some value in her points. From her far left view my sense it Wendy
Brown is reacting to the sense that Trump wants to turn the US into the US of the 1950's and
60's and on many fronts that ship has sailed.
=== Indeed, to the extent that there is a connection with "nativism" it is that
privatisation has enabled an international network of distant and unaccountable private
companies to take away management of national resources and assets from the people. Likewise,
neoliberalism is entirely happy to trample over traditional gender roles in the name of
efficiency and increasing the number of workers chasing the same job. ===
Excellent point and having read some of Wendy Brown's books and paper is a point she would
agree with while still seeing some patriarchial themes running through neoliberalism. To your
point above I would recommend reading some of Cynthia Enloe's work specifically Bananas,
Beaches and Bases.
====I think that kind of person is potentially dangerous====
Wow. Dangerous??? Clearly the post has hit a nerve. Many people in our current society are
dangerous but IMO Wendy Brown is not one of them. A bit hyperbolic in her focus on gender?
Maybe but not wrong. A bit too far left (of the bleeding heart kind)? Maybe. But to call
someone who worked for Sheldon Wolin dangerous. C'mon man.
I have gotten into disputes on NC as IMO many people over focus on a word or the use of a
word and ascribe way to literal view of a word. I tend to view words more symbolically and
contextually. I do not overreact to the use a word and instead try to step back and glean a
message or the word in context of what is the person trying to say? So for instance when WB
uses the phrase "Privatization of the nation" I am not going to react because my own
interpretation is WB is reacting to Trump's nationalism and not to the type of privatization
that your example of London shows.
I am disappointed that most of the comments to this post seem to take a critical view of
Wendy Brown's comments. Is she a bit too far left and gender focused (identity political) for
my tastes? Yes and that somewhat hurts her overall message and the arguments she is trying to
discuss which are not unlike her mentor Sheldon Wolin.
Thanks for the reply David. My sense is we have what I call a "positional" debate (i.e.
Tastes Great! Less Filling!). And positional debates tend to go nowhere.
When WB speaks of gender, note that she then mentions sex, followed by race. By "gender"
she is NOT talking about the rights and power of female people under neoliberalism.
She is speaking of the rights of people to claim, that they are the opposite sex and
therefore entitled to the rights, set-asides and affirmative discrimination permitted that
sex -- for instance, to compete athletically on that sex's sports teams, to be imprisoned if
convicted in that sex's prisons, to be considered that sex in instances where sex matters in
employment such as a job as a rape counselor or a health care position performing intimate
exams where one is entitled to request a same-sex provider, and to apply for scholarships,
awards, business loans etc. set aside for that sex.
WB, in addition to being a professor at Berkeley, is also the partner of Judith Butler,
whose book "Gender Trouble" essentially launched the postmodern idea that subjective sense of
one's sex and how one enacts that is more meaningful than the lived reality people experience
in biologically sexed bodies.
By this reasoning, a male weightlifter can become a woman, can declare that he's in fact
always been a woman -- and so we arrive at the farce of a male weightlifter (who, granted,
must under IOC policy reduce his testosterone for one year to a low-normal male range that is
5 standard deviations away from the female mean) winning a gold medal in women's
weightlifting in the Pan-Pacific games and likely to win gold again in the 2020 Olympics.
If that's not privileging individual freedom over collective rights, I don't know what
is.
>That's how it is possible to be simultaneously libertarian, ethnonationalist and
patriarchal today: The right's contemporary attack on "social justice warriors" is straight
out of Hayek.
Anyone who could write such a statement understands neither libertarianism nor
ethnonationalism. The last half-decade has seen a constant intellectual attack by
ethnonationalists against libertarianism. An hour's examination of the now-defunct Alt
Right's would confirm this.
Similarly, the contemporary attack on SJW's comes not out of Hayek, but from Gamergate. If
you do not know what Gamergate is, you do not understand where the current rightwing and
not-so-rightwing thrust of contemporary white identity politics is coming from. My guess is
Brown has never heard of it.
Far from trying to uphold patriarchy, Contemporary neoliberalism seeks a total atomization
of society into nothing but individual consumers of product. Thus what passes for
liberalization of a society today consists in little more than staging sham elections,
opening McDonalds, and holding a gay pride parade.
This is why ethnonationalism and even simple nationalism poses a mortal threat to
neoliberalism, in a way that so-called progressives never will: both are a threat to
globalization, while the rainbow left has shown itself to be little more than the useful
idiots of capital.
Brown strikes me as someone who has a worldview and will distort the world to fit that
view, no matter how this jibes with facts or logic. The point is simply to array her bugbears
into a coalition, regardless of how ridiculous it seems to anyone who knows anything about
it.
Actually, maybe not "Bingo," if by that you mean Wendy Brown is a typical representative
of "pearl clutching progressive angst." Yes, WB is a very successful academic at Berkeley who
worked with Sheldon Wolin as a graduate student IIRC (who was atypical in just about every
important way), but this book along with its predecessor Undoing the Demos are much
stronger than the normative "why are the natives so restless?" bullshit coming from my
erstwhile tribe of "liberals," most of whom are incapacitated by a not unrelated case of
Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Hayek was eloquent. Too bad he didn't establish some end goals. Think of all the misery
that would have been avoided. I mean, how can you rationalize some economic ideology to
"deregulate the social sphere" – that's just the snake eating its tail. That's what
people do who don't have boundaries. Right now it looks like there's a strange bedfellowship,
a threesome of neoliberal nazis, globalists, and old communists. Everybody and their dog
wants the world to work – for everyone. But nobody knows how to do it. And we are
experiencing multiple degrees of freedom to express our own personal version of Stockholm
syndrome. Because identity politics. What a joke. Maybe we need to come together over
something rational. Something fairly real. Instead of overturning Citizens United (which is
absurd already), we should do Creatures United – rights for actual living things on
this planet. And then we'd have a cause for the duration.
Well stated. The -isms seem like distractions, almost red herrings leading us down the
primrose path to a ceaseless is/ought problem. Rather than discuss the way the world is, we
argue how it ought to be.
Not to say theory, study, and introspection aren't important. More that we appear
paralyzed into inaction since everyone doesn't agree on the One True Way yet.
Let us not get to simplistic here. It helps to understand the origins of political,
economic, and even social ideals. The origin of modern capitalism, for there were
different and more limited earlier forms, was in the Dutch Republic and was part of the
efforts of removing and replacing feudalism; liberalism arose from the Enlightenment, which
itself was partly the creation of the Wars of Religion, which devastated Europe. The Thirty
Years War, which killed ½ of the male population of the Germanies, and is considered
more devastating to the Germans than both world wars combined had much of its energy from
religious disagreements.
The Age of Enlightenment, along with much of political thought in the Eighteenth Century,
was a attempt to allow differences in belief, and the often violent passions that they can
cause, to be fought by words instead of murder. The American Constitution, the Bill of
Rights, the whole political worldview, that most Americans unconsciously have, comes from
from those those times.
Democracy, Liberalism, even Adam Smith's work in the Wealth of Nations were
attempts to escape the dictatorship of kings, feudalism, serfdom, violence. Unfortunately,
they have all been usurped. Adam Smith's life's work has been perverted, liberalism has been
used to weaken the social bonds by making work and money central to society. Their evil child
Neoliberalism, a creation of people like Hayek, was supposed to reduce wars (most of the
founders were survivors of the world wars) and was supposed to be be partly
antidemocratic.
Modern Neoliberalism mutates and combines the partly inadvertent atomizing effects of the
ideas of the Enlightenment, Liberalism, Dutch and British Capitalism, the Free Markets of
Adam Smith, adds earlier mid twentieth century Neoliberalism as a fuel additive, and creates
this twisted flaming Napalm of social atomizing; it also clears out any challenges to money
is the worth of all things. Forget philosophy, religion, family, government, society. Money
determines worth. Even speech is only worth the money spent on it and not any inherent worth.
Or the vote.
"liberalism has been used to weaken the social bonds by making work and money central to
society"
I think you may have swapped the cart and the horse.
Money evolved as a way of aiding and organizing useful interactions within groups larger
than isolated villages of a hundred people.
It also enabled an overall increase in wealth through specialization.
Were it not for money, there would be a difficult mismatch between goods of vastly
differing value. A farmer growing wheat and carrots has an almost completely divisible supply
of goods with which to trade. Someone building a farm wagon a month, or making an iron plough
every two weeks has a problem exchanging that for items orders of magnitude less
valuable.
Specialization is a vital step in improving resources and capabilities within societies.
I've hung out with enough friends who are blacksmiths to know that every farmer hammering out
their own plough is a non-starter, for many reasons.
And I've followed enough history to know that iron ploughs mean a lot more food, which
allows someone to specialize in making ploughs rather than growing food for personal
consumption.
The obvious need is for a way of dividing the value of the plough into many smaller
amounts that can be used to obtain grain, cloth, pottery, and so on.
While the exact form of money is not rigidly fixed, at lower technological levels one
really needs something that is portable, doesn't spontaneously self destruct, and has a
clearly definable value . and exists in different concentrations of worth, to allow
flexibility in transport and use.
Various societies have come up with various tokens of value, from agricultural products to
bank drafts, each with different advantages and disadvantages, but for most of history,
precious metals, base metals, and coinage have been the most practical representation of
exchangeable value.
Money is almost certainly an inevitable and necessary consequence of the invention of
agriculture, and the corresponding increase in population density.
Agreed, but as I've suggested elsewhere liberalism always had the capacity within it to
destroy social bonds, societies and even nations, it's just that, at the time, this was
hidden behind the belief that a just God would not allow it to happen. I see liberalism less
as mutating or being usurped than finally being freed of controls. Paradoxically, of course,
this "freedom" requires servitude for others, so that no outside forces (trades unions for
example) can pollute the purity of the market. It's the same thing with social justice:
freedom for identity group comes through legal controls over the behaviour of others, which
is why the contemporary definition of a civil rights activist is someone who wants to
introduce lots of new laws to prevent people from doing things.
frankly, I don't believe the "monsters" neoliberalism has helped create are an unwanted
side effect of their approach, on the contrary, neoliberalism needs those "monsters", like
the authoritarian state, to impose itself on society (ask the mutilated gilets jaunes).
Repression, inequality, poverty, abuse, dispossession, disfranchisement, enviromental
degradation are certainly "monstrous" to those who have to endure them, but not to those who
profit the most from the system and sit on the most powerful positions. Of course, the degree
of exposure to those monstrosities is dependent on the relative position in the pyramid
shaped neoliberal society, the bottom has to endure the most. On the other side, the middle
classes tend to support the neoliberal model as long as it ensures them a power position
relative to the under classes, and the moment those middle classes feel ttheir position
relative to the under classes threatened, the switch to open fascism is not far, we can see
this in Bolivia.
"neoliberalism needs those "monsters", like the authoritarian state, to impose itself on
society"
If I understood Quinn Slobodian's "Globalists" correctly it was precisely this -- that the
neoliberal project while professing that markets were somehow "natural" spent an inordinate
amount of time working to ensure that legal structures be created to insulate them from the
dirty demos.
Their actions in this respect don't square with a serious belief that markets are natural
at all -- if they were, they wouldn't need so damned much hothousing, right?
I think the argument was that markets were "natural", but vulnerable to interference, and
so had to be protected by these legal structures. There's a metaphor there, but it's too late
here for me to find it.
===spent an inordinate amount of time working to ensure that legal structures be created
to insulate them from the dirty demos===
I enjoyed Slobodian's book as well. Interestingly, there is a new book out called The Code
of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality by Katharina Pistor that discusses
those "legal structures".
If you check out Katharina Pistor on Twitter, you can also find good commentaries and even
videos of talks discussing the book and the matter – it is very edifying to open your
eyes to the fundamental role of law in creating such natural phenomena as markets and, among
other things, billionaires.
Thanks deplorado. I do not frequent Pistor's twitter page as much as I would like.
In reading Pistor's book and some of the interviews with Pistor and some of her papers
discussing the themes in the book, I had the same reaction as when I read some of Susan
Strange's books such as The Retreat of the State: complete removal of any strand of
naïveté I may have had as to how the world works. And how hard it will be to undo
the destruction.
As you mention the "dirty demos" above, one of Wendy Brown's recent books was Undoing the
Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution.
Never having read any of Susan Strange's writings, I decided to find a book review of The
Retreat of the State. I found this one and found it very interesting, enough so that I'll go
to abebooks.com and get a copy to read.
Hmm. Definitely Monsters from the Id at work here. I am going with the theory that the
wealthier class pushed this whole project all along. In the US, Roosevelt had cracked down
and imposed regulations that stopped, for example, the stock market from being turned into a
casino using ordinary people's saving. He also pushed taxes on them that exceeded 90% which
tended to help keep them defanged.
So lo and behold, after casting about, a bunch of isolated rat-bag economic radicals was
found that support getting rid of regulations, reducing taxes on the wealthy and anything
else that they wanted to do. So money was pumped into this project, think tanks were taken
over or built up, universities were taken over to teach this new theories, lawyers and future
judges were 'educated' to support their fight and that is what we have today.
If WW2 had not discredited fascism, the wealthy would have use this instead as both Mussolini
and Hitler were very friendly to the wealthy industrialists. But they were so instead they
turned to neoliberalism instead. Yes, definitely Monsters from the Id.
William White (BIS, OECD) talks about how economics really changed over one hundred years
ago as classical economics was replaced by neoclassical economics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iXBQ33pBo&t=2485s
He thinks we have been on the wrong path for one hundred years.
This is why we think small state, unregulated capitalism is something it never was when it
existed before.
We don't understand the monetary system or how banks work because:
Our knowledge of privately created money has been going backwards since 1856.
Credit creation theory -> fractional reserve theory -> financial intermediation
theory
"A lost century in economics: Three theories of banking and the conclusive evidence" Richard
A. Werner http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477
This is why we come up with crazy ideas like "financial liberalisation".
If corporations are to be people, then they, like the extremely wealthy, need to be reined
in politically. One step we could take is to only allow money donations to political
campaigns to take place when the person is subject or going to be subject to the politicians
decisions. I live in Illinois, I should be able to donate money to the campaigns of those
running for the U.S> Senate from Illinois, but Utah? If I donate money to a Utah candidate
for the Senate, I am practicing influence peddling because that Senator does not represent
me.
If corporations are to be people, they need a primary residence. The location of their
corporate headquarters should suffice to "place" them, and donations to candidates outside of
their set of districts would be forbidden.
Of course, we do have free speech, so people are completely free to speak over the
Internet, TV, hire halls in the district involved and go speak in person. They just couldn't
pay to have someone else do that for them.
To allow unfettered political donations violates the one ma, one vote principle and also
encourages influence peddling. In fact, it seems as if our Congress and Executive operates
only through influence peddling.
"... Concretely this means challenging, in the name of freedom, not only regulatory and redistributive economic policy but policies aimed at gender, sexual and racial equality. It means legitimating assertions of personal freedom against equality mandates (and when corporations are identified as persons, they too are empowered to assert such freedom). Because neoliberalism has everywhere carried this moral project in addition to its economic one, and because it has everywhere opposed freedom to state imposed social justice or social protection of the vulnerable, the meaning of liberalism has been fundamentally altered in the past four decades. ..."
"... Friedman was working for Hayek, in the sense that Hayek instigated the program that Friedman fronted. ..."
"... I think Citizen's United is the least conservative ruling that the conservative court could have come up with, bordering on fascism instead of the principles clearly enunciated throughout the Constitution. It is likely to be the "Dred Scott" decision of the 21st century. ..."
"... Neo-liberalism is like Marxism and a bunch of other isms, where the principles look fine on paper until you apply them to real-world people and societies. This is the difference between Thaler's "econs" vs "humans" ..."
"... The foundation was laid for Citizens United long before, I think, when the Supreme Court decided that corporations were essentially people, and that money was essentially speech. It would be nice if some justice started hacking away at those erroneous decisions (along with what they did with the 2nd Amendment in D.C. v Heller .) ..."
"... "If most of the big corporations were actually treated like people those people would be in jail." ..."
"... True, but corporations are directed by people who *can* be jailed. Often they are compensated as if they were taking full liability when in fact they face none. I think its long past time to revisit the concept of limited liability. ..."
"... "Limited Liability" is basic to the concept of the corporation. How about some "limited liability" for individuals? The whole point of neo-liberalism is "lawlessness" or the "Law of the Jungle" in unfettered markets. ..."
"... The idea is to rationalize raw power, both over society and the family, the last stand of male dominance, the patriarchy. The women who succeed in this eco-system, eschew the nurturing feminine and espouse the predatory masculine. "We came, we saw, he died." Psychopaths all! ..."
"... The executives need to go to jail. Until then, corporate fines are just a cost of doing business and white collar lawbreaking will continue. Blowing up the world's financial system has less legal consequence than doing 80 in a 65 mph zone. Even if they just did civil asset forfeiture on executives based on them having likely committed a crime while in their house and using their money would go along ways to cleaning things up. ..."
Political theorist Wendy Brown's latest book, In the Ruins of
Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West , traces the intellectual
roots of neoliberalism and reveals how an anti-democratic project unleashed monsters –
from plutocrats to neo-fascists – that its mid-20 th century visionaries
failed to anticipate. She joins the Institute for New Economic Thinking to discuss how the
flawed blueprint for markets and the less-discussed focus on morality gave rise to threats to
democracy and society that are distinct from what has come before.
Lynn Parramore:To many people, neoliberalism is about economic agendas. But your book
explores what you describe as the moral aspect of the neoliberal project. Why is this
significant?
Wendy Brown: Most critical engagement with neoliberalism focuses on economic policy
– deregulation, privatization, regressive taxation, union busting and the extreme
inequality and instability these generate. However, there is another aspect to neoliberalism,
apparent both in its intellectual foundations and its actual roll-out, that mirrors these moves
in the sphere of traditional morality. All the early schools of neoliberalism (Chicago,
Austrian, Freiburg, Virginia) affirmed markets and the importance of states supporting without
intervening in them.
But they also all affirmed the importance of traditional morality (centered in the
patriarchal family and private property) and the importance of states supporting without
intervening in it. They all supported expanding its reach from the private into the civic
sphere and rolling back social justice previsions that conflict with it. Neoliberalism thus
aims to de-regulate the social sphere in a way that parallels the de-regulation of markets.
Concretely this means challenging, in the name of freedom, not only regulatory and
redistributive economic policy but policies aimed at gender, sexual and racial equality. It
means legitimating assertions of personal freedom against equality mandates (and when
corporations are identified as persons, they too are empowered to assert such freedom). Because
neoliberalism has everywhere carried this moral project in addition to its economic one, and
because it has everywhere opposed freedom to state imposed social justice or social protection
of the vulnerable, the meaning of liberalism has been fundamentally altered in the past four
decades.
That's how it is possible to be simultaneously libertarian, ethnonationalist and patriarchal
today: The right's contemporary attack on "social justice warriors" is straight out of
Hayek.
LP:You discuss economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek at length in your book.
How would you distribute responsibility to him compared to other champions of conservative
formulations for how neoliberalism has played out? What were his blind spots, which seem
evidenced today in the rise of right-wing forces and angry populations around the world?
WB: Margaret Thatcher thumped Hayek's The Constitution of
Liberty and declared it the bible of her project. She studied it, believed it, and
sought to realize it. Reagan imbibed a lot of Thatcherism. Both aimed to implement the Hayekian
view of markets, morals and undemocratic statism. Both accepted his demonization of society
(Thatcher famously quotes him, "there's no such thing") and his view that state policies aimed
at the good for society are already on the road to totalitarianism. Both affirmed traditional
morality in combination with deregulated markets and attacks on organized labor.
I am not arguing that Hayek is the dominant influence for all times and places of
neoliberalization over the past four decades -- obviously the Chicago Boys [Chilean economists of the '70s
and '80s trained at the University of Chicago] were key in Latin America while Ordoliberalism [a German
approach to liberalism] has been a major influence in the European Union's management of the
post-2008 crises. "Progressive neoliberals" and neoliberalized institutions hauled the project
in their own direction. But Hayek's influence is critical to governing rationality of
neoliberalism in the North and he also happens to be a rich and complex thinker with a fairly
comprehensive worldview, one comprising law, family, morality, state, economy, liberty,
equality, democracy and more.
The limitations? Hayek really believed that markets and traditional morality were both
spontaneous orders of action and cooperation, while political life would always overreach and
thus required tight constraints to prevent its interventions in morality or markets. It also
needed to be insulated from instrumentalism by concentrated economic interests, from aspiring
plutocrats to the masses. The solution, for him, was de-democratizing the state itself. He was,
more generally, opposed to robust democracy and indeed to a democratic state. A thriving order
in his understanding would feature substantial hierarchy and inequality, and it could tolerate
authoritarian uses of political power if they respected liberalism, free markets and
individual freedom.
We face an ugly, bowdlerized version of this today on the right. It is not exactly what
Hayek had in mind, and he would have loathed the plutocrats, demagogues and neo-fascist masses,
but his fingerprints are on it.
LP:You argue that there is now arising something distinct from past forms of fascism,
authoritarianism, plutocracy, and conservatism. We see things like images of Italian right groups giving Fascist
salutes that have been widely published. Is that merely atavism? What is different?
WB: Of course, the hard right traffics in prior fascist and ultra-racist iconography,
including Nazism and the Klan. However, the distinctiveness of the present is better read from
the quotidian right than the alt-right.
We need to understand why reaction to the neoliberal economic sinking of the middle and
working class has taken such a profoundly anti-democratic form. Why so much rage against
democracy and in favor of authoritarian statism while continuing to demand individual freedom?
What is the unique blend of ethno-nationalism and libertarianism afoot today? Why the
resentment of social welfare policy but not the plutocrats? Why the uproar over [American
football player and political activist] Colin Kaepernick but not the Panama Papers [a massive
document leak pointing to fraud and tax evasion among the wealthy]? Why don't bankrupt workers
want national healthcare or controls on the pharmaceutical industry? Why are those sickened
from industrial effluent in their water and soil supporting a regime that wants to roll back
environmental and health regulations?
Answers to these questions are mostly found within the frame of neoliberal reason, though
they also pertain to racialized rancor (fanned by opportunistic demagogues and our mess of an
unaccountable media), the dethronement of white masculinity from absolute rather than relative
entitlement, and an intensification of nihilism itself amplified by neoliberal
economization.
These contributing factors do not run along separate tracks. Rather, neoliberalism's aim to
displace democracy with markets, morals and liberal authoritarian statism legitimates a white
masculinist backlash against equality and inclusion mandates. Privatization of the nation
legitimates "nativist" exclusions. Individual freedom in a world of winners and losers assaults
the place of equality, access and inclusion in understandings of justice.
LP: Despite your view of democratized capitalism as an "oxymoron," you also observe that
capitalism can be modulated in order to promote equality among citizens. How is this feasible
given the influence of money in politics? What can we do to mitigate the corruption of
wealth?
WB:Citizens United certainly set
back the project of achieving the political equality required by and for democracy. I
wrote about this in a previous book, Undoing the Demos , and Timothy
Kuhner offers a superb account of the significance of wealth in politics in Capitalism V. Democracy: Money in Politics
and the Free Market Constitution. Both of us argue that the Citizens
United decision, and the several important campaign finance and campaign speech decisions
that preceded it, are themselves the result of a neoliberalized jurisprudence. That is,
corporate dominance of elections becomes possible when political life as a whole is cast as a
marketplace rather than a distinctive sphere in which humans attempt to set the values and
possibilities of common life. Identifying elections as political marketplaces is at the heart
of Citizens United.
So does a future for democracy in the United States depend on overturning that decision?
Hardly. Democracy is a practice, an ideal, an imaginary, a struggle, not an achieved state.
It is always incomplete, or better, always aspirational. There is plenty of that aspiration
afoot these days -- in social movements and in statehouses big and small. This doesn't make the
future of democracy rosy. It is challenged from a dozen directions – divestment
from public higher education, the trashing of truth and facticity, the unaccountability of
media platforms, both corporate and social, external influence and trolling, active voter
suppression and gerrymandering, and the neoliberal assault on the very value of democracy we've
been discussing. So the winds are hardly at democracy's back.
I think Milton Friedman was vastly more important than Hayek is shaping the worldview of
American conservatives on economic policy. Until Hayek won the Nobel he was virtually
forgotten in the US. Don't know about the UK, but his leaving the London School of Economics
undoubtedly reduced his influence there.
Hayek was very isolated at the University of Chicago
even from the libertarians at the Department of Economics, largely due to methodological
issues. The Chicago economists thought was really more of as philosopher, not a real
economist like them.
Friedman was working for Hayek, in the sense that Hayek instigated the program that
Friedman fronted.
I was amused by a BBC radio piece a couple of years ago in which some City economist was
trying to convince us that Hayek was a forgotten genius who we ought to dig up and worship,
as if he doesn't already rule the World from his seat at God's right hand.
Citizens United: The conservative originalists keep whining about activist judges making
up rights, like the "right to privacy" in Roe v. Wade. Yet they were able to come up with
Citizens United that gave a whole new class of rights to corporations to effectively give
them the rights of individuals (the People that show up regularly in the Constitution,
including the opening phrase).
If you search the Constitution, "company", "corporation" etc.
don't even show up as included in the Constitution. "Commerce" shows up a couple of times,
specifically as something regulated by Congress. Citizens United effectively flips the script
of the Constitution in giving the companies doing Commerce the ability to regulate Congress.
I think Citizen's United is the least conservative ruling that the conservative court could
have come up with, bordering on fascism instead of the principles clearly enunciated
throughout the Constitution. It is likely to be the "Dred Scott" decision of the 21st
century.
2. Neo-liberalism is like Marxism and a bunch of other isms, where the principles look
fine on paper until you apply them to real-world people and societies. This is the difference
between Thaler's "econs" vs "humans". It works in theory, but not in practice because people
are not purely rational and the behavioral aspects of the people and societies throw things
out of kilter very quickly. That is a primary purpose of regulation, to be a rational
fly-wheel keeping things from spinning out of control to the right or left. Marxism quickly
turned into Stalinism in Russia while Friedman quickly turned into massive inequality and
Donald Trump in the US. The word "regulate" shows up more frequently in the Constitution than
"commerce", or "freedom" (only shows up in First Amendment), or "liberty" (deprivation of
liberty has to follow due process of law which is a form of regulation). So the Constitution
never conceived of a self-regulating society in the way Hayek and Friedman think things
should naturally work – writing court rulings on the neo-liberal approach is a radical
activist departure from the Constitution.
The foundation was laid for Citizens United long before, I think, when the Supreme
Court decided that corporations were essentially people, and that money was essentially
speech. It would be nice if some justice started hacking away at those erroneous decisions
(along with what they did with the 2nd Amendment in D.C. v Heller .)
I honestly think the corporations are people was good and the money is speech is terrible.
If most of the big corporations were actually treated like people those people would be in
jail. They are treated better than people are now. Poor people, anyway. When your corporation
is too big not to commit crimes, it's too big and should go in time out at least.
My understanding is that corporate personhood arose as a convenience to allow a
corporation to be named as a single entity in legal actions, rather than having to name every
last stockholder, officer, employee etc. Unfortunately the concept was gradually expanded far
past its usefulness for the rest of us.
"If most of the big corporations were actually treated like people those people would be
in jail."
Thats part of the problem: Corporations CANNOT be put in jail because they are
organizations, not people, but they are given the same 'rights' as people. That is
fundamentally part of the problem.
True, but corporations are directed by people who *can* be jailed. Often they are
compensated as if they were taking full liability when in fact they face none. I think its
long past time to revisit the concept of limited liability.
"Limited Liability" is basic to the concept of the corporation. How about some "limited
liability" for individuals? The whole point of neo-liberalism is "lawlessness" or the "Law of
the Jungle" in unfettered markets.
The idea is to rationalize raw power, both over society
and the family, the last stand of male dominance, the patriarchy. The women who succeed in
this eco-system, eschew the nurturing feminine and espouse the predatory masculine. "We came,
we saw, he died." Psychopaths all!
The executives need to go to jail. Until then, corporate fines are just a cost of doing
business and white collar lawbreaking will continue. Blowing up the world's financial system
has less legal consequence than doing 80 in a 65 mph zone. Even if they just did civil asset
forfeiture on executives based on them having likely committed a crime while in their house
and using their money would go along ways to cleaning things up.
The whittling away of white collar crime by need to demonstrate intent beyond reasonable
doubt means the executives can just plead incompetence or inattention (while collecting their
$20 million after acquittal). Meanwhile, a poor person with a baggie of marijuana in the
trunk of their car goes to jail for "possession" where intent does not need to be shown, mere
presence of the substance. If they used the same standard of the mere presence of a fraud to
be sufficient to jail white collar criminals, there wouldn't be room in the prisons for poor
people picked up for little baggies of weed.
Actually, if you research the history, the court DID NOT decide that corporations are
people. The decision was made by the secretary to the court, who included the ruling in the
headnote to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 1886. The concept was not
considered in the case itself nor in the ruling the judges made. However, it was so
convenient for making money that judges and even at least one justice on the supreme court
publicized the ruling as if it were an actual legal precedent and have followed it ever
since. I am not a lawyer, but I think that ruling could be changed by a statute, whereas
Citizens United is going to require an amendment to the constitution. On the other hand, who
knows? Maybe the five old, rich, Republican, Catholic Men will rule that it is embedded in
the constitution after all. I think it would be worth a try.
"Neo-liberalism is like Marxism and a bunch of other isms, where the principles look fine
on paper until you apply them to real-world people and societies."
Marx analysed 19th Century capitalism; he wrote very little on what type of system should
succeed capitalism. This is in distinct contrast to neo-liberalism which had a well plotted
path to follow (Mirowski covers this very well). Marxism did not turn into Stalinism; Tsarism
turned into Leninism which turned into Stalinism. Marx had an awful lot less to do with it
than Tsar Nicholas II.
+1000. I think it was Tsar Nicholas II who said, L'etat, c'est moi"./s; Lenin just
appropriated this concept to implement his idea of "the dictatorship of the proletariat."
"Neo-liberalism is like Marxism and a bunch of other isms, where the principles look fine
on paper until you apply them to real-world people and societies."
I'm sorry, but this is fundamentally intellectually lazy. Marxism isn't so much a way to
structure the world, like Neoliberalism is, but a method of understanding Capitalism and
class relations to capitalism.
Edit: I wrote this before I saw New Wafer Army's post since I hadnt refreshed the page
since I opened it. They said pretty much what I wanted to say, so kudos to them.
These critiques of neoliberalism are always welcome, but they inevitably leave me with
irritated and dissatisfied with their failure or unwillingness to mention the political
philosophy of republicanism as an alternative, or even a contrast.
The key is found in Brown's statement " It also needed to be insulated from
instrumentalism by concentrated economic interests, from aspiring plutocrats to the masses.
The solution, for him [von Hayek], was de-democratizing the state itself. He was, more
generally, opposed to robust democracy and indeed to a democratic state."
Contrast this to Federalist Paper No. 10, Madison's famous discourse on factions.
Madison writes that 1) factions always arise from economic interests ["But the most common
and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property."],
and 2) therefore the most important function of government is to REGULATE the clash of these
factions ["The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task
of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and
ordinary operations of the government."
In a very real sense, neoliberalism is an assault on the founding principles of the
American republic.
Which should not really surprise anyone, since von Hayek was trained as a functionary of
the Austro-Hungarian empire. And who was the first secretary of the Mont Pelerin Society that
von Hayen founded to promote neoliberalist doctrine and propaganda? Non other than Max Thurn,
of the reactionary Bavarian Thurn und Taxis royal family.
Madison's Federalist 10 is much like Aristotle's Politics and the better Roman historians
in correctly tracing back the fundamental tensions in any political community to questions of
property and class.
And, much like Aristotle's "mixed regime," Madison proposes that the best way of
overcoming these tensions is to institutionalize organs of government broadly representative
of the two basic contesting political classes–democratic and oligarchic–and let
them hash things out in a way that both are forced to deal with the other. This is a
simplification but not a terribly inaccurate one.
The problem though so far as I can tell is that it almost always happens that the
arrangement is set up in a way that structurally privileges existing property rights
(oligarchy) over social freedoms (democracy) such that the oligarchic class quickly comes to
dominate even those governmental organs designed to be "democratic". In other words, I have
never seen a theorized republic that upon closer inspection was not an oligarchy in
practice.
1) Support welfare for the banks (e.g. deposit guarantees) and the rich (e.g. non-negative
yields and interest on the inherently risk-free debt of monetary sovereigns).
2) Seek to regulate the thievery inherent in 1).
3) Bemoan the inevitable rat-race to the bottom when 2) inevitably fails because of
unenforceable laws, such as bans on insider trading, red-lining, etc.
Shorter: Progressives ENABLE the injustice they profess, no doubt sincerely at least in
some cases, to oppose.
Rather stupid from an engineering perspective, I'd say. Or more kindly, blind.
I'm fine with the federal government providing basic banking services (which would
inherently protect depositors) but your initial post didn't say anything about that. If we
continue with a private banking system I want deposit guarantees even if they somehow
privilege the banks better than nothing
I have read that originally conservatives (including many bankers) opposed deposit
insurance because it would lead people to be less careful when they evaluated the banking
institution they would entrust with their money. They did not seem to notice that however
much diligence depositors used, they ended up losing their life's savings over and over. Just
as they do not seem to notice that despite having employer-provided insurance tens of
thousands of people every year go bankrupt because of medical bills. Funny how that
works.
Adding that rather than deposit guarantees, the US government could have expanded the
Postal Savings Service to provide the population with what private banks had so miserably
failed to provide – the safe storage of their fiat.
The banking system was failing in 1932, as was the financial system in 2008, not
necessarily because of any lack of solvency of an individual business although some were, but
because of the lack of faith in the whole system; bank panics meant that every depositor was
trying to get their money out at the same time. People lost everything. It is only the faith
in the system that enables the use of bits of paper and plastic to work. So having a
guarantee in big, bold letters of people's savings is a good idea.
Personally, I see little distance between the Neo Liberal treatment of Market and Naked
Greed, coupled with a complete rejection of Rule of Law for the Common Good.
" It means legitimating assertions of personal freedom against equality mandates (and when
corporations are identified as persons, they too are empowered to assert such freedom)."
"We need to understand why reaction to the neoliberal economic sinking of the middle and
working class has taken such a profoundly anti-democratic form." Really? Does anybody here
believe that? This reads like another clumsy attempt to dismiss actual popular anger against
neoliberalism in favour of pearl-clutching progressive angst, by associating this anger with
the latest target for liberal hate, in this case blah blah patriarchy blah blah. The reality
is that liberalism has always been about promoting the freedom of the rich and the strong to
do whatever they feel like, whilst keeping the ordinary people divided and under control.
That's why Liberals have always hated socialists, who think of the good of the community
rather than of the "freedom" of the rich, powerful and well connected.
The "democracy" that is being defended here is traditional elite liberal democracy, full of
abstract "rights" that only the powerful can exert, dominated by elite political parties with
little to choose between them, and indifferent or hostile to actual freedoms that ordinary
people want in their daily lives. Neoliberalism is simply a label for its economic views
(that haven't changed much over the centuries) whereas social justice is the label for its
social wing (ditto).
I think of this every time I wall home through the local high street, where within thirty
metres I pass two elderly eastern European men aggressively begging. (It varies in France,
but this is slightly closer than the average for a city). I reflect that twenty years of
neoliberal policies in France have given these people freedom of movement, and the freedom to
sit there in the rain with no home, no job and no prospects. Oh, and now of course they are
free to marry each other.
I agree with your analysis and assessment of Wendy Brown, as she is portrayed in her
statements in this post. However I quibble your assertion: "Neoliberalism is simply a label
for its economic views (that haven't changed much over the centuries) whereas social justice
is the label for its social wing (ditto)." The word "Neoliberalism" is indeed commonly used
as a label as you assert but Neoliberalism as a philosophy is obscured in that common
usage.
At its heart I believe Neoliberalism might best be characterized as an epistemology based
on the Market operating as the all knowing arbiter of Truth. Hayek exercises notions of
'freedom' in his writing but I believe freedom is a secondary concern once it is defined in
terms of its relation to the decisions of the Market. This notion of the Market as
epistemology is completely absent from Wendy Brown's discussion of her work in this post.
Her assertion that "neoliberalism's aim [is] to displace democracy with markets, morals
and liberal authoritarian statism legitimates a white masculinist backlash against equality
and inclusion mandates" collapses once the Market is introduced as epistemology.
Neoliberalism does not care one way or another about any of Wendy Brown's concerns. Once the
Market decides -- Truth is known. As a political theorist I am surprised there is no analysis
of Neoliberalism as a tool the Elite have used to work their will on society. I am surprised
there is no analysis of how the Elites have allowed themselves to be controlled within and
even displaced by the Corporate Entities they created and empowered using their tool. I am
surprised there is no analysis of the way the Corporate Entities and their Elite have worked
to use Neoliberalism to subordinate nation states under a hierarchy driven by the decisions
of the World Market.
[I admit I lack the stomach to read Hayek -- so I am basing my opinions on what I
understand of Phillip Mirowski's analysis of Neoliberalism.]
I don't disagree with you: I suppose that having been involved in practical politics
rather than being a political theorist (which I have no pretensions to being) I am more
interested of the reality of some of these ideas than their theoretical underpinnings. I have
managed to slog my way through Slobodian's book, and I think your presentation of Hayek's
writing is quite fair: I simply wonder how far it is actually at the origin of the
destruction we see around us. I would suggest in fact that, once you have a political
philosophy based on the value-maximising individual, rather than traditional considerations
of the good of society as a whole, you eventually wind up where we are now, once the
constraints of religious belief, fear of popular uprisings , fear of Communism etc. have been
progressively removed. It's for that reason that I argue that neoliberalism isn't really new:
it represents the essential form of liberalism unconstrained by outside forces – almost
a teleological phenomenon which, as its first critics feared, has wound up destroying
community, family, industries, social bonds and even – as you suggest – entire
nation states.
Your response to my comment, in particular your assertion "neoliberalism isn't really new"
coupled with your assertion apparently equating Neoliberalism with just another general
purpose label for a "political philosophy based on the value-maximizing individual, rather
than traditional ", is troubling. When I put your assertions with Jerry B's assertion at 6:58
pm:
" many people over focus on a word or the use of a word and ascribe way to literal view of a
word. I tend to view words more symbolically and contextually."
I am left wondering what is left to debate or discuss. If Neoliberalism has no particular
meaning then perhaps we should discuss the properties of political philosophies based on the
value-maximizing-individual, and even that construct only has meaning symbolically and
contextually, which is somehow different than the usual notion of meaning as a denotation
coupled with a connotation which is shared by those using a term in their discussion -- and
there I become lost from the discussion. I suppose I am too pedantic to deviate from the
common usages of words, especially technical words like Neoliberalism.
Considering how elites throughout history have used religion as a bulwark to guard their
privileges, it should be of no surprise that they are building a new one, only this time they
are building one that appeals to the religious and secular alike. Neoliberalism will be very
difficult to dismantle.
But what ironies we create. Citizens United effectively gave political control to the big
corporations. In a time when society has already evolved lots of legislation to limit the
power and control of any group and especially in commercial/monopoly cases. So that what CU
created was a new kind of "means of production" because what gets "produced" these days is at
least 75% imported. The means of production is coming to indicate the means of political
control. And that is fitting because ordinary people have become the commodity. Like
livestock. So in that sense Marx's view of power relationships is accurate although
civilization has morphed. Politics is, more and more, the means of production. The means of
finance. Just another reason why we would achieve nothing in this world trying to take over
the factories. What society must have now is fiscal control. It will be the new means of
production. I'm a dummy. I knew fiscal control was the most important thing, but I didn't
quite see the twists and turns that keep the fundamental idea right where it started.
Exactly. The writer seems determined to tie in neoliberalism with a broader conservative
opposition to modern social justice movements, when in reality neoliberalism (the 'neo' part
anyway) was more than happy to co-opt feminism, anti-racism, etc., into its narrative. The
more the merrier, as 'rights' became associated entirely with social issues, and not economic
rights.
The co-optation neoliberalism has exacted on rights movements has dovetailed nicely with
postmodernism's social-constructivism, an anti-materialist stance that posits discourse as
shaping the world and one that therefore privileges subjectivity over material reality.
What this means in practice is that "identity" is now a marketplace too, in which
individuals are naming their identities as a form of personal corporate branding. That's why
we have people labeling themselves like this: demisexual queer femme, on the spectrum, saying
hell no to my tradcath roots, into light BDSM, pronouns they/them.
And to prove this identity, the person must purchase various consumer products to garb and
decorate themselves accordingly.
So the idea of civil rights has now become utterly consumerist and about awarding those
rights based on subjective feelings rather than anything to do with actual material
exploitation.
The clue is in the way the words "oppression" and "privilege" are used. Under those words,
exploitation, discrimination, disadvantage, and simple dislike are conflated, though they're
very different and involve very different remedies.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under
bridges and stealing bread = classical Liberalism.
The bizarre thing is to meet younger neoliberal middle class people whom neoliberalism has
priced out of major cities, who have hardly any real savings, and who still are on board with
the project. The dream dies hard.
David – I enjoy reading your comments on NC as they are well reasoned and develop an
argument or counter argument. The above comment reads more like a rant. I do not disagree
with most of your comment. From my experience with Wendy Brown's writing your statement below
is not off base.:
This reads like another clumsy attempt to dismiss actual popular anger against
neoliberalism in favour of pearl-clutching progressive angst, by associating this anger with
the latest target for liberal hate, in this case blah blah patriarchy blah blah
However, in reading Wendy Brown's comments I did not have the same emotional reaction that
comes across in your comment. I have read the post twice to make sure I understand the points
Wendy Brown is trying to make and IMO she is "not wrong" either. . I would advise you to not
"throw out the baby with the bathwater".
As KLG mentions below, WB is a very successful academic at Berkeley who worked with
Sheldon Wolin as a graduate student IIRC (Sheldon Wolin wrote a terrific book entitled
Democracy Incorporated), so she is not just some random journalist.
Much of WB's writing has gender themes in it and there are times I think she goes over the
top, BUT, IMO there is also some truth to what she is saying. Much of the political power and
economic power in the US and the world is held by men so that may be where WB's reference to
patriarchy comes in.
How could there be patriarchy with men begging in the streets is a valid point. And that
is where I divert with WB, in that the term patriarchy paints with too broad a brush. But
speaking specifically to neo-liberalism and not liberalism as you refer to it, that is where
WB's reference to patriarchy may have some merit. Yes, there are many exceptions to the
neoliberalism and patriarchy connection such as Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, etc., so
again maybe painting with too broad a brush, but it would be wise not to give some value.
The sociologist Raewyn Connell has written about the connection between neoliberalism and
version of a certain type of masculinity embedded with neoliberalism. Like Wendy Brown,
Connell seems to gloss over the examples of Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, and the class
based elite bourgeois feminism as counterpoints to neoliberal patriarchy. There are
exceptions to every rule.
Women have made enormous strides in politics and the boardroom. But in the halls of political
and economic power the majority of the power is still held by men, and until women become
close to 50% or more of the seats of power, to ignore the influence of patriarchy/oligarch
version of masculinity(or whatever term a person is comfortable with) on neoliberalism would
be foolish.
Neoliberalism is simply a label for its economic views (that haven't changed much over
the centuries) whereas social justice is the label for its social wing (ditto).
I disagree. IMO, neoliberalism is a different animal than the "traditional elite liberal
democracy", and neoliberalism is much darker and as WB mentions "Neoliberalism thus aims to
de-regulate the social sphere in a way that parallels the de-regulation of markets".
If you have not I would highly recommend reading Sheldon Wolin's Democracy Incorporated:
Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism It is an excellent book.
I haven't read that book by Wolin, though his Politics and Vision is in the bookcase next
to me. I'll try to get hold of it. I didn't know she was his student either.
I think the issues she raises about gender are a different question from neoliberalism
itself, and that it's not helpful to believe that you can fight neoliberalism by
"legitimating assertions of personal freedom against equality mandates" whatever that means.
Likewise, it's misleading to suggest that "Privatization of the nation legitimates "nativist"
exclusions", since the actual result is the opposite, as you will realise when you see that
London buses have the same logo as the ones in Paris, and electricity in the UK is often
supplied by a French company, EDF. Indeed, to the extent that there is a connection with
"nativism" it is that privatisation has enabled an international network of distant and
unaccountable private companies to take away management of national resources and assets from
the people. Likewise, neoliberalism is entirely happy to trample over traditional gender
roles in the name of efficiency and increasing the number of workers chasing the same
job.
In other words, I was irritated (and sorry if I ranted a bit, I try not to) with what I saw
as someone who already knows what the answer is, independent of what the question may be. I
suspect her analysis of, say, Brexit, would be very similar. I think that kind of person is
potentially dangerous.
==I think the issues she raises about gender are a different question from neoliberalism
itself==
Again as I said in my comment I would agree in a theoretical sense that gender and
neoliberalism are different issues but again I believe there is a thread of gender, i.e.
oligarchic patriarchy, of the type of neoliberalism that WB talks about.
===not helpful to believe that you can fight neoliberalism by "legitimating assertions of
personal freedom against equality mandates" whatever that means===
What I think that means is the more libertarian version of neoliberalism. That maybe where
our differences lie, in that my sense is WB is talking about a specific form of neoliberalism
and your view is broader.
===it's misleading to suggest that "Privatization of the nation legitimates "nativist"
exclusions"===
On this I see your disagreement with WB and understand your reference to "that
privatisation has enabled an international network of distant and unaccountable private
companies to take away management of national resources and assets from the people".
Where I think WB is coming from is the more nationalistic, Anglosphere that the Trump
administration is pushing with his border wall, etc. In this WB does expose her far left
priors but again there is some value in her points. From her far left view my sense it Wendy
Brown is reacting to the sense that Trump wants to turn the US into the US of the 1950's and
60's and on many fronts that ship has sailed.
=== Indeed, to the extent that there is a connection with "nativism" it is that
privatisation has enabled an international network of distant and unaccountable private
companies to take away management of national resources and assets from the people. Likewise,
neoliberalism is entirely happy to trample over traditional gender roles in the name of
efficiency and increasing the number of workers chasing the same job. ===
Excellent point and having read some of Wendy Brown's books and paper is a point she would
agree with while still seeing some patriarchial themes running through neoliberalism. To your
point above I would recommend reading some of Cynthia Enloe's work specifically Bananas,
Beaches and Bases.
====I think that kind of person is potentially dangerous====
Wow. Dangerous??? Clearly the post has hit a nerve. Many people in our current society are
dangerous but IMO Wendy Brown is not one of them. A bit hyperbolic in her focus on gender?
Maybe but not wrong. A bit too far left (of the bleeding heart kind)? Maybe. But to call
someone who worked for Sheldon Wolin dangerous. C'mon man.
I have gotten into disputes on NC as IMO many people over focus on a word or the use of a
word and ascribe way to literal view of a word. I tend to view words more symbolically and
contextually. I do not overreact to the use a word and instead try to step back and glean a
message or the word in context of what is the person trying to say? So for instance when WB
uses the phrase "Privatization of the nation" I am not going to react because my own
interpretation is WB is reacting to Trump's nationalism and not to the type of privatization
that your example of London shows.
I am disappointed that most of the comments to this post seem to take a critical view of
Wendy Brown's comments. Is she a bit too far left and gender focused (identity political) for
my tastes? Yes and that somewhat hurts her overall message and the arguments she is trying to
discuss which are not unlike her mentor Sheldon Wolin.
Thanks for the reply David. My sense is we have what I call a "positional" debate (i.e.
Tastes Great! Less Filling!). And positional debates tend to go nowhere.
When WB speaks of gender, note that she then mentions sex, followed by race. By "gender"
she is NOT talking about the rights and power of female people under neoliberalism.
She is speaking of the rights of people to claim, that they are the opposite sex and
therefore entitled to the rights, set-asides and affirmative discrimination permitted that
sex -- for instance, to compete athletically on that sex's sports teams, to be imprisoned if
convicted in that sex's prisons, to be considered that sex in instances where sex matters in
employment such as a job as a rape counselor or a health care position performing intimate
exams where one is entitled to request a same-sex provider, and to apply for scholarships,
awards, business loans etc. set aside for that sex.
WB, in addition to being a professor at Berkeley, is also the partner of Judith Butler,
whose book "Gender Trouble" essentially launched the postmodern idea that subjective sense of
one's sex and how one enacts that is more meaningful than the lived reality people experience
in biologically sexed bodies.
By this reasoning, a male weightlifter can become a woman, can declare that he's in fact
always been a woman -- and so we arrive at the farce of a male weightlifter (who, granted,
must under IOC policy reduce his testosterone for one year to a low-normal male range that is
5 standard deviations away from the female mean) winning a gold medal in women's
weightlifting in the Pan-Pacific games and likely to win gold again in the 2020 Olympics.
If that's not privileging individual freedom over collective rights, I don't know what
is.
>That's how it is possible to be simultaneously libertarian, ethnonationalist and
patriarchal today: The right's contemporary attack on "social justice warriors" is straight
out of Hayek.
Anyone who could write such a statement understands neither libertarianism nor
ethnonationalism. The last half-decade has seen a constant intellectual attack by
ethnonationalists against libertarianism. An hour's examination of the now-defunct Alt
Right's would confirm this.
Similarly, the contemporary attack on SJW's comes not out of Hayek, but from Gamergate. If
you do not know what Gamergate is, you do not understand where the current rightwing and
not-so-rightwing thrust of contemporary white identity politics is coming from. My guess is
Brown has never heard of it.
Far from trying to uphold patriarchy, Contemporary neoliberalism seeks a total atomization
of society into nothing but individual consumers of product. Thus what passes for
liberalization of a society today consists in little more than staging sham elections,
opening McDonalds, and holding a gay pride parade.
This is why ethnonationalism and even simple nationalism poses a mortal threat to
neoliberalism, in a way that so-called progressives never will: both are a threat to
globalization, while the rainbow left has shown itself to be little more than the useful
idiots of capital.
Brown strikes me as someone who has a worldview and will distort the world to fit that
view, no matter how this jibes with facts or logic. The point is simply to array her bugbears
into a coalition, regardless of how ridiculous it seems to anyone who knows anything about
it.
Actually, maybe not "Bingo," if by that you mean Wendy Brown is a typical representative
of "pearl clutching progressive angst." Yes, WB is a very successful academic at Berkeley who
worked with Sheldon Wolin as a graduate student IIRC (who was atypical in just about every
important way), but this book along with its predecessor Undoing the Demos are much
stronger than the normative "why are the natives so restless?" bullshit coming from my
erstwhile tribe of "liberals," most of whom are incapacitated by a not unrelated case of
Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Hayek was eloquent. Too bad he didn't establish some end goals. Think of all the misery
that would have been avoided. I mean, how can you rationalize some economic ideology to
"deregulate the social sphere" – that's just the snake eating its tail. That's what
people do who don't have boundaries. Right now it looks like there's a strange bedfellowship,
a threesome of neoliberal nazis, globalists, and old communists. Everybody and their dog
wants the world to work – for everyone. But nobody knows how to do it. And we are
experiencing multiple degrees of freedom to express our own personal version of Stockholm
syndrome. Because identity politics. What a joke. Maybe we need to come together over
something rational. Something fairly real. Instead of overturning Citizens United (which is
absurd already), we should do Creatures United – rights for actual living things on
this planet. And then we'd have a cause for the duration.
Well stated. The -isms seem like distractions, almost red herrings leading us down the
primrose path to a ceaseless is/ought problem. Rather than discuss the way the world is, we
argue how it ought to be.
Not to say theory, study, and introspection aren't important. More that we appear
paralyzed into inaction since everyone doesn't agree on the One True Way yet.
Let us not get to simplistic here. It helps to understand the origins of political,
economic, and even social ideals. The origin of modern capitalism, for there were
different and more limited earlier forms, was in the Dutch Republic and was part of the
efforts of removing and replacing feudalism; liberalism arose from the Enlightenment, which
itself was partly the creation of the Wars of Religion, which devastated Europe. The Thirty
Years War, which killed ½ of the male population of the Germanies, and is considered
more devastating to the Germans than both world wars combined had much of its energy from
religious disagreements.
The Age of Enlightenment, along with much of political thought in the Eighteenth Century,
was a attempt to allow differences in belief, and the often violent passions that they can
cause, to be fought by words instead of murder. The American Constitution, the Bill of
Rights, the whole political worldview, that most Americans unconsciously have, comes from
from those those times.
Democracy, Liberalism, even Adam Smith's work in the Wealth of Nations were
attempts to escape the dictatorship of kings, feudalism, serfdom, violence. Unfortunately,
they have all been usurped. Adam Smith's life's work has been perverted, liberalism has been
used to weaken the social bonds by making work and money central to society. Their evil child
Neoliberalism, a creation of people like Hayek, was supposed to reduce wars (most of the
founders were survivors of the world wars) and was supposed to be be partly
antidemocratic.
Modern Neoliberalism mutates and combines the partly inadvertent atomizing effects of the
ideas of the Enlightenment, Liberalism, Dutch and British Capitalism, the Free Markets of
Adam Smith, adds earlier mid twentieth century Neoliberalism as a fuel additive, and creates
this twisted flaming Napalm of social atomizing; it also clears out any challenges to money
is the worth of all things. Forget philosophy, religion, family, government, society. Money
determines worth. Even speech is only worth the money spent on it and not any inherent worth.
Or the vote.
"liberalism has been used to weaken the social bonds by making work and money central to
society"
I think you may have swapped the cart and the horse.
Money evolved as a way of aiding and organizing useful interactions within groups larger
than isolated villages of a hundred people.
It also enabled an overall increase in wealth through specialization.
Were it not for money, there would be a difficult mismatch between goods of vastly
differing value. A farmer growing wheat and carrots has an almost completely divisible supply
of goods with which to trade. Someone building a farm wagon a month, or making an iron plough
every two weeks has a problem exchanging that for items orders of magnitude less
valuable.
Specialization is a vital step in improving resources and capabilities within societies.
I've hung out with enough friends who are blacksmiths to know that every farmer hammering out
their own plough is a non-starter, for many reasons.
And I've followed enough history to know that iron ploughs mean a lot more food, which
allows someone to specialize in making ploughs rather than growing food for personal
consumption.
The obvious need is for a way of dividing the value of the plough into many smaller
amounts that can be used to obtain grain, cloth, pottery, and so on.
While the exact form of money is not rigidly fixed, at lower technological levels one
really needs something that is portable, doesn't spontaneously self destruct, and has a
clearly definable value . and exists in different concentrations of worth, to allow
flexibility in transport and use.
Various societies have come up with various tokens of value, from agricultural products to
bank drafts, each with different advantages and disadvantages, but for most of history,
precious metals, base metals, and coinage have been the most practical representation of
exchangeable value.
Money is almost certainly an inevitable and necessary consequence of the invention of
agriculture, and the corresponding increase in population density.
Agreed, but as I've suggested elsewhere liberalism always had the capacity within it to
destroy social bonds, societies and even nations, it's just that, at the time, this was
hidden behind the belief that a just God would not allow it to happen. I see liberalism less
as mutating or being usurped than finally being freed of controls. Paradoxically, of course,
this "freedom" requires servitude for others, so that no outside forces (trades unions for
example) can pollute the purity of the market. It's the same thing with social justice:
freedom for identity group comes through legal controls over the behaviour of others, which
is why the contemporary definition of a civil rights activist is someone who wants to
introduce lots of new laws to prevent people from doing things.
frankly, I don't believe the "monsters" neoliberalism has helped create are an unwanted
side effect of their approach, on the contrary, neoliberalism needs those "monsters", like
the authoritarian state, to impose itself on society (ask the mutilated gilets jaunes).
Repression, inequality, poverty, abuse, dispossession, disfranchisement, enviromental
degradation are certainly "monstrous" to those who have to endure them, but not to those who
profit the most from the system and sit on the most powerful positions. Of course, the degree
of exposure to those monstrosities is dependent on the relative position in the pyramid
shaped neoliberal society, the bottom has to endure the most. On the other side, the middle
classes tend to support the neoliberal model as long as it ensures them a power position
relative to the under classes, and the moment those middle classes feel ttheir position
relative to the under classes threatened, the switch to open fascism is not far, we can see
this in Bolivia.
"neoliberalism needs those "monsters", like the authoritarian state, to impose itself on
society"
If I understood Quinn Slobodian's "Globalists" correctly it was precisely this -- that the
neoliberal project while professing that markets were somehow "natural" spent an inordinate
amount of time working to ensure that legal structures be created to insulate them from the
dirty demos.
Their actions in this respect don't square with a serious belief that markets are natural
at all -- if they were, they wouldn't need so damned much hothousing, right?
I think the argument was that markets were "natural", but vulnerable to interference, and
so had to be protected by these legal structures. There's a metaphor there, but it's too late
here for me to find it.
===spent an inordinate amount of time working to ensure that legal structures be created
to insulate them from the dirty demos===
I enjoyed Slobodian's book as well. Interestingly, there is a new book out called The Code
of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality by Katharina Pistor that discusses
those "legal structures".
If you check out Katharina Pistor on Twitter, you can also find good commentaries and even
videos of talks discussing the book and the matter – it is very edifying to open your
eyes to the fundamental role of law in creating such natural phenomena as markets and, among
other things, billionaires.
Thanks deplorado. I do not frequent Pistor's twitter page as much as I would like.
In reading Pistor's book and some of the interviews with Pistor and some of her papers
discussing the themes in the book, I had the same reaction as when I read some of Susan
Strange's books such as The Retreat of the State: complete removal of any strand of
naïveté I may have had as to how the world works. And how hard it will be to undo
the destruction.
As you mention the "dirty demos" above, one of Wendy Brown's recent books was Undoing the
Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution.
Never having read any of Susan Strange's writings, I decided to find a book review of The
Retreat of the State. I found this one and found it very interesting, enough so that I'll go
to abebooks.com and get a copy to read.
Hmm. Definitely Monsters from the Id at work here. I am going with the theory that the
wealthier class pushed this whole project all along. In the US, Roosevelt had cracked down
and imposed regulations that stopped, for example, the stock market from being turned into a
casino using ordinary people's saving. He also pushed taxes on them that exceeded 90% which
tended to help keep them defanged.
So lo and behold, after casting about, a bunch of isolated rat-bag economic radicals was
found that support getting rid of regulations, reducing taxes on the wealthy and anything
else that they wanted to do. So money was pumped into this project, think tanks were taken
over or built up, universities were taken over to teach this new theories, lawyers and future
judges were 'educated' to support their fight and that is what we have today.
If WW2 had not discredited fascism, the wealthy would have use this instead as both Mussolini
and Hitler were very friendly to the wealthy industrialists. But they were so instead they
turned to neoliberalism instead. Yes, definitely Monsters from the Id.
William White (BIS, OECD) talks about how economics really changed over one hundred years
ago as classical economics was replaced by neoclassical economics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iXBQ33pBo&t=2485s
He thinks we have been on the wrong path for one hundred years.
This is why we think small state, unregulated capitalism is something it never was when it
existed before.
We don't understand the monetary system or how banks work because:
Our knowledge of privately created money has been going backwards since 1856.
Credit creation theory -> fractional reserve theory -> financial intermediation
theory
"A lost century in economics: Three theories of banking and the conclusive evidence" Richard
A. Werner http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477
This is why we come up with crazy ideas like "financial liberalisation".
If corporations are to be people, then they, like the extremely wealthy, need to be reined
in politically. One step we could take is to only allow money donations to political
campaigns to take place when the person is subject or going to be subject to the politicians
decisions. I live in Illinois, I should be able to donate money to the campaigns of those
running for the U.S> Senate from Illinois, but Utah? If I donate money to a Utah candidate
for the Senate, I am practicing influence peddling because that Senator does not represent
me.
If corporations are to be people, they need a primary residence. The location of their
corporate headquarters should suffice to "place" them, and donations to candidates outside of
their set of districts would be forbidden.
Of course, we do have free speech, so people are completely free to speak over the
Internet, TV, hire halls in the district involved and go speak in person. They just couldn't
pay to have someone else do that for them.
To allow unfettered political donations violates the one ma, one vote principle and also
encourages influence peddling. In fact, it seems as if our Congress and Executive operates
only through influence peddling.
No! But there will be a new "civil war" in the US around the mid of the next decade. Split
occuring not south to north, but west to east; chaos further increased by immigrants from the
middle & south Americas with their own agenda.
Forces (land & air), militia & DHS people of the eastern party may seek secure
backing near frontier to Canada (area of Great Lakes therefore save). Some of the 'big
capitalists' who feel more international than patriot will flee to outer South America
(Argentinia, Chile).
Eventually a dead president (for that and for the civil war please look into cycles of
US-history). Peace will come with the first female president. Keep watch on Tulsi Gabbard
(but may be also another lady - as I am in Europe I am not familiar with all probable coming
female candidates).
Why no permanent split of the States? There are internal benefits (common traffic, markets
etc.) but more it is the outside pressure: to be able to compete with China it is a necessity
for the States to remain united. Also the coming chaos in Europe and Russia demands
unification of the US.
Now a very strange remark: some elites in the US have already accepted, even promote the
tendency toward "civil war" to enable a 'reset' of the political, economical and social
structure of the country. Furthermore, a seemingly weak US with a split in the military may
lead Russia in temptation to make some mistake (towards Ukraine and Europe). And now a very,
very strange remark: while some forces in the homeland are caught in civil disorder some
other forces in the overseas may be involved in a foreign war. Extremely pointed out: the
coming civil war in a very specific manner is a fake (to deceive and trap Russia - of course
not Putin but his followers).
Today I had a look into George Friedman's book about the next hundred years. For the first
view there is a lot of nonsense (disintegration of China etc.). But I agree that the power of
the US will be restored during the century. And if not the same power as it was in the 1990s,
then in every case the internal stability of the USA is completely guaranteed.
With greetings from Germany and with thanks to Bernhard for his valuable work, Gerhard
I see a civil war in the USA as highly unlikely. The upper class has too much common
interest and purpose. The lower classes are divided and powerless and in the near future only
seem to be becoming more so. When the third-worldization reaches a critical point, a staged
and managed revolution may be in the cards. Before a real revolution has any chance, the
elites will have flooded the USA with immigrants from the south, ensuring further division of
the lower classes and postponing any real challenge.
Overall, the societal foundation of the USA looks to have been crumbling for maybe five
decades already and for the next few decades an acceleration of that process is more likely
than a reversal. Don't be on the lookout for leaders or movements to change any of that. Only
when the american people clean up their act, ie. their addiction to numbing drugs, empty
consumerism and false jingoisms, will anything there ever change for good. Until that
happens, the place will be withering more and more.
Not until the American elites start to fail to safeguard their own priviliges at the cost
of the rest of the population will change happen.
I don't see the Russian aggression that you propose to be realistic or likely to happen.
Russia does not need to reach abroad for energy, resources or food. Their main challenge is
to manage the riches of the huge country with the people they have. Already the resurgence
after the post-1990 crash (and the preceding stagnation) is an accomplishment worthy of
admiration.
The Russian interest clearly is consolidation and defence, which is exactly what their
policies have been showing on the international stage. Suggestions of aggression are pure
projection by Atlanticists theselves. Instead of Washington trying to provoke Russian
mistakes, the real game is about Moscow trying to contain NATO's erratic trashing and
carefully preventing any catastrophic escalation.
To wit, what country did recently "update" its nuclear doctrine, suggesting the
possibility of 'limited' use of nuclear weapons? Was it Russia, or ehhm... perhaps the
USA?
The only uncertain factor between Russia and the USA is Europe. I expect a lot more
American craziness towards Europe, as its effective leverage crumbles. Europe has not yet
devolved as badly as the USA and the American implosion is a major risk factor for the
Europeans.
The issue with the Americans is a hyper-partisan mindset has been instilled, akin to duelling
sports teams, so one cheers for their team facts or context be damned. This used to be a Fox
News-Republican phenomenon, but now has infected Dem supporters as well.
Break up of US would mean break up of Canada too. Look to the moves made by province of
Alberta in response to fed election - a sort of firewall is being proposed where Alberta will
take on fed gov responsibilities pension, health care, etc. Alberta is a Koch Bros oil
republic, and any N American melt-down will result in formation of private fiefdoms - i.e.
Alberta-Montana-Wyoming-South Dakota become Kochland.
You'd probably do well to study the history of China after the downfall of the Manchu Qing
dynasty up to the 1930s at least (when Japan began invading the country and bringing its own
forms of chaos, violence and enslavement) to get an idea of where the US might be heading if
and when the Federal government falls. From the 1910s onwards, China was governed by warlords
looking out for No 1, with their own armies.
Not so very different from the situation prevailing in Afghanistan and Libya. Talk about
the chickens coming home to roost.
The other alternative is if the 50 states decide to be self-governing statelets or form
their own federations among themselves or with neighbouring provinces and states in Canada
and Mexico, or even abroad. Alaska may petition Moscow to be accepted back into the Russian
Federation and Hawaii may seek another large patron to attach itself for security reasons.
Washington and Oregon
states may finally form a federation with British Columbia and call it Cascadia.
Gerhard @10;
I agree the US will split up. As a poli sci initiate, i was forced to consider the role of
institutions acting in support of the polis. I wasn't impressed at the time. my disdain for
the rot of leadership in most if not all institutions in the west, it was mostly for the
greed....but i realize the cumulative effect is the fraying of those 'supports' of the nation
itself. Consider:
The 16 intelligence agencies each have their own agendas, the regulatory agencies are
revolving doors for industry placements, the FBI was crooked since the days of Hoover, the
governments agencies are rife with oligarchy quislings .....and in the end the greed of those
in power will be not be held back by any moral force. The police are militarized, murdering
and robbing their own citizens.
Meanwhile, the MSM are owned by the oligarch, so there is no national forum where the
corruption can be addressed on a national level. This leaves the blog sites such as MOA to
lead the fight against the PTB. The problem is in the nature of the internet, which has no
'locus' as in a national voice. The internet has no center. As example, i am not a US
citizen. When the polis finally hit the point where the Rentier economy has driven them to
extreme reaction, they will not be thinking of reclaiming the vast American experiment,
rather they will seek to at least control their little part of the world. I believe you will
see blocs of similar states rising up to control whet they think is in their own best
interests: The mid-west, the west coast and mountain states, the deep south, the eastern
states will find common issues to crytalize around.
That's my read.
As a Canadian, my thoughts are how Canada will negotiate with these remainder blocs of former
US states.
So long as the United States continues to serve its function as the core of the capitalist
empire it will not be allowed to "break up" . Literally $trillions have been invested
in brainwashing conditioning and indoctrinating the American public into
barking (or salivating) on command like Pavlov's dogs. This programming is, like religion,
transgenerational (don't religious people ever wonder how it was that their parents were
indoctrinated into the "one true religion" and not one of all of the fake ones that
everyone else believes in?). The capitalist programming (TV programming) compounds from
generation to generation, becoming more deeply ingrained over the decades in the culture
regardless of the birth and passing away of individuals in that culture. For capitalism to
throw that massive investment away and start over somewhere else is a ludicrous proposition.
That is not going to happen until capitalism itself is dismantled.
Where else in the world can capitalism find a base of support like the American
poopulation? Where else would the capitalists be cheered on for unleashing the fascists
gangsters or imperial stormtroopers on defenseless countries attempting brave experiments to
uplift their people?
As long as capitalism continues to need a home base to operate their death squads from,
and a population to recruit enthusiastic cannon fodder from, then America will be maintained
@ Lurk | 32
@ Jen | 40
@ Breadonwaters |43
Thanks for Your assessments and arguments!
1. In my comment (|10) I have put the term "civil war" in quotation marks to indicate that
it will not be a war with military units against other units, with states against states (as
in the first civil war). In the beginning it will be a very disturbing civil unrest and
complete chaos. Multiple splits and fragmentations will occure throughout all institutions
and all regional corporations, also within the army itself (as far as based on US soil). Only
towards the end of this period (about 2 - 3 years) the shape will evolve as I have described
(east - west; dominant pressure from Latin America; other foreign influences higly probable
...).
2.A. For the neutral geopolitical observer main problem today are the US. For the
observing US elites it is Russia. It was a severe mistake to start the war against 'islamic
terror' before the US grip on Russia was complete. Now Putin has torn his homeland out of the
transatlantic-angloamerican fist. Would Russia still be under dominance of the US (as started
and intended in the 1990s) then the US could face China. Now the US have the problem of
Russia and China combined - besides Islam ...
2.B. I suggest to look on the alliance of Putin and Xi as a new Molotov-Rippentrop-Pact.
It will hold some more years longer but eternally. What if Russia makes a mistake and looks
towards Europe? True, Russia is a very rich and powerful country, but it depends on Europe:
more than half of its trade exchange is with European countries. What if Europe falls into
civil disorder, too? What if US forces leave Europe? Two years ago such questions were
nonsense, but today they are discussed.
3.A. (@ Jen) I am very familiar with Chinese history. I am working on historical cycles,
patterns in time. There was a Spenglerian cultural cycle from ~ 1780 BCE which span to 220
CE. After that, with China in the state of a "civilzation", we only see cycles of maximum 300
years of stability. Such a new cycle has started in the 1920s with the foundation of the
Chinese Communist Party. This party is the new dynasty and will rule till 2220, formally -
becoming weaker and weaker after 2120. But no power on earth can change this cycle, it's too
late. During the 21st century the cylce will experience his height line.
3.B. If Russia makes a mistake and engages in Ukraine and Europe - lead into such a
temptation by civil disorder and fragmentation in the US - , then the new
Molotw-Ribbentrop-Pact between Russia and China will exspire. Because China meanwhile has
strong interests in Europe, too, and will not accept Russian dominance over Europe. Therefore
the Chinese will be open to talks - about Russia - with the restored USA. The Chinese may
even help one of the then US parties to restore internal peace in North America. These future
talks between China and the USA over Russia and Europe will not be talks of politicians but
talks of "capitalists", Chinese and American ones. Both have hundred years of experience with
such bilateral talks ...
My outline is strange and provocative - I know! Keep on watching the changing walk of
history - and remember me! Also my outline is restricted to the sphere of geopolitics. The
main problem of the world is of course the gap between the powerful rich and the helpless
poor. The rich will always fight each other (to get more), but they are also prepared to go
into talks with each other when the proper moment has come. Only the poor have no idea and no
organization to manage their sad destiny.
Andrew Bacevich rightly
rejects
the
idea that there was ever a
Pax Americana
in the Middle East:
"It took many decades to build a
Pax Americana
in the Middle East," X writes. Not
true: it took only a handful of hours - the time he invested in writing his essay. The
Pax
Americana
is a figment of X's imagination.
Defenders of U.S. hegemony like to make what they think is a flattering comparison between the
U.S. and the Roman Empire, but
where the Romans made a desert and called it peace the U.S.
has gone to war in the desert again and again with no end in sight.
Not only has the U.S. not brought peace, but there is little reason to think that our
government is capable of doing so.
More to the point, the U.S. has no right to keep
meddling in the affairs of these nations. It would also be accurate to say that the more American
involvement there has been in the region, the less
pax
there has been there. There is
nowhere else in the world where our foreign policy is as intensely militarized, and it is no
accident that it is also where our foreign policy is most destructive.
If the U.S.
genuinely desired stability and the security of energy supplies, it would not be waging an economic
war on Iran, and it wouldn't be fueling a disgraceful war on Yemen.
The author of that
piece, William Wechsler, notably has nothing to say about either one of those policies.
Opponents of U.S. withdrawal
from the Middle East make two major claims: that withdrawal would
harm U.S. interests and that it would make the region worse off than it already is.
The second point is wrong but debatable, and the first one depends on an absurdly expansive
definition of what U.S. interests are. The
piece
that
Bacevich is answering asserts that "it would be a terrible mistake and deeply harmful to the United
States" to withdraw from the region, but the author does not show that current troop levels of more
than 50,000 people are necessary or even useful for securing U.S. interests.
The U.S.
didn't have and didn't need a large military presence in the Middle East for the entire Cold War,
and it doesn't need to have one now.
Having a military presence in the region has directly
contributed to increased threats to U.S. security through terrorism, and it made the Iraq war
debacle possible. The greatest harm to U.S. security has come from our ongoing extensive military
involvement in this part of the world.
Neither does the author demonstrate that U.S. foreign policy up until now has actually
been doing the job he thinks it has.
For instance, he mentions "supporting a delicate
balance of power that promotes regional stability and protects our allies," but looking back over
just the last twenty years of U.S. foreign policy in the region there is no evidence that the U.S.
has been supporting a balance of power or promoted regional stability.
On the contrary, to
the extent that there was a balance of power at the start of this century, the U.S. set about
destroying it by overthrowing the Iraqi government, and it has further contributed to the
destabilization of at least three other countries through direct or indirect involvement in
military interventions.
The clients that the U.S. has in the Middle East aren't allies and
we aren't obliged to protect them, but the U.S. hasn't done a terribly good job of protecting them,
either. The U.S. has managed to indulge its clients in reckless and atrocious behavior that has
also made them less secure and undermined our own security interests. Support for the war on Yemen
is a good example of that.
Enabling the Saudi coalition's war has bolstered Al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), devastated and fractured Yemen, and exposed Saudi Arabia to reprisal
attacks that it had never suffered before.
The other major flaw with the Wechsler piece is that he is warning against something that isn't
happening:
As campaign promises tend to become governing realities for American foreign policy, the
prospect of a full U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East now stands before us.
If only that were true.
The U.S. has more troops in the region than it
did at the start of this year. There is no sign that those numbers will be reduced anytime soon.
Support for the war on Yemen continues, and the president has gone out of his way to keep arming
the Saudi coalition. Even in Syria, there will still be an illegal U.S. military presence for the
foreseeable future. Full withdrawal is nowhere in sight right now. The U.S. is heading in the
opposite direction. The author pretends that withdrawal is in the offing and then urges the next
president to "reverse this course," but there is nothing for the next president to reverse. So why
rail against something that hasn't happened and isn't likely to occur?
This is an old
tactic of making the option of withdrawing from the region seem so extreme and dangerous that it
has to be rejected out of hand, but these scare tactics are less and less effective as we see the
mounting costs of open-ended conflict and deep entanglement in the affairs of other countries.
The author wants the next administration "to reestablish American leadership in the Middle East,
restore deterrence with our adversaries, and begin renewing trust with our partners and allies,"
but he has not made a persuasive case that "American leadership" in the region is worth
"reestablishing" even if it were possible to get back to the way things were before the Iraq war.
Many of the "partners and allies" in question are themselves unreliable and have become
liabilities, and many of the adversaries do not really threaten the U.S.
Bacevich
concludes that there needs to be a radical overhaul of U.S. foreign policy in the region on account
of its colossal failures:
Given the dimensions of that failure, the likelihood of resuscitating X's illusory Pax is
essentially zero.
There is no going back to an imagined Golden Age of American statecraft in the Middle East.
The imperative is to go forward, which requires acknowledging how wrongheaded U.S. policy in
region has been ever since FDR had his famous tete-a-tete with King Ibn Saud and Harry Truman
rushed to recognize the newborn State of Israel.
Once we acknowledge those errors, the next step is not to fall into the same patterns
out of a misguided desire for "leadership" and domination.
Instead of chasing after a
fantasy of imposing peace in some other part of the world, we need to stop our destabilizing and
destructive policies that perpetuate conflict and make new wars more likely.
Lets just be honest the USA is in the business of war,overthrowing
governments and creating vassal states with murder and mayhem all
the way,sponsoring fascists,dictators,drug lords and Christ knows
what else along the way and there is no high moral ground as its
average citizen is either watching football or Kim Kardashians ***
and couldn't give a ****,no amount of whinging is ever going to
change that the author is pissing in the wind.
Instead of replacing and upgrading infrastructure in the US, we
have burned that money up in the desert fighting wars so the
Chinese and Russian oil companies could waltz in and take all of
marbles.
US Middle East policy has been failing since Eisenhower
injected us into Iran an in the 1950s.
It seems to me those people are intent on killing each other at
all costs. No need to get in their way and suffer casualties.
Seems like a population reduction in that region might improve
the world
Your ignorance is amazing. Before the US interventions a
number of these countries were going down the path of having
secular governments. Many had mixed communities from a
religious and ethnic perspective. US bastardry has cost the
lives of tens of thousands of people.
Aside from the countless us blunders in the middle east.. The core
issues are rooted in the barbaric religious beliefs that have
plagued the region since Mohammed rose to power.
Let them figure it out. Why stick yoar hook nose into someone
else's problems? Ah there is something in it for the special
group, and the tab goes to the tax payers.
The politicians
should set the example by sending their kids to woar first.
Trillions wasted and what benefit has that been to the tax
payers? No money for healthcare or education, pensions,
infrastructure etc. Lotsa money available for killing people.
Agreed. The Jews were a relatively recent reintroduction to
the region. It was a **** hole long before this time. Try to
blame it all on them but it's a weak point of view. Unless
you are looking at the last 70 years. But that **** hole
status goes back far beyond this time frame
Perpetual war was always the plan since Reagan days to break up
OPEC or cause in-fighting and destablize region. Iran/Iraq war,
first Gulf war, Iraq war, ISIS, Syrian conflict, Yemen,
Sunni/Shitte division, feed the fire on unofficial decades old
plan still ongoing by CIA and State Dept lifers. Perpetual war in
Mid-East was always the plan.
That way you keep down the competition.
What do you think all the demonizing efforts are against China
and Russia now? They are countries murica can't conquer.
The author of the referenced article is a prototypical Atlantic
Council Zionist *** chickenhawk ******** artist who pisses
swampwater - William F. Wechsler.
His concern is Greater Israel, not what is best for Americans.
All humanity, including us, have the right to survive and defend
ourselves from obliteration. To do this we must hit when hit, and
harder to eliminate the attack. beyond that, we need not fight.
God will is in charge, not ours.
We are at risk of non-survival
when we fail to recognize the difference between what we feel
responsibly for, and what we can actually control. That is why we
need a border. Defnding it gives us a line behidn which we can
produce, and be productive. Once we cross that line, we begin to
fall into a morass.
How long did it take America to exit Vietnam? You would think
America had money and men to burn with these fruitless wars. Who
benefits other than the vampires of the military-industrial
complex, owners of cemetaries, and those who produce and market
the Intel community's distracting and criminally-produced films
and television offerings?
Vietnam War started back when dollar debt was redeemable in
gold. Back then debts had impact and the war spending was felt
almost immediately though its effect on the economy. War was
partially responsible for closing of the gold window by Nixon.
They couldn't fake sustainability otherwise.
Jimmy Carter: US 'Most Warlike Nation in History of the World'
-
April 19, 2019
Most countries surveyed in a 2013 WIN/Gallup poll identified
the United States as the greatest threat to world peace, and a
2017 Pew Research poll found that a record number of people in
30 surveyed nations viewed US power and influence as a "major
threat."
Benjamin
Disraeli: Father Of The World Wars
The British-Jewish Lion Plots
Austria-Hungary and Turkey were the winners at Disraeli's
Congress of Berlin. Serbia and Russia were the losers.
Disraeli: "Our great object was to break up and permanently
prevent the alliance of the three Empires and I maintain there
never was a general diplomatic result more completely
effected."
The Franco-Russian alliance encircles Germany and
Austria-Hungary. Britain joined the alliance in 1907.
The Great War was only triggered by the assassination. The real
engineer of the disaster was Rothschild agent, Benjamin
Disraeli, who died in 1881.
All Wars Are Bankers' Wars!
The IRS and The Federal Reserve
Bank work together to swindle USA citizens
The 16th Amendment and the Income Tax
1913 proved to be a transformative year for the nation's
economy, first with the passage of the 16th "income tax"
Amendment and the false claim that it had been ratified.
"I think if you were to go back and and try to find and
review the ratification of the 16th amendment, which was the
internal revenue, the income tax, I think if you went back
and examined that carefully, you would find that a
sufficient number of states never ratified that amendment."
- U.S. District Court Judge James C. Fox, Sullivan Vs.
United States, 2003.
Later that same year, and apparently unwilling to risk
another questionable amendment,
Congress passed the
Federal Reserve Act over Christmas holiday 1913, while
members of Congress opposed to the measure were at home.
This was a very underhanded deal, as the Constitution
explicitly vests Congress with the authority to issue the
public currency, does not authorize its delegation, and thus
should have required a new Amendment to transfer that
authority to a private bank. But pass it Congress did, and
President Woodrow Wilson signed it as he promised the
bankers he would in exchange for generous campaign
contributions.
Woodrow Wilson later regretted that decision.
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my
country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its
system of credit. We are no longer a government by free
opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote
of the majority, but a government by the opinion and du
I don't blame
them. Look at all the invasions and coups since WWII. Theft of
gold, resources, death and destruction and poverty follows. No
moar competition.
Washington? We know what our founding father said about the Jews.
He was right. Today, and even before the Federal Reserve "Black
Magic Act" of 1913:
Washington = Israel.
There is no
America any longer. It was 911'd inside and out by the Joker ***
cult. And after they 911'd you they did a Joker dance, didn't
they?
it was never paxamericana. it was always paxjudaica, in other
words war and chaos called peace the way jewlanders roll with
their zionazi cocksuckers in tow.
"They [the Jews] work more
effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a
hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great
cause we are engaged in... It is much to be lamented that each
state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society
and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America."
-- George
Washington
Today's largely boring testimony included a few fireworks - notably when House Intelligence
Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) prevented Republicans from recognizing Rep. Elise Stefanik to ask
Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch questions about Hunter Biden and Ukrainian gas company
Burisma.
And when Stefanik was allowed to question Yovanovitch, she pointed out that the Obama State
Department prepared her to answer questions about perceived conflicts of interest regarding the
unusual Biden arrangement .
In part two of Democrats' impeachment hearing drama, the public will hear from former
American Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was removed from her post in the spring.
Yovanovitch was removed from her post in the spring by the administration, and has been cast by
Democrats as an honorable public servant sacked for tying to do the right thing.
As
BBG reminds us, Yovanovitch testified in private on Oct. 11 that she felt she was recalled
following a "concerted campaign" by President Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Because she left Ukraine
in May, she clearly doesn't have any direct knowledge of Trump's efforts to elicit a quid pro
quo - or as the Dems are now calling it, a bribe.
Yovanovitch testified that she felt "threatened" by the way Trump spoke about her on the
July 25 call, which is at the center of the impeachment issue. Trump called her "bad news" and
said "she's going to go through some things."
Watch her testimony live below (it's set to begin at 9 am ET):
https://www.youtube.com/embed/sPoc_sj1hgQ
Later, the committee will enter a closed-door session to hear from David Holmes, a staffer
at the US embassy in Kyiv, about this week's revelation that Trump allegedly asked envoy Gordon
Sondland on July 26 about the status of certain "investigations" he sought from Ukraine into
the Bidens.
We're still waiting on President Trump to release a transcript of an April congratulatory
call with Zelensky, something he promised to do, but has yet to follow through on.
Fortunately, so far, the hearings have been a disaster for the Dems, with even the NYT
criticizing them as dull and boring. In response, the Dems tried to spice things up ahead of
toady's hearing by talking up the possibility of a bribery charge against Trump.
* * *
After two years of reporting on Ukraine issues, the Hill's John Solomon said that
Yovanovitch could still be an important fact witness, and that if he had his druthers, he would
ask her
these fifteen questions.
1. Ambassador Yovanovitch, at any time while you served in Ukraine did any officials in Kiev
ever express concern to you that President Trump might be withholding foreign aid assistance to
get political investigations started? Did President Trump ever ask you as America's top
representative in Kiev to pressure Ukrainians to start an investigation about Burisma Holdings
or the Bidens?
2. What was the Ukrainians' perception of President Trump after he allowed lethal aid to go
to Ukraine in 2018?
3. In the spring and summer of 2019, did you ever become aware of any U.S. intelligence or
U.S. treasury concerns raised about incoming Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his
affiliation or proximity to certain oligarchs? Did any of those concerns involve what the IMF
might do if a certain oligarch who supported Zelensky returned to power and regained influence
over Ukraine's national bank?
4. Back in May 2018, then-House Rules Committee chairman Pete Sessions wrote a letter to
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggesting you might have made comments unflattering or
unsupportive of the president and should be recalled. Setting aside that Sessions is a
Republican and might even have donors interested in Ukraine policy, were you ever questioned
about his concerns? At any time have you or your embassy staff made comments that could be
viewed as unsupportive or critical of President Trump and his policies?
5. John Solomon reported at The Hill and your colleagues have since confirmed in testimony
that the State Department helped fund a nonprofit called the Anti-Corruption Action Centre of
Ukraine that also was funded by George Soros' main charity. That nonprofit, also known as
AnTac, was identified in a 2014 Soros foundation strategy document as critical to reshaping
Ukraine to Mr. Soros' vision. Can you explain what role your embassy played in funding this
group and why State funds would flow to it? And did any one consider the perception of mingling
tax dollars with those donated by Soros, a liberal ideologue who spent millions in 2016 trying
to elect Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump?
6. In March 2019, Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko gave an on-the-record,
videotaped interview to The Hill alleging that during a 2016 meeting you discussed a list of
names of Ukrainian nationals and groups you did not want to see Ukrainian prosecutors target.
Your supporters have since suggested he recanted that story. Did you or your staff ever do
anything to confirm he had recanted or changed his story, such as talk to him, or did you just
rely on press reports?
7. Now that both the New York Times and The Hill have confirmed that Lutsenko stands by his
account and has not recanted, how do you respond to his concerns? And setting aide the use of
the word "list," is it possible that during that 2016 meeting with Mr. Lutsenko you discussed
the names of certain Ukrainians you did not want to see prosecuted, investigated or
harassed?
8. Your colleagues, in particular Mr. George Kent, have confirmed to the House Intelligence
Committee that the U.S. embassy in Kiev did, in fact, exert pressure on the Ukrainian
prosecutors office not to prosecute certain Ukrainian activists and officials. These efforts
included a letter Mr. Kent signed urging Ukrainian prosecutors to back off an investigation of
the aforementioned group AnTac as well as engaged in conversations about certain Ukrainians
like Parliamentary member Sergey Leschenko, journalist Vitali Shabunin and NABU director Artem
Sytnyk. Why was the US. Embassy involved in exerting such pressure and did any of these actions
run afoul of the Geneva Convention's requirement that foreign diplomats avoid becoming involved
in the internal affairs of their host country?
9. On March 5 of this year, you gave a speech in which you called for the replacement of
Ukraine's top anti-corruption prosecutor. That speech occurred in the middle of the Ukrainian
presidential election and obviously raised concerns among some Ukrainians of internal
interference prohibited by the Geneva Convention. In fact, one of your bosses, Under Secretary
David Hale, got questioned about those concerns when he arrived in country a few days later.
Why did you think it was appropriate to give advice to Ukrainians on an internal personnel
matter and did you consider then or now the potential concerns your comments might raise about
meddling in the Ukrainian election or the country's internal affairs?
10. If the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States suddenly urged us to fire Attorney
General Bill Bar or our FBI director, would you think that was appropriate?
11. At any time since December 2015, did you or your embassy ever have any contact with Vice
President Joe Biden, his office or his son Hunter Biden concerning Burisma Holdings or an
investigation into its owner Mykola Zlochevsky?
12. At any time since you were appointed ambassador to Ukraine, did you or your embassy have
any contact with the following Burisma figures: Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, lawyer John
Buretta, Blue Star strategies representatives Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano, or former
Ukrainian embassy official Andrii Telizhenko?
13. John Solomon obtained documents showing Burisma representatives were pressuring the
State Department in February 2016 to help end the corruption allegations against the company
and were invoking Hunter Biden's name as part of their effort. Did you ever subsequently learn
of these contacts and did any one at State -- including but not limited to Secretary Kerry,
Undersecretary Novelli, Deputy Secretary Blinken or Assistant Secretary Nuland -- ever raise
Burisma with you?
14. What was your embassy's assessment of the corruption allegations around Burisma and why
the company may have hired Hunter Biden as a board member in 2014?
15. In spring 2019 your embassy reportedly began monitoring briefly the social media
communications of certain people viewed as supportive of President Trump and gathering
analytics about them. Who were those people? Why was this done? Why did it stop? And did anyone
in the State Department chain of command ever suggest targeting Americans with State resources
might be improper or illegal?
On Tuesday, Congressional impeachment hearings exposed an
interesting facet of the
current battle
between Donald Trump and the so-called deep state: namely, that
many government bureaucrats now fancy themselves as superior
to the elected civilian
government.
In an exchange between Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Alexander Vindman, a US Army Lt. Colonel,
Vindman insisted that Nunes address him by his rank.
After being addressed as "Mr. Vindman," Vindman
retorted
"Ranking
Member, it's Lt. Col. Vindman, please."
Throughout social media, anti-Trump forces, who have apparently now become pro-military
partisans, sang Vindman's praises, applauding him for putting Nunes in his place.
In a properly functioning government -- with a proper view of military power -- however, no one
would tolerate a military officer lecturing a civilian on how to address him "correctly."
It is not even clear that Nunes was trying to "dis" Vindman,
given that junior
officers have historically been referred to as "Mister" in a wide variety of times and place. It is
true that higher-ranking offers like Vindman are rarely referred to as "Mister," but even if Nunes
was
trying
to insult Vindman, the question remains: so what?
Military modes of address are for the use of
military
personnel, and no one
else.
Indeed, Vindman was
forced
to retreat on this point
when later asked by Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) if he always insists on
civilians calling him by his rank. Vindman blubbered that since he was wearing his uniform (
for
no good reason, mind you
) he figured civilians ought to refer to him by his rank.
Of course, my position on this should not be construed as a demand that people give greater
respect to members of Congress.
If a private citizen wants to go before Congress and refer
to Nunes or any other member as "hey you," that's perfectly fine with me.
But the
important issue here is we're talking about
private citizens
-- i.e., the people who pay
the bills -- and not military officers who must be held as subordinate to the civilian government at
all times.
After all,
there's a reason that the framers of the US Constitution went to great pains
to ensure the military powers remained subject to the will of the civilian government.
Eighteenth and nineteenth century Americans regarded a standing army as a threat to their freedoms.
Federal military personnel
were
treated accordingly.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress shall have the power "to raise
and support Armies " and "to provide and maintain a Navy." Article II, Section 2 states, "The
President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the
Militia of the several States when called into the actual Service of the United States."
The authors of the constitution were careful to divide up civilian power of the
military, and one thing was clear:
the military was to have no autonomy in policymaking
.
Unfortunately, early Americans did not anticipate the rise of America's secret police in
the form of the CIA, FBI, NSA, and other "intelligence" agencies. Had they, it is likely the
anti-federalists would have written more into the Bill of Rights to prevent organizations like the
NSA from shredding the fourth amendment, as has been the case.
The inversion of the civilian-military relationship that is increasingly on display
in Washington is just another symptom of the growing power of often-secret and unaccountable
branches of military agencies and intelligence agencies that exercise so much power both in
Washington and around the world.
"... Morrison also testified that the Trump administration withheld foreign aid from Ukraine due to Trump's general skepticism toward foreign aid , and a "concern that Ukrainians were not paying their fair share, as well as concerns [that] our aid would be misused because of the view that Ukraine has a significant corruption problem ." ..."
"... "I had concerns about Lieutenant Colonel Vindman's judgment . Among the discussions I had with Dr. Hill in the transition [period] was our team, my team, its strengths and its weaknesses. And Fiona and others had raised concerns about Alex's judgment," he recalled. ..."
"... When asked about rumors that Vindman might be leaking information to the press, Morrison said "It was brought to my attention that some had -- some of my personnel had concerns that he did [have access to things he was not supposed to see] ." ..."
A former top national security adviser to President Trump told a secret impeachment panel that he
believed nothing improper occurred during a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian
president Volodomyr Zelensky,
according to a
transcript
released over the weekend.
NSC official Tim Morrison, who was on that phone call, expressed this narrative-killing opinion
to the Democratic-led House Intelligence Committee
last month
- which would have
undermined recent public testimony by several US officials who said that President Trump abused his
office when he asked Zelensky to investigate former VP Joe Biden and matters related to the 2016 US
election.
That said, Morrison also testified that US Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, was involved
in an effort to encourage Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden - though he could not say whether Trump
was involved in those efforts.
He was uncertain of Trump's involvement in Sondland's efforts. "
I'm still not
completely certain that this was coming from the President
," Morrison testified to
House Democrats. "I'm only getting this from Ambassador Sondland."
During a closed-door deposition as part of the House impeachment inquiry, Morrison was asked,
"
In your view, there was nothing improper that occurred during the call?
"
"
Correct
," he answered as he was testifying under oath. -
Epoch
Times
Morrison replaced former NSC official Fiona Hill, who resigned from her position on July 19,
days before the infamous Trump-Zelensky call. He says that the word "Burisma" never came up during
that call, referring to the Ukrainian natural gas company which employed Hunter Biden on its board
while Joe Biden used his position as Vice President to have a prosecutor fired who was
investigating the company.
Trump asked Zelensky to investigate this, as well as allegations that Ukraine was involved with
the hacked DNC server as well as the only firm allowed to look at it, Crowdstrike.
Morrison also testified that
the Trump administration withheld foreign aid from Ukraine
due to Trump's general skepticism toward foreign aid
, and a "concern that Ukrainians were
not paying their fair share, as well as concerns [that] our aid would be misused because of the
view that
Ukraine has a significant corruption problem
."
Morrison was asked more about the phone call.
"
You were on the call. Do you remember whether the name Burisma came up on the call?"
"No, I don't believe it did,
" he said.
The answer is significant, as a junior NSC official, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, testified to
the House Intelligence Committee that Zelensky brought up the word "Burisma." However,
Morrison said that he has the "final clearing authority" on the July 25 call transcript
.
"Do you remember whether anyone suggested edits adding the word Burisma to the [memorandum of
conversation]?" Morrison was asked. "
I do not
," he responded. Vindman testified
that he suggested to edit in the word "Burisma."
But when asked about Vindman's suggestions,
Morrison said he approved all of them
.
"Had I recalled or had it in my notes that was mentioned, yes, I would have agreed to the
edit," he said of the word "Burisma." -
Epoch
Times
Morrison also told Congressional investigators that
he questioned Vindman's judgement
and that other NSC officials shared those concerns.
"I had concerns about Lieutenant Colonel Vindman's judgment
. Among the
discussions I had with Dr. Hill in the transition [period] was our team, my team, its strengths and
its weaknesses. And Fiona and others had raised concerns about Alex's judgment," he recalled.
"I had concerns that he did not exercise appropriate judgment as to whom he would say what."
When asked about rumors that Vindman might be leaking information to the press, Morrison said
"It was brought to my attention that some had -- some of my personnel had concerns that
he did
[have access to things he was not supposed to see]
."
Following closely on the heels of sanctions and freeze orders by
the European Union and the United States, the primary objectives of
UFAR include facilitating international cooperation for the early
tracing of assets and identifying specific capacity building needs
for Ukraine. US Attorney General Eric Holder announced at the
conference that the Department of Justice would be placing a Justice
Department attorney in Kyiv to work exclusively on asset recovery and
mutual legal assistance. He also announced the formation of a
dedicated kleptocracy squad within the FBI.
UFAR's organizers, the United States and the United Kingdom, have
long been the most aggressive in recovering and repatriating assets
of corrupt officials and have formed units specifically to address
the issue since the entry into force of the United Nations Convention
Against Corruption, which, among other international commitments,
contains a critical chapter on the return of the proceeds of
corruption to countries of origin.
"The key character we should be
talking about is Eric Holder, President Obama's Attorney General.
No one has commented on the
chutzpah
of the Obama
administration demanding Ukraine fire Viktor Shokin, its top
prosecutor, for failing to prosecute Ukraine's most elite
criminals that had corrupted the entire system. Goldberg
explains:
"Shokin was seen as a single point of failure clogging up
the system and blocking corruption cases," a former official in
Barack Obama's administration told me. Vice President Joe Biden
eventually took the lead in calling for Shokin's ouster.
"We weren't pressing Ukraine to get rid of a tough
prosecutor, we were pursuing Ukraine to replace a weak
prosecutor who wouldn't do his job," Mr. Biden said.
Mr. Volker in his deposition defended Mr. Biden's work in
Ukraine and pointed out that the prosecutor was corrupt and
worked to shield favored people from prosecution, rather than
go after wrongdoers, according to the person familiar with his
testimony.
The international effort to remove Shokin, who became
prosecutor general in February 2015, began months before Biden
stepped into the spotlight, said Mike Carpenter, who served as
a foreign policy adviser to Biden and a deputy assistant
secretary of defense, with a focus on Ukraine, Russia, Eurasia,
the Balkans, and conventional arms control.
As European and U.S. officials pressed Ukraine to clean up
Ukraine's corruption, they focused on Shokin's leadership of
the Prosecutor General's Office.
"Shokin played the role of protecting the vested interest in
the Ukrainian system," said Carpenter, who traveled with Biden
to Ukraine in 2015. "He never went after any corrupt
individuals at all, never prosecuted any high-profile cases of
corruption."
That demonstrated that Poroshenko's administration was not
sincere about tackling corruption and building strong,
independent law enforcement agencies, said Heather Conley,
director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, a Washington-based foreign policy think
tank.
I have not found any article that points out the obvious
hypocrisy of the Obama administration demanding that a nation's
top prosecutor be fired for failing to prosecute the nation's most
powerful, corrupt, and destructive elite financial criminals. The
hypocrisy of Obama praising Holder while demanding Shokin's 'head'
was epic. To fix a problem one must first admit it and resolve to
fix it. Instead, Holder and Obama went with the preposterous lie
that there were no fraudulent elite bankers, so they brought no
prosecutions of the elite bankers whose frauds drove the GFC"
So basically, Corruptocrats want to impeach Trump, because he held up
foriegn aid to Ukraine, that was being money laundered back to the
curruptocrats like Joe Bidens son, and also because Trump wanted the
corruption investigated?....
And then the American news media
declares Trump is the criminal in all this?...
And in William Barrs grand jury room the chirping crickets are the
jury.....
Why do I get the feeling that D.C. is heading for one big reset
from a lot of pissed off people?.....
And let's not forget that Vindman
is (((Ukrainian))). So we have an un-elected Ukrainian by birth
working actively to, at best, replace his Commander-In-Chief's
judgment with his own and, at worst, actively subvert
his Commander-In-Chief's policy decisions and have him removed
from office.
Are there any military codes that might address such a
situation?
Read the transcript of his testimony. Ratcliffe gets him to
basically admit he advised his Uke counterparts to ignore
Trumps directions. The follow up is hysterical and his attorney
has to jump in and save his ***. A classic beat-down, complete
with stammering and and "holier than thou" comments from his
attorney, "if you want to go this direction, God be with you"
1.
Mr. Morrison did not believe anything improper
occurred on the July 25 call.
(p. 60)
2.
Mr. Morrison testified that the memorandum of
conversation (a phrase used to describe the call transcript) of
the July 25 call was complete and accurate.
(p. 60)
3. Mr. Morrison, who listened to the July 25 call, testified
that he was not concerned about the substance of what was
discussed on the call – only that the transcript might leak.
(p. 46-47)
4. Mr. Morrison was told by National Security Council lawyer
John Eisenberg that the July 25 call record mistakenly ended up
on the highly classified system, debunking the Democrats'
allegations of an attempted "cover up."
5.
Mr. Morrison repeatedly testified that he purposefully
kept Lt. Col. Vindman out of the loop on this matter because he
had concerns about Vindman's judgment, which were also raised
to him by Fiona Hill and others.
6. Mr. Morrison testified that, as the final clearing
authority for any edits made to the 7/25 call package, he
accepted all of Lt. Col. Vindman's proposed edits. (p. 61-62)
7. Mr. Morrison testified that he does not believe Burisma
came up on the call or that anyone suggested edits to the mem-con
to include the word Burisma. (p. 64)
8. Mr. Morrison testified that Lt. Col. Vindman relayed two
concerns to him about the July 25 call: that the call did not
get into the subject matter they had hoped, and the fidelity of
the translation. (p. 72-73)
9.
Mr. Morrison testified that Lt. Col. Vindman never
reported to Morrison any of the "light queries" that he
received from Ukrainian officials in August regarding the hold
on aid.
(p. 93)
10. Mr. Morrison confirmed that President Trump generally
does not like foreign aid generally, and specifically held
concerns that corruption in Ukraine may cause U.S. aid to be
"misused."
This should end the Democrat impeachment proceedings. There
is no crime. There was no crime. And Democrats continue to lie to
the American people about their secret sham investigation!
when news of hunter came out, I investigated a bit. I dont want to
blame an innocent person..So I went to leftist news and browsed...An
article on a msm website defended hunter, saying "many top officials
were concerned about corruption in burisma..Had nothing to do with
hunter. Hunter just worked there...So, I am not a ******* like the
left, and let them have the benefit of the doubt. Not enough proof to
beat up hunter is what I thought...but now, they twisted their lies
again and go after trump. unbelievable, I even researched and gave
hunter the benefit of the doubt, and that wasnt enough, now the left
commies are fibbing ovver their own fibs...unbelievable....burisma
was/is a corrupt entity and many top officials asked for them to be
investigated...even the left commies put out articles about it...dear
jesus
No one would argue that Ukraine isn't a cesspool of corruption,
but here's the rub. If trump was really concerned about that he
could suspend ALL US financial aid until ...umm...they adhered
to American standards of "sound and responsible money management a
fiscal responsibility'
:))
You know, like how the Pentagon accounts for it's trillions..
snicker.
Ok seriously now, the corruption he was interested in was
Burisma and the Biden connection? There's the takeaway right
there.
At the core of the Ukraine problem is this, simply put. The
regime change project has produced little to no dividends for
Corporate America and all the uniparty is willing to spare to
maintain the status quo is chump change in the great scheme of
things. Thus weakening their grip and influence. Kolomoiski,
having returned from exile is now talking about going back with
the Russians..It's a black hole, and all that trump was after was
dirt.
"The Syrian president said he saw links between the death of Le Mesurier and the deaths of
US financier Jeffry Epstein, Al Qaeda chieftain Osama bin Laden and Islamic State (outlawed
in Russia) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. 'American billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was killed
several weeks ago, they said he had committed suicide in jail. However, he was killed because
he knew a lot of vital secrets connected with very important people in the British and
American regimes, and possibly in other countries as well,' Assad pointed out....
"'Both of us know that they [representatives of the White Helmets] are naturally part of
Al Qaeda. I believe that these people, as well as the previously liquidated bin Laden and
al-Baghdadi had been killed chiefly because they knew major secrets. They turned into a
burden once they had played out their roles. A dire need to do away with them surfaced after
they had fulfilled their roles,' Assad explained.
"According to him, the death of Le Mesurier is the work of the CIA that got rid of the
founder of the White Helmets independently or through the intelligence services of other
countries. 'Of course, this is the work of the secret services. But which secret service?
When we talk about Western secret services in general, about Turkish and some other ones in
our region, these are not the secret services of sovereign states, rather these are
departments of the main intelligence agency - the CIA,' he stressed."
Many will nod their heads in agreement with Assad's hypothesis. Indeed, one of the more
amazing happenings related to taking terrorists prisoners is the resulting lack of
information related to the NATO-Terrorist bond we know exists but rarely sees the light of
day in the form of documents, radio intercept logs and other items, although we're constantly
treated to a massive parade of captured arms and munitions including chemical weapon
precursors stamped with their NATO country of origin.
I don't know how well this will retain format but it is the latest from the US Fed on
providing "liquidity" to the private banking system
"
Friday, 11/15/2019- Thursday, 12/12/2019 The Desk plans to conduct overnight repo operations
on each business day as well as a series of term repo operations over the specified period.
OVERNIGHT OPERATIONS DATES AGGREGATE OPERATION LIMIT
Friday, 11/15/2019 - Thursday, 12/12/2019 At least $120 billion
TERM OPERATION DATE MATURITY DATE TERM AGGREGATE OPERATION LIMIT
Tuesday, 11/19/2019 Tuesday, 12/3/2019 14-days At least $35 billion
Thursday, 11/21/2019 Thursday, 12/5/2019 14-days At least $35 billion
Monday, 11/25/2019 Monday, 1/6/2020 42-days At least $25 billion
Tuesday, 11/26/2019 Tuesday, 12/10/2019 14-days At least $35 billion
Wednesday, 11/27/2019 Thursday, 12/12/2019 15-days At least $35 billion
Monday, 12/2/2019 Monday, 1/13/2020 42-days At least $15 billion
Tuesday, 12/3/2019 Tuesday, 12/17/2019 14-days At least $35 billion
Thursday, 12/5/2019 Thursday, 12/19/2019 14-days At least $35 billion
Monday, 12/9/2019 Monday, 1/6/2020 28-days At least $15 billion
Tuesday, 12/10/2019 Monday, 12/23/2019 13-days At least $35 billion
Thursday, 12/12/2019 Thursday, 12/26/2019 14-days At least $35 billion
"
Some take away quotes from various ZH postings
"
In short, the Fed's dual mandate has been replaced by a single mandate of promoting financial
stability (or as some may say, boosting JPMorgan's stock price) similar to that of the
ECB.
Here BofA adds ominously that "by deciding to dynamically assess bank demand for reserves
and reduce the risk of air pockets in repo markets, we believe the Fed has entered
unchartered territory of monetary policy that may stretch beyond its dual mandate." And the
punchline: "By running balance-sheet policy to ensure overnight funding markets remain flush,
the Fed is arguably circumventing the most important brake on excess leverage: the
price."
So if NOT QE is in fact, QE, and if the Fed is once again in the price manipulation
business, what then?
According to BofA's Axel, the most worrying part of the Fed's current asset purchase
program is the realization that an ongoing bank footprint in repo markets is required to
maintain control of policy rates in the new floor system, or as we put it less politely,
banks are now able to hijack the financial system by indicating that they have an overnight
funding problem (as JPMorgan very clearly did) and force the Fed to do their (really
JPMorgan's) bidding.
And this is where BofA's warning hits a crescendo, because while repo is fully
collateralized and therefore contains negligible counterparty credit risk, "there may be a
situation in which banks want to deleverage quickly, for example during a money run or a
liquidation in some market caused by a sudden reassessment of value as in 2008."
Got that? Going forward please refer to any market crash as a "sudden reassessment of
value", something which has become impossible in a world where "value" is whatever the Fed
says it is... Well, the Fed or a bunch of self-serving venture capitalists, who pushed the
"value" of WeWork to $47 billion just weeks before it was revealed that the company is
effectively insolvent the punch bowl of endless free money is taken away.
Therefore, to Bank of America, this new monetary policy regime actually increases systemic
financial risk by making repo markets more vulnerable to bank cycles. This, as the bank
ominously warns, "increases interconnectedness, which is something regulators widely
recognize as making asset bubbles and entity failures more dangerous."
It is, however, BofA's conclusion that we found most alarming: as Axel writes, in his
parting words:
"some have argued, including former NY Fed President William Dudley, that the last
financial crisis was in part fueled by the Fed's reluctance to tighten financial conditions
as housing markets showed early signs of froth. It seems the Fed's abundant-reserve regime
may carry a new set of risks by supporting increased interconnectedness and overly easy
policy (expanding balance sheet during an economic expansion) to maintain funding conditions
that may short-circuit the market's ability to accurately price the supply and demand for
leverage as asset prices rise."
What I didn't include in comment # 137 above but did in the last Weekly Open Thread is the
following about the recent NOT SHORT TERM actions of the US Fed:
The POMO is a Permanent Open Market Operation (purchases from the primary private banks of
Treasuries & MBS) that bought $20 billion between mid-August to mid-September, another
bought $20 billion between mid-September to mid-October and $60 billion between mid-October
to mid-November....totaling $100 billion of US taxpayers money, so far, and is expected to
continue at the $60 billion/month until, supposedly, the middle of next year. (This is the
one that should concern folks the most because the economy has supposedly not crashed yet and
here the Fed is "foaming the runway" of the private banking system on the backs of Americans
already
@ William Gruff # 156 who wrote
"
There is no increase in the domestic US production of anything but bullshit, which America is
cranking out in record quantities, and with delusional fascists leading that productivity
surge.
"
I agree and want to summarize my comments # 137, 138 to add that on top of the manufacturing
recession that you write of and link to that the US has been in a financial recession since
the August/September time frame.
The US Fed has and continues to foam the private banking runway with billions of dollars
to prop up and delay price/value assessment. One reason that I can think of for that is the
coming IPO of Aramco for Saudi Arabia.
Another reason is likely to be a huge game of musical chairs being played where those in
control are arranging a specific set of very few chairs to be available for them when the
music stops. It will all be legal of course since all these financial derivative instruments
that will be in place will have Super-Priority in bankruptcy which gives those creditors of a
bankrupt debtor (America) the right to receive payment before others who would seem to have
superior claims to money or assets. The other losers in this case will be Social Security,
pension funds, state and municipal bonds to say nothing of the savings of the public that
think they are protected with FDIC.
If this event does not incite the pubic to nationalize the private banking system and
imprison many then a super-national cult of folk will own what is left of the Western world
and be defended by xxxx army.
Bloomberg (D)(1): "Leon Cooperman, who has been battling Elizabeth Warren, says he will
support fellow billionaire Mike Bloomberg for president" [
CNBC ].
"Cooperman is one of several Wall Street executives who are already preparing to
help Bloomberg in anyway they can if he runs for president. A private equity executive, who
declined to be named in order to speak frankly about the situation, said he would likely
support Bloomberg's campaign as well." •
Assad
Goes Red Pill In Interview: Epstein, Bin Laden & Baghdadi 'Liquidated' As "They Knew Vital Secrets"
by
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 - 17:25
0
SHARES
In a wide-ranging new interview with Russia's
Rossiya-24
television on Thursday, Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad addressed the death of White Helmets founder James Le Mesurier, who had
been found dead Nov. 11 after an apparent fall from a three story high balcony outside his Istanbul
office.
Le Mesurier was a former British military intelligence officer and founder of the controversial
White Helmets group which Assad has
previously dubbed
the
'rescue force for al-Qaeda' and his reported suicide under mysterious circumstances is
still subject of an ongoing Turkish investigation. In an
unusual
and rare conversation
for a head of state, Assad compared Le Mesurier's death to the murky
circumstances surrounding the deaths of
Jeffry Epstein, Osama bin Laden and ISIS leader Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi
.
Assad said what connects these men are that
they "knew major secrets"
and were
thus
"liquidated" by "intelligence services"
--
most likely the CIA
, in
the now viral interview picked up by
Newsweek
and
other mainstream outlets.
"American billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was killed several weeks ago, they said he had committed
suicide in jail," Assad said during the
Russian broadcaster interview
.
"However, he was killed because
he knew a lot of vital secrets connected with very
important people in the British and American regimes
, and possibly in other countries as
well."
"And now the main founder of the White Helmets has been killed, he was an officer and he had
worked his whole life with NATO in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Iraq and Lebanon," he explained.
"Both of us know that they [representatives of the White Helmets] are naturally part of Al
Qaeda.
I believe that these people, as well as the previously liquidated bin Laden and
al-Baghdadi had been killed chiefly because they knew major secrets.
They turned into a
burden once they had played out their roles. A dire need to do away with them surfaced after they
had fulfilled their roles," Assad continued.
Concerning White Helmet's founder Le Mesurier's death, he pointed to the CIA or an allied
intelligence service,
such
as Turkey's MIT
:
"Of course, this is the work of the secret services. But which secret service? When we talk
about Western secret services in general, about Turkish and some other ones in our region,
these are not the secret services of sovereign states, rather these are departments of
the main intelligence agency – the CIA
."
"It is quite possible that Turkish intelligence agencies did the job upon the instructions of
foreign intelligence services," he qualified.
The Syrian president then
speculated that
, "Possibly,
the founder of the White Helmets had been working on his
memoirs and on the biography of his life, and this was unacceptable
. This is an
assumption, but a very serious one, since other options don't sound convincing to me at the
moment."
Though Assad has done major media interviews routinely over the past years related to the now
eight-year long war out of which which he's come out on top,
this latest has already
received the most visibility, and is currently going viral
--
likely given the
immense public suspicion and doubts surrounding Epstein's jail cell death.
Even Newsweek weighed in,
commenting
: "Syrian President Bashar al-Assad waded into the conspiracy theories around Jeffery
Epstein's suicide, saying the financier and convicted sex offender was murdered as part of a
Western plot to eliminate high-profile people who knew too much."
Trump, for all his faults, tells the truth often. Give the man
his due. He did a lot of work to expose the corruption of the
MSM as simply propaganda for the deep state (aka "fake news").
That alone is a legacy more lasting than any president I can
think of in my lifetime.
Prince Andrew interview has the convenience of "I do not recall "
ever meeting the underage girls I have my arm around in multiple
photos. What hope of justice do the plebs have
The deep state IS A REGIME...they disregard the constitution,
have total disdain for American citizens an compromise EVERYONE
in their path for control. That's a totalitarian regime.
After House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) took time out of today's impeachment testimony to
rebuke President Trump for "witness intimidation," President Trump hit back.
During testimony from former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, Trump took aim at her over
Twitter, saying "
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad
. She started off in
Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke
unfavorably about her..."
Following Trump's tweet, Schiff dramatically interrupted questioning from his staff counsel to read
Trump's tweet aloud - asking Yovanovitch what effect Trump's tweet might have on future witnesses, to
which she replied that it would be "very intimidating.
Trump's tweet was so troubling that former Media Matters employee Paul Waldman wrote in the
Washington Post
that Trump "talks and acts like a Mafioso" in an article entitled
"Yovanovitch hearing confirms that
Trump is running a thugocracy
."
Following Schiff's dramatic exchange, Trump was asked whether his words can be intimidating, to
which he said "I don't think so at all."
"
I have the right to speak. I have freedom of speech just like other people do
,"
Trump told White House reporters following remarks on a health care initiative, adding that he's
"allowed to speak up" and defend himself.
It's remarkable how tone deaf the Beltway Bubble has made these
bureaucrats and their clingers. The United States elected Donald
Trump, to get rid of people like Marie Yovanovitch. If anything, he
needs to speed things up.
We are at a turning point in our history. The Dems and
their Deep State agents have once again proven that they will go to
any lengths to destroy the constitution, upend the rule of law, lie,
cheat, steal and twist words to accomplish any goal.
I pretty much stopped having an ounce of sympathy for Trump this
week. On day two of his presidency he should have locked up Hillary,
and he didn't. He then has the ******* balls to tell us that "they"
meaning the Clintons "are good people". Are you ******* kidding me ?
? ?
For more than six months now, EVERYONE on planet Earth has
known about the Deep State, Obama, Biden, Pelosy, Brennan, Comey,
McCabe Stzrok, Page, Lynch, Rice ,Powers, Misfud, Fusion GPS ,Halper,
Neuland, Schiff, Nadler, Wray, Rosenstein, the entire Mainstream
Media and three dozen other ******* treasonous assholes tearing this
country apart.
And what exactly has Trump done to bring these people to justice
for treason and seditious conspiracy ? Jack ******* squat !
Epstein allegedly gets murdered in his cell/disapears, and all
Barr does is ******* shrug his shoulders like Schultz and says "I
know nothing". Assange is slowly being murdered in his cell while
Trump claims " I never heard of Wikileaks". Snowden and Manning are
enemies of the state, and nobody seems to care.
Meanwhile the entire country is being overrun up to our eyeballs
with illegals, the mentally ill are walking around like a zombie
apocalypse and the rule of law is totally dead.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for
such time as the State can shield the people from the political,
economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes
vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to
repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and
thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."-
Joseph Goebbels
After House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) took time out of today's impeachment testimony to
rebuke President Trump for "witness intimidation," President Trump hit back.
During testimony from former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, Trump took aim at her over
Twitter, saying "
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad
. She started off in
Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke
unfavorably about her..."
Following Trump's tweet, Schiff dramatically interrupted questioning from his staff counsel to read
Trump's tweet aloud - asking Yovanovitch what effect Trump's tweet might have on future witnesses, to
which she replied that it would be "very intimidating.
Trump's tweet was so troubling that former Media Matters employee Paul Waldman wrote in the
Washington Post
that Trump "talks and acts like a Mafioso" in an article entitled
"Yovanovitch hearing confirms that
Trump is running a thugocracy
."
Following Schiff's dramatic exchange, Trump was asked whether his words can be intimidating, to
which he said "I don't think so at all."
"
I have the right to speak. I have freedom of speech just like other people do
,"
Trump told White House reporters following remarks on a health care initiative, adding that he's
"allowed to speak up" and defend himself.
It's remarkable how tone deaf the Beltway Bubble has made these
bureaucrats and their clingers. The United States elected Donald
Trump, to get rid of people like Marie Yovanovitch. If anything, he
needs to speed things up.
We are at a turning point in our history. The Dems and
their Deep State agents have once again proven that they will go to
any lengths to destroy the constitution, upend the rule of law, lie,
cheat, steal and twist words to accomplish any goal.
I pretty much stopped having an ounce of sympathy for Trump this
week. On day two of his presidency he should have locked up Hillary,
and he didn't. He then has the ******* balls to tell us that "they"
meaning the Clintons "are good people". Are you ******* kidding me ?
? ?
For more than six months now, EVERYONE on planet Earth has
known about the Deep State, Obama, Biden, Pelosy, Brennan, Comey,
McCabe Stzrok, Page, Lynch, Rice ,Powers, Misfud, Fusion GPS ,Halper,
Neuland, Schiff, Nadler, Wray, Rosenstein, the entire Mainstream
Media and three dozen other ******* treasonous assholes tearing this
country apart.
And what exactly has Trump done to bring these people to justice
for treason and seditious conspiracy ? Jack ******* squat !
Epstein allegedly gets murdered in his cell/disapears, and all
Barr does is ******* shrug his shoulders like Schultz and says "I
know nothing". Assange is slowly being murdered in his cell while
Trump claims " I never heard of Wikileaks". Snowden and Manning are
enemies of the state, and nobody seems to care.
Meanwhile the entire country is being overrun up to our eyeballs
with illegals, the mentally ill are walking around like a zombie
apocalypse and the rule of law is totally dead.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for
such time as the State can shield the people from the political,
economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes
vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to
repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and
thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."-
Joseph Goebbels
"... It's remarkable how tone deaf the Beltway Bubble has made these bureaucrats and their clingers. The United States elected Donald Trump, to get rid of people like Marie Yovanovitch. If anything, he needs to speed things up. ..."
"... The ambassador also shows her true state between various masks she wears during impeachment interviews, the cameras have an easy time capturing it, it's a smirk, & she seems to show it to the democrats as well. One bad actor. ..."
"... For more than six months now, EVERYONE on planet Earth has known about the Deep State, Obama, Biden, Pelosy, Brennan, Comey, McCabe Stzrok, Page, Lynch, Rice ,Powers, Misfud, Fusion GPS ,Halper, Neuland, Schiff, Nadler, Wray, Rosenstein, the entire Mainstream Media and three dozen other ******* treasonous assholes tearing this country apart. ..."
"... Was she even actually intimidated? She had already known Trump's opinion of her job performance for some time. She had been reassigned, as was the administration prerogative. There was no threat to take further action against her. Trump merely again stated he was unhappy/disappointed wherever she had been assigned. ..."
After House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) took time out of today's impeachment testimony to
rebuke President Trump for "witness intimidation," President Trump hit back.
During testimony from former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, Trump took aim at her over
Twitter, saying "
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad
. She started off in
Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke
unfavorably about her..."
Following Trump's tweet, Schiff dramatically interrupted questioning from his staff counsel to read
Trump's tweet aloud - asking Yovanovitch what effect Trump's tweet might have on future witnesses, to
which she replied that it would be "very intimidating.
Trump's tweet was so troubling that former Media Matters employee Paul Waldman wrote in the
Washington Post
that Trump "talks and acts like a Mafioso" in an article entitled
"Yovanovitch hearing confirms that
Trump is running a thugocracy
."
Following Schiff's dramatic exchange, Trump was asked whether his words can be intimidating, to
which he said "I don't think so at all."
"
I have the right to speak. I have freedom of speech just like other people do
,"
Trump told White House reporters following remarks on a health care initiative, adding that he's
"allowed to speak up" and defend himself.
It's remarkable how tone deaf the Beltway Bubble has made these
bureaucrats and their clingers. The United States elected Donald
Trump, to get rid of people like Marie Yovanovitch. If anything, he
needs to speed things up.
We are at a turning point in our history. The Dems and
their Deep State agents have once again proven that they will go to
any lengths to destroy the constitution, upend the rule of law, lie,
cheat, steal and twist words to accomplish any goal.
The ambassador also shows her true state between various masks she
wears during impeachment interviews,
the cameras have an easy time
capturing it, it's a smirk, & she seems to show it to the democrats
as well.
One bad actor.
I pretty much stopped having an ounce of sympathy for Trump this
week. On day two of his presidency he should have locked up Hillary,
and he didn't. He then has the ******* balls to tell us that "they"
meaning the Clintons "are good people". Are you ******* kidding me ?
? ?
For more than six months now, EVERYONE on planet Earth has
known about the Deep State, Obama, Biden, Pelosy, Brennan, Comey,
McCabe Stzrok, Page, Lynch, Rice ,Powers, Misfud, Fusion GPS ,Halper,
Neuland, Schiff, Nadler, Wray, Rosenstein, the entire Mainstream
Media and three dozen other ******* treasonous assholes tearing this
country apart.
And what exactly has Trump done to bring these people to justice
for treason and seditious conspiracy ? Jack ******* squat !
Epstein allegedly gets murdered in his cell/disapears, and all
Barr does is ******* shrug his shoulders like Schultz and says "I
know nothing". Assange is slowly being murdered in his cell while
Trump claims " I never heard of Wikileaks". Snowden and Manning are
enemies of the state, and nobody seems to care.
Meanwhile the entire country is being overrun up to our eyeballs
with illegals, the mentally ill are walking around like a zombie
apocalypse and the rule of law is totally dead.
As that photoshopping suggests, these Democrats live in an altered
reality. Fantasy. Insanity? Not sure Joseph Goebbels meant telling
oneself lies over and over eventually turns them into truths. But it
seems to for these Democrats.
And they vote their fantasies...
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for
such time as the State can shield the people from the political,
economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes
vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to
repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and
thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."-
Joseph Goebbels
Was she even actually intimidated?
She had already known Trump's
opinion of her job performance for some time.
She had been reassigned, as was the administration prerogative.
There was no threat to take further action against her.
Trump merely again stated he was unhappy/disappointed wherever she
had been assigned.
"Intimidated"?
B.S. She is/was supposedly a top diplomat/negotiator.
If her skin is that thin, and she is that easily "intimidated",
then she is clearly at a job level well above her competence.
of course, during her testimony,
she would not even have known
about the tweet,
much less been allegedly intimidated by it,
nor could her "testimony" been affected in any way by the tweet,
except that Adam Schiff showed it to her to elicit a response.
"DNC Announces 10 Candidates in Atlanta Democratic Debate" [
Bloomberg ]. Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Amy
Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang. And not Julian Castro,
sadly. "The forum will be co-hosted by the Washington Post and MSNBC. Candidates will be
questioned by four female moderators: Rachel Maddow, Andrea Mitchell and Kristen Welker from
the network, and Ashley Parker from the Post. The two-hour event had a higher bar to qualify
than previous debates. Candidates must have contributions from 165,000 donors, up from 135,000.
And the donors must be geographically dispersed, with a minimum of 600 per state in at least 20
states. In addition, participants must either show 3% support in four qualifying national or
single-state polls, or have at least 5% support in two qualifying single-state polls released
between Sept. 13 and Nov. 13 in the early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South
Carolina or Nevada."
UPDATE "Democrats sharpen impeachment case, decrying 'bribery' as another potential witness
emerges linking Trump to Ukraine scandal" [
WaPo ]. "Several Democrats have stopped using the term 'quid pro quo,' instead describing
'bribery' as a more direct summation of Trump's alleged conduct. The shift came after the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee conducted focus groups in key House battlegrounds
in recent weeks, testing messages related to impeachment . Among the questions put to
participants was whether 'quid pro quo,' 'extortion' or 'bribery' was a more compelling
description of Trump's conduct. According to two people familiar with the results, which
circulated among Democrats this week, the focus groups found 'bribery; to be most damning. The
people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the results have not been made public."
• Readers will recall I spotted this change as it happened. But my goodness, I was given
to understand that impeachment was all about the rule of law (besides defending whoever the
George Washington of Ukraine might be). And now it turns out impeachment is about 2020! I think
I'm gonna have to sit down for awhile.
Economic warfare was widely used in WWII. When one country blockaded another's supply of essential goods or
bombed the industries producing them, why did the adversary's economy fail to collapse? This column, part of
the Vox debate on the economics of WWII, reviews Mançur Olson's insights, which arose from the elementary
economic concept of substitution. He concluded that there are no essential goods; there are only essential
uses, which can generally be supplied in many ways.
Mançur Olson (1932–1998) is best known for contributions to the political economy of collective action
(Olson 1965) and of comparative economic development (Olson 1982, 2000). In earlier work, Olson also
provided novel insights into the economic adaptation of countries to international conflict.
When one country imposed trade sanctions on another, blockaded its food supply, or bombed its war
industries, why did the results so often disappoint or surprise? This question puzzled and frustrated
civilian and military leaders on both sides in two world wars. Olson proposed that the answer lay in the
elementary economic concept of substitution.
Bombing Germany
The possibility of economic warfare arose when a country's economy was fully employed in the supply of
war. The strategy of economic warfare was to weaken an adversary's fighting power by attacking it, not
directly, but through its supply chain. The tactics of economic warfare then aimed to block or destroy
supplies of the commodities thought to be essential to the enemy's war production or its war economy more
generally. It was a tactical success if ships were sunk or factories were destroyed.
But strategic success was achieved only if the enemy's fighting power was weakened as a result. Given
tactical success, would strategic success follow? Olson (1962) argued that the link from tactics to strategy
would generally be undermined by the adversary's adaptation. The key to this response, he suggested, was
substitution.
Allied economic analysis suggested that ball and roller bearings were 'essential' to the supply chain of
German munitions (Bollard 2019). From August to October 1943, the US Army Air Forces systemically attacked
and largely destroyed the small number of factories around Schweinfurt that provided around half of
Germany's ball-bearing capacity. While the cost in aircraft and crew was heavy, the observed effect on
German war production was near zero (USSBS 1946: 4-5).
Olson noted several reasons. A high proportion of Germany's existing supply of ball-bearings was used
unnecessarily, where plain bearings would also do. Plain bearings were easily substituted when the supply of
ball-bearings failed so that the much smaller range of truly essential uses could still be met. In addition,
to assure the essential uses, capital and labour were quickly diverted from other employments to rebuild the
essential capacity in dispersed, less vulnerable locations. Thus, the German economy under attack was
re-optimised for war by sliding along its production frontier, although at a cost to other less-important
objectives.
This led Olson to be critical of model-based approaches to target selection (such as Wassily Leontief's
input-output framework) that assumed fixed coefficients in production and consumption. Such models implied
that to deprive an economy of a single 'essential' commodity, whether ball-bearings, oil, or molybdenum,
would be a crippling blow. But this followed entirely from ruling out substitution, which turned out to be
crucial to the outcome.
Starving Britain
In
The Economics of the Wartime Shortage,
Olson (1963) generalised his idea. He asked how Great
Britain, of all nations most dependent on international trade, survived three major conflicts -- the Napoleonic
War and two World Wars -- without famine. Olson noted that food was widely thought of as an 'essential' good
and that, in all countries, food security loomed large in thinking about war preparations. This was the
thinking of German leaders in two world wars when they applied submarine warfare to the blockade of the
British Isles, aiming to cut the UK economy off from its main sources of food.
Olson rejected the idea that, in an integrated market economy, any one commodity, even food, was more
essential than any other. At the margin, where choices must be made, the strategic value of a dollar's worth
of food would always be about the same as a dollar's worth of anything else. In a rich society, food would
have many uses, some essential and some inessential or luxurious. "It is not the
type of good
",
Olson wrote (1963: 9), "but the
type of use
that distinguishes a necessity from a luxury" (my
emphasis).
Before WWII, Britain imported more than three-quarters of wheat and flour, oils and fats, butter, cheese,
and sugar (Hammond 1951: 394). The Battle of the Atlantic was hard fought and very costly to both sides. By
1942, as Table 1 shows, food imports were running at just half the rate of the first nine months (October
1939 to June 1940). The loss of imports was only partly mitigated by a substantial increase in home
production. Yet, after a dip at the end of 1939, British food stocks never fell below the pre-war level.
Table 1
British food supplies and consumption in WWII
Sources
: Food imports and stocks are from Hancock and Gowing (1949: 206-207, 357-358);
home production and energy consumed from Hammond (1951: 387, 393).
Notes
: The figure for food imports under 1939 covers October 1939 to June 1940, and that for 1940
covers July to December 1940. The figures for pre-war home production are averaged over 1936-1938. The
figure for pre-war food stocks is from the end of August 1939.
Most importantly, Table 1 shows the calories consumed per person remained essentially constant throughout
the war, while their distribution was probably somewhat equalised by rationing. Rationing covered 'luxury'
foods, but bread and potatoes were the most important sources of calories. These were never rationed, which
also speaks to the adequacy of the food supply (Hammond 1951: 388). As for health, in 1942, deaths among
children and adult civilians fell below the rates of 1939 and continued along the pre-war downward trend
(Titmuss 1950: 521, 524).
Thus, Britain survived blockade despite initially relying on foreign sources for nearly two-thirds of
calories for human consumption. Other countries that entered the war more nearly or entirely self-sufficient
struggled and sometimes failed to feed their populations. They failed because they were poorer and so had
fewer inessential uses of food at the outset or because their economies were insufficiently integrated so
that efficient substitutions did not take place -- or both.
Implications
The implications of Olson's thinking were at the time, and remain today, contrary to the thinking of
nearly all government leaders and advisers in every country, including Britain. For two centuries, the
threat of war has prompted calls for a larger agriculture (or manufacturing industry), more food and oil
security, and larger stocks of 'essential' goods. Any suggestion that the pursuit of self-sufficiency in
such commodities is unnecessary, or even harmful, appears to lie well beyond the bounds of 'acceptable'
discourse. Yet historical investigation shows that such efforts were often, if not always, misdirected.
It is tempting to swing the other way and conclude that economic warfare was always pointless or had no
effect on the outcome of the war. Olson (1962: 313) took pains to reject this conclusion. He emphasised that
supply-chain disruption was ineffective mainly when the economy was wealthy (so any commodity had many
inessential uses) and when the commodity concerned was only partly interrupted (so enough remained for
essential uses). He maintained that substitution had its limits.
As an example of when those limits were breached, he gave the German synthetic oil industry in 1944–45.
Germany had no natural oil reserves and the pre-war creation of a synthetic oil industry was itself a
substitute for a commodity in short supply. Access to Romania's oilfields was lost in August 1944, making
Germany entirely dependent on domestic sources. Repeated bombing of the oil plants in the summer of 1944
permanently reduced supply below consumption. By the time of the Ardennes offensive of December 1944, German
plans relied on capturing Allied fuel stocks for their success (USSBS 1946: 8-9).
Extensions
Four extensions are suggested. One is to the uses of economic assistance from one ally to another in
wartime. During the decisive years of the war, the US economy, being twice the size of the combined
economies of the UK and USSR, showered $50 billion of military-economic aid on Britain and the Soviet Union
through the Lend-Lease programme. The framing purpose of Lend-Lease was "further to promote the defense of
the US" -- and nothing else. But that is not necessarily how the aid was used.
Inter-Ally aid turned out to be the converse of economic warfare. Just as the architects of the Combined
Bomber Offensive did not predict and could not control the substitutions that the Germany economy made to
adapt to destruction from the air, so too the US Lend-Lease administration did not predict and could not
control the Soviet economy's adaptation to the inflow of Allied munitions and war goods.
These resources were provided strictly to support Soviet fighting power. Because the external resources
were at least partial substitutes for home resources; however, the Soviet authorities were able to respond
by diverting those home resources to consumption and investment (Harrison 1996: 139-146). The
re-optimisation described here was also an element in Olson's later work (Olson and Zeckhauser 1966) on the
free-riding problem in NATO.
Another extension is to the sources of national feeling in wartime. The effect of economic warfare on the
enemy's fighting power is indirect; it works via the economy. It follows that economic warfare always does
'collateral' damage to people who are civilians, whether or not they are part of the enemy's supply chain.
The result is often to stiffen the enemy's resistance. The collateral damage inflicted on British cities by
German bombers stiffened British resistance; the same done to German cities stiffened German resistance. The
collateral damage of Germany's submarine war on Atlantic shipping in WWI brought America into the war
against Germany.
More generally, war is polarising and economic warfare extends that polarisation to the civilian
population. This then facilitates what Olson saw as the enemy's adaptation to economic warfare: economic
warfare makes angry civilians more willing to tighten belts and make do with substitutes that would be
unacceptable in peacetime. This does not make economic sanctions pointless, but it is a predictable
consequence that should be reckoned with beforehand.
A third extension addresses the question: can economic sanctions be a substitute for battle?
International relations since 1945 have provided many cases of economic sanctions aimed at forcing states to
change their behaviour without bloodshed, most of them apparently unsuccessful (Jones 2015). Examples range
from the Warsaw Pact countries in the Cold War to China, Cuba, North Korea, Southern Rhodesia, South Africa,
Myanmar, Iraq, Iran, and Russia. In a few cases, sanctions or the threat of them have had completely
unexpected side-effects: in 1941, US oil sanctions precipitated Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, while the
fear of blockade was a factor in Hitler's plan to seize the farmlands and oilfields of the Soviet Union.
These examples suggest that economic sanctions may not ultimately save soldiers' lives. They may achieve
their goals only when backed up by the credible threat or use of superior fighting power.
Finally, Olson's idea may be useful in illustrating the importance of economic analysis. When you teach
the principles of consumer choice, consider whether your students may find the life-or-death consequences of
substitution in a besieged economy to be a more impressive motivation than doughnuts versus pizza.
In Germany, the ball bearings were far from the most important thing, true. But Germany was running into
way more significant problems, amongs them notably transportation. The decimation of the German (more
widely, West-European) rail network by Allied raids was massive, and Germans had rail problems already
before. The destruction (especially from 44 onwards, especially using long range fighters and
fighter-bombers that could target trains with high precision) of the German logistics was crippling. And
there was no substitute. Similarly, there was little substitute for molybdenum and wolfram, needed for
quality armour (or, for that matter, Swedish iron ore, which was way better than German one). There was no
realistic substitue for the rail tranport in Germany.
In the UK – yes, the UK could provide the food. But at the expense of lots of other things (i.e if you're
growing food, you can't do other things. Which si why the food part of L&L was so important for the USSR).
Perharps even more importantly, sinking the merchant marine was sinking the navy you'd need to trade. If
Germany was able to sink the ships faster than you replaced them. From July to October 1940, U-boats sunk
282 ships. That is more than two ships a day on average. Compare to the Liberty ships productions later on,
the average was three ships every two days. So still losing proposition to two ships a day sunk. No ships,
not trade.
Crucually, he also commits the mistake a lot of economists do with the "oh, it will be just substitution"
assumption. Any substitution takes time. In war, time matters. By the time you substituted, you might have
well lost. (this is relevant to moder economies too, as the time and effort it takes to substitute at
similar quality and quantity is often just waved away in the "assume can opener" way).
Then there is Albert Speer's claim that Germany wasn't on a war footing (fully mobilized) until 1944.
In late '44 the bombing of German railheads was found by Enigma intercepts to have brought rail
transport to a standstill. But the advocates of attacking oil supplies won the priority debate -- (based on
my recollection of a piece in the NYRB. Can anybody corroborate?)
Allied planners in WW2 thought that the Germans were so super-efficient, that their economy would be 'as
tight as a drum'. A precursor of the just-in-time economy if you will. That is why the attacks against the
ball-bearing factories. As it turned out, after those factories were hit the German planners started to work
the phones and discovered that there was so much slack in the system, that they they had over a months worth
of ball-bearings ready to go which would last them while they rebuilt the factories. Slackers!
The rail problem that vlade mentioned was made worse by the fact that the trains to the concentration camps
had priority which led to German troops spinning their wheels while waiting for train transport as
train-loads of civilians went sailing by. This was made worse by the German practice swapping units between
the eastern and western front for whatever reason.
Olson may say that products can be simply substituted but it does not mean that it was a successful
substitution. As an example, by the end of WW1 German troops were forced to use bandages based on paper that
had been substituted for cloth bandages as there was no choice. Tough luck if you were wounded and needed a
good bandage. Economic warfare is brutal and we saw this in modern times Some 500,000 children in Iraq died
due to it but 'the price was worth it'. Thousands have died recently in Venezuela too so how are you going
to substitute for these deaths?
Frankly I suspect that Olson is not getting a true reflection of the reality of the situation with
blockades. Jerome K. Jerome, who spent time in Germany before WW1, in his autobiography mentioned people
like little old ladies he had know that had starved to death in the British blockade. Would the UK print
stories of people starving due to the German blockade? You might have to read a lot of autobiographies of
people who lived through those times to get a true picture of what was going on.
In any case, I believe that somebody ran the numbers on economic blockades and found that over the past
century, that they do not work no matter how many civilians that they ended up killing. Modern day Yemen is
proof of this.
On economic sanctions see the roughly 300 case studies that form the foundation for: Hufbauer, Gary
Clyde, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott. "Economic Sanctions Reconsidered 3rd edition (hardcover+
CD)." Peterson Institute Press: All Books (2008).
I have the impression that the single most devastating consequence of aerial disruption of the German
rail network was the interruption of coal deliveries to power plants. Not sure where I read that, perhaps in
Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction", but it may have been another author.
If that's right, there
was
one or more single-points-of-failure within the Nazi economy, but it
took most of the war to locate it.
There are a number of metrics that show that the Russian's production quality of their tanks fell off
during their crises period and improved somewhat toward the end of the war. There is also the same, but I
have not seen it in as clear cut a form, shown for the German's. Since they didn't survive their crisis,
quality dropped and never recovered.
Ball bearings would be part of the "quality" issue, but very hard to quantify. The reliability of a lot
of the German tanks was never particularly good because of rushed design. As the tanks were loaded up with
bigger guns and armor, but using the same engines, overloading issues were added to the rushed design of
their later designs. Somewhere in that mess, you are trying to get by with using less ball bearings.
If I am teaching a course and trying to find a good example of substitution that can probably be
quantified. I might look at the (coal-based) synthetic oil issue. This is a case where you can probably get
descent numbers. And you can look at the reduction of oil imports versus the added cost of the synthetic
fuel.
You could also look at what part of the rest of their economy were the Germans willing to sacrifice to
keep the program running.
If there are "no essential goods, only essential uses" we might want to insure that our uses are made
sustainable. And for basic survival because modern life is not survivable let alone modern warfare. Foot
soldiers and tanks are no longer an essential use of force. Neither are planes. Nor trains. Don't tell all
the would-be belligerents, but we've all got hypersonic nuclear missiles that can travel half way around the
world. We've got a redundancy of satellites. And modernized grids. Bio warfare. Weather manipulation. We've
got mass destruction down pat. The word "blockade" is a punchline. We've gone MAD. But one small problem,
we've got no where to run. So clinging to the patriotic hope of a long drawn out fight to be victorious is
as silly as it gets. There won't be any way for "substitution" in a time of war. It's nauseating to think
about World Wars. But it is encouraging to think we can substitute neoliberalism for an economy of
collective action going into the future. I'd say first on a national scale. Only substituting when disaster
prevents a good harvest, etc.
This analysis makes the same mistake that writers make about US war on terror claiming it is failing, not
winning, chaotic, etc.
The relatively recent goal, 20+ years or so, with sanctions as well as military exploits is demand
destruction. I read somewhere that the West has some 8000 sanctions in place around the world and the
military has bombed how many Countries "back to the stone age? How much would all these Countries be
consuming if none of this was taking place?
Substitution was only a big factor back in the good old days of plenty. Now we need to substitute less
for more.
With all due respect, humans are complex machines requiring more than just raw fuel (calories).
It's the quality of the nutrition, ie protein, vitamin complexes, that determine critical health factors.
A diet poor in those will have serious deletrious effects, including inhibiting cognitive development.
That an equal calory regimen was maintained during wartime rationing is commendable, but it says
nothing about the actual levels of penury.
I see this quote mistakenly attributed to Mikhail Khodorkovsky and a few others all the time.
That's incorrect. It was famously said by Oscar R. Benavides, President of Peru from 1933 to
1939:
After a trial that spanned just over a week, a federal court jury in Washington, D.C.,
convicted Stone on five felony counts of lying to investigators, one of obstructing a
congressional probe and one of witness tampering.
The charges against Stone were brought by Robert Mueller and handed off to career federal
prosecutors in Washington after the special counsel's Russia probe ended this spring. -
Politico
Stone was accused of lying about his contacts with Wikileaks "intermediary" Randy Credico and
lying about his contacts with senior campaign officials and Wikileaks about the release of stolen
emails harmful to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
Count One alleges that Stone obstructed the House committee's investigation by denying he
had emails and other documents about WikiLeaks-related contacts. During his House testimony,
Stone was asked if he had "emails to anyone concerning the allegations of hacked documents ...
or any discussions you have had with third parties about [WikiLeaks]?" Stone answered that he
did not, when in fact he had a bunch of emails and other communications. The obstruction charge
also alleges Stone attempted to prevent Credico from testifying or tried to convince him to
testify falsely.
Counts two through six concern specific statements to the House committee. Count Two is based
on Stone's assertion that he did not have emails.
Count Three alleges that Stone lied when he said that Credico was his only "go-between" to
Assange, when in fact, Stone was also in contact with Corsi for that purpose. "At no time did
Stone identify [Corsi] to [the House] as another individual Stone contacted to serve as a
'go-between,'" the indictment says.
Count Four alleges that Stone lied when he said he did not ask Credico to communicate
anything to Assange, when in fact Stone asked both Credico and Corsi to get in touch with
Assange "to pass on requests ... for documents Stone believed would be damaging to the Clinton
campaign."
Count Five alleges that Stone lied when he told the House that he and Credico did not
communicate via text message or email about WikiLeaks. Stone told the committee the two talked
over the phone, when in fact, according to the indictment, "Stone and [Credico] ... engaged in
frequent written communications by email and text message."
Count Six alleges that Stone lied when he testified that he had never discussed his
conversations with Credico with anyone at the Trump campaign, when in fact, "Stone spoke to
multiple individuals involved in the Trump campaign about what he claimed to have learned from
his intermediary to [WikiLeaks]."
Count Seven is a witness tampering charge, alleging that Stone tried to convince Credico to
take the Fifth or to lie to the House committee.
This is how filthy neocon fifth column typically works: "The senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine said Tuesday he was told release of
military aid was contingent on public declarations from Ukraine that it would investigate the Bidens and the 2016 election, contradicting
President Trump’s denial that he used the money as leverage for political gain." Who told him? Some State Dept. apparatchik? Unless
it was directly from Trump it's just a hearsay and evidence of nothing whatsoever.
"It’s absolutely insane that neoconservatism is still a thing, let alone still a thing that mainstream America tends to regard
as a perfectly legitimate set of opinions for a human being to have. As what Dr. Paul Craig Roberts rightly
calls “the most dangerous ideology that has ever
existed,” neoconservatism has used its nonpartisan bloodlust to work with the Democratic party for the purpose of escalating tensions
with Russia on multiple fronts, bringing our species to the brink of what could very well end up being a
world war with a nuclear superpower and its allies."
This is not okay. Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan member
or a child molester, but neocon pundits are routinely invited on mainstream television outlets to share their depraved perspectives.
Taylor notably expressed his concerns in a Sept. 9 text message to US ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, saying: " I think
it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. "
To which Sondland replies " Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions. The President has been crystal
clear no quid pro quo's of any kind, " adding "I suggest we stop the back and forth by text."
On Tuesday, Mr. Taylor directly addressed accusations surrounding Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Burisma, a Ukrainian
gas company that employed Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., one of the leading Democratic candidates
for president.
He "drew a very direct line in the series of events he described between President Trump's decision to withhold funds and refuse
a meeting with Zelensky unless there was a public pronouncement by him of investigations of Burisma and the so-called 2016 election
conspiracy theories," Ms. Wasserman Schultz said. -
New York Times
As the
Washington
Post notes, Taylor said "By mid-July it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelenskyy wanted was conditioned
on the investigations of Burisma," the Ukrainian gas firm which employed Hunter Biden, "and alleged Ukrainian interference in the
2016 U.S. elections."
He's a Liar. There's no QPQ. We have the transcript of the call. No QPQ. This Frail looking Douche Bag is lying. He's obviously
on the Ukrainian-Take like the rest of them. DNC kept Servers in the Ukraine. Why would they do that??? (wink, wink)
Democrats have called the testimony the most damaging account yet, as Taylor provided an "excruciatingly detailed" opening
statement, according to the
New York Times .
Taylor was a democratic appointee from the Obama administration...shocker. And he was the only one suggesting this was politically
motivated. Sondland corrected him immediately. Nobody else, including the Ukrainians, agree with his "interpretation".
Schiff's bitch said it like he was told to. Nothing to see folks.
Bobzilla. Do not piss him off , 12 minutes ago
link
Wasn't creepy uncle joe doing a quid pro quo when he said no billion $ unless you fir the prosecutor?? Seems the demonrats
have two sets of rules. ******* hypocrites.
That's right, I followed everything Ukraine in detail in 2013, so did my Mom who is 81. She knows more Ukraine than any of
my dirtbag Democrat friends. Hunter Biden corruption old news.
First of all Ukraine had already started to investigate Biden and Burisma in March, second of all the aid was turned over to
them already and there is no resolution to the investigation yet. Third, the Ukrainians have gone on the record saying there was
no pressure. Last, the president has a responsibility to look into corruption even if it was a Demonrat.
This is how filthy neocon fifth column typically works: "The senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine said Tuesday he was told release of
military aid was contingent on public declarations from Ukraine that it would investigate the Bidens and the 2016 election, contradicting
President Trump’s denial that he used the money as leverage for political gain." Who told him? Some State Dept. apparatchik? Unless
it was directly from Trump it's just a hearsay and evidence of nothing whatsoever.
"It’s absolutely insane that neoconservatism is still a thing, let alone still a thing that mainstream America tends to regard
as a perfectly legitimate set of opinions for a human being to have. As what Dr. Paul Craig Roberts rightly
calls “the most dangerous ideology that has ever
existed,” neoconservatism has used its nonpartisan bloodlust to work with the Democratic party for the purpose of escalating tensions
with Russia on multiple fronts, bringing our species to the brink of what could very well end up being a
world war with a nuclear superpower and its allies."
This is not okay. Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan member
or a child molester, but neocon pundits are routinely invited on mainstream television outlets to share their depraved perspectives.
Taylor notably expressed his concerns in a Sept. 9 text message to US ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, saying: " I think
it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. "
To which Sondland replies " Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions. The President has been crystal
clear no quid pro quo's of any kind, " adding "I suggest we stop the back and forth by text."
On Tuesday, Mr. Taylor directly addressed accusations surrounding Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Burisma, a Ukrainian
gas company that employed Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., one of the leading Democratic candidates
for president.
He "drew a very direct line in the series of events he described between President Trump's decision to withhold funds and refuse
a meeting with Zelensky unless there was a public pronouncement by him of investigations of Burisma and the so-called 2016 election
conspiracy theories," Ms. Wasserman Schultz said. -
New York Times
As the
Washington
Post notes, Taylor said "By mid-July it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelenskyy wanted was conditioned
on the investigations of Burisma," the Ukrainian gas firm which employed Hunter Biden, "and alleged Ukrainian interference in the
2016 U.S. elections."
He's a Liar. There's no QPQ. We have the transcript of the call. No QPQ. This Frail looking Douche Bag is lying. He's obviously
on the Ukrainian-Take like the rest of them. DNC kept Servers in the Ukraine. Why would they do that??? (wink, wink)
Democrats have called the testimony the most damaging account yet, as Taylor provided an "excruciatingly detailed" opening
statement, according to the
New York Times .
Taylor was a democratic appointee from the Obama administration...shocker. And he was the only one suggesting this was politically
motivated. Sondland corrected him immediately. Nobody else, including the Ukrainians, agree with his "interpretation".
Schiff's bitch said it like he was told to. Nothing to see folks.
Bobzilla. Do not piss him off , 12 minutes ago
link
Wasn't creepy uncle joe doing a quid pro quo when he said no billion $ unless you fir the prosecutor?? Seems the demonrats
have two sets of rules. ******* hypocrites.
That's right, I followed everything Ukraine in detail in 2013, so did my Mom who is 81. She knows more Ukraine than any of
my dirtbag Democrat friends. Hunter Biden corruption old news.
First of all Ukraine had already started to investigate Biden and Burisma in March, second of all the aid was turned over to
them already and there is no resolution to the investigation yet. Third, the Ukrainians have gone on the record saying there was
no pressure. Last, the president has a responsibility to look into corruption even if it was a Demonrat.
I am sorry but I c/n remember if was the guy at the far end of the bar down near to the bathroom in the boots, bathing suit, and
top hat, or the guy at the seat nearest to the front door, in the grey flannel suit with polished boots, but it was one of them who
gave the bar, a few evenings back, much of what it needs to be coherent. It was hierarchy of elements that propagandist use to install
and support false narratives in their written and spoken words. It was system of analysis, given to us here at the bar, to establish
the gosh awful truth hidden within an intentionally wrong narrative.
That evening I had too much bar juice, so this all I can recall, 8 elements could be applied to the propaganda to diagnose and
debunk and discover the false in wrongful, misleading propaganda.. see the following.
1. EN always the propagandist must establish the general narrative God turned the blue sky, red.
2. WR the propagandist must make great wrongs into powerful strong rights.. The devil made him do it.
3. PE profession propagandists cherry pick the facts; include in the narrative only those facts that support the proposition.
The devil was seen talking to God on more than one occasion.
4. IS ignore damning or off point stuff that challenge or defeat the narrative or transform it into a positive
The fact that God had killed the devil two years before is ignored.
5. BV blame the victim.. don't give the victim a chance to speak.. The victim (God) did it..
6. MU make stuff up to support the narrative. A person on Jupitor saw God practising every evening He watched as God turned blue
seas red and red seas blue
7. AC Attack all challengers allow no one to intercede in the attack. The Pope said God could not show him that he could turn Blue
seas to red, or vice a versa
8. RL Repeat, and repeat and repeat the lie.. until it becomes embedded in the mind of the innocent. We are all tired of hearing
this story..
After sobering up and thinking about this list, I realized its content seems very close to what a lynch party seeking to get up
the never to hang an innocent slave for a criminal act "done by one of their kind" would do. The party would pretty much go through
the 8 things, attempting to convince itself that the slave was guilty, until finally one of the members of the lynching party would
swat the horse and the party would watch the victim swing..
We must develop a technology suitable to encoding these things, and to find other such things to add to this debunk the propaganda
list of 8 items; so that no one can pass off on us wrongful narrative?
Its ok to be innocently wrong, in fact, we all learn when we discover a wrong, but intentional wrong should be against the rules
of the bar.
We should adopt these 8 things and use them in our analysis..
"... Neoliberalism became an incubator for a growing authoritarian populism fed largely by economic inequality. ..."
"... This apocalyptic populism was rooted in a profound discontent for the empty promises of a neoliberal ideology that made capitalism and democracy synonymous, and markets the model for all social relations. In addition, the Democratic proponents of neoliberalism, such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, participated in the dismantling of the social contract, widening economic inequality, and burgeoning landscapes of joblessness, misery, anger and despair. ..."
"... Liberal democracies across the globe appeared out of touch with not only the misery and suffering caused by neoliberal policies, they also produced an insular and arrogant group of politicians who regarded themselves as an enlightened political formation that worked " on behalf of an ignorant public ." ..."
"... As a regime of affective management, neoliberalism created a culture in which everyone was trapped in his or her own feelings, emotions and orbits of privatization. One consequence was that legitimate political claims could only be pursued by individuals and families rather than social groups. ..."
Talk of a looming recession is heating up as the global economy slows and President Trump's tiff with China unsettles financial
markets. As world trade contracts, stock markets drop, the manufacturing sector in the United States is
in decline for the first time in a decade , and farmers and steel workers continue losing their income and jobs.
Rumors of a coming recession accentuate fears about the further deterioration of conditions faced by workers and the poor, who
are already suffering from precarious employment, poverty, lack of meaningful work and dwindling pensions. A global economic slump
would make living standards for the poor even worse. As
Ashley Smith points out
, levels of impoverishment in the United States are already shocking, with "four out of every ten families [struggling] to meet the
costs of food, housing, health care, and utilities every month."
Just as the 2008 global economic crisis revealed the failures of liberal democracy and the scourge of neoliberalism, a new economic
recession in 2019 could also reveal how institutions meant to serve the public interest and offer support for a progressive politics
now serve authoritarian ideologies and a ruling elite that views democracy as the enemy of market-based freedoms and white nationalism.
What has not been learned from the 2008 crisis is that an economic crisis neither unites those most affected in favor of a progressive
politics nor does it offer any political guarantees regarding the direction of social change. Instead, the emotions that fueled massive
public anger toward elites and globalization gave rise to the celebration of populist demagogues and a right-wing tsunami of misdirected
anger, hate and violence toward undocumented immigrants, refugees, Muslims and people of color.
The 2008 financial crisis wreaked havoc in multiple ways. Yet there was another crisis that received little attention: a crisis
of agency. This crisis centered around matters of identity, self-determination and collective resistance, which were undermined in
profound ways, giving rise to and legitimating the emergence of authoritarian populist movements in many parts of the world, such
as United States, Hungary, Poland and Brazil.
At the heart of this shift was the declining belief in the legitimacy of both liberal democracy and its pledges about trickle-down
wealth, economic security and broadening equal opportunities preached by the apostles of neoliberalism. In many ways, public faith
in the welfare state, quality employment opportunities, institutional possibilities and a secure future for each generation collapsed.
In part, this was a consequence of the post-war economic boom giving way to massive degrees of inequality, the off-shoring of wealth
and power, the enactment of cruel austerity measures, an expanding regime of precarity, and a cut-throat economic and social environment
in which individual interests and needs prevailed over any consideration of the common good. As liberalism aligned itself with corporate
and political power, both the Democratic and Republican Parties embraced financial reforms that increased the wealth of the bankers
and corporate elite while doing nothing to prevent people from losing their homes, being strapped with chronic debt, seeing their
pensions disappear, and facing a future of uncertainty and no long-term prospects or guarantees.
Neoliberalism became an incubator for a growing authoritarian populism fed largely by economic inequality.
In an age of economic anxiety, existential insecurity and a growing culture of fear, liberalism's overheated emphasis on individual
liberties "made human beings subordinate to the market, replacing social bonds with market relations and sanctifying greed," as
noted by Pankaj Mishra. In this instance, neoliberalism became an incubator for a growing authoritarian populism fed largely
by economic inequality. The latter was the outcome of a growing cultural and political polarization that made "it possible for haters
to come out from the margins, form larger groups and make political trouble." This toxic polarization and surge of right-wing populism
produced by casino capitalism was accentuated with the growth of fascist groups that
shared a skepticism
of international organizations, supported a militant right-wing nationalism, and championed a surge of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim
and anti-democratic values.
This apocalyptic populism was rooted in a profound discontent for the empty promises of a neoliberal ideology that made capitalism
and democracy synonymous, and markets the model for all social relations. In addition, the Democratic proponents of neoliberalism,
such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, participated in the dismantling of the social contract, widening economic inequality, and
burgeoning landscapes of joblessness, misery, anger and despair.
At the same time, they enacted policies that dismantled civic culture and undermined a wide range of democratic institutions that
extended from the media to public goods such as public and higher education. Under such circumstances, democratic narratives, values
and modes of solidarity, which traded in shared responsibilities and shared hopes, were replaced by a market-based focus on a regressive
notion of hyper-individualism, ego-centered values and a view of individual responsibility that eviscerated any broader notion of
social, systemic, and corporate problems and accountability.
Ways of imagining society through a collective ethos became fractured, and a comprehensive understanding of politics as inclusive
and participatory morphed into an anti-politics marked by an investment in the language of individual rights, individual choice and
the power of rights-bearing individuals.
Under the reign of neoliberalism, language became thinner and more individualistic, detached from history and more self-oriented,
all the while undermining viable democratic social spheres as spaces where politics bring people together as collective agents and
critically engaged citizens. Neoliberal language is written in the discourse of economics and market values, not ethics. Under such
circumstances, shallowness becomes an asset rather than a liability. Increasingly, the watered-down language of liberal democracy,
with its over-emphasis on individual rights and its neoliberal coddling of the financial elite, gave way to a regressive notion of
the social marked by rising authoritarian tendencies, unchecked nativism, unapologetic expressions of bigotry, misdirected anger
and the language of resentment-filled revolt. Liberal democracies across the globe appeared out of touch with not only the misery
and suffering caused by neoliberal policies, they also produced an insular and arrogant group of politicians who regarded themselves
as an enlightened political formation that worked "
on behalf of an ignorant public ."
The ultimate consequence was to produce later what Wolfgang Merkel describes as "a rebellion of the disenfranchised." A series
of political uprisings made it clear that neoliberalism was suffering from a crisis of legitimacy further accentuated by the Brexit
vote in the United Kingdom, the election of Donald Trump, support for the National Rally (
formerly known as the
National Front ) in France, and the emergence of powerful right-wing populist movements across the globe.
What has been vastly underestimated in the rise of right-wing populism is the capture of the media by authoritarian populists.
As a regime of affective management, neoliberalism created a culture in which everyone was trapped in his or her own feelings,
emotions and orbits of privatization. One consequence was that legitimate political claims could only be pursued by individuals and
families rather than social groups. In this instance, power was removed from the social sphere and placed almost entirely in
the hands of corporate and political demagogues who used it to enrich themselves for their own personal gain.
Power was now used to produce muscular authority in order "to secure order, boundaries, and to divert the growing anger of a declining
middle and working-class," Wendy Brown observes . Both
classes increasingly came to blame their economic and political conditions that produced their misery and ravaged ways of life on
"'others': immigrants, minority races, 'external' predators and attackers ranging from terrorists to refugees." Liberal-individualistic
views lost their legitimacy as they refused to indict the underlying structures of capitalism and its winner-take-all ethos.
Functioning largely as a ruthless form of social Darwinism, economic activity was removed from a concern with social costs, and
replaced by a culture of cruelty and resentment that disdained any notion of compassion or ethical concern for those deemed as "other"
because of their class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion. This is a culture marked by gigantic hypocrisies, "the
gloomy tabulation of unspeakable violent events," widespread viciousness, "great concentrations of wealth," "surveillance overkill,"
and the "unceasing despoliation of biospheres for profit."
George Monbiot sums up well some of the more toxic elements of neoliberalism, which remained largely hidden since it was in the
mainstream press less as an ideology than as an economic policy. He
writes :
Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose
democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains
that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical
to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimized, public services should be privatized. The organization of labor and collective
bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and
losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone.
Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets
what they deserve.
In the neoliberal worldview, those who are unemployed, poor consumers or outside of the reach of a market in search of insatiable
profits are considered disposable. Increasingly more people were viewed as anti-human, unknowable, faceless and symbols of fear and
pathology. This included undocumented immigrants in the United States and refugees in Europe, as well as those who were considered
of no value to a market society, and thus eligible to be deprived of the most basic rights and subject to the terror of state violence.
Marking selected groups as disposable in both symbolic and material forms, the neoliberal politics of disposability became a machinery
of political and social death -- producing spaces where undesirable members are abused,
put in cages
, separated from their children and subject to a massive violation of their human rights. Under a neoliberal politics of disposability,
people live in spaces of ever-present danger and risk where nothing is certain; human beings considered excess are denied a social
function and relegated to what Étienne Balibar calls the "death zones
of humanity." These are the 21st century workstations designed for the creation and process of elimination; a death-haunted mode
of production rooted in the "absolute triumph of irrationality."
Economic and cultural nationalism has become a rallying cry to create the conditions for merging a regressive neoliberalism and populism
into a war machine.
Within this new political formation, older forms of exploitation are now matched, if not exceeded, by a politics of racial and
social cleansing, as entire populations are removed from ethical assessments, producing zones of social abandonment. In this new
world, there is a merging of finance capital and a war culture that speaks to a moral and political collapse in which the welfare
state is replaced by forms of economic nationalism and a
burgeoning carceral state .
Furthermore, elements of this crisis can be seen in the ongoing militarization of everyday life as more and more institutions
take on the model of the prison. Additionally, there is also the increased arming of the police, the criminalization of a wide range
of behaviors related to social problems, the rise of the surveillance state, and the ongoing war on youth, undocumented immigrants,
Muslims and others deemed enemies of the state.
Under the aegis of a neoliberal war culture, we have witnessed increasing immiseration for the working and middle classes, massive
tax cuts for the rich, the outsourcing of public services, a full-fledged attack on unions, the defunding of public goods, and the
privatization of public services extending from health and education to roads and prisons. This ongoing transfer of public resources
and services to the rich, hedge fund managers, and corporate elite was matched by the corporate takeover of the commanding institutions
of culture, including the digital, print and broadcast media. What has been vastly underestimated in the rise of right-wing populism
is the capture of the media by authoritarian populists and its flip side, which amounts to a full-fledged political attack on independent
digital, online and oppositional journalists.
While it is generally acknowledged that neoliberalism was responsible for the worldwide economic crisis of 2008, what is less
acknowledged is that structural crisis produced by a capitalism on steroids was not matched by subjective crisis and consequently
gave rise to new reactionary political populist movements. As economic collapse became visceral, people's lives were upended and
sometimes destroyed. Moreover, as the social contract was shredded along with the need for socially constructed roles, norms and
public goods, the "social" no longer occupied a thick and important pedagogical space of solidarity, dialogue, political expression,
dissent and politics.
As public spheres disappeared, communal bonds were weakened and social provisions withered. Under neoliberalism, the social sphere
regresses into a privatized society of consumers in which individuals are atomized, alienated, and increasingly removed from the
variety of social connections and communal bonds that give meaning to the degree to which societies are good and just.
Establishment politics lost its legitimacy, as voters rejected the conditions produced by financialized capitalism.
People became isolated, segregated and unable "
to negotiate democratic dilemmas in a democratic
way " as power became more abstract and removed from public participation and accountability. As the neoliberal net of privilege
was cast wider without apology for the rich and exclusion of others, it became more obvious to growing elements of the public that
appeals to liberal democracy had failed to keep its promise of a better life for all. It could no longer demand, without qualification,
that working people should work harder for less, and that democratic participation is exclusively about elections. What could not
be hidden from many disenfranchised groups was that ruling elites produced what
Adam Tooze describes
as "a disastrous slide from the hypocrisies and compromises of the previous status quo into something even [more dangerous]."
As the global crisis has intensified since 2008, elements of a political and moral collapse at the heart of an authoritarian society
are more obvious and find their most transparent expression of ruthlessness, greed and unchecked power in the rule of Donald Trump.
As Chris Hedges points out :
The ruling corporate elites no longer seek to build. They seek to destroy. They are agents of death. They crave the unimpeded
power to cannibalize the country and pollute and degrade the ecosystem to feed an insatiable lust for wealth, power and hedonism.
Wars and military "virtues" are celebrated. Intelligence, empathy and the common good are banished. Culture is degraded to patriotic
kitsch . Those branded as unproductive or redundant are discarded and left to struggle in poverty or locked away in cages.
The slide into authoritarianism was made all the easier by the absence of a broad-based left mass movement in the United States,
which failed to provide both a comprehensive vision of change and an alignment of single-issue groups and smaller movements into
one mass movement. Nancy Fraser
rightly observes that following Occupy, "potential links between labour and new social movements were left to languish. Split
off from one another, those indispensable poles of a viable left were miles apart, waiting to be counterposed as antithetical."
Since the 1970s, there has been a profound backlash by economic, financial, political and religious fundamentalists and their
allied media establishments against labor, an oppositional press, people of color and others who have attempted to extend the workings
of democracy and equality.
As the narrative of class and class struggle disappeared along with the absence of a vibrant socialist movement, the call for
democracy no longer provided a unifying narrative to bring different oppressed groups together. Instead, economic and cultural nationalism
has become a rallying cry to create the conditions for merging a regressive neoliberalism and populism into a war machine. Under
such circumstances, politics is imagined as a form of war, repelling immigrants and refugees who are described by President Trump
as "invaders," "vermin" and "rapists." The emergence of neoliberalism as a war machine is evident in the current status of the Republican
Party and the Trump administration, which wage assaults on anything that does not mimic the values of the market. Such assaults take
the form of fixing whole categories of people as disposable, as enemies, and force them into conditions of extreme precarity -- and
in increasingly more instances, conditions of danger. Neoliberal capitalism radiates violence, evident in its endless instances of
mass shooting, such as those that took place most recently in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. This should not be surprising for
a society that measures power by the speed that it removes itself from any sense of ethical and social responsibility. As Beatrix
Campbell puts it ,
The richest society on the planet is armed. And it invests in one of the largest prison systems in the world. Violence circulates
between state and citizen. Drilled to kill, doomed to die: mastery and martyrdom is the heartbreaking dialectic of the manufacture
of militarized, violent masculinity . The making and maintaining of militarised masculinities is vital to these new modes of armed
conflict that are proliferating across the flexible frontiers of globalized capitalism, between and within states.
What has become clear is that
the neoliberal agenda has been a spectacular failure . Moreover, it has mobilized on a global level the violent political, social,
racial and economic energies of a resurgent fascist politics. Across the globe, right-wing modes of governance are appearing in which
the line collapses between "outside foreign enemies" such as refugees and undocumented immigrants, on the one hand, and on the other,
inside "dangerous" or "treasonous" classes such as critical journalists, educators and dissidents.
As neoliberal economies increasingly resort to violence and repression, fear replaces any sense of shared responsibilities, as
violence is not only elevated to an organizing principle of society, but also expands a network of extreme cruelty. Imagining politics
as a war machine, more and more groups are treated as excess and inscribed in an order of power as disposable, enemies, and [forced]
into conditions of extreme precarity. This is a particularly vicious form of state violence that undermines and constrains agency,
and subjects individuals to zones of abandonment, as evident in the growth of immigrant jails and an expanding carceral complex in
the United States and other countries, such as Hungary.
As neoliberalism's promise of social mobility and expanding economic progress collapsed, it gave way to an authoritarian right-wing
populism looking for narratives on which to pin the hatred of governing elites who, as Paul Mason
notes , "capped health and welfare
spending, [imposed] punitive benefit withdraws [that] forced many families to rely on food banks [and] withdraw sickness and disability
benefits from one million former workers below retirement age."
Across the globe, a series of uprisings have appeared that signal new political formations that rejected the notion that there
was no alternative to neoliberal hegemony. This was evident not only with the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote in the
United Kingdom, but also with the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and support for popular movements such as the National Rally
in France. Establishment politics lost its legitimacy, as voters rejected the conditions produced by financialized capitalism.
In the United States, both major political parties were more than willing to turn the economy over to the bankers and hedge fund
managers while producing policies that shaped radical forms of industrial and social restructuring, all of which caused massive pain,
suffering and rage among large segments of the working class and other disenfranchised groups. Right-wing populist leaders across
the globe recognized that national economies were in the hands of foreign investors, a mobile financial elite and transnational capital.
In a masterful act of political diversion, populist leaders attacked all vestiges of liberal capitalism while refusing to name neoliberal
inequities in wealth and power as a basic threat to their societies. Instead of calling for an acceleration of the democratic ideals
of popular sovereignty and equality, right-wing populist leaders, such as Trump, Bolsonaro and Hungary's Viktor Orbán defined democracy
as the enemy of those who wish for unaccountable power. They also diverted genuine popular anger into the abyss of cultural chauvinism,
anti-immigrant hatred, a contempt of Muslims and a targeted attack on the environment, health care, education, public institutions,
social provisions and other basic life resources. As Arjun Appadurai
observes , such authoritarian leaders
hate democracy, capture the political emotions of those treated as disposable, and do everything they can to hide the deep contradictions
of neoliberal capitalism.
In this scenario, we have the resurgence of a fascist politics that capitalizes on the immiseration, fears and anxieties produced
by neoliberalism without naming the underlying conditions that create and legitimate its policies and social costs. While such populists
comment on certain elements of neoliberalism such as globalization, they largely embrace those ideological and economic elements
that concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a political, corporate and financial elite, thus reinforcing in the end an extreme
form of capitalism. Moreover, right-wing populists may condemn globalization, but they do so by blaming those considered outside
the inclusive boundaries of a white homeland even though
the same forces victimize them . At the same
time, such leaders mobilize passions that deny critical understanding while simultaneously creating desires and affects that produce
toxic and hypermasculine forms of identification.
Authoritarian leaders hate democracy and do everything they can to hide the deep contradictions of neoliberal capitalism.
In this instance, an oppressive form of education becomes central to politics and is
used as a tool of power in the struggle over
power, agency and politics. What is at stake here is not simply a struggle between authoritarian ideas and democratic ideals, but
also a fierce battle on the part of demagogues to destroy the institutions and conditions that make critical thought and oppositional
accounts of power possible. This is evident, for example, in Trump's constant attack on the critical media, often
referring to them as "'the enemy of the people' pushing 'Radical Left Democrat views,'" even as journalists are subject to expulsion,
mass jailing and assassination across the world by some of Trump's allies.
Waging war on democracy and the institutions that produce it, neoliberalism has tapped into a combination of fear and cathartic
cruelty that has once again unleashed the mobilizing passions of fascism, especially the historically distinct registers of extreme
nationalism, nativism, white supremacy, racial and ethnic cleansing, voter suppression, and an attack on a civic culture of critique
and resistance. The result is a new political formation that I have called neoliberal fascism, in which the principles and practices
of a fascist past and neoliberal present have merged, connecting the worst dimensions and excesses of gangster capitalism with the
fascist ideals of white nationalism and racial supremacy associated with the horrors of a fascist past.
Neoliberal fascism hollows out democracy from within, breaks down the separation of power while increasing the power of the presidency,
and saturates cultural and social life with its ideology of self-interest, a survival-of-the-fittest ethos, and regressive notions
of freedom and individual responsibility.
What needs to be acknowledged is that neoliberalism as an extreme form of capitalism has produced the conditions for a fascist
politics that is updated to serve the interest of a concentrated class of financial elite and a rising tide of political demagogues
across the globe.
The mass anger fueling neoliberal fascism is a diversion of genuine resistance into what amounts to a pathology, which empties
politics of any substance. This is evident also in its support of a right-wing populism and its focus on the immigrants and refugees
as "dangerous outsiders," which serves to eliminate class politics and camouflage its own authoritarian ruling class interests and
relentless attacks on social welfare.
A new economic slump would further fuel forces of repression and strengthen the forces of white supremacy.
In the face of a looming global recession, it is crucial to understand the connection between the rise of right-wing populism
and neoliberalism, which emerged in the late 1970s as a commanding ideology fueling a punitive form of globalization. This historical
moment is marked by unique ideological, economic and political formations produced by ever-increasing brutal forms of capitalism,
however diverse.
Governing economic and political thinking everywhere, neoliberalism's unprecedented concentration of economic and political power
has produced a toxic state modeled after the models of finance and unchecked market forces. It has also produced a profound shift
in human consciousness, agency and modes of identification. The consequences have become familiar and include cruel austerity measures,
adulation of self-regulating markets, the liberating of capital from any constraints, deregulation, privatization of public goods,
the commodification of everyday life and the gutting of environmental, health and safety laws. It has also paved the way for a merging
of extreme market principles and the sordid and mushrooming elements of white supremacy, racial cleansing and ultranationalism that
have become specific to updated forms of fascist politics.
Such policies have produced massive inequities in wealth, power and income, while further accelerating mass misery, human suffering,
the rise of state-sanctioned violence and ever-expanding sites of terminal exclusion in the forms of walls, detention centers and
an expanding carceral state. An impending recession accentuates the antagonisms, instabilities and crisis produced by the long history
and reach of neoliberal ideologies and policies.
A new economic slump would further fuel forces of repression and strengthen the forces of white supremacy, Islamophobia, nativism
and misogyny. In the face of such reactionary forces, it is crucial to unite various progressive forces of opposition into a powerful
anti-capitalist movement that speaks not only to the range of oppressions exacerbated by neoliberalism, but also to the need for
new narratives that speak to overturning a system steeped in the machineries of war, militarization, repression and death.
Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair
for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar
in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education (Haymarket 2014), The Violence of Organized
Forgetting (City Lights 2014), Dangerous Thinking in the Age of the New Authoritarianism (Routledge, 2015), America's Addiction to
Terrorism (Monthly Review Press, 2016), America at War with Itself (City Lights, 2017), The Public in Peril (Routledge, 2018) and
American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism (City Lights, 2018) and The Terror of the Unforeseen (LARB Books, 2019). Giroux is also a member of Truthout 's Board of Directors.
"In 2019, the bottom 99% of families will pay 7.2% of their wealth in taxes, while the top
0.1% of households will pay just 3.2%."
~~Elizabeth Warren~
do you see how EW has finally opened our eyes?
sure! poor people think about wealth as being income. they think about Wealth as being
their salary. from the perspective of a wealthy senator wealth is a function of assets. EW
had the guts to share this perspective with us, to open our eyes to reality.
we should not be taxing the payroll we should not be taxing the capital gains and other
income. we should be taxing non productive assets, assets which cannot be hidden which cannot
be taken off shore.
the Swiss have such a tax. all of their real estate is taxed at a rate of 0.3% per annum.
it would be easy for us to stop all local taxes All County taxes all state taxes and all
federal tax then initiate a 1% tax on all real property unimproved and on all improved real
property. we should continue this tax until our federal debt is completely discharged. such a
taxation shift would revv up our productive activity and increase our per capita GDP. as
usual there would be winners and there would be losers. the losers would be those who want
more inequality and the winners would be
"... Cliff Asness, another money manager, would fly into a rage at Warren adviser Gabriel Zucman for using the term "revenue maximizing" -- a standard piece of economic jargon -- describing it as "disgustingly immoral." ..."
"... Objectively, Obama treated Wall Street with kid gloves. In the aftermath of a devastating financial crisis, his administration bailed out collapsing institutions on favorable terms. He and Democrats in Congress did impose some new regulations, but they were very mild compared with the regulations put in place after the banking crisis of the 1930s. He did, however, refer on a few occasions to "fat cat" bankers and suggested that financial-industry excesses were responsible for the 2008 crisis because, well, they were. And the result, quite early in his administration, was that Wall Street became consumed with " Obama rage ," and the financial industry went all in for Mitt Romney in 2012. ..."
No, the really intense backlash against Warren and progressive Democrats in general is
coming from
Wall Street . And while that opposition partly reflects self-interest, Wall Street's Warren
hatred has a level of virulence, sometimes crossing into hysteria, that goes beyond normal
political calculation.
What's behind that virulence?
First, let's talk about the rational reasons Wall Street is worried about Warren. She is, of
course, calling for major tax increases on the very wealthy, those with wealth exceeding $50
million, and the financial industry is strongly represented in that elite club. And since
raising taxes on the wealthy is highly popular , it's an
idea a progressive president might actually be able to turn into real policy.
Warren is also a big believer in stricter financial regulation; the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, which was highly effective until the Trump administration set about gutting
it, was her brainchild.
So if you are a Wall Street billionaire, rational self-interest might well induce you to
oppose Warren. Neoliberal_rationality/ does not, however, explain why a money manager like Leon Cooperman
-- who just two years ago
settled a suit over insider trading for $5 million, although without admitting wrongdoing
-- would circulate an embarrassing, self-pitying open letter
denouncing Warren for her failure to appreciate all the wonderful things billionaires like
him do for society.
Nor does it explain why Cliff Asness, another money manager, would fly into a rage at Warren
adviser Gabriel Zucman for using the term "revenue maximizing" -- a standard piece of
economic jargon -- describing it as "disgustingly immoral."
The real tell here, I think, is that much of the Wall Street vitriol now being directed at
Warren was previously directed at, of all people, President Barack Obama.
Objectively, Obama treated Wall Street with kid gloves. In the aftermath of a devastating
financial crisis, his administration bailed out collapsing institutions on favorable terms. He
and Democrats in Congress did impose some new regulations, but they were very mild compared
with the regulations put in place after the banking crisis of the 1930s. He did, however, refer on a few occasions to "fat cat" bankers and suggested that
financial-industry excesses were responsible for the 2008 crisis because, well, they were. And
the result, quite early in his administration, was that Wall Street became consumed with "
Obama
rage ," and the financial industry went all in for Mitt Romney in 2012.
I wonder, by the way, if this history helps explain an odd aspect of fund-raising in the
current primary campaign. It's not surprising that Warren is getting very little money from the
financial sector. It is, however, surprising that the top recipient isn't Joe Biden but
Pete
Buttigieg , who's running a fairly distant
fourth in the polls. Is Biden suffering from the lingering effects of that old-time Obama
rage?
In any case, the point is that Wall Street billionaires, even more than billionaires in
general, seem to be snowflakes, emotionally unable to handle criticism.
I'm not sure why that should be the case, but it may be that in their hearts they suspect
that the critics have a point.
What, after all, does modern finance actually do for the economy? Unlike the robber barons
of yore, today's Wall Street tycoons don't build anything tangible. They don't even direct
money to the people who actually are building the industries of the future. The vast expansion
of credit in America after around 1980 basically involved a surge in
consumer debt rather than new money for business investment.
Moreover, there is growing evidence that when the financial sector gets too big it actually
acts as a drag on the economy -- and America is well past that point .
Now, human nature being what it is, people who secretly wonder whether they really deserve
their wealth get especially angry when others express these doubts publicly. So it's not
surprising that people who couldn't handle Obama's mild, polite criticism are completely losing
it over Warren.
What this means is that you should beware of Wall Street claims that progressive policies
would have dire effects. Such claims don't reflect deep economic wisdom; to a large extent
they're coming from people with vast wealth but fragile egos, whose rants should be discounted
appropriately. The Times is committed to publishing
a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of
our articles. Here are some tips
. And here's our email: [email protected]
.
That dramatic growth culminates Tuesday with the grand opening in the Cayman Islands of
the first phase of a $2 billion "health city" complex -- a project that seems far removed
from the nonprofit health system's humble origins and its Catholic mission to serve the
poor and vulnerable.
Ascension executives say they hope through this joint venture with a for-profit, India
hospital chain to learn ways to reduce medical costs.
But the Caribbean investment also illustrates how dramatically U.S. health care is
changing. In its rapid-fire evolution, Ascension has become a leading example of a
nonprofit health system that often acts like a for-profit, blurring the line between
businesses and charities. Its health ministry has drawn criticism for risk-taking and its
ties to Wall Street. And some critics have raised questions about its tax-exempt
status.
"Meet the witnesses: Diplomats start off impeachment hearings" [Associated Press].
"Diplomats and career government officials, they're little known outside professional circles,
but they're about to become household names testifying in the House impeachment inquiry . The witnesses will
tell House investigators -- and Americans tuning into the live public hearings -- what they
know about President Donald Trump's actions toward Ukraine First up will be William Taylor, the
charge d'affaires in Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy Assistant Secretary in the European
and Eurasian Bureau, both testifying on Wednesday." • You can read the full article for
the bios. First, William Taylor:
"Op-Ed in Novoye Vremya by CDA Taylor: Ukraine's Committed Partner" [ U.S.
Embassy in Ukraine ]. From November 10, 2019, the penultimate paragraph. I've helpfully
underlined the dogwhistles:
But as everyone who promotes democracy knows, strengthening and protecting democratic
values is a constant process, requiring persistence and steady work by both officials and
ordinary citizens. As in all democracies, including the United States, work
remains in Ukraine, especially to strengthen rule of law and to hold
accountable those who try to subvert Ukraine's structures to serve their personal aims,
rather than the nation's interests .
It's kind of Taylor to let the Ukrainians know who's really in charge of foreign policy,
isn't it? Now, Kent–
"George Kent Opening Statement At Impeachment Hearing: Concerned About
"Politically-Motivated Investigations" [
RealClearPolitics ]. From the full text as prepare for delivery:
Ukraine's popular Revolution of Dignity in 2014 forced a corrupt pro-Russian leadership to
flee to Moscow.
By analogy, the American colonies may not have prevailed against British
imperial might without help from transatlantic friends after 1776. In an echo of
Lafayette's organized assistance to General George Washington's army and Admiral John Paul
Jones' navy , Congress has generously appropriated over $1.5 billion over the past five
years in desperately needed train and equip security assistance to Ukraine.
Similar to von Steuben training colonials at Valley Forge, U.S. and NATO allied
trainers develop the skills of Ukrainian units at Yavoriv near the Polish border, and
elsewhere.
Are these people out of their minds? See, e.g., "America's Collusion With Neo-Nazis" [
The Nation ]:
Not even many Americans who follow international news know the following, for example:
That the snipers who killed scores of protestors and policemen on Kiev's Maidan Square in
February 2014, thereby triggering a "democratic revolution" that overthrew the elected
president, Viktor Yanukovych, and brought to power a virulent anti-Russian, pro-American
regime -- it was neither democratic nor a revolution, but a violent coup unfolding in the
streets with high-level support -- were sent not by Yanukovych, as is still widely reported,
but instead almost certainly by the neofascist organization Right Sector and its
co-conspirators.
§ That the pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and others in Odessa
shortly later in 2014 reawakened memories of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during
World War II has been all but deleted from the American mainstream narrative even though it
remains a painful and revelatory experience for many Ukrainians.
(To be fair, the Ukrainian neo-Nazis we supported weren't slaveholders, unlike to many of
our own Founders. So there's that.)
The Hearings should be in a room that lets in sunlight, that universal disinfectant. Make
the Front Row Kid Careerists sit by the windows.
Thus far, my main reaction is that the State Department needs to be shaken up to get rid of
those entrenched FRK'ing Careerists and to bring in some accountability. Inspector General
positions and functions should not be optional at the whim of some SoS or other.
Not change for its own sake, just bringing things out of the shadows. In keeping with my
light theme, a Sunset Provision would help, too. That is one step toward eliminating the
hearsay, innuendo and nonsense suppression of Due Process as that is anti-Constitutional. The
people, including back-row, dropouts and all, deserve better from their government.
"Meet the witnesses: Diplomats start off impeachment hearings" [Associated Press].
"Diplomats and career government officials, they're little known outside professional circles,
but they're about to become household names testifying in the House impeachment inquiry . The witnesses will
tell House investigators -- and Americans tuning into the live public hearings -- what they
know about President Donald Trump's actions toward Ukraine First up will be William Taylor, the
charge d'affaires in Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy Assistant Secretary in the European
and Eurasian Bureau, both testifying on Wednesday." • You can read the full article for
the bios. First, William Taylor:
"Op-Ed in Novoye Vremya by CDA Taylor: Ukraine's Committed Partner" [ U.S.
Embassy in Ukraine ]. From November 10, 2019, the penultimate paragraph. I've helpfully
underlined the dogwhistles:
But as everyone who promotes democracy knows, strengthening and protecting democratic
values is a constant process, requiring persistence and steady work by both officials and
ordinary citizens. As in all democracies, including the United States, work
remains in Ukraine, especially to strengthen rule of law and to hold
accountable those who try to subvert Ukraine's structures to serve their personal aims,
rather than the nation's interests .
It's kind of Taylor to let the Ukrainians know who's really in charge of foreign policy,
isn't it? Now, Kent–
"George Kent Opening Statement At Impeachment Hearing: Concerned About
"Politically-Motivated Investigations" [
RealClearPolitics ]. From the full text as prepare for delivery:
Ukraine's popular Revolution of Dignity in 2014 forced a corrupt pro-Russian leadership to
flee to Moscow.
By analogy, the American colonies may not have prevailed against British
imperial might without help from transatlantic friends after 1776. In an echo of
Lafayette's organized assistance to General George Washington's army and Admiral John Paul
Jones' navy , Congress has generously appropriated over $1.5 billion over the past five
years in desperately needed train and equip security assistance to Ukraine.
Similar to von Steuben training colonials at Valley Forge, U.S. and NATO allied
trainers develop the skills of Ukrainian units at Yavoriv near the Polish border, and
elsewhere.
Are these people out of their minds? See, e.g., "America's Collusion With Neo-Nazis" [
The Nation ]:
Not even many Americans who follow international news know the following, for example:
That the snipers who killed scores of protestors and policemen on Kiev's Maidan Square in
February 2014, thereby triggering a "democratic revolution" that overthrew the elected
president, Viktor Yanukovych, and brought to power a virulent anti-Russian, pro-American
regime -- it was neither democratic nor a revolution, but a violent coup unfolding in the
streets with high-level support -- were sent not by Yanukovych, as is still widely reported,
but instead almost certainly by the neofascist organization Right Sector and its
co-conspirators.
§ That the pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and others in Odessa
shortly later in 2014 reawakened memories of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during
World War II has been all but deleted from the American mainstream narrative even though it
remains a painful and revelatory experience for many Ukrainians.
(To be fair, the Ukrainian neo-Nazis we supported weren't slaveholders, unlike to many of
our own Founders. So there's that.)
The Hearings should be in a room that lets in sunlight, that universal disinfectant. Make
the Front Row Kid Careerists sit by the windows.
Thus far, my main reaction is that the State Department needs to be shaken up to get rid of
those entrenched FRK'ing Careerists and to bring in some accountability. Inspector General
positions and functions should not be optional at the whim of some SoS or other.
Not change for its own sake, just bringing things out of the shadows. In keeping with my
light theme, a Sunset Provision would help, too. That is one step toward eliminating the
hearsay, innuendo and nonsense suppression of Due Process as that is anti-Constitutional. The
people, including back-row, dropouts and all, deserve better from their government.
"... The credibility of neoliberalism's faith in unfettered markets as the surest road to shared prosperity is on life-support these days. And well it should be. The simultaneous waning of confidence in neoliberalism and in democracy is no coincidence or mere correlation. Neoliberalism has undermined democracy for 40 years. ..."
"... The effects of capital-market liberalization were particularly odious: If a leading presidential candidate in an emerging market lost favor with Wall Street, the banks would pull their money out of the country. Voters then faced a stark choice: Give in to Wall Street or face a severe financial crisis. It was as if Wall Street had more political power than the country's citizens. 1 ..."
"... Even in rich countries, ordinary citizens were told, "You can't pursue the policies you want" – whether adequate social protection, decent wages, progressive taxation, or a well-regulated financial system – "because the country will lose competitiveness, jobs will disappear, and you will suffer." 1 ..."
"... How can wage restraint – to attain or maintain competitiveness – and reduced government programs possibly add up to higher standards of living? Ordinary citizens felt like they had been sold a bill of goods. They were right to feel conned. ..."
"... If the 2008 financial crisis failed to make us realize that unfettered markets don't work, the climate crisis certainly should: neoliberalism will literally bring an end to our civilization. But it is also clear that demagogues who would have us turn our back on science and tolerance will only make matters worse. ..."
"... The sad truth is, human nature is selfish, and the elites will always do whatever it takes to protect their own interests. With this being the basis of all political systems, it only comes down to how the elites can best serve their own interests. In democracies, it relies on creating an illusion of people's power. ..."
For 40 years, elites
in rich and poor countries alike promised that neoliberal policies would lead to faster economic growth, and that the benefits would
trickle down so that everyone, including the poorest, would be better off. Now that the evidence is in, is it any wonder that trust
in elites and confidence in democracy have plummeted?
NEW YORK – At the end of the Cold War, political scientist
Francis Fukuyama wrote a celebrated essay
called " The End of History?
" Communism's collapse, he argued, would clear the last obstacle separating the entire world from its destiny of liberal democracy
and market economies. Many people agreed.
Today, as we face a retreat from the rules-based, liberal global order, with autocratic rulers and demagogues leading countries
that contain well over half the world's population, Fukuyama's idea seems quaint and naive. But it reinforced the neoliberal economic
doctrine that has prevailed for the last 40 years.
The credibility of neoliberalism's faith in unfettered markets as the surest road to shared prosperity is on life-support these
days. And well it should be. The simultaneous waning of confidence in neoliberalism and in democracy is no coincidence or mere correlation.
Neoliberalism has undermined democracy for 40 years.
The form of globalization prescribed by neoliberalism left individuals and entire societies unable to control an important part
of their own destiny, as Dani Rodrik of Harvard
University has explained
so clearly , and as I argue in my recent books Globalization and Its Discontents
Revisited and People, Power, and Profits
. The effects of capital-market liberalization were particularly odious: If a leading presidential candidate in an emerging
market lost favor with Wall Street, the banks would pull their money out of the country. Voters then faced a stark choice: Give in
to Wall Street or face a severe financial crisis. It was as if Wall Street had more political power than the country's citizens.
1
Even in rich countries, ordinary citizens were told, "You can't pursue the policies you want" – whether adequate social protection,
decent wages, progressive taxation, or a well-regulated financial system – "because the country will lose competitiveness, jobs will
disappear, and you will suffer." 1
In rich and poor countries alike, elites promised that neoliberal policies would lead to faster economic growth, and that the
benefits would trickle down so that everyone, including the poorest, would be better off. To get there, though, workers would have
to accept lower wages, and all citizens would have to accept cutbacks in important government programs.
The elites claimed that their promises were based on scientific economic models and "evidence-based research." Well, after 40
years, the numbers are in: growth has slowed, and the fruits of that growth went overwhelmingly to a very few at the top. As wages
stagnated and the stock market soared, income and wealth flowed up, rather than trickling down.
How can wage restraint – to attain or maintain competitiveness – and reduced government programs possibly add up to higher standards
of living? Ordinary citizens felt like they had been sold a bill of goods. They were right to feel conned.
We are now experiencing the political consequences of this grand deception: distrust of the elites, of the economic "science"
on which neoliberalism was based, and of the money-corrupted political system that made it all possible.
The reality is that, despite its name, the era of neoliberalism was far from liberal. It imposed an intellectual orthodoxy whose
guardians were utterly intolerant of dissent. Economists with heterodox views were treated as heretics to be shunned, or at best
shunted off to a few isolated institutions. Neoliberalism bore little resemblance to the "open society" that Karl Popper had advocated.
As George Soros has
emphasized , Popper
recognized that our society is a complex, ever-evolving system in which the more we learn, the more our knowledge changes the behavior
of the system. 2
Nowhere was this intolerance greater than in macroeconomics, where the prevailing models ruled out the possibility of a crisis
like the one we experienced in 2008. When the impossible happened, it was treated as if it were a 500-year flood – a freak occurrence
that no model could have predicted. Even today, advocates of these theories refuse to accept that their belief in self-regulating
markets and their dismissal of externalities as either nonexistent or unimportant led to the deregulation that was pivotal in fueling
the crisis. The theory continues to survive, with Ptolemaic attempts to make it fit the facts, which attests to the reality that
bad ideas, once established, often have a slow death. 3
If the 2008 financial crisis failed to make us realize that unfettered markets don't work, the climate crisis certainly should:
neoliberalism will literally bring an end to our civilization. But it is also clear that demagogues who would have us turn our back
on science and tolerance will only make matters worse.
The only way forward, the only way to save our planet and our civilization, is a rebirth of history. We must revitalize the Enlightenment
and recommit to honoring its values of freedom, respect for knowledge, and democracy.
Follow Joseph E. Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University, is the co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize, former
chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, and former Chief Economist of the World Bank. His most recent book is People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age
of Discontent .
In his 'After
Neoliberalism' essay of May 30, 2019, Joseph Stiglitz (like many PS contributors) excoriated the 4-decade neoliberal episode in
the US and many other Western Democracies. He advocated development of a progressive capitalism focusing on true sources of national
wealth built on public investment in education, health, research and other basic functions of government. This time (PS, November
4, 2019, 'The End of Neoliberalism') )in a similar vein, he describes how neoliberalism has "undermined democracy for the last
40 years," and advocates a 'rebirth of history as the only way forward. I, like many others, wholly agree with his characterization
of the economics profession's descent into neoliberal ideology and generally admire his body of work. However, the calls to 'progressive
capitalism' and even more to a 'rebirth of history' are quite puzzling. A much more detailed development of the challenges to
be overcome and the steps to be taken is sorely needed.
Regrettably, Stiglitz and his eminent colleagues Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi failed to propose what could have been a
body blow to neoliberal theory and practice -- an in-depth revision of the concept and accounting measures embedded in the System
of National Accounts (SNA) measure of GDP. But the Stiglitz-led report, issued in 2009 -- only shortly after the GFC -- avoided
direct criticism of neoliberal failures and shied away from proposing fundamental reform to GDP accounting and consequent biased
decision processes. The report did identify major problems with current GDP accounting, but tamely recommended only to supplement
current GDP measures with a dashboard of supplementary indicators. An opportunity badly missed. Stiglitz' December 2018 essay
"Beyond GDP," (on which I commented), however, extolled the virtues, and indeed the necessity, of accurate measures of social
impact of government and economic activity, but a critical follow-through has been lacking. Though a range of alternative measures
of social wellbeing are being used by a several countries none have had much impact on the centrality of GDP growth and stability
as the measure of social policy success or failure. Current GDP measures allow neoliberal values, based on promotion of commercial
capitalism and reduction of public-interest spending by government, to continue to dominate US Republican policies -- taken to
near-incredible extremes by the Trump administration -- as well as condone austerity policies in much of the western world.
As I advocated in my 2018 comment on Stiglitz PS essay and in more detail in my 2017 book, responsibility for outputs and outcomes
from use of all forms of capital (commercial, environmental, human, and social and relationship) should be borne by all public
and private enterprises, results of all uses of these capitals should be incorporated in annual reports, and ultimately should
be incorporated in the SNA to guide economic, social and security policies nationally and internationally. Promotion of these
concepts has been taken up by a not-for-profit organization the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC). Stiglitz and
like-minded economists would do well to examine these issues further via readily accessible internet sites.
In support
of Stiglitz' Theory, I would note that the power of the combined of the US Middle Class and Upper Middle class still supersedes
the power of the combined wealth of the US 1% and the lower 50%. This is enough wealth and power to defeat Centrism (the rule
of the 1% by appeasing the lower 50% through subsidies (think the current Egyptian government ruled by Assisi in support of Egyptian
Elites.)
With proper organization and political fusion of the middle class and upper middle class in America, they together have the
power to overthrow Centrism controlled by Plutocrats, and re-institute a Democratic State in America.
In this regard, the power of Financialism has reached its limits, but only if the US middle class and upper middle class fusion
can create a political power that opposes Centrism.
The enemy of this theory is that the US upper middle class is so proud of its ability to supersede the middle class that it
cannot fuse with the standard middle class politically, and believes its financial power comes from the condolences of the 1%
upper class in America that supports it because it supports them.
Clearly, the "Responsibility of the Middle Class" to maintain American Idealism will be destroyed if the Upper Middle Class
denigrates its ideal, and the US middle class joins the lower US worker class in demanding revolution against the 1% Elites.
The Responsibility of the Middle Class in America to preserve the American Nation as an affluent class, through its political
power is now sadly waning. The US Middle Class has lost all three sociological important powers: 1) Status; 2) Power; 3) Economic
equality.
The failure of the US Middle Class to re-obtain its previous power as a political/social/economic entity in America would be
the destruction/obviation of the previous American ideal (a house with a white picket fence, a dog or can, children, financial
security and raising children who will do better than their parents).
Nobody in
the World can say that the Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King did not succeed in creating a better life for Blacks
and other minorities in the United States.
We now need a Middle Class movement to accomplish the same feat: the politically equivalent equality of the US Middle
Class to the US Upper Class
D. V. Gendre Nov 11, 2019 Only a blind
and ignorant like Mr. Stiglitz (elitist) can claim that we live in a neoliberal world.
In reality there were never so many regulations upon us as today. Not only businesses but also the private person is crushed by
ever more regulations! Year over year those regulations are getting more complex then ever.
In ancient times people lived together only guided by 10 Commandments on two stone tablets. Today the first page of any legal
code contains more then ten commandments, laws etc.
Mr. Stiglitz should be advisor to Kim Jong-un. He certainly beliefs the fairytale of neoliberalims.
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
The biggest harm to the capital market was done by two things:
1. The monopoly on money supply, i. e. central banks
2. The abandoning of the gold standard without any adequate replacement
Both measures have nothing to do with neoliberalism or deregulation but with socialistic achievments!
Already in the communist manifesto from 1848 the monopoly on the money supply was a central goal.
Both measures have been introduced without resistance because not only banks were benefitig but more so politicians!
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Animesh Ghoshal Nov 11, 2019 I read
with interest Prof. Stiglitz's assertion that in "economists with heterodox views were treated as heretics to be shunned, or at
best shunted off to a few isolated institutions". These institutions presumably include Columbia University, the World Bank, and
the Council of Economic Advisors.
John Hansen Nov 11, 2019 Excellent,
timely, and thought-provoking. Thank you.
As you note, "The credibility of neoliberalism's faith in unfettered markets as the surest road to shared prosperity is on
life-support these days," and, "The effects of capital-market liberalization [have been] particularly odious."
I totally agree. In fact, I spent thirty years at the World Bank fighting for "shared prosperity" in countries around the world
and was always concerned that excessive capital market liberalization could be a serious barrier to balanced, sustainable growth.
(By the way, I am still most grateful to you for speaking out against the Washington Consensus and other neoliberal ideas that
don't work while you were our Chief Economist.)
Since retiring, I have focused on fighting inequality in America. A major source of our inequality is the overvalued dollar
that destroys farms, factories, jobs, and entire communities by destroying the international competitiveness of America's producers
and workers.
The overvalued dollar is caused by excessive inflows of foreign capital seeking to purchase dollars and dollar-based assets
-- a reflection to the excessive global demand for dollars that is part of today's globalization. This overvaluation makes our
exports artificially expensive and our imports artificially cheap. Thus, for example, we borrow money from China to pay them to
make things for us that we could be making for ourselves at internationally competitive prices -- were it not for the dollar's
overvaluation.
The overvalued dollar shifts both domestic and foreign demand from made-in-America to foreign-made goods, leaving American
producers without the demand needed to grow, invest, employ more workers, and boost wages. Hence our increased inequality and
polarization.
You rightly conclude that the "belief in self-regulating markets and [the] dismissal of externalities as either nonexistent
or unimportant led to the deregulation that was pivotal in fueling the [2008] crisis" and that "unfettered markets don't work."
I am pleased to note that a new macroeconomic policy, which is designed to put appropriate fetters on excessive capital flows
into our financial markets, is central to the "Competitive Dollar for Jobs and Prosperity Act" (S. 2357) that Senators Baldwin
and Hawley recently presented to the US Senate on a bipartisan basis.
This legislation will implement a Market Access Charge (MAC). The MAC will restore the long-broken link between exchange rates
and balanced trade by imposing a moderate charge on foreign capital inflows whenever America is suffering job-killing, wage-killing
trade deficits -- a clear indication that the dollar is overvalued.
By dampening foreign demand for dollars and dollar-based assets, the MAC will allow the USD to return to a rate that balances
trade. With a fully competitive dollar, Americans will be able to earn as much producing exports as they spend on imports. And
because the size of the MAC charge will be linked to the size of the trade deficit, the MAC will always work to keep the dollar
at a trade-balancing level.
In addition to the higher output, employment, and wages that the MAC will make possible for America's producers and workers,
the MAC will help moderate the out-of-control financialization that will continue to cause serious damage like the Crash of 2008
unless appropriate regulations are put in place.
On the international front, eliminating US trade deficits will reduce the trade surpluses of mercantilist countries like China
and Germany. In fact, the MAC will help pave the way to the long-held goal of the G-8 and other international bodies -- growth
for all nations that is stable, balanced, sustainable, and equitably shared.
Thanks again for your thought-provoking article. Let us hope that, with the support of concrete proposals such as the Market
Access Charge, your article will become the clarion call to action that our country so urgently needs to take.
The sad truth is,
human nature is selfish, and the elites will always do whatever it takes to protect their own interests. With this being the basis
of all political systems, it only comes down to how the elites can best serve their own interests. In democracies, it relies on
creating an illusion of people's power.
The electorate is of average intelligence and education, by definition, whereas the elites
are superior. It goes without saying that the electorate would be played like a fiddle by the elites whilst believing that they
are acting out of their own free will. In an autocracy, the populace is either subdued by the threats of violence, or brainwashed
into believing that those in power act for the good of the whole society. On rare occasions, this might even be true, such as
Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, and the various noble emperors throughout Chinese history. In democracies, this is more difficult,
as those seduced by power are often more ruthless and more ready to deceive the public than those with noble intentions, and consequently
always have the upper hand.
There is a far deeper
and more profound issues that underlies the ills wrought by Neoliberalism, but which is not limited to Neoliberalism.
That great issue facing the world today is that a significant portion of the population, if not the vast majority of the population
and including the Elite, appear to be unable to distinguish between reality, and the abstractions/tools/models that we create
for ourselves in order to be able to manipulate and or predict future events.
We have enough experimental experience to know that that given a certain specific and limited set of input conditions that
Neoliberalism has a pretty good track record of predicting what will happen next. We also have the experimental data that shows
that outside of the abovementioned narrow range of input conditions, the ability of Neoliberalism to predict what happens next
in the real world simply sucks balls.
The same is true of socialism. Given an exceedingly narrow and specific set of input conditions, yeah it works OK as a predictor
of future real world events. Anything outside of that input range however is a total train wreck.
The same is true of economics more generally.
And physics, medicine, geology, whatever....
So the real question is why do people feel the need to confuse their abstractions/tools/models, with reality? Why do people
confuse the abstractions/tools/models that we make for ourselves to help us predict what the world will do next, with what the
universe actually is? Why do people write libraries fully of convoluted arguments 'proving' why this or that abstraction/tool/model
must work in reality, when the experimental truth that it simply does not work has been made plain to see by thousands upon thousands
of real world experimental results?
Perhaps the answer to the above question is that most bodies of abstract knowledge, such as economics and political theory
and many of the 'sciences', have more in common to religion than they do to actual science.
Well that's the hypothesis... It would be great to see the experimental results.
Alfred Korzybski
attempted to confront this confusion several decades ago, with little success. But you might enjoy his book, Science and Sanity.
Reply
There is
nothing wrong with neoliberalism!!! Fix the drug problem, fix the education system by getting back to the basics of english grammer,
math and sciences. Create a culture among the young of learning to study and try, try again when they fail a test. Give them generous
amounts one on one tutoring. Teach them social media have destroyed their attention span and that is why they cannot learn from
a book and do their homework. Explain to them that embracing drugs, tattoos and social media is a cancer. Until this happens,
my money is on China winning the race (no drug problem, motivated hard working people).
"Neoliberalism"
is neither. It is not attached to liberty, but to slavery. And it is nothing new. Plutocracy is the cancer of civilizations, and
kills them readily. But this time, the entire biosphere is going down.
A better name for "Neoliberalism" would be "plutophilia", the love of the darkest passions, the love of plutocracy, which is
etymologically and in reality, the rule of evil (as this is exactly what pluto-kratia means: the rule of wealth being a particular
case of Pluto's propensities).
"Neoliberalism", was initially called "trickle down". One of its axioms was as professor Stiglitz says: "the credibility of
neoliberalism's faith in unfettered markets as the surest road to shared prosperity". However, by "markets" one really meant "merchants".
Indeed, what is a market? Who dominates a market? Well, those with enough capital to do so. In other words, the wealthy, or
those that banks have decided to lend to typically, again, those with collateral, namely the wealthy. So the banking system, if
it looks for a profit, makes the wealthy wealthier. Hence the so-called "unfettered markets" were, in truth, the unfettered wealthiest,
while the fetters were put on everybody else.
But, unfettered, wealth grows exponentially (as the wealthiest have nearly all the money and lend it, leveraged, to the wealthiest,
namely themselves).
This is exactly what happened: the wealthy got wealthier. And what is wealth? It is power onto others. So the powers of a few
grew, onto most people, helped along by a government by "representatives" which learned to act in its own best interest, serving
power, that is, wealth.
"Neoliberalism" fostered, in turn, other myths, first of which was that, unfettered globalization, worldwide, was good for
the Republic. Actually, globalization was a disaster: it undermined social rights and taxation.
The last spectacular example of the disaster engineered by unfettered globalization was the Roman Republic. The Roman REPUBLIC,
which lasted 5 centuries, had an absolute wealth limit. And it lasted 5 centuries because it had an absolute wealth limit. The
Florence Republic fell to plutocrats, the Medicis, within three centuries, precisely because it had no wealth limit.
There was an absolute wealth limit, because the wealth tax, during the Roman Republic, was 100% above a threshold (the threshold
was pretty low, at most 30 million 2019 dollars, and maybe as low as ten million).
However, after 200 BCE, and the Second Punic war, having had to fight in Greece, Spain, Africa, the Roman republic became global.
Yet, taxation was still local, so wealthy Romans were able to escape the wealth limit, and Roman billionaires appeared. They immediately
started to plot against the Republic. The best way to do that was to corrupt it, by buying politicians. It took many generations,
but the Republic declined and collapsed, in spite of the life endangering efforts of many heroes, including the Gracchi brothers,
Marius, and his nephew Caesar (Caesar passed a wealth distribution law in 59 BCE).
Plutocracy expects We The People to believe that a few know best, and deserve all the wealth, all the powers. As a result calamitous
policies are engaged into, because only a few brains, without debate, devoured by greed, don't think too well. Moreover, plutocratic
policies look accidentally bad, but they are actually so by design: the worse things get, the more the worst gets going.
A particular example of these satanic policies is the climate catastrophe, which is part of a mass extinction, the likes of
which have not been seen in 70 million years. There were technologies, at the ready already in 1990, to prevent the CO2 catastrophe:
in 2019, France pollutes 5 tons of CO2 per capita (the world average), California 9.2 tons, the USA 16 tons, Canada and Australia
more than 16 So France knows how to do it, and the others chose not to (the UK, Spain and Italy are around 6 tons; whereas hysterically
pro-coal Germany is at 10 tons...) The mood in France is more ecological, more egalitarian, more social... All this is related:
respect the environment, just as, and because, you respect your neighbor. Disrespect the environment, as countries like the US,
Australia and Canada do, disrespect the neighbor.
The global plutocracy is indeed intensely related to its fossil fuel component: fossil fuel money is recycled through Wall
Street. US President FD Roosevelt set-up that system, meeting with Ibn Saud on the Great Bitter lake in Egypt, shortly before
his death. Similarly, when Obama became president, he presented fracking as "the bridge fuel to the future", and Wall Street,
applauding, made massive fracking investments on the lands and water Obama put at its disposal. Thus, once again, the US is the
world's greatest fossil fuel producer: alleluia, say the "America First" crowd, and one expects them to make dark secret masses
to their hero Obama, who made fracking into the lifeblood of the US.
Plutocracy rules through minds. Careful disinformation, and lack of significant information needs to be fed to the masses.
Here is an example:
The New York Times just woke up to the fact that climate scientists systematically underestimated the gravity of the climate
crisis we are in. The paper couldn't explain why this happened, but showed with great clarity how much it happened. I sent a comment
basically explaining that the "Neoliberal" regime paid the salaries of those scientists, so they couldn't be too alarmist, if
they wanted to be employed.
The New York Times apparently found my explanation alarming, and refused to publish it. Just as, over the years, much of the
MainStream Media has found any discourse against the "Neoliberal" order deranged and alarming (and censored thousands of my comments).
Here my comment explaining why scientists were not too alarmed by the climate catastrophe:
The problem has been that scientists are paid by governments which are manipulated by plutocrats, most of them part of the
establishment And the establishment is fossil fuel plutocracy dependent (say, Wall Street, as an example).
So scientists do not want to bite the hand that feed them. And this is still true. The real truth is that the giant masses
of ice of Antarctica will melt with a warming of just a few more degrees. I have explained the exact mechanism in essays on my
site, in great detail, for more than a decade. The reason is that half of Antarctica is under water And the densest water is at
4 degrees Centigrade (roughly 40 Fahrenheit)
Thus a hyper catastrophic melting is entirely possible Millennia before what the old, baseless, "scientific" analyses pretended.
Also a serious diminution of the oxygen content of the atmosphere, ridiculed by well-fed scientists, is actually entirely possible
under very plausible (yet complex) scenarios. And so on.
The plutocracy which rules over us is mostly fossil-fuel based. Any plutocracy knows that it needs to control the minds. Nowadays
this means controlling the scientists. The gross attack, "climate denier" style, are there only to confuse us.
The real danger is the subtle disinformation that the situation is not dire, that we have time, it's a question for the grandchildren.
I have lived in smoke for weeks on end in the tech metropolis of the San Francisco Bay Area: the burning climate catastrophe is
upon us now. One can see it very clearly when one looks outside, and all one sees is smoke.
To free ourselves from "Neoliberalism", which is economic neofascism by another name, will require a great intellectual effort.
I don't see our schools, including universities, committed to it. Yet. Thank, prof. Stiglitz, for the effort!
Your etymology is almost as bad as your economics. In Plato's dialogue Cratylus Socrates argues that the etymology of Hades
is "his knowledge (eidenai) of all noble things" rather than, as widely believed, "unseen."
Later on Greeks began to refer to Hades as Plouton. The root of Plouton is "wealthy" meaning that from below (the soil)
come riches (e.g., fertile crops, metals and so on). Not only that but Plouton became the Roman god Pluto who distributed riches
from below. Call that "trickle up" rather than "trickle down."
So stop maligning plutocrats. It is a vulgar habit.
Read More Reply
Patrice Ayme Nov 11, 2019 Dear
Ian:
Thanks for the comment. It doesn't address any of the very deep reasons I presented to object to have a few individuals
exert huge amounts of power on others, and thus, automatically corrupt democracy, pervert the economic system, and bring
us back to the collapse of the Republic the Romans went through (before the monstrous plutocracy known as the Roman empire
itself collapsed soon afterwards).
Socrates was practicing traditional euphemism science about Hades. The question of the etymology of Hades (Hell, but
also the enemy, in Hebrew, Satan), Pluto, Ploutos, etc. is fascinating. I have long pondered the question, I am a specialist.
I am actually going to write an essay on the subject, just in your honor. The confusion between the god of riches (Ploutos)
and the god of the underground (Pluto) was deliberately made, and as many ways to NOT say the word "Hades" (there were nearly
50 euphemisms for Hades). The New Testament mentions "Hades" in its Greek original many times (now translated as "Hell").
Also Hades is represented as a dark figure, with long wings...
The existence of plutocracy is intrinsically evil, because no species, and certainly no species of primate, is made to
be ruled by a few having the powers of millions. When Obama was president at some point he put the Gates (of hell) in command
of US education. In Obama Reagan perverted mind, the hyper wealthy had, assuredly, achieved supreme wisdom. Never mind that
Gates (of hell) never finished college. Same Gates (of hell) are now telling us they won't work, it they had only ten billion
dollars plus a 50 billion dollar foundation under their command. Such individuals are therefore only motivated by greed,
they have no appreciation for the glory of the human spirit. For them, only greed is the motivation, not care, love, thinking,
etc. And they impose their ways on the entire planet, and their emotional, not to say nervous, system, reduced to greed.
That's evil. Even Jesus noticed. But now, as the biosphere implodes under their greedy blows, we should all be able to notice.
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
As the mathematics of economics seldom seems to use complex math (real and imaginary numbers) that is required to properly
describe a system with feedback/feedforward characteristics (ie supply/demand markets where demand drives supply, etc.), the observation
that the models didn't "see" instabilities is a bit of a DUH. Just adding a time delay, like putting a pillow over a thermostat,
will make a feedback control system unstable. Adding bureaucratic delay (zoning, EIR's, etc.) to housing development makes housing
prices unstable creating boom/bust cycles. It is all just simple math but you need a dynamic equation to describe a dynamic problem.
Read More Reply
ron smith Nov 12, 2019 You mistake
complex variables for the mathematics of complexity. Complex variables is standard fare but there has been no Newton to create
a "calculus" of Complexity. The events you describe are real and, it seems, cause probability distribution function instability
which makes a mess of the math tools we now have. Those fond of science fiction often say that we are awaiting Hari Seldon,
who was the creator of an (imaginary -- it is sci fi) approach to statistics that had accurate application to certain social
situations. [Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy.]
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Jay Kay Nov 11, 2019 More generally,
the most important character of the equation or black-box or digital model or whatever, is that it exhibits a useful degree
of predictive ability as to how the real world will operate given a specific set of input conditions when tested experimentally.
That's what a successful hypothesis is, it's a useful predictor of future events.
Sure, once you have a usefully predictive model of how the real experimental world works, you can open up your model to
investigation to see whether the architecture of the model can give you clues as to what may be in play in the real world,
and what future experiments to design based on that.
However too often what passes for 'science' or economics or politics science modelling:
- has essentially no useful predictive ability when tested experimentally. It just fails constantly. Global Warming models
anyone?
- has no measurable input conditions that can be used to experimentally test the model. It is essentially a philosophy.
Much economic theory falls into this category.
- has a degree of useful predictive ability over a narrow set of input conditions, but then fails miserable in every other
circumstance and yet people insist on constantly applying said model outside of its useful range as a predictor of future events.
Communism works just fine on the nuclear family scale, and implodes at every other scale.
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Most of the so-called Heterodox views are really just warmed-over versions of economic concepts from long-dead economists containing
internal assumptions that "wise economists and politicians" are smart enough to understand and direct the system. Meanwhile, the
complexity of the connection between the economic system and technology is further increasing the rate of change as technology
changes. As none of these heterodox economists seem to have a real understanding of the technology revolution with the creation
of "free" goods and goods with high R&D costs combined with insignificant production costs and how that interacts with economic
statistics and how this all relates to economic growth and its measurement, I am less confident that they can give better results
than markets.
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Raghaba Sahu Nov 10, 2019 The real questions:
1. Are Capitalism and Democracy compatible?
2. What type of economic model will be compatible with Democracy?
3.Should the influence of money on political choices be curbed?
Ian Maitland Nov 10, 2019 "If a leading
presidential candidate in an emerging market lost favor with Wall Street, the banks would pull their money out of the country.
Voters then faced a stark choice: Give in to Wall Street or face a severe financial crisis. It was as if Wall Street had more
political power than the country's citizens" (Stiglitz).
Folks, try a simple thought experiment. For Wall Street substitute "IMF."
Now, do you see any difference? Try this one: "It was as if the IMF had more political power than the country's citizens."
Does Stiglitz propose to put the IMF out of business? No. So why is it OK by Stiglitz if countries get themselves in hock to
the IMF but not if they get themselves in hock to Wall Street? In either case, their people's sovereignty is diluted.
In fact, it gets even worse. Stiglitz has been a consistent advocate of throwing more money at deadbeats. He is a dinosaur
who really believes that foreign aid from rich countries will help poor countries grow rather than encourage them to get deeper
into debt. He has called for debt relief for Puerto Rico to make the island's debt sustainable! Hasn't he heard of moral hazard?
If he gets his way, why should Puerto Rico stop issuing debt to fund its expenses -- something it has done since 1973.
Read More Reply
Patrice Ayme Nov 11, 2019 IMF, under
Lagarde, has forbidden governments to cut down on basic social services when they get help. The IMF functions like a charity.
Wall Street functions like sharks. Greed comes naturally to the lowest critters, and that is very good to make a global ecology,
yet, we, humans, aspire for more. This is the problem with plutocracy: reduction to the lowest, biggest sharks. Reduction not
just of the economy to this lowest realm, but even reductions of highest human aspirations to this. Sharks are hungry, yet,
not too smart, and, in a Pluto economy, they control the flow, and even the genesis, of ideas (or lack thereof).
Another problem is the reduction of incentives: Gates (of hell) just said (semi-joking) he won't work if he had just ten
billion dollars plus a 50 million dollars foundation he controls. Question: what about the rest of us? Should we stop working,
because we have no prospect to make ten billions?
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Patrice Ayme Nov 11, 2019 IMF, under
Lagarde, has forbidden governments to cut down on basic social services when they get help. The IMF functions like a charity.
Wall Street functions like sharks. Greed comes naturally to the lowest critters, we, humans, aspire for more. This the problem
with plutocracy: reduction to the lowest, biggest sharks. Reduction not just of the economy to this lowest realm, but even
reductions of highest human aspirations to this.
Another problem is the reduction of incentives: Gates (of hell) just said he won't work if he had just ten billion dollars
plus a 50 million dollars foundation. Question: what about the rest of us? Should we stop working, because we don't have ten
billions?
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Adrian Wu Nov 11, 2019 IMF, Wall Street,
what is the difference ? Still the same old bunch of elites. Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
"Even in rich countries, ordinary citizens were told..." describes what I felt coming back from years abroad: What happened?
Who gave these people authority to tell me what (and especially what not) to think and say? Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
David Schraa Nov 10, 2019 That's right,
but watch out for what you ask for. "History" can mean nationalist exaggerations about things such as Kosovo, or unionism in Northern
Ireland, or nostalgia for Russian greatness. We need real, responsible history that would, for example, illuminate the incredible
contributions of the EU to prosperity, solidarity and peace. But in so doing, we need to have history that can not only inform
but touch people emotionally, whereas much academic or "woke" history does the opposite today, in the rare event that it breaks
out of narrow academic or activist discussions. The NYT was right to broaden knowledge about the history of slavery, but utterly
wrong if the conclusion is to take the view that "1619" is the essence of the US story and leave the profoundly important intellectual
history of "1776" and its legacy to the right.
That's absolutely right, but the populist paradox is that "the people" rebel against complexity and the evolution of society
by voting right, not left. The left has to find a voice that reorients the discussion, but hasn't managed to do so in a way that
touches many voters.
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Except that, at least in the US and the UK, and to a certain extent in the rest of Europe as well, people seem to be voting
against "adequate social protection, decent wages, progressive taxation, or a well-regulated financial system" ... those are not
the issues voters are pounding drums about (left-wing activists, yes, but not lots of votes). So how do we overcome the suspicion,
resentment of "elites" and low information that motivates those positions?
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Jonathan Willinger Nov 10, 2019
Part of any reexamination of neo-liberal orthodoxy must be a consideration of Keynes' view that currency exchange rates need to
be controlled to curtail excess trade surplus and deficits. Firstly, if we had listened to Keynes there would be no way that the
American manufacturing base would have been so hollowed out. Secondly, as Keynes foresaw, without an international body controlling
cross currency valuation nations would incur continual surplus and deficits thereby leading to a return to the protectionism of
the '30's. I have never understood why Keynesians like Krugman and Somers have forgotten or dropped this extremely important part
of Keynes' thinking. I would like to know what Prof. Stieglitz' view on this point is....
nigel southway Nov 10, 2019 Stiggy
and the base of economists that went along with global free trade are the main problem. They brainwashed our leadership to allow
the finanialization of our economies now thank god we have some leadership such as trump to call a halt and start the question
of what's next
It's certainly a more nationalistic future and away from multilateralism and we also need to question the myth of man made climate
change which is fast looking like a huge hoax
Joe Ryan Nov 10, 2019 Prof. Stiglitz's essay
recommends discrimination on the basis of national origin as a way of reforming capitalism. Which is a bad idea.
The way the essay ends up in this bad situation is, at least in part, due to poor choice of words.
The essay re-phrases the idea of discrimination on the basis of national origin (which is bad), calling it opposition to globalism
(which is popular).
The essay also falls for the rhetorical trap of identifying capitalism with free markets, a confusion that is inherent in the
term, "neoliberalism." For capitalism, however, "free markets" (and "laissez faire") isn't about "perfectly competitive markets,"
which capitalists hate. It's about delegitimizing any interference in capitalists' control of firms.
We need less inventive vocabulary in order to have clearer thinking about how to both regulate and use the market mechanism.
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
John Tegner Nov 10, 2019 Moving quickly
to matters at hand, we know what to do, can we act with urgency?
1. reform the US tax code, dramatically simplifying it and increasing rates of taxation based on income levels to a max rate of
50% for top earners (both income and capital gains)
2. implement strict term limits for politicians
3. make education and health care our nation's top priority after defense leveraging technology to reach the masses (we already
have the tools, we need to apply them with intent)
4. return to a policy of sustainability, deliberately incentivizing and investing to secure the future
Who's ready to take these steps?
Douglas Leyendecker Nov 10, 2019
Maybe Stiglitz wasn't aware that..."Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty,
and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history. This is one of the greatest human achievements
of our time," World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said.
Read More Reply
nigel southway Nov 10, 2019 This
was at OUR expense.... mass wealth transfer not any wealth creation.... we did not sign up to build a middle class in china
you need to get educated as to how much damage has been done. Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Ian Maitland Nov 10, 2019 Shout it
from the rooftops!
As 2015 economics Nobelist Angus Deaton says: "Life is better now than at almost any time in history. More people are richer
and fewer people live in dire poverty. Lives are longer and parents no longer routinely watch a quarter of their children die."
And little or none of the credit for that belongs to Stiglitz and his fellow mandarins at the World Bank and IMF.
Read More Reply
nigel southway Nov 10, 2019 wealth
transfer.. from us to "them" Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
mtcmom222a Loppy Nov 10, 2019 Free
Market? That's a JOKE...ONLY a Superliberal can be so deluded.. Governments consume 40 to 60 % of the People's Time/Money/Resources.....and
over regulate another big chunk... what Planet are you living on?? Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Louis Woodhill Nov 10, 2019 Capitalism
depends upon stable money, which we have not had since 2001. The 2008 financial/economic crisis was the result of the most violent
monetary deflation in U.S. history, and this was 100% the result of Federal Reserve incompetence. Right now, world economic growth
is being suppressed by dollar deflation. Right now, the CRB Index is at 180. If the Fed were to increase total world dollar liquidity
enough to bring it up to 250 (its 10-year average) and keep it there, the problems Stiglitz decries would disappear.
Dirk Faegre Nov 10, 2019 I'm always surprised
when reading (most) economists take on the 2008 financial crisis. From this non-economists view it was shockingly simple and not
some complex, deep gray matter, academic, blah, blah, blah ...
For it to happen it took: Greed on Wall Street, idiocy in the housing market (to include mortgage brokers, retail banks, investment
houses, and the like) and a total collapse of the stated processes by rating agencies, along with a lapse of reason by The Fed
(Greenspan especially, who believed, in the face of the obvious, that banks would never, ever work against their own self interests
-- it took him years to apologize for his willful blindness), and the public who fell for the ponzie scheme of: "housing prices
will soar forever".
It was the perfect storm where almost all involved simply got stupid. Blazingly stupid. A reasonably wise 5th grader could
see and describe why it was going to blow up.
It seems to me Stiglitz got ahead of his skis with overly complex thinking here.
The argument that we can't raise wages so low level earners can make a livable wage is crazy. You want that people should work
hard to become homeless? That's as dumb as the housing crisis! If restaurants and convenience stores were to pay a living wage
the world economy would not collapse in a pile of rubble. They'd just have to raise prices. Full stop. What's so horrible about
that -- we've been doing it for centuries.
Sometimes the obvious is staring us right in the face!
Inflation you say? Tax the hell out of the filthy rich. No one should ever be allowed to become a billionaire - that's simply
a bridge too far and only brings negative value to society. No individual can supply anywhere near enough value to justify having
been paid a thousand millions (or, God forbid, multiples of that!!). Not even close. Check with the 5th grader again. She'll tell
you.
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Waleed Addas Nov 10, 2019 " We are all
Keynesians Now "! If the end (of neoliberalism) is near, then what should or will replace it? The article by of James K. Galbraith
"the new great transformation " may provide a hint (along with my modest comment, as usual :) Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Jose M. R. Nov
10, 2019 Although I do not disagree completely I do see this debate as too western centric. Asia is faring very well, even Latam
despite political chaos. Maybe all that is happening to the West is historical decay: the End of the Roman Empire... Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
John Alexander Nov 10, 2019 'Even
in rich countries, ordinary citizens were told, "You can't pursue the policies you want" – whether adequate social protection,
decent wages, progressive taxation, or a well-regulated financial system – "because the country will lose competitiveness, jobs
will disappear, and you will suffer."'
Thomas Piketty has pointed out, and for all I know Prof. Stiglitz has also pointed out, a significant fact regarding the years
1930-1980: the top rate of income tax in the US was on average astronomical by today's standards, but the American economy was
humming very nicely. The idea that progressive taxation would result in all manner of catastrophe is just another of those baseless
dogmas that are perpetuated by rightwing thinkers, or, more accurately, by rightwing propagandists.
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
Vincent Catalano Nov 10, 2019 Articulating
the problem is all well and good but not describing (or at least hinting at) the successor to Friedmanism/neoliberalism leaves
the reader no closer to the truth. The only way forward is an economic theory to replace Friedmanism/neoliberalism, not some broad
stroke statements like a rebirth of history. Economists need a justification to act based on a theory for it takes a theory to
beat a theory.
Read More Reply
Andrés Galia Nov 10, 2019 No you are
wrong. It does not take a theory to defeat another theory. It takes empirical evidence that the theory is wrong, and the empirical
evidence is in front of our eyes, unless you are not willing to see it. Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
G B Nov 10, 2019 Please go and read all the
related books written by J. Stiglitz and I'm sure you can find good answers for your questions... Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
jagjeet sinha Nov 9, 2019 NEOLIBARALISM
PLUS PLUS - CONFIDENCE IN DEMOCRACY
The end of Economics of/for/by The Elite is perhaps more appropriate title.
The Professor as usual hits the nail on its head.
The departures from Neoliberalism rightly reflecting in Democracy.
The Realignment of Economics demanded by The Marginalized Majority.
Both in The West and in The Emerging markets - where Democracy reigns.
The self correction that Neoliberalism ought to possess - was missing.
The Marginalized Majority had enough - Inequalities were bequeathed.
The Marginalized Majority was bypassed - and Democracy gave answers.
Brexit and Trump were inevitable - as were Modi and Macron.
Germany and China, Brussels and Beijing - emerged.
The Rebirth of History that Stiglitz foresees is Return to Enlightenment.
The Elites in America had met their match in Brussels and Beijing.
The Elites in America had found partners in London and Delhi.
Because Brussels and Beijing both never detached from The Church within.
Whereas London and Delhi were semi-detached from their Hinterlands.
Europe's reticence in accepting London over Brussels - rooted in The Church.
India's reticence in accepting its First Family in Delhi - rooted in The Heartlands.
Both Brussels and Beijing - rooted in The Heartlands within.
The Washington Consensus had alienated The Heartlands within.
The Anglosphere however was always underwritten by its Wealth Machine.
Democracy warranted Realignment of Economics within - for sustainability.
The return to Enlightenment that Stiglitz sees - is as inevitable as Brexit n Trump.
The sooner it happens - the better for The Anglosphere.
Having become the World's Economic Epicentre - demands nothing less.
Both Brussels and Beijing - are now being confronted by this Return.
The shape of The Return to Enlightenment - is a correction long overdue.
And Neoliberalism plus plus - is in fact reiterating confidence in Democracy.
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
M Guiffre Nov
8, 2019 Professor: It seems that much of the U.S. population may not distinguish between the meaning of terms liberalism and elites.
I suspect this common misunderstanding is used to divide the population. Would you mind distinguishing between social liberalism
and economic liberalism? Would you mind distinguishing between intellectual elites and wealth elites? With respects.
vivek iyer Nov 7, 2019 Voters in emerging
markets- like India or Indonesia- have never heard of 'neo-liberalism' or even 'liberalism' come to that. Stiglitz must be utterly
mad if he really believes that the Bihari peasant votes on the basis of Wall Street's preferences!
Stiglitz writes- ' If a leading presidential candidate in an emerging market lost favor with Wall Street, the banks would pull
their money out of the country. Voters then faced a stark choice: Give in to Wall Street or face a severe financial crisis. It
was as if Wall Street had more political power than the country's citizens.'
I'm Indian. Unlike 99.99 percent of the Indian electorate, I know what Wall Street is. I also know that its preferences are irrelevant
for India. Dr. Manmohan Singh, whatever his other faults, knew this too. If American voters don't care what Wall St. thinks, why
does Stiglitz imagine it can have any power in 'emerging markets' where very few people know anything about it? What is the 'transmission
mechanism' he has in mind? Does he really believe
1) f.d.i is linked to market sentiment?
2) Voters take account of it?
There is no evidence for either view. The truth is f.d.i depends on structural and institutional factors. Short term jitters can
affect hot flows but only if there is structural balance sheet weakness.
Furthermore, in the one case where Stiglitz opposed 'neo-liberalism' with something more than an op-ed - i.e. Indonesia- he
was wrong. The IMF was right to squeeze Suharto and his kleptocrats out. Stiglitz very foolishly argued that the IMF ought to
prop up dictators in the pretense that this helped the poor.
Ordinary citizens everywhere, even in rich countries, know that 'adequate social protection' for every workshy loser and hordes
of bogus asylum seekers means high taxes and national insurance. Working for a living becomes a mug's game. Reagan got voters
to accept high unemployment because he was promising to cut taxes and squeeze the 'Welfare Queens'. Clinton did a U turn on gaining
office and went for 'Workfare'. He was also the 'deporter in chief'.
In rich and poor countries alike, elites did not promise 'neoliberal policies'. What they did was gas on about how we must
spend trillions fighting for democracy and human rights and the environment. Voters didn't want this because it meant higher taxes
and reduced public services. Germany, it is true, did adopt wage-restraint when other European countries were borrowing and spending
like drunken sailors- but that paid off big time! No doubt, the genius of Merkel turned this affluence into a curse. Her own native
East Germany is rife with discontent. But this has nothing to do with 'neo-liberalism' and everything to do with elitist virtue
signalling.
Elites don't talk about 'evidence-based research'. Their paid lackeys do it for them. Instead, elites pretend to be caring and
compassionate and committed to a new world order.
Stiglitz asks how wage restrain can lead to higher standards of living. The Harz reforms in Germany shows how- though of course
Merkel wasted much of the gain. Why ask for a 'rebirth of history' if you can't learn from the one we already have? What 'Enligtenment'
can be rekindled by recycling the same nonsense year after year? Rothbard's Law states that great economists specialize in what
they are worst at. They double down on their greatest follies. When will people stop pretending that ordinary people can be stirred
up against the bogeyman of 'neo-liberalism' rather than immigration or multi-culti or political correctness gone mad?
Read More Reply
G B Nov 10, 2019 With all due respect, Sir,
i think your post is, shall i say, long-winded with twists and turns, difficult to follow and hard to wrap one's head around...
I suggest you read all the related books written by J. Stiglitz and I'm sure you can better understand J. Stiglitz.
Read More Reply
vivek iyer Nov 10, 2019 To understand
an economist's theory it is not sufficient to read his books and articles. You have to be aware of criticisms and refutations
of his theses. You also need to do some empirical work of your own so as to determine how and why that economist has ended
up illustrating Rothbard's Law. In the case of Stiglitz, it is because he genuinely believes that there is a bias within
his profession. However, his profession is not influential. He himself is considered a virtue signaller and polemicist,
not a serious thinker.
Read More Reply
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
A new reply to this comment has been posted. Load?
JOSE GERARDO TRASLOSHEROS
HERNANDEZ Nov 6, 2019 Agree that elites should contribute significantly more to social justice everywhere and be less selfish.
This will help save democracy and open markets. China and many in the developing world did benefit greatly in the process pulling
hundreds of millions out of poverty.
Ariel Tejera Nov 6, 2019 I think there
is a bit more to add: Your honor, the notion that the global trade an finance monster can be tamed by mere nation states, is ...
surreal. And the tragedy is that, so far, the people´ s reaction consists on entrenching themselves, behind increasingly tribal
insularity (literally, Brexit).
If I were ultra-rich, I couldn't ask for more. Real.
Mirek Fatyga Nov 6, 2019 So, as neoliberalism
gets stripped of it's clothes, can we have a return of actual economic science to economic profession?
What is the effect of global resource constraints on attainable world growth, and how does the slow but steady rise of "developing"
countries affect the distribution of the standards of living in "developed" countries?
Please, a return to reality, instead of money games, whether neoliberalism or modern monetary theory (aka burst of inflation)?
Can we return to relity before wars begin? Prof Stiglitz?
john zac Nov 5, 2019 Yes, yes and yes, professor,
you got it right. But you didn't address the issue, or the degree of psychological damage this neoliberal world created. Which
stood as collateral damage in our war against truth. Where "what suits me/us was always favored to what suits you/them" The truth
has now sadly devolved to whatever suits the most powerful narcissist in the room and the rest, preferably outside the room,and
miles away, should not complain, watch Apple TV or Disney, or put headphones on and listen to Eminem, Allison Krause or even Jesus
loving Kanye
Also kindly. We not only take orders from Wall Street and those that have the money, but we also take orders from those that have
the guns.
I seriously doubt the nerds in Silicon Valley can continue to clumsily lead without any muscle and that muscle unfortunately comes
at a price--You must also allow them to create the stories they need in order to help create the world your math calls for. Which
comically dumbs down the narrative (Iran WMD, contras, etc) Anyway, this dangerous alliance of tech/money/guns serves as an imposing,
probably unbeatable force of a managing agent. As this engine manages to build superior narratives as an exhaust,making sure nothing
stands in its way. Professor Fukuyama, I'm sure is tossing and turning but I always thought of him as a man with ethics, so I
feel for him. I don't think he intended it this way.
Stephen Banicki Nov 5, 2019 Well said
and the near depression of 2008 proves that a market not properly regulated can result in a disaster. 2008 was a good example
where sub-prime lending went unregulated, corruption prevailed with the result being a near depression.
Raising the minimum wage, food stamps and other social programs are short term band aids to the real solutions of bringing
back free markets and significantly improving our ability to provide a good education to all Americans.
These social programs should be used to buy time so we can get things right. Getting things right is going to take a while;
at least a generation. There are no quick fixes. The President needs to be like Teddy. Teddy Roosevelt who busted up Standard
Oil and took on the railroads. Free markets help the consumer and worker. More competition keeps prices low and increases the
demand for labor which will raise wages. For that to happen Citizens United needs to be reversed.
The Supreme Court recently said that limiting what one can spend on elections goes against free speech. I say uncontrolled
spending by the rich on elections drowns out my right to voice my opinion. We were a nation based on the principle of one man,
one vote. Today we are a nation living by the motto one dollar, one vote. If you don't have lots of dollars too bad. Your vote
does not count for much. So I am in favor of raising the minimum wage as long as we will also address the longer term problems
of improving education and truly seeking free markets. Just like the vote, free markets have been bought. ... http://lstrn.us/1hkN2ll
Yoshimichi Moriyama Nov 5, 2019
We must not be deceived by economics theories; they are more often than not propaganda selfishly committed to protecting class
or group interests.
Excuse me for my senile nostalgia for the days at college. In my first year I had to attend two English classes and the reading
assignment for one of them was Henry S. Commager/The American Mind. "The most realistic of American economists, he (Veblen) never
failed to ask of the institutions which he examined: how do they work? This question he aske explicitly; it is relevant to add
that he asked only implicitly: how should they work?"
A friend of my wife's brought a lot of books a month ago, said his father had bought them and asked if I was interested in
any of them; she told me to dispose of the rest. The following is from Samuel Koenig/Sociology:An Introduction to the Science
of Society, published in 1964.
"The structure of economic institutions and the ideas upon which they are based are the primary concern of economics. Economic
institutions, however, do not have a separate, independent existence. They are part and parcel of the culture of a society, being
influenced by the other constituents of a culture and, in turn, influencing them. In other words, economic activities are inseparable
from social life and cannot be understood apart from it. Many economic activities are themselve social in character..."
Alongside respect for knowledge, knowledge of respect might be useful at some point, as it is often difficult to build a second
floor before the first floor is build. Reply
Any lingering doubts about Obama's status as an abject puppet of Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Rockefeller Trilateral Commission
ended this morning when the withered mummy of imperialism himself appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe* to campaign for Obama, urged on
by his own moronic daughter, Mika Brzezinski, an Obama groupie and sycophant.
Zbigniew, a low-level Polish aristocrat whose life has been devoted to hatred for Russia, lauded Obama for his 2002 speech opposing
the Iraq war, saying that he himself was the source of Obama's arguments back then - thus confirming Obama's long-term status as
his puppet, which probably began in 1981-1983, when Obama was a student at Columbia University, and Zbig was directing the anti-Russian
institute.
The aging revanchist showed all the misogynism of his szachta origins with a scurrilous attack on Sen. Clinton as a mere housewife,
a Mamie Eisenhower running against charismatic a JFK played by Zbig's own Manchurian candidate, and as a woman whose foreign policy
experience was worth as much as that of Zbig's own travel agent.
Zbig, who was kept in the closet for many months during the Carter administration because of his hideous Dr. Strangelove persona,
portrayed Obama as a peace candidate who wanted to end the Iraq war and usher in peace in the Middle East. Zbig is an infamous Cold
War hawk who has managed to re-invent himself in the eyes of some dupes by opposing the Iraq adventure, mainly because it is bad
for imperialism.
Zbig did not mention that the reason he wants to downplay certain aspects of US aggression in the Middle East is to free up resources
for use in the much bigger and more dangerous adventures which the Trilateral Commission is now directing.
Zbig is the mastermind of the Kosovo secession under KLA terrorist auspices, a gambit against Serbia and Russia to prepare a coming
Operation Barbarossa II against Moscow. With the help of his son Mark Brzezinski, another top foreign policy controller of Obama,
Zbig is also behind the new Euromissiles crisis involving US ABM installations in Poland. Zbig is the enforcer for the new CIA policy
of killing Pakistanis (as "terrorists") without consulting the government of that country, a nuclear power twice as big as Iran.
Most dangerous of all, Zbig is the obvious mastermind of the massive destabilization of China now ongoing, starting with the CIA/MI-6
Tibet insurrection, which has placed the US on a collision course with China, a superpower with 1.4 billion people and thermonuclear
weapons which can strike US cities, a far cry from the helpless and defenseless targets preferred by the neocons. It is an open secret
that Zbig intends to attempt a color revolution or CIA people power coup in China under the cover of the Beijing Olympics later this
year. He may also make the Taiwan crisis explode. The dangers of these lunatic policies are infinitely worse than anything that could
ever come out of the Middle East.
Senator Jay Rockefeller and Trilateral/BIlderberger boss Joseph Nye are also actively campaigning for Obama. Nye is the theoretician
of "soft power," a new form of imperialist aggression based on economic warfare, subversion, deception, and people power coups. They
want Obama to mobilize soft power to give a face lift to US imnperialism.
Brzezinski's goal is confrontation with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the main world center for resistance to US-UK global
domination.
Anti-war activists are still fixated on Iran, but not Brzezinski is not - his target is China, TWENTY times bigger than Iran,
with ICBMs ready to launch, followed by Russia, the world's biggest nuclear power. Such confused activists need to focus on stopping
the next war - the final global showdown with Pakistan, China, and Russia. That means rejecting Brzezinski's puppet candidate Obama.
"... The Polish born Brzezinski put the historic blood-feud of his mother country ahead of the interests of the United States. He openly opposed Nixon and Ford's policy of detente and orchestrated the use American power to arm and fund all those who sought to undermine the Soviet Union. ..."
"... This became most apparent when he decided to use US might to fund, arm and train the Arab Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Among the fighters Brzezinski's policy helped to arm was Osama bin-Laden, the founder of the Salafist terrorist group al-Qaeda. The group was later blamed for orchestrating and executing the September 11 terrorist atrocities in the United States. ..."
"... Brzezinski was happy to ally with blood soaked jihadists in order to topple the secular, modern government of Afghanistan, for the simple reason that the government was a Soviet ally. ..."
"... Brzezinski's jihadists took over the country in the 1990s and famously executed and then mutilated the corpse of Afghanistan's pro-Soviet President Dr. Mohammad Najibullah in 1996. Many blame the Brzezinski authored policies in Afghanistan for unleashing the plague of jihadist terrorism throughout the wider world. ..."
"... Brzezinski's time in the White House was limited to the single term of Jimmy Carter, but many of his policies lived long after his formal period in power. ..."
Richard Nixon had more foreign policy achievements that just about any modern American President. These achievements however,
have generally been overshadowed by Nixon's scandal plagued White House.
Among his most important achievements was engaging in
detente with the Soviet Union. Nixon's de-escalation of tensions with Moscow penultimately led to the signing of the Helsinki Accords
in 1975, wherein America and its allies and also non-aligned states of Europe agreed to respect the borders and sovereignty of existing
states, including that of the Soviet Union and her allies. The Helsinki Accords affirmed a renunciation of violence as a means of
settling disputes and forced signatories to respect the right of self-determination among peoples.
This was a rare moment when the US admitted that the Cold War could not be won and that engagement and peaceful dialogue was preferable
to threats against the Soviet superpower.
In 1976, Jimmy Carter was elected the President of the United States after Nixon's former Vice-President Gerald Ford, failed to
win an America hungry for change on the domestic front.
While Jimmy Carter is often remembered as a man of peace, his Presidency was anything but peaceful. The reason for this was the
power behind the throne, Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The Polish born Brzezinski put the historic blood-feud of his mother country ahead of the interests of the United States. He openly
opposed Nixon and Ford's policy of detente and orchestrated the use American power to arm and fund all those who sought to undermine
the Soviet Union.
This became most apparent when he decided to use US might to fund, arm and train the Arab Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Among the
fighters Brzezinski's policy helped to arm was Osama bin-Laden, the founder of the Salafist terrorist group al-Qaeda. The group
was later blamed for orchestrating and executing the September 11 terrorist atrocities in the United States.
Brzezinski was happy to ally with blood soaked jihadists in order to topple the secular, modern government of Afghanistan, for
the simple reason that the government was a Soviet ally.
Brzezinski's jihadists took over the country in the 1990s and famously executed and then mutilated the corpse of Afghanistan's
pro-Soviet President Dr. Mohammad Najibullah in 1996. Many blame the Brzezinski authored policies in Afghanistan for unleashing the
plague of jihadist terrorism throughout the wider world.
Brzezinski's time in the White House was limited to the single term of Jimmy Carter, but many of his policies lived long after
his formal period in power.
Throughout the rest of his life, Brzezinski continued to vocally advocate for policies designed to cripple Russia, including the
expansion of NATO into eastern Europe.
He was a strong supporter of the 2014 coup against the legitimate Ukrainian government and more recently said that the Russian
Federation would break up. Furthermore, he said that the US must help those wanting to break it up, irrespective of who they are.
He continued to advocate sanctions against Russia until his dying day, in spite of the fact that the sanctions ended up hurting his
native Poland more than the Russian Federation he sought to destroy.
Brzezinski was a deeply violent and hateful man. He was also dishonest, he told the last Shah of Iran that the US would give him
America's full backing, knowing well that the White House was divided on the issue.
He was a man who brought ancient hatreds, hatreds which long pre-dated the existence of the United States, into the heart of American
policy making.
At the age of 89, Brzezinski is dead. Even if he lived another hundred years, he would never see his dream, the death of Russia.
Russia remains alive and well and in this sense, perhaps he died knowing that his entire reason for being was a failure.
"... Will the Democratic Party, this time in open collusion with the intelligence apparatus, succeed in its second attempt to depose President Donald Trump in what might fairly be called a bloodless coup? Whatever the outcome of the thus-far-farcical impeachment probe, which is to be conducted publicly as of Wednesday, did the president use his office to pressure Ukraine in behalf of his own personal and political interests? Did Trump, in his fateful telephone conversation last July 25 with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president, put U.S. national security at risk, as is alleged? ..."
"... All good questions. Here is another: Will Joe Biden, at present the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, get away with what is almost certain to prove his gross corruption and gross abuse of office when he carried the Ukraine portfolio while serving as vice president under Barack Obama? ..."
"... Ciaramella has previously worked with Joe Biden during the latter's days as veep; with Susan Rice, Obama's recklessly hawkish national security adviser; with John Brennan, a key architect of the Russiagate edifice; as well as with Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-born Democratic National Committee official charged during the 2016 campaign season with digging up dirt on none other than candidate Donald Trump. ..."
"... Here we come to another question. If everyone knows the whistleblower's identity, why have the corporate media declined to name him? There can be but one answer to this question: If Ciaramella's identity were publicized and his professional record exposed, the Ukrainegate narrative would instantly collapse into a second-rate vaudeville act -- farce by any other name, although "hoax" might do, even if Trump has made the term his own. ..."
"... There is another half to this burlesque. While Schiff and his House colleagues chicken-scratch for something, anything that may justify a formal impeachment, a clear, documented record emerges of Joe Biden's official interventions in Ukraine in behalf of Burisma Holdings, the gas company that named Hunter Biden to its board in March 2014 -- a month, it is worth noting, after the U.S.–cultivated coup in Kiev. ..."
"... There is no thought of scrutinizing Biden's activities by way of an official inquiry. In its way, this, too, reflects upon the pantomime of the impeachment probe. Are there sufficient grounds to open an investigation? Emphatically there are. Two reports published last week make this plain by any reasonable measure. ..."
Now that "Russiagate" has failed and "
Ukrainegate " neatly takes its
place, many questions arise.
Will the Democratic Party, this time in open collusion with the intelligence apparatus, succeed in its second attempt to depose
President Donald Trump in what might fairly be called a bloodless coup? Whatever the outcome of the thus-far-farcical impeachment
probe, which is
to be conducted publicly as of Wednesday, did the president use his office to pressure Ukraine in behalf of his own personal
and political interests? Did Trump, in his fateful telephone conversation last July 25 with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president,
put U.S. national security at risk, as is alleged?
All good questions. Here is another: Will Joe Biden, at present the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination,
get away with what is almost certain to prove his gross corruption and gross abuse of office when he carried the Ukraine portfolio
while serving as vice president under Barack Obama?
Corollary line of inquiry: Will the corporate media, The New York Times in the lead, get away with self-censoring what is now
irrefutable evidence of the impeachment probe's various frauds and corruptions? Ditto in the Biden case: Can the Times and the media
that faithfully follow its lead continue to disregard accumulating circumstantial evidence of Biden's guilt as he appears to have
acted in the interest of his son Hunter while the latter sat on the board of one of Ukraine's largest privately held natural gas
producers?
Innuendo & Interference
It is not difficult to imagine that Trump presented Zelensky with his famous quid pro quo when they spoke last summer: Open an
investigation into Biden père et fils and I will release $391 million in military aid and invite you to the White House. Trump seems
to be no stranger to abuses of power of this sort. But the impeachment probe has swiftly run up against the same problem that sank
the good ship Russiagate: It has produced no evidence. Innuendo and inference, yes. Various syllogisms, yes. But no evidence.
There is none in the transcript of the telephone exchange. Zelensky has flatly stated that there was no quid pro quo. The witnesses
so far called to testify have had little to offer other than their personal opinions, even if Capitol Hill Democrats pretend these
testimonies are prima facie damning. And the witnesses are to one or another degree of questionable motives: To a one, they appear
to be Russophobes who favor military aid to Ukraine; to a one they are turf-conscious careerists who think they set U.S. foreign
policy and resent the president for intruding upon them. It is increasingly evident that Trump's true offense is proposing to renovate
a foreign policy framework that has been more or less untouched for 75 years (and is in dire need of renovation).
Ten days ago
Real Clear Investigations suggested that the "whistleblower" whose "complaint" last August set the impeachment probe in motion
was in all likelihood a CIA agent named Eric Ciaramella. And who is Eric Ciaramella? It turns out he is a young but seasoned Democratic
Party apparatchik conducting his spookery on American soil.
Ciaramella has previously worked with Joe Biden during the latter's days as veep; with Susan Rice, Obama's recklessly hawkish
national security adviser; with John Brennan, a key architect of the Russiagate edifice; as well as with Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-born
Democratic National Committee official charged during the 2016 campaign season with digging up dirt on none other than candidate
Donald Trump.
For good measure, Paul Sperry's perspicacious reporting in Real Clear Investigations reveals that Ciaramella conferred with the
staff of Rep. Adam Schiff, the House Democrat leading the impeachment process, a month prior to filing his "complaint" to the CIA's
inspector general.
This information comes after Schiff stated on the record that the staff of the House Intelligence Committee, which he heads, had
no contact with the whistleblower. Schiff has since acknowledged the Ciaramella connection.
Phantom in Plain Sight
No wonder no one in Washington will name this phantom in plain sight. The impeachment probe starts to take on a certain reek.
It starts to look as if contempt for Trump takes precedence over democratic process -- a dangerous priority. Sperry quotes Fred Fleitz,
a former National Security Council official, thus: "Everyone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York
Times knows. Congress knows. The White house knows . They're hiding him because of his political bias."
Here we come to another question. If everyone knows the whistleblower's identity, why have the corporate media declined to
name him? There can be but one answer to this question: If Ciaramella's identity were publicized and his professional record exposed,
the Ukrainegate narrative would instantly collapse into a second-rate vaudeville act -- farce by any other name, although "hoax"
might do, even if Trump has made the term his own.
There is another half to this burlesque. While Schiff and his House colleagues chicken-scratch for something, anything that
may justify a formal impeachment, a clear, documented record emerges of Joe Biden's official interventions in Ukraine in behalf of
Burisma Holdings, the gas company that named Hunter Biden to its board in March 2014 -- a month, it is worth noting, after the U.S.–cultivated
coup in Kiev.
There is no thought of scrutinizing Biden's activities by way of an official inquiry. In its way, this, too, reflects upon
the pantomime of the impeachment probe. Are there sufficient grounds to open an investigation? Emphatically there are. Two reports
published last week make this plain by any reasonable measure.
'Bursimagate'
John Solomon, a singularly competent follower of Russiagate and Ukrainegate, published
a report last Monday exposing Hunter Biden's extensive contacts with the Obama State Department in the early months of 2016.
Two developments were pending at the time. They lie at the heart of what we may well call "Burismagate."
One, the Obama administration had committed to providing Ukraine with $1 billion in loan guarantees. In a December 2015 address
to the Rada, Ukraine's legislature, V–P Biden withheld an apparently planned announcement of the credit facility.
Two, coincident with Hunter Biden's numerous conferences at the State Department, Ukraine's prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin,
was swiftly advancing a corruption investigation into Burisma's oligarchic owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was by early 2016 living
in exile. Just prior to Biden's spate of visits to Foggy Bottom, Shokin had confiscated several of Zlochevsky's properties -- a clear
sign that he was closing in. Joe Biden wanted Shokin fired. He is, of course,
famously on the record boasting of his threat [starts at
52.00 in video below]to withhold the loan guarantee as a means to getting this done. Shokin was in short order dismissed, and the
loan guarantee went through.
Solomon documents his report with memos he obtained via the Freedom of Information Act earlier this year. These add significantly
to the picture. "Hunter Biden and his Ukrainian gas firm colleagues had multiple contacts with the Obama State Department during
the 2016 election cycle," he writes, "including one just a month before Vice President Joe Biden forced Ukraine to fire the prosecutor
investigating his son's company for corruption."
Last Tuesday, a day after Solomon published his report, Moon of Alabama , the much-followed web publication, posted a granularly
researched and well-sourced
timeline of the events surrounding Shokin's dismissal at Vice President Biden's request. This is the most complete chronology
of the Burismagate story yet available.
In an ethical judicial system, it or something like it would now sit on a prosecutor's desk. There is no suggestion in the Moon
of Alabama's timeline that Shokin had shelved his investigation into Burisma by the time Biden exerted pressure to get him sacked,
as Biden's defenders assert. Just the opposite appears to be the true case: The timeline indicates Shokin was about to pounce. Indeed
Shokin said so under oath in an Austrian
court case, testifying that he was fired because of Biden's pressure not to conduct the probe.
It is important to note that there is no conclusive evidence that Joe Biden misused his office in behalf of his son's business
interests simply because there has been no investigation. Given what is beginning to emerge, however, the need for one can no longer
be in doubt. Can Democrats and the media obscure indefinitely what now amounts to very strong circumstantial evidence against Biden?
We live in a time when the corporate media make as much effort to hide information as they do to report it. But as in the case
of Ciaramella's identity, it is unlikely these myriad omissions can be sustained indefinitely -- especially if Biden wins the Democratic
nomination next year. Forecast: If only because of Burismagate, Joe Biden will never be president.
As everyone in Washington seems to understand, it is highly unlikely Trump will be ousted via an impeachment trial: The Republican-controlled
Senate can be counted on to keep him in office. Whatever Trump got up to with Zelensky, there is little chance it will prove sufficient
to drive him from office. As to the charge that Trump's dealings with the Ukrainian president threatened national security, let us
allow this old chestnut to speak for itself.
Price of Irresponsible Theatrics
This leaves us to reckon the price our troubled republic will pay for months of irresponsible theatrics that are more or less
preordained to lead nowhere.
More questions. What damage will the Democrats have done when Ukrainegate draws to a close (assuming it does at some point)? What
harm has come to U.S. political institutions, governing bodies, judiciary and media? The corporate press has been profligately careless
of its already questionable credibility during the years of Russiagate and now Ukrainegate. Can anyone argue there is no lasting
price to pay for this?
More urgently, what do the past three years of incessant efforts to unseat a president tell us about the power of unelected constituencies?
The CIA is now openly operating on American soil in clear breach of its charter and U.S. law. There is absolutely no way this can
be questioned. We must now contemplate the frightening similarities Russiagate and Ukrainegate share with the agency's classic coup
operations abroad: Commandeering the media, stirring discontent with the leadership, pumping up the opposition, waving false flags,
incessant disinformation campaigns: Maybe it was fated that what America has been doing abroad the whole of the postwar era would
eventually come home.
What, at last, must we conclude about the ability of any president (of any stripe) to effect authentic change when our administrative
state -- "deep," if you like -- opposes it?
"... I might have to disagree with Vindman being labelled 'a bureaucrat among bureaucrats'. I would judge that his allegiances lay elsewhere and by that I do not mean the dual loyalty to the Ukraine, even though he appears to be acting in the roll of Kiev's man in Washington. I suppose that you would say that he is a member of the deep state and the policies that they formulate with little regard to who is in power. ..."
"... Burisma is just one of numerous examples of the payoffs and shady deals that poison the American political system and disgust citizens. Schiff has been given the impossible task of trying to defend that against mounting evidence of corruption. How can he or anyone else rationalize that little gas board activity, or countless others including those benefiting those people related to elected officials across the aisle. ..."
"... One of the wonderful aspects of Empire is that you get to house all the right-wing exiles from around the world. Whether it's Batista-ites from Cuba, Curveballs from Iraq, rich, right-wing "refugees" from Chavismo in South America or Ukrainians like Vindman. They're happy to use the host country to further a color revolution back home, and the CIA is happy to use them as cover for another Empire resource grab. ..."
Ilargi: Vindman, the
Expert Posted on November 13, 2019
by Yves Smith
Yves here. While the main source for this piece on Alexander Vindman is Byron York of the
Washington Examiner, bear in mind that the Examiner is a non-crazy right-leaning site and has
even broken some important stories. It is telling that there are so few people on the left who
have the patience and constitutional fortitude to pick through the impeachment evidence
carefully, see what it amounts to and withstand the vitriol if what they find is not what Team
Dem insists is there.
And that's before we get to our regular lament: why are the Dems choosing a line of inquiry
which is a hairball (albeit less of one than Russiagate) and also has the Dems taking the
position that the President is not in charge of foreign policy, and should defer to the CIA and
other non-accountable insiders? Why not go after emoluments, which is in the Constitution as a
Presidential no-no, where Trump has clearly abused repeatedly (you need go no further than the
guest list in his DC hotel) and therefore easy to prove, and would have the added benefit of
allowing Team Dem to rummage around in his finances?
By Raúl Ilargi Meijer, editor of Automatic Earth. Originally published at
Automatic Earth
Let's see what shape I can give this. I was reading a piece by Byron York that has the first
good read-out I've seen of the October 29 deposition by Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman,
self-labeled no. 1 Ukraine expert at the National Security Counsel, and I want to share that in
a summarized form, with my comments. There'll be some longer quotes though. And I know there
are people who may not like York, but just skip his opinions and focus on the facts then.
Overall, Vindman comes across to me as a bureaucrat among bureaucrats, who also appears to
be on the edge what we think of when we mention the Deep State. And who seems to think his
views and opinions trump Trump's own. ".. his greatest worry was that if the Trump-Zelensky
conversation were made public, then Ukraine might lose the bipartisan support it currently has
in Congress."
A US President is elected to determine foreign policy, but Vindman doesn't like things that
way. He wants the policy to be set by people like him. It brings to mind Nikki Haley saying
that Tillerson and Kelly wanted her to disobey the President, because they felt they knew
better. That slide is mighty slippery. And unconstitutional too.
And the suspicion that Vindman's report of the call may be what set off "whistleblowing" CIA
agent Eric Ciaramella is more alive after the testimony than before. But, conveniently, his
name may not be spoken. For pete's sake,
Vindman Even Testified He Advised Ukrainians to Ignore Trump .
House Democrats conducted their impeachment interviews in secret, but Lt. Col.
Alexander Vindman still emerged as star of the show. Appearing at his Oct. 29 deposition in
full dress uniform, the decorated Army officer, now a White House National Security Council
Ukraine expert, was the first witness who had actually listened to the phone call between
President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that is at the heart of the
Democratic impeachment campaign. Even though lawmakers were forbidden to discuss his
testimony in public, Vindman's leaked opening statement that "I did not think it was proper
[for Trump] to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen" exploded on news
reports.
Here are four problems with the Vindman testimony:
1) Beyond his opinions, he had few new facts to offer.
[..] Indeed, Vindman attested to the overall accuracy of the rough transcript, contrary to
some impeachment supporters who have suggested the White House is hiding an exact transcript
that would reveal everything Trump said to the Ukrainian president. As one of a half-dozen
White House note-takers listening to the call, Vindman testified that he tried unsuccessfully
to make a few edits to the rough transcript as it was being prepared. In particular, Vindman
believed that Zelensky specifically said the word "Burisma," the corrupt Ukrainian energy
company that hired Hunter Biden, when the rough transcript referred only to "the company."
But beyond that, Vindman had no problems with the transcript, and he specifically said he did
not believe any changes were made with ill intent.
"You don't think there was any malicious intent to specifically not add those edits?"
asked Republican counsel Steve Castor. "I don't think so." "So otherwise, this record is
complete and I think you used the term 'very accurate'?" "Yes," said Vindman. Once Vindman
had vouched for the rough transcript, his testimony mostly concerned his own interpretation
of Trump's words. And that interpretation, as Vindman discovered during questioning, was
itself open to interpretation. Vindman said he was "concerned" about Trump's statements to
Zelensky, so concerned that he reported it to top National Security Council lawyer John
Eisenberg. (Vindman had also reported concerns to Eisenberg two weeks before the
Trump-Zelensky call, after a Ukraine-related meeting that included Gordon Sondland, the U.S.
ambassador to the European Union.)
Vindman said several times that he was not a lawyer and did not know if Trump's words
amounted to a crime but that he felt they were "wrong." That was when Republican Rep. John
Ratcliffe, a former U.S. attorney, tried to get to the root of Vindman's concerns. What was
really bothering him? "I'm trying to find out if you were reporting it because you thought
there was something wrong with respect to policy or there was something wrong with respect to
the law," Ratcliffe said to Vindman. "And what I understand you to say is that you
weren't certain that there was anything improper with respect to the law, but you had
concerns about U.S. policy. Is that a fair characterization?"
"So I would recharacterize it as I thought it was wrong and I was sharing those views,"
Vindman answered. "And I was deeply concerned about the implications for bilateral relations,
U.S. national security interests, in that if this was exposed, it would be seen as a partisan
play by Ukraine. It loses the bipartisan support. And then for -- " "I understand that,"
Ratcliffe said, "but that sounds like a policy reason, not a legal reason." Indeed it
did.
Elsewhere in Vindman's testimony, he repeated that his greatest worry was that if
the Trump-Zelensky conversation were made public, then Ukraine might lose the bipartisan
support it currently has in Congress. That, to Ratcliffe and other Republicans, did not seem
a sufficient reason to report the call to the NSC's top lawyer, nor did it seem the basis to
begin a process leading to impeachment and a charge of presidential high crimes or
misdemeanors.
So Vindman was so concerned that he contacted the National Security Council (NSC) top
lawyer, John Eisenberg. However, when John Ratcliffe asked Vindman: "I'm trying to find out
if you were reporting it because you thought there was something wrong with respect to policy
or there was something wrong with respect to the law.." , it turns out, it was about
policy, not the law. So why did he contact Eisenberg? He doesn't know the difference, or
pretends he doesn't know? Moreover, Eisenberg's not the only person Vindman contacted. There
were lots of others. And remember, this is sensitive material. Vindman was listening in on the
President's phone call with a foreign leader, in itself a strange event. Presidents and PM's
should be able to expect confidentiality.
2) Vindman withheld important information from investigators.
Vindman ended his opening statement in the standard way, by saying, "Now, I would be
happy to answer your questions." As it turned out, that cooperation did not extend to both
parties.
The only news in Vindman's testimony was the fact that he had twice taken his concerns to
Eisenberg. He also told his twin brother, Yevgeny Vindman, who is also an Army lieutenant
colonel and serves as a National Security Council lawyer. He also told another NSC official,
John Erath, and he gave what he characterized as a partial readout of the call to George
Kent, a career State Department official who dealt with Ukraine. That led to an obvious
question: Did Vindman take his concerns to anyone else? Did he discuss the Trump-Zelensky
call with anyone else? It was a reasonable question, and an important one. Republicans asked
it time and time again. Vindman refused to answer, with his lawyer, Michael Volkov, sometimes
belligerently joining in. Through it all, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff
stood firm in favor of keeping his committee in the dark.
[..] Vindman openly conceded that he told other people about the call. The obvious
suspicion from Republicans was that Vindman told the person who became the whistleblower, who
reported the call to the Intelligence Community inspector general, and who, in a carefully
crafted legal document, framed the issue in a way that Democrats have adopted in their drive
to remove the president from office. Vindman addressed the suspicion before anyone raised it.
In his opening statement, he said, "I am not the whistleblower I do not know who the
whistleblower is and I would not feel comfortable to speculate as to the identity of the
whistleblower."
Fine, said Republicans. We won't ask you who the whistleblower is. But if your story is
that you were so concerned by the Trump-Zelensky issue that you reported it to Eisenberg, and
also to others, well, who all did you tell? That is when the GOP hit a brick wall from
Vindman, his lawyer Volkov, and, most importantly, Schiff. As chairman of the Intelligence
Committee, charged with overseeing the intelligence community, Schiff might normally want to
know about any intelligence community involvement in the matter under investigation. But in
the Vindman deposition, Schiff strictly forbade any questions about it. "Can I just caution
again," he said at one point, "not to go into names of people affiliated with the IC in any
way." The purpose of it all was to protect the identity of the whistleblower, who Schiff
incorrectly claimed has "a statutory right to anonymity."
Schiff's role is beyond curious. Sometimes you think he's the boy with his finger in the
dike, mighty fearful that it could break at any moment. But then Vindman's lawyer jumps in as
well:
That left Republicans struggling to figure out what happened. "I'm just trying to
better understand who the universe of people the concerns were expressed to," said Castor.
"Look, the reason we're objecting is not -- we don't want -- my client does not want to be in
the position of being used to identifying the whistleblower, okay?" said Volkov. "And based
on the chair's ruling, as I understand it, [Vindman] is not required to answer any question
that would tend to identify an intelligence officer."
[..] Vindman's basic answer was: I won't tell you because that's a secret. After
several such exchanges, Volkov got tough with lawmakers, suggesting further inquiries might
hurt Vindman's feelings. "Look, he came here," Volkov said. "He came here. He tells you he's
not the whistleblower, okay? He says he feels uncomfortable about it. Try to respect his
feelings at this point." An unidentified voice spoke up. "We're uncomfortable impeaching the
president," it said. "Excuse me. Excuse me," Volkov responded. "If you want to debate it, we
can debate it, but what I'm telling you right now is you have to protect the identity of the
whistleblower. I get that there may be political overtones. You guys go do what you got to
do, but do not put this man in the middle of it."
Castor spoke up. "So how does it out anyone by saying that he had one other conversation
other than the one he had with George Kent?" "Okay," said Volkov. "What I'm telling you right
now is we're not going to answer that question. If the chair wants to hold him in contempt
for protecting the whistleblower, God be with you. You don't need this. You don't need to go
down this. And look, you guys can -- if you want to ask, you can ask -- you can ask questions
about his conversation with Mr. Kent. That's it. We're not answering any others." "The only
conversation that we can speak to Col. Vindman about is his conversation with Ambassador
Kent?" asked Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin. "Correct," said Volkov, "and you've already asked
him questions about it."
"And any other conversation that he had with absolutely anyone else is off limits?" "No,"
said Volkov. "He's told you about his conversations with people in the National Security
Council. What you're asking him to do is talk about conversations outside the National
Security Council. And he's not going to do that. I know where you're going." "No,
actually, you don't," said Zeldin. "Oh, yes, sir," said Volkov. "No, you really don't," said
Zeldin. "You know what?" said Volkov. "I know what you're going to say. I already know
what you're going to do, okay? And I don't want to hear the FOX News questions, okay?"
[..] It should be noted that Volkov was a lawyer, and members of Congress were members
of Congress. The lawyer should not be treating the lawmakers as Volkov did. Volkov was
able to tell Republicans to buzz off only because he had Schiff's full support . And
Republicans never found out who else Vindman discussed the Trump-Zelensky call with.
Looking at this, you get to wonder what the role is of GOP lawmakers, and why anyone would
want to be one. Their peers across the aisle pretend they can tell them exactly what and what
not to do or say. Is that why they are elected? I couldn't find one question or even word in
here that would be labeled unfitting, or out of place, or aggressive or anything like that. But
even then, they hit a brick wall.
So what makes Vindman the expert on Ukraine? I get the idea that it's his compliance with
whatever anyone says is the desired and required policy, and in this case, what is not. He
certainly doesn't appear to know everything. Maybe that's because he left the country at age
three.
3) There were notable gaps in Vindman's knowledge.
Vindman portrayed himself as the man to see on the National Security Council when it
came to issues involving Ukraine. "I'm the director for Ukraine," he testified. "I'm
responsible for Ukraine. I'm the most knowledgeable. I'm the authority for Ukraine for the
National Security Council and the White House." Yet at times there were striking gaps in
Vindman's knowledge of the subject matter. He seemed, for instance, distinctly incurious
about the corruption issues in Ukraine that touched on Joe and Hunter Biden.
Vindman agreed with everyone that Ukraine has a serious corruption problem. But he knew
little specifically about Burisma, the nation's second-largest privately owned energy
company, and even less about Mykola Zlochevsky, the oligarch who runs the firm. "What do you
know about Zlochevsky, the oligarch that controls Burisma?" asked Castor. "I frankly don't
know a huge amount," Vindman said. "Are you aware that he's a former Minister of Ecology"?
Castor asked, referring to a position Zlochevsky allegedly used to steer valuable government
licenses to Burisma. "I'm not," said Vindman.
"Are you aware of any of the investigations the company has been involved with over the
last several years?" "I am aware that Burisma does have questionable business dealings,"
Vindman said. "That's part of the track record, yes." "Okay. And what questionable business
dealings are you aware of?" asked Castor. Vindman said he did not know beyond generalities.
"The general answer is I think they have had questionable business dealings," Vindman
said.
[..] Vindman had other blind spots, as well. One important example concerned U.S.
provision of so-called lethal aid to Ukraine, specifically anti-tank missiles known as
Javelins. The Obama administration famously refused to provide Javelins or other lethal aid
to Ukraine, while the Trump administration reversed that policy, sending a shipment of
missiles in 2018. On the Trump-Zelensky call, the two leaders discussed another shipment in
the future. "Both those parts of the call, the request for investigation of Crowd Strike and
those issues, and the request for investigation of the Bidens, both of those discussions
followed the Ukraine president saying they were ready to buy more Javelins. Is that right?"
asked Schiff.
"Yes," said Vindman. "There was a prior shipment of Javelins to Ukraine, wasn't there?"
said Schiff. "So that was, I believe -- I apologize if the timing is incorrect -- under the
previous administration, there was a -- I'm aware of the transfer of a fairly significant
number of Javelins, yes," Vindman said. Vindman's timing was incorrect. Part of the entire
Trump-Ukraine story is the fact that Trump sent the missiles while Obama did not. The top
Ukraine expert on the National Security Council did not seem to know that.
York goes on to explain just how much of a bureaucrat Vindman is, as exemplified by things
like "..there's a fairly consensus policy within the interagency towards Ukraine," . The
"interagency" doesn't set -foreign- policy, the President does.
4) Vindman was a creature of a bureaucracy that has often opposed President
Trump.
One of his favorite words is "interagency," by which he means the National Security
Council's role in coordinating policy among the State Department, Defense Department, the
Intelligence Community, the Treasury Department, and the White House. [..] He says things
such as, "So I hold at my level sub-PCCs, Deputy Assistant Secretary level. PCCs are my boss,
senior director with Assistant Secretaries. DCs are with the deputy of the National Security
Council with his deputy counterparts within the interagency." He believes the interagency has
set a clear U.S. policy toward Ukraine. "You said in your opening statement, or you indicated
at least, that there's a fairly consensus policy within the interagency towards Ukraine,"
Democratic counsel Daniel Goldman said to Vindman.
"Could you just explain what that consensus policy is, in your own words?" "What I can
tell you is, over the course of certainly my tenure there, since July 2018, the interagency,
as per normal procedures, assembles under the NSPM-4, the National Security Policy [sic]
Memorandum 4, process to coordinate U.S. government policy," Vindman said. "We, over the
course of this past year, probably assembled easily a dozen times, certainly at my level,
which is called a subpolicy coordinating committee -- and that's myself and my counterparts
at the Deputy Assistant Secretary level -- to discuss our views on Ukraine."
The "interagency" doesn't set policy, the President does -and with him perhaps the House and
Senate. But not an alphabet soup of agencies.
I've said it before, and I fear I may have to say it again, this is a show trial. And no,
it's not even a trial, that happens next in the Senate. Jonathan Turley said the other day that
he thinks Nancy Pelosi wants a quick -before Christmas- resolution to the House part, but I'm
not convinced.
The reason is that the Democrats lose the director's chair once this moves to the Senate.
They can't silence the Republicans there the same way Adam Schiff does it in the House. Pelosi
herself said in March that impeachment MUST be a bipartisan effort. It's unclear why she
abandoned that position in August, but I think it could be panic, and that it was the worst
move she could have made.
Because this thing in its present shape is unwinnable. To impeach Trump, the Dems would need
Republican votes. But how could they possibly get those when they lock out the Republicans of
the entire process?
I certainly have no legal expertise & knowledge relating to what it takes to impeach a
president, but it does all strike be as being pretty threadbare & if it it all falls
apart only likely to strengthen Trump's support. I get the feeling that the only truly smart
thing about these people is in their ability to constantly fill their rice bowls &
perhaps we need an extra definition for that word.
Smart :
adj. Having or showing intelligence; bright. synonym: intelligent.
adj. Canny and shrewd in dealings with others.
IMO, I also don't believe that the above applies to gadgets, apps or whatever.
I always think of something similar to your second definition when I hear/read that
someone is smart. It is a subclass of self-serving intelligence. If I put myself in Vindman's
position, what would I do? What would be smart and what would be on the general interest?.
His actions reflect where he feels his obligations belong and it shows clearly he was
"obligued" to the interagency, not to the President. It is not clear to me if he thougth that
the interagency represents, better than the president, the interest of the US or if he was
being smart and thinking of his own career within the interagency.
I might have to disagree with Vindman being labelled 'a bureaucrat among bureaucrats'. I
would judge that his allegiances lay elsewhere and by that I do not mean the dual loyalty to
the Ukraine, even though he appears to be acting in the roll of Kiev's man in Washington. I
suppose that you would say that he is a member of the deep state and the policies that they
formulate with little regard to who is in power. That is the thing about these hearings. The
moment that the Republicans pull at a loose thread of this narrative, the Democrats stomp on
it before it goes any further. But the connections are all there on record and can be
followed up. Here are some examples.
Burisma, who is at the heart of this whole matter, has been giving the Atlantic Council
$100,000 a year for the past three years which is deep state central. You can see their name
in the $100,000 – $249,999 section at https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/support-the-council/honor-roll-of-contributors/
and is just below the British Consulate General Istanbul and two entries above CNN. Burisma
"also reimbursed speaker travel and event costs, which amounted to around [$50,000 to
$70,000] per year." One of the staffers that went there was Thomas Eager who worked for
Schiff's Intelligence Committee, and the group at one point met with Bill Taylor, the top
U.S. diplomat in Ukraine. Bill Taylor is now one of the main witnesses.
If any sort of proper investigations start then it will open up all these people and their
connections and the lucrative payments that they have been receiving from places like
Burisma. Maybe when this case first came up the DNC thought that this was an impeachment case
to die for but they may very well get their wish. It is all there online and it does not take
much to find a very dubious group of people, organizations and companies with it seems the
Atlantic Council acting as some sort of clearing house. Below is just one article talking
about some of this stuff as an example-
Burisma is just one of numerous examples of the payoffs and shady deals that poison the
American political system and disgust citizens. Schiff has been given the impossible task of
trying to defend that against mounting evidence of corruption. How can he or anyone else
rationalize that little gas board activity, or countless others including those benefiting
those people related to elected officials across the aisle.
That defense of the widespread corruption permeating the DC culture is the real subject of
Schiff's fool's errand. When he fails, that will set back whatever good works the Dems have
been trying to accomplish, and undermine what remains of an alleged two-party system. That is
the Hill upon which he has been sent to die.
How can the Party that inflicted Christine Blasey Ford on us and turned a Supreme Court
nomination into a Jerry Springer show demean the institutions of the Republic further into
disrepute? With this going nowhere piece of political theater.
I have a hard time believing that any Lieutenant Colonel could be sufficiently high enough
in the food chain to have any impact on policy. I wonder if people are focusing on him too
much, at the expense of what's really going on here.
This isn't just a matter of the bureaucracy at odds with the President – it's also
Congress. Despite what many people seem to think, the President does not have carte blanche
in the conduct of foreign policy. Congress passed legislation to provide military assistance
to Ukraine. The President does not have the authority to decide on his own on whether to
execute that legislation or not. Unless there are conditions attached to that legislation, or
previously existing, the President cannot attach conditions of his own to that
legislation.
The U.S. system of government, as clearly envisioned by the founders, was set up with the
legislative branch to have more power than either the executive or judicial. Only Congress
can initiate legislation, and if the President vetoes it, Congress has the power to override
that veto. You can argue the merits of providing military assistance to the Ukraine (which I
personally think is a bad idea), but Congress did approve of it in accordance with the
Constitution. Trump withholding that assistance most likely did not. There are a lot of bad
actors on both sides of this controversy, but that doesn't mean that there aren't certain
principles worth defending. In my mind, Congress reasserting itself over the President is an
important enough principle to support impeachment (assuming they make their case). Long term,
such a position could also be used to reign in the blob.
One of the wonderful aspects of Empire is that you get to house all the right-wing exiles
from around the world. Whether it's Batista-ites from Cuba, Curveballs from Iraq, rich,
right-wing "refugees" from Chavismo in South America or Ukrainians like Vindman. They're
happy to use the host country to further a color revolution back home, and the CIA is happy
to use them as cover for another Empire resource grab.
What I find amusing about all this is that there is an influential school of American
political science writing going back to Huntington and Janowitz which shows an almost
paranoid distrust of career military officers and their potential impact on policy, and
advocates their close "control" by civilian political authorities to prevent them influencing
government too much. Now, suddenly, every General who ever led a military coup because they
feared that the government was doing things that were bad for the country will be feeling
retrospectively justified. The position in any democracy is quite clear: the government makes
the decisions in the context of existing laws, including the Constitution. Government
officials, in uniform or not, are not there to substitute their judgement of the interests of
the country for the judgement of the political leadership.
One might even entertain the suspicion that the reason so many keep accusing Trump of
fascism is that they keep flirting with it themselves. That "interagency consensus" thing is
much scarier than Trump and indeed some of his more despicable moves –Venezuela,
Bolivia(?)–may track back to that very source. Some of us have long thought that what
the USG does in Latin America is what they would like to do here if they could get away with
it. The previous Clinton impeachment, Bush v Gore, the media's lockstep approval of
imperialistic militaristic "narratives," the wild, over the top rejection of Trump's defeat
of Hillary–all show a deep contempt for the democratic process by both parties. Letting
military or IC figures opine on policy is part of this. How long before some general tells
Trump he should resign to "restore order"?
These Deep-Staters, who aren't so deep anymore, remind me of those Japanese theatre
stage hands that dress in black and by convention, are invisible to the audience, even though
they move about the stage in plain sight.
They've gradually become more and more visible, what with color revolutions abroad, and
election fraud at home, and finally, one would hope, they are throwing a tantrum, insisting
not only that they are still ' invisible' but that their efforts to pull off regime
change here at home are legitimate.
Which reminds me of a good friend's definition of a politician;
"A politician is a person who would try to steal a red-hot stove with their bare
hands."
Garryowen in Glory, the 7th Cavalry Regiment at Ap Bu Nho
By a quirk of fate, "D" 2/7 Cavalry, was given the chance to demonstrate the plausibility of
Spinoza's despair several weeks later. A Montagnard agent reported that the 141 st
NVA Regiment was temporarily in position just to the west of the Montagnard resettlement
village of Ap (village) Bu Nho about 20 kilometers southwest of Song Be. This village, like
several others in Phuoc Long province, had been created in the course of earlier years of war
and migration throughout Indochina. It was perfectly rectangular, three streets wide and five
hundred feet long with the long axis running east-west, with a dirt road extending to the tar
two lane road connecting Song Be with the south. The Song Be River passed north-south to the
west of the village. There was a roughly circular patch of woods just northwest of the village.
The wood was about one kilometer in diameter. The river ran along the west side of the wood. On
the eastern side of the wood, there was a large open "field" covered with grass nearly hip
high. The field extended along the whole northern side of the village out to the tar road and
beyond. The inhabitants were three or four hundred in number, living in tribal style in long
houses and other small flimsily built shacks. They had originally lived in the area of Camp
Roland in the northeastern corner of PhuocLongProvince, and had moved or been moved to this
site during the First Indochina War. They were S'tiengan people. The agent was one of them and
lived in Bu Nho.
I drove to Landing Zone "Buttons" with this information to visit the command post of the
Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, then operating out of the landing zone. In the underground
facility, I talked to the S-2 (Intelligence Staff Officer) of the battalion. I had been
providing this officer with information for some time. An example had been the information that
led to the BDA mission mentioned above. While we two intelligence officers were discussing the
report, the lieutenant colonel commanding 2/7 Cav entered the command post. He was new, having
arrived in country within the previous month, and having joined the battalion the week before.
In his late thirties, blond, and in his new found dignity, he had a "lean and hungry look." The
S-2 introduced me to him, told him how valuable the detachment's information had been in the
past. The Bn. CO seemed to have a hard time understanding who I was. In talking to me he seemed
to be more interested in "showing off" for his operations staff who had followed him into the
bunker than in listening. The idea of an intelligence officer resident in the province who had
brought him information seemed more than he could handle. After a few minutes, he tired of the
whole thing, and asked to be shown on the map. After a glance, he asked the S-3, another
superior being and soi-disant tactical virtuoso, what "D" Company was doing the next
day. The major said that "D" was in LZ "Buttons" resting and refitting. The CO casually said
"Well, put'em in there at first light." His finger indicated the big, grassy clearing in the
angle between Bu Nho and the round woods to the west. The S-2 looked at me, opened his mouth
and then said nothing.
I thought What the hell! I don't work for this man.. "Colonel," I began, "there is at
least a battalion of the 141 st NVA Regiment in that wood. They are the best troops
in the 7 th NVA Division, which is the best in their army. They have been in that
wood for at least two weeks. They will be ready." The CO was irritated. "That's all right,
Captain," he said. "You are really a captain, aren't you? We'll take it from here. Most of
these reports are untrue. Why, when I was here as an adviser in the Delta, none of the stuff we
got from you people was true." So, the man didn't believe the report and was just
looking for something for "D" Company to do. This was a delicate situation. "I must
protest, sir," I began. "I would be negligent..." "That will be all!" the CO barked. "Good
Day!" The sycophants on the staff bristled in the hope that their master would recognize them
as the good dogs they were.
I drove back to Song Be and called my higher headquarters to tell them that a disaster was
about to occur. The foreseeable reply from 525 th MIG in Saigon was that they would
not attempt to interfere with the exercise of command by a line officer in command of troops in
the field. I then asked for a helicopter to come to Song Be to be at my disposal the next day.
This was agreed. The "Huey" showed up early and I was sitting in the thing at 3,000 feet
listening to the 1 st Cavalry Division when the fire preparation of Ap Bu Nho
commenced.
" They will not grow old, as we who are left grow old,
Age will not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the mornings,
We shall remember them.."
A.E. Housman - inscribed in Washington Archat VMI
First, there was a lot of fire from corps heavy artillery batteries, including the one at
Victor 241 airfield. Then, there were Tacair fighter strikes with bombs and rockets, then there
was a massive fire preparation by armed helicopters, of which the 1 st Cavalry
Division had many. The bombs, shells, and rockets searched the round wood and the big, grassy
field. While the armed helicopters were still working on the patch of forest, the twenty odd
"Huey Slicks", (transports unarmed except for a machine gun on each side), swooped onto the
scene from the east, having picked up "D" Company at LZ "Buttons." Throughout the preparation,
there had not been a shot fired from the area under bombardment. I could hear the Cavalry
Division talking about it on the air. Their opinion was that this would be a "cold" LZ, and
that the enemy were not present. With mixed feelings, I watched the assault unfold. The landing
was in two columns of helicopters, which were perhaps fifty yards apart. There were about ten
helicopters in each column. The cavalry troops scrambled out and headed for the round wood.
The 141 st NVA Infantry Regiment had held its fire throughout the preparatory
bombardment, a remarkable display of fire discipline. Now, as the helicopters lifted in unison,
they opened fire in a roaring, ripping demonstration of just how much firepower a well trained
and disciplined light infantry force can possess. Four "Slicks" were shot down on the LZ. All
four exploded. It was not likely that anyone lived. The fire balls killed a number of "D"
Company men nearby. Several more helicopters were badly damaged and departed smoking. The NVA
had organized the defense of the wood in such a way that interlocking bands of machine gun fire
from log and earth bunkers cris-crossed out in the field. The guns appeared to have been laid
so that the fire was about two to three feet above the ground. The inevitable dips in the
ground (dead space) were filled with the fires of mortars shooting from positions behind the
bunker line. A general in the War Between the States remarked on a similar occasion that "not
even a chicken could live under that fire." It was thus. The NVA were all in the round wood.
The bunkers themselves, as later inspected, were solid with two layers of hardwood logs
separated by a foot of packed earth and with another layer of earth on top. They had firing
embrasures six inches high, were sited for mutual support and were staggered in depth. "D"
Company 2/7 Cavalry was "dead meat" out in that field in the bright sunlight. They could not
move forward and to move back meant rising which was certain death.
The fighters and armed helicopters returned to repeatedly bomb and rocket the woods. Corps
artillery joined in whenever the aircraft left off.. It did not help. 12.7 mm heavy machine
guns and RPG-7 teams engaged the aircraft from within the NVA position. The iron grip of the
141 st NVA held "D" Company fast. Everyone was pinned flat on the LZ, face to the
dirt.
Additional Cavalry troops began to be inserted into the fight. The rest of 2/7 Cav landed to
the east of "D" Company, 1/5 Cav landed north of the round wood, and 2/12 Cav landed to the
west of the Song Be river, west of the round wood. All these insertions were by helicopter.
What they discovered, as they closed on the wood, was that the 141 st had organized
the position for a 360 degree, all around defense. The fire and bunkers were just as solid on
the other sides as on the east. The position was so large and so well put together that it may
well have contained the whole 141 st Regiment. The reinforcements got nowhere. The
only difference between their situations and that of "D" Company was that they were not pinned
down at close quarters. All of these units took substantial losses in this fight.
Wounded from "D" Company crawled toward the eastern side of the clearing, toward the earthen
"dike" that carried the main north-south road. They could be seen with the naked eye from the
air. As some got across the road, Med-evac helicopters (Dustoffs) began landing in the fire
shadow of the road to pick them up. The warrant officer flying the 525 th MIG "Huey"
told me he intended to land to pick up wounded. Altogether, the strange helicopter with the
blue boomerang insignia on the tail boom, made four trips from LZ "Buttons" to Ap Bu Nho
carrying 2/7 Cav's wounded. After a while, the floor of the bird was slippery, and everyone in
back was busy trying to keep some of them alive long enough to deliver them to the medics. The
helicopter took a number of hits.
About four in the afternoon, the CO of 2/7 Cav made a fatal error. He requested a napalm
strike on the round wood. December was the height of the dry season, and the wind was blowing
steadily from the west. This could be seen by the direction that smoke was drifting across the
battlefield. The napalm strike went in, delivered by two F-4s. It may have done some damage to
the NVA, but what it did for certain was to light a grass fire that swept toward the east,
toward "D" Company. The Company now faced an ancient dilemma. My great-grandfather had spoken
of having faced the same problem in the Wilderness in 1864. The choice was to lie prone and
burn or stand and be shot. According to the medics, most preferred to be shot. In the course of
this process, "D" Company's commander, a young captain, who happened to be a Citadel man,
decided he had had enough. With his pockets full of grenades, he crawled as close as possible
to the nearest machine gun bunker, and with half a dozen of his men firing in support he rushed
the bunker throwing grenades, jumped down into the position and killed all within with his
pistol. With this crack in the enemy position, "D" Company moved forward behind him and by
nightfall had broken the outer defense perimeter of the 141 st . They held half a
dozen bunkers. The sun went down. The fight ended. All night long the Cavalry Division moved
forces into the area to finish the 141 st the next morning.
" Good! Whenever you find a real bastard, especially a dumb bastard
make sure you stake'em down, through the heart, through the heart!"
LTC (Ret.) Walter P. Langto his son, June, 1969
"It is not a mercy to tolerate incompetence in officers , think of the poor
men.."
Robert E. Lee , thinking of Bristoe Station
In the morning, the enemy had gone, departed, taking their dead and wounded with them. They
had slipped out through some gap in the surrounding lines and simply vanished. "D" Company was
extracted and mustered at LZ "Buttons" that afternoon. There were 12 men in the ranks. 52
killed and over 70 wounded was the "Butcher's Bill" at Ap Bu Nho. This may have been the worst
single day's bloodletting in the Seventh Cavalry since the Little Big Horn in 1876. There too,
they had been commanded by a fool. At the muster, the company commander, who was unscathed,
stood dry eyed before his remnant while strong men wept, among them, me. I asked the battalion
commander and the S-3 how they spelled their names and left. I would have happily killed them
both with my own hand, and they seemed to know that.
I sent a report of the action disguised as an intelligence report on the performance of the
141 st . It went to every echelon of command above 2/7 Cavalry. Under investigation
by division headquarters, the lieutenant colonel later claimed that the agent's report had been
a "provocation" intended to lure him into an ambush. The Division commander was not deceived.
525 th MIG saw through my subterfuge and I was admonished for responding to the
Operations side's attempt to scapegoat Intelligence for its own failure. This was the first
instance in which I saw this syndrome of the leadership of the intelligence community. I
continued to see it for the rest of my government career." from the memoir of W. Patrick
Lang
This description brings tears to my eyes as well yours in that battle. It graphically
demonstrates the difference between auctoritas and podestas as well as much more. Thank you
for sharing, remembering, and reminding us.
I found the NVA to be a very worthy foe. I learned of the "hold them by the belt buckle"
tactic the hard way. Just south of the DMZ one of our companies stumbled into a Regimental
CP. The Marines were driven back by AK & MG fire. The Marines laid down in the elephant
grass about 50m in front of the forward bunkers while we ran air support "danger close".
After 3 flights of snake & napalm, the company assaulted again just before dark and was
met again with heavy fire. We evacuated our wounded & settled in for the night. When we
moved forward the next morning the scorched bunkers were empty. Trails in the grass showed
that when the Marines pulled back 50m, the NVA had crawled forward about 35m. After observing
a very close air strike, the NVA had crawled back into their buckers & thwarted our
second assault. Discipline & guts.
Booby,
I would say they were desperate. Did whatever they thought would get a edge over the US
troops. Considering the number of casualties they took, they never had a easy life.
desperate ? Think you're living in a parallel universe ... Maybe it's a consolation to you
and It does something for your ego, but not sure it's of any help when analyzing why that war
was lost.
Military medicine got steadily better throughout the 20th Century so the ratio of killed
to wounded became lower and lower. Medevac helicopters and forward surgical hospitals made a
big difference, but the 52 KIA here in tis one company were killed outright on the field of
battle. I do not know how many of the WIA died of their wounds. Remember there were a lot of
casualties in the other units of our encirclement. The NVA had a widely distributed system of
underground hospitals supplied through the Laos/Cambodia corridor (HCM Trail) but they had to
live long enough to be carried to them. I agree with Booby that the NVA were a remarkably
tough and dedicated enemy. pl
BTW, I have looked at this place in Google Earth. The Vietnamese government has built a
widespread network of hydroelectric dams in the highlands since the war. As a result the site
of this combat is buried under a prosperous Vietnamese town. This is one of the few instances
of the outright defeat of US forces in the field in the war, along with the loss of Lang Vei
SF camp and LZ Albany. At Song Be a few miles away there are actual memorials to the
protracted battle in February-March 1969 but not at this place. pl
Just finished watching an hour PBS episode
about James "Maggie" Magellas the most
decorated soldier in the history of the 82nd
Airborne. To paraphrase" How could I send
young 18 and 19 year olds to lead and I stay
in the rear. " A remarkable man for anytime,
he is still alive at 98. That we would have more
like him in all fields of endeavor.
Thank you Colonel. That story really brings it home to me. I was on a somewhat similar
disastrous mission during the 1972 NVA Easter offensive. The NVA had taken Quang Tri City,
and we were inserting South Vietnamese soldiers at key points around the city of Quang Tri to
cut off supplies. Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything about the tactical situation on
this particular mission. I was but a WO1 front seat co-pilot gunner in a Cobra gunship at the
time. On this particular mission, we (about 10 gunships as I recall) were gun cover for a US
Marine insertion of South Vietnamese marines. There were I think about 15 CH-54 Jolly Greens
full of the marines. At that time, because of the SA-7 heat-seekers, we had to fly low level.
We took massive fire beginning at least 8 or 10 klicks out from the LZ, and then the LZ was
hot. The US Marine pilots told us at least half of the troops were dead or wounded from
ground fire before they ever got to the LZ. Two of the Jolly Greens went down. Actually, I
never made it to the LZ. About 3 kicks out my pilot was hit and the command ship directed us
back to the staging area for the pilot to be attended to. His wound turned out to be
superficial and he was ok. Like I said, I don't know anything about the tactical situation,
but surely there must have been an intelligence failure. Either that, or they felt the risk
was worth the prize. They eventually re-took Quang Tri, but it was several months later.
"I was but a WO1 front seat co-pilot gunner in a Cobra gunship at the time."
WO1? Would there be backseat gunners too.
"At that time, because of the SA-7 heat-seekers, we had to fly low level. We took massive
fire beginning at least 8 or 10 klicks out from the LZ, and then the LZ was hot."
My guess at klicks or kicks, which you use later suggests a distance from a battlefield LZ
to an LZ with a slightly longer "life-span" then the battlefield LZ.
Got that completely wrong. Kicks, klicks?
Sounds like a dangerous missing anyway. You have to be low to target MANPAD's or whatever
it was, but this also endangers you heavily.
WO1 = Warrant Officer grade 1. After grade 1 they are called Chief Warrant officers, or
CW-2,3,and 4. 4 is the highest grade. About half the U.S. Army helicopter pilots were warrant
officers, and half commissioned officers. The warrants flew pretty much full time with no
other command duties, other than flight related command duties.
You can fly the Cobra from either seat, but the primary duty of the front seat is to man
the turret weapons. The back seat primary duty is to fly the aircraft and shoot the wing
store weapons which shoot in the same direction that the aircraft is pointing. The wing store
weapons are rockets and/or 20mm gatling gun. The turret weapons are the 6.62 gatling gun and
the 40mm grenade gun. You can shoot any of the weapons from either seat and fly the aircraft
from either seat, but those are the primary duties. The back seat cannot move the turret but
only fire it in the direction of the aircraft.
Its klicks, not kicks. Sorry for the typo. Its just slang for a kilometer.
When flying a few yards above the ground, tree tops, or buildings, it is more difficult
for a heat seeker to lock on to the heat. Of course then one is more vulnerable to small
arms, but they are the lesser of two evils. Our company commander and his crew were lost to
an SA-7 a few weeks prior to that particular mission.
Thanks FND, I realized at one point I may have read this not carefully enough: You really
made it quite clear with your "because of the FA-7 heat-seekers" - BECAUSE
In other words the Jolly Greens in your story above while higher where a good target for
the heat-seekers, while your mission partly was to ideally find and destroy them before they
could hit them. ...
The problem with trying to understand this as a layman is that there is a high chance you
misunderstand details in context.
What a great bird the Cobra was. The Marines didn't get the Cobra until '69.
When I was there (67-68)we had the huey gunships, and I first saw the Cobra being flown by
the 101st whose AO was next to ours in Northern I Corp. I was fortunate to fly it for over
2000 hours in the National Guard but never got to fly it in combat.
Thank you for posting this. Never having been in combat it is humbling to read what others
have endured, and in this as in many other situations having done so under incompetent
leadership.
all,
found this article that described the life of a VC (I think he may have joined to fight the
french ) fighter who joined the fight in 1950s and fought until the end.
Although the article has been written with a sense of humor in mind, I thought it was a
worthy read.
Indeed interesting, Aka. But strictly no surprise. ...
I encountered the same respect as Pat's shows here for his "battle counterpart", for loss
of a better term, among war correspondents for the ones killed reporting for the other side.
...
FND's comment above triggered memories of their stories and images combined with Pat's
story.
Were Jolly Green's the type of helicopters that did not only carry materials but also
journalists occasionally?
I may be mistaken but that was my basic google impression while looking into military
terms.
Yes, thanks, now I see something FND mentioned above. Although it leaves me at an odd as to
why it makes sense to be able to fly the type of helicopters he flew from both the front and
back-seat. Supposing the design was somewhat meant to help the crew.
Apparently, when I saw some photos years ago my attention was somewhere else. Or it wasn't
the focus of the image. And I cannot ask Horst anymore. Seems bigger then the one I had in
mind, anyway.
A "click" is US Army slang for a kilometer. A "WO1" is a warrant officer. That is a rank
between the enlisted ranks and the commissioned officers, lieutenants and up. The US Army and
US Marine Corps have warrant officer pilots as well as commissioned officer pilots. These
last are normally the commanders. "LZ" means "Landing Zone." This is the place where the
south Vietnamese Marines in this story were to be landed. pl
I looked up LZ. But I understand that LZ could have both a longer existence, or exist for
a slightly longer time then a single LZ for a specific battle. In which case the first type
of LZ would be the starting base? Like LZ "Buttons"?
More specifically were only "2/5 Cav" based at "Buttons" and the others were "inserted
(?)/were brought in" later, as support? Or was the whole 5 cav, I understand, located
there?
In the late '60's a Marine LtCol., William Corson, published a book "The Betrayal"
criticizing US strategy & tactics in VN. In the final chapter he hypothesized that the
Soviet Union could dramatically change the helicopter war in VN any time they wished by
giving the NVA the Strela shoulder fired AA missile. In the Easter Offensive, the Soviets
played that card. Helo & OV-10 losses in the Quang Tri area were devastating & forced
an immediate change of helo tactics. Fly low or die. It took us a decade to develop effective
counter-measures to these missiles.
Years later I had a SNCO who worked for me who had crewed a CH-46 inserting VN Marines
along the coast north of Quang Tri during '72. The LZ brief warned of a "dead" NVA tank in
the LZ. As his AC landed beside the "dead" tank, he saw the turret turn & he was looking
down the barrel. The tank fired; but, either it was too close to the helo or the thin
aluminum skin of the helo didn't activate the fuse & the round went through his AC as a
solid shot.
The SA-7s were indeed deadly. We would rather take our chances flying ground level. The guy
whose helicopter took the tank round is very lucky. I'm glad he and the others made it.
William Corson a very interesting person and I met him long after RVN days.
I had a 10 week course at Ft.Bliss on the REDEYE MANPAD after completing OCS and all my
classmates could do was think about these in the context of AirCav units.
I was in VN in '72 and remember the advent of the SA-7. as an immediate expedient defense
we threw thermite grenades out the doors when we saw one fired. I don't know if that worked
well, but I am still here. I also remember seeing an NVA team fir an RPG at a Cobra. The
missile did not arm and went right through the boom. pl
They also put what we called toilet bowles on the engine exhaust to direct the exhaust up to
the rotors so that the heat would be dispersed, but I don't think it worked that well.
In the largely helicopter transported war an LZ could be either a semi-permanent base for
aircraft as well as a convenient place where troops could be billeted and supplied or the
place where troops would be landed by air in a single operation as in the Quang Tri story. LZ
Buttons was named for some officer's girl friend. I think she was a Red Cross girl in Saigon.
2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment just happened to be based at LZ Buttons just then. During
the VN period US Army infantry and cavalry fighting as infantry were organized by battalions.
The regiment, as in this case, 5th Cavalry, only existed as a tradition. Armored Cavalry
sxisted as a whole regiment and the 11th Cavalry in VN (the Black Horse) were a formidable
group. The US Marines, who, I am sure you know are not part of the Army still had regimental
formations. pl
One lucky Cobra crew. Usually when a helo & an RPG met, it was catastrophic for the
helo. I hated being shot at with RPG's because the projectile moved slow enough that you
could see them coming. Time moves real slowly when you see one coming. I've had them pass
through my rotor disc & still don't understand how the projectile could make it through
without hitting or being hit by a rotor blade.
A CH-46 from my squadron became a part of Marine Corps history after being hit by an RPG
on Mutter's Ridge, just below the DMZ. The climax of the novel "Matterhorn" was based on this
incident. A Company was assaulting a hill that was an abandoned Marine LZ. The NVA were
fighting from the old Marine bunkers. The CH-46 was departing a neighboring hill with
Medevacs when it was hit in the aft pylon by an RPG & burst into flames. The pilot saw a
LZ directly below him & shot an emergency landing. The pilot was unaware that the NVA
held the hill & the Marines were assaulting the hill & engaged in close combat. The
NVA were startled by a flaming CH-46 crashing on them & their defense was disrupted. Some
NVA climbed aboard the burning helo & were trying to take the 50 caliber machine guns.
There was a gunfight between the crew & the NVA in the cabin of the helo. The Marines won
& the NVA abandoned the hill. The Grunts gave our squadron credit for capturing the hill
- a 1st & only in Marine Corps history.
Rumor was that it had to do with the woman's anatomy. I don't know. I didn't know her. At
Dien Bien Phu the French strongpoints were all named for De Castries' mistresses. Isabelle,
etc. V- 241 was a Japanese built airfield from WW2. pl
My oldest uncle was at Dien Bien Phu with "8e bataillon parachutiste de choc". He was one of
the few men in his unit to have survived the battle. I flew back with him to DBP in 2004 and
we visited the battlefield with an former viet Minh vet as a tour guide.
my uncle and him had fought against each other some 50 years earlier, in muddy trenches,
using grenades, flame throwers and bayonets and there they were, two old men, talking to each
other in broken french and broken Vietnamese, remembering those who had not been worn down by
age.
The Vietnamese were very gracious hosts to us, and my uncle had no hard feelings against
them. However, he never forgave the French army generals who had designed the battle plan,
totally underestimating the viet Minh. It is something he has passed onto me and its been
quite useful a reminder sometimes.
Thx for this piece PL !
Patrick's comment reminds me of my limits not only concerning the military but also
suggested by Patrick's comment below: the larger historical context during and after WWII in
which Viet Minh via Ho Chi Ming mutated into Viet Cong. ;)
P.L. and ALL: It has taken sometime for me to formulate a comment to this post and thread.
Why? First because it gives important insights that anyone in the US Army today of any rank
might learn from. Second, while I never served in RVN by spring summer 1968 Artillery OCS at
Ft. Sill was totally dedicated to furnishing officers for the war in RVN. 8 of the 110 in my
graduating class did not serve in RVN. I was one of the eight.
But two things stick in my mind from OCS. The first how to help create a firebase for an
artillery unit. And second how to defend an artillery firebase from ground assault.
Yes, realism had cretp into artillery by summer 1968 and no more emphasis on stopping Soviet
tank armies in northern Europe. 3 members of my OCS class were in firing batteries overrun by
NVA. I believe the two that survived both recieved Silver Stars. One of the survivors after
spiking guns survived by E&E. The other succeeded in defending his battery.
Receiving my draft notice on June 12th, having been married June 10th [and graduated from
Law School June 7th] I realized that despite two years of AFROTC and with rejections from
both the Navy and Air Force in hand over winter 1966-67 for reasons of vision I realized that
not being a Kennedy Father I was destined for RVN in one form or another. So I started
reading: first any Bernard Fall book or article I could get my hands on. Second, because the
Combat Arms were open to me through OCS [Army JAG was giving priority to those who signed up
for the longest service --often up to 10 years (and they almost all served in RVN] it seemed
wise to be in shape and learn how to survive. So before reporting on September 10th, 1967, to
Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri for Basic I read all of S.L.A Marshall's studies of combat in Viet
Nam. Reading some French I stumbled through the travails of the PARA against the Viet Minh. I
also read some biographies of Uncle HO!
THIS POST AND THREAD SHOULD BE POINTED OUT TO DoD leadership AS TO WHY THIS BLOG SHOULD BE
AVAILABLE TO ALL THROUGH its servers.
More later!
BTW there is a move on to ban flechette arty rounds under International Law!
It wasn't our battalion, but we lay alongside it,
So the story is as true as the telling is frank.
They hadn't one Line-officer left, after Arras,
Except a batty major and the Colonel, who drank.
'B' Company Commander was fresh from the Depot,
An expert on gas drill, otherwise a dud;
So Sergeant-Major Money carried on, as instructed,
And that's where the swaddies began to sweat blood.
His Old Army humour was so well-spiced and hearty
That one poor sod shot himself, and one lost his wits;
But discipline's maintained, and back in rest-billets
The Colonel congratulates 'B' Company on their kits.
The subalterns went easy, as was only natural
With a terror like Money driving the machine,
Till finally two Welshmen, butties from the Rhondda,
Bayoneted their bugbear in a field-canteen.
Well, we couldn't blame the officers, they relied on Money;
We couldn't blame the pitboys, their courage was grand;
Or, least of all, blame Money, an old stiff surviving
In a New (bloody) Army he couldn't understand.
Thank you for sharing this riveting excerpt from your memoir. Is this body of work to be
published by any chance? I for one would be grateful for the opportunity to read more of such
a fascinating life.
Brings back a lot of memories. In 1968 I was a senior in high school reading about the
marines at Khe Sahn. In 70-71 I was up on the DMZ with the 1st Bde, 5th Mech that had
replaced the 3rd Marine Division. Spent the first six months at Con Thien, Charlie 4, Dong
Ha, Quang Tri, patrols in the DMZ. Then got promoted to the General's security platoon just
in time to go west when the Vietnamese went into Laos. Got to visit Lang Vei, Khe Sanh, Camp
Carrol, all those places I had read about in high School.
Back in the states in 1972 in college reading again about Vietnam. How the PVA (I think
they prefer that to NVA) had come across the DMZ and captured the provincial capital of Quang
Tri. Went to visit the Traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall today. Didn't last 3 minutes.
This is how the Iraq vets must feel when they read about Ramadi, Fallujah, etc. Shades of
Manstein- Lost Victories?
We had a butter bar who continuously violated procedure by going out on the road before it
was swept in the morning. One day he took off with his driver and another EM, they hit a mine
and all died. Years later the Lt's brother found me via an internet site. His brother's
college fraternity was going to do a memorial tribute and he wanted to know what I knew. I
saw no value in telling him what really happened so I didn't. Nothing like this account but
it sticks with you.
Let me see. Bad judgment, trouble concentrating, impulsive, reckless, hot-tempered. I'd
say there was no telling how many American soldiers that battalion commander would have
gotten killed and maimed for no good reason on his way to the rank of colonel.
But he was stopped.
Another thought about your account: Somebody had to provide evidence that the Montagnard
agent had not given deliberately misleading intelligence -- that on the contrary he'd warned
that the enemy had been dug in for two weeks, a clear indication they were well-prepared for
an assault. So although you were admonished by 525th MIG, your subterfuge would have allowed
the operational upper echelon to include your report in their investigation. That might have
been the only way they could have nailed the CO, given his blame-shifting.
From my reading of an article by Thomas Ricks ("General Failure"), by the Vietnam War the
emphasis on accountability in the U.S. military was being replaced by careerism. So that CO
might have gotten away with it, if you had not filed a report.
In the ABN fight a cobra expended its load at the bunkers and then turned to leave. An NVA
RPG team standing on a bunker roof shot it through the boom. the rocket did not arm (too
close maybe?) and the Cobra staggered away heading for LZ Buttons. pl
I've heard a lot of stories like that. To be made of aluminum sheeting and rivets those birds
were amazingly resilient. I wasn't quite so lucky, the same thing happened to me but the shot
severed the tail rotor and we came crashing down. Fortunately there was no fire and no one
was seriously injured. After we were picked up a flight of F-4s naped the wreckage to prevent
the NVA from salvaging anything useful.
I've read this at least four times and still find it riveting. Think your memoirs should be
published.
I worked with a locomotive engineer who took a 50 caliber in the leg as a helicopter pilot
in VN. Don't know where or when. He was good natured and one of the best hogheads I worked
with.
FWIW this same Battalion (2/7 Cav) lost 155 KIA at LZ Albany in 1965. I became old at Ap
Bu Nho although there were worse fights. In my second tour I was often given the additional
job of recruiting NVA officers for our side from the RVN National Interrogation Center. I was
quite good at this. They were old soldiers like me pl
To the Col.
I was always amazed at the "Kit Carson Scouts with our Bn. They often walked point for us.
I'll always remember a platoon passing thru our position in the northern end of the Ashau
Valley. The 1st "Marine" thru the wire was a Kit Carson on point. It had been a long, hard
patrol. He approached me, threw down his NVA pack, looked me in the eye & smiled before
saying, "Maline Corps number 10 G**Damned Thou." A bitching Marine is a happy Marine.
I thought I remembered for many years that the Bn involved was 2/5 Cav but a historian
researching my time in VN proved to me that the unit was actually 2/7 Cav.
And I was spared to tell the tale. I must honor the dead of both sides. I remember seeing
a two man NVA RPG team mount the roof of a bunker to duel with a Cobra at a hundred yards or
so. Bullets from the Cobra's Gatling gun kicked up dust all around them They stood solidly
until they fired a round that wounded the Cobra. Foemen worthy of our steel.
If anything good can come from the Democrat's incessant efforts to impeach Donald Trump it will be the outgrowth, from the nurturing
'mother of necessity,' of a more inclusive political system that acknowledges more than just a compromised duopoly as the voice of
the American people.
With complete disregard for the consequences of their actions, the Democrat House Intelligence Committee under Adam Schiff has
abandoned all pretense of democratic procedure in their effort to remove the 45th President of the United States from office.
Indeed, the Democrats have provided the Republicans with a Machiavellian crash course on the subtle art of decadent behavior for
getting what you want , which of course is ultimate political power, and to hell in a proverbial hand basket with the consequences.
The Republicans have been snoozing through a game of 2D checkers, holding out hope that Sheriff Billy Barr and his deputy John Durham
will
round
up the real criminals, while the Democrats have been playing mortal combat.
The dark prince in this Gothic tale of diabolical, dare I say biblical, proportions is none other than Adam 'Shifty' Schiff, who,
like Dracula in his castle dungeon, has contorted every House rule to fit the square peg of a Trump telephone call into the bolt
hole of a full-blown impeachment proceeding. Niccolò Machiavelli would have been proud of his modern-day protégé.
As if to mock the very notion of Democratic due process, whatever that means, Schiff and his torch-carrying lynch mob took their
deliberations down into the dank basement, yes, the basement, of the US Capital where they have been holding secretive depositions
in an effort to get some new twist on the now famous phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky back in June. But
why all the cloak and dagger theatrics when the transcript has long been available for public consumption?
At one point, the frazzled Republicans bared a little backbone against this bunker mentality when they
crashed the basement meetings for some really outstanding optics. Schiff, betraying a lack of foresight, could not defenestrate
the well-dressed hooligans since the meetings, as mentioned, are being held inside of a windowless dungeon. The Republican troublemakers
were ushered back up the stairs instead.
Considering what Prince Schiff has managed to pull off over the course of this not-made for television impeachment process is
astounding, and could not have happened without the drooling complicity of the lapdog media corporations. Schiff got the ball bouncing
when he performed a Saturday Night Live skit of the Trump-Zelensky phone call on the hallowed floor of Congress. The imaginary voices
in Schiff's head made the president sound like a mafia boss speaking to one of his lackeys.
Not only did Schiff survive that stunt, it was revealed that he blatantly lied, not once but several times, about his affiliation
with the White House insider, reportedly a CIA officer, who, without ever hearing the Trump-Zelensky phone call firsthand, blew the
whistle anyways. The Democrats claim Trump was looking for some 'quid pro quo' with Kiev, which would dig up the dirt on Joe Biden
and his son Hunter in exchange for the release of $400 million in military aid. The transcript, however, points to no such coercion,
while Zelensky himself denies that he was pressured by Trump.
Meanwhile, Schiff has taken great efforts to keep the identity of the whistleblower a 'secret' out of "safety concerns." The Republicans
in the House said they will subpoena the whistleblower for the public impeachment that starts next week, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio)
told reporters. Yet Schiff has awarded himself the power to reject any witnesses the Republicans may wish to grill.
"We'll see if he gives us any of our witnesses," Jordan said.
A person need not feel any particular fondness for Donald Trump to find these circumstances surrounding the impeachment show trial
as disgraceful, dishonorable and beneath the dignity of the American people. And whether they want it or not, the fallout from Schiff's
shenanigans will have repercussions long into the future of the US political system, which is groaning under the weight of corruption
and deceit.
It is doubtful the Republicans will soon forgive and forget what the Democrats have put them through ever since Trump entered
office in 2016. From Russiagate to Ukrainegate, the Trump White House has been held hostage by a non-stop, media-endorsed hate campaign
to oust a democratically elected POTUS. Although it would be difficult for the Republicans, who lack the support of the media, an
overwhelmingly left-leaning propaganda machine, to exact an equal amount of revenge on the Democrats when the latter have one of
their own in the White House, they will certainly try. This will lead the Republic into an inescapable vortex of infighting where
the sole function of the political system will be based on that of vengeance and 'pay backs' and more waste of time and money as
the parties investigate the crimes of the other side.
The public, which is slowly awakening to the problem, will ultimately demand new leadership to break the current two-party internecine
struggle. Thus, talk of a civil war in the United States, while possible, is being overplayed. The truth will be much simpler and
far less violent.
Out of the dust and ashes of the defunct duopoly that is now at war with itself, the American people will soon demand fresh political
blood in Washington and this will bring to the forefront capable political forces that are committed to the primary purpose of politics:
representing the needs of the people, once again. Tags Politics
As it turns out the once apathetic and flustered American woke up pissed off, in large numbers I might add. They sensed that
someone was starting to mess with their happy blind relationship to the materialistic free market American dream. In other words,
they are broke for the most part or are working like a beast to stay even. I get it.
"Apathy does not make us stupid. On the contrary, a great deal of energy is used to offset the world and hibernate in an
apathetic state of existence. Apathy requires an acute awareness of the obvious. It is what drives some to having a broken "give
a damn". Many can only cope with the influence of the pressure of reality by excusing themselves from it and gathering in flocks
for comfort. They yearn for a sheep dog."
And now they are awake, angry and wanting revenge against whomever shattered their illusion of American integrity. In most
respects some have herded together and really are angry political mobs.
So why hasn't Graham started a senate investigation into this whole Ukrainian affair? Why hasn't he called all of Adam Schiff's
witnesses into one of his own investigations of this thing and gotten the truth out of them under penalty of perjury should they
not come clean?
Republicans are as usual cowering in the corner hoping this will all pass by without harming their re-election chances. There
are precious few that really care and the bug eyed liar has them shut down totally. If they were playing chess, the Dems would
have the Republicans in a constant state of Check (thanks to the unwavering support of their media lap dogs). The Republicans
would be sitting at the table hoping time would run out while wetting their pants in fear that they would be discovered to be
the weak kneed mamas boys in suits who just had their lunch money stolen AGAIN by the big bad Dem boys & girls.
The Democratic Socialists will absorb the butthurt left, and Pelosi, Waters, Schiff and the rest will die naturally soon enough.
This is a result of Democrats' identity politics, and radicalizing of the left.
The Republicans will likely move farther right. Both parties will continue to spend too much - just on different causes. But
when the DS get rolling, probably with someone like AOC at the helm, it will be Kristallnacht all over again.
Except this time it will be Christians and conservatives.
I would say that a 3rd and 4th party are not only inevitable but the next organic evolution of party. This will help explain
why --> The Altered States
of America.
If there is one thing that truly illustrates the psychotic break with reality the Democrats, DC Deep State Establishment, and
their *useless* idiots in the MSM have suffered, it has to be the bizarre situation with the identity of the *whistleblower* that
EVERYONE on the planet knows but that somehow THEY think they have kept *secret*.
Cue the Twilight Zone music, America, because THAT takes a special kind of crazy! Lol! 25th Amendment for every Democrat in
the House??
On top of THAT craziness, Sen. Lindsay Graham has made it clear to Dems that if ERIC C*a*Amella (You literally cannot post
comments with his name! Hysterical! lol) does not publicly testify, their show trial is DOA in the Senate. So I hope they have
fun with their impeachment coup to nowhere as ERIC C*A*a*ell* sits like some bloated political elephant in the room for the next
two weeks!
On the upside, it will be loads of fun watching a bunch of crazy people have their mental breakdown on national T.V. so, by
all means, Dems, PLEASE carry on!
The political system is dead. You cannot run this freak show before people in the age of Internet. Most of deplorables are
more online savvy than their ruling political class.
Schiff has connections to sex trafficking and pedophilia. He has a lot to do with well know activities in the Standard Hotel
(west Pedowood) involving minors and powerful people in that filthy city which include politicians and business people. You easily
start with Ed Buck which the media has buried quickly.
This is an excellent example of Orwellian cognitive dissonance.
Everyone knows that almost all, if not all, politicians are bought off to the highest bidder.
Everyone knows that the people who control the money system have the most money.
But very few will logically assemble those two data points and conclude what exists in reality - that the Money Power Monopolists
CONTROL BOTH PARTIES!
Schitt and his cult of DemonRats represents the darkest elements of society. So without writing a long list you already know,
here's what you should prepare yourself for.
Buy guns, ammo, cameras and survival supplies to last a few months.
Civil War 2.0 is coming.
We didn't start this war, but we sure as hell will finish it.
The time has come to take this country back from an elite permanent political class who doesn't give a damn about you, your
family, your future.
Lock and load, the San Fransicko **** has already hit the fan.
The public is in a mood to vote out RINO Republicans and most Democrats, and vote in MAGA Republicans. The Democrats will all
but disappear from sight for awhile. After they reorganize and dump their radicals and after their corrupt ones go to jail, and
after the MSM completely falls apart -- they will then come back, but probably not till 2024 or 2026
The two party political system was never much of a democratic system at all. It's been with us since 1854, and has polarized
the country more than once, the first time being the Civil War. In 2003, the MIT professor Noam Chomsky said, "In the US, there
is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different
but carry out variations on the same policies".
The two party system should be ended, and the Voter Access laws be repealed, and Gerrymandering districts be prohibited. Even
your own vote means nothing, since it is only designed to ratify a selection someone else made for you. The only selection you
can make is choosing personalities, but never on issues or money. You are never allowed to be a participant in the American political
system, but rather, just a "consumer". Why? Because the American society is ruled by an Oligarchy! Why would they want to allow
you to share power with them? None of this is what is practiced in a true democracy. The entire system needs to undergo some major
changes.
"... Peter Strzok was interviewed on 19 July 2017 by the FBI and, according to his affidavit, pretended that he was asked on the 24th of January 2017 to interview General Flynn. He implied this was a last minute request. But as noted in the preceding paragraph, which is based on an interview of Strzok's mistress, Lisa Page, a meeting took place the day before to orchestrate the ambush of General Flynn. ..."
"... What is truly remarkable is that Peter Strzok stated the following, which exonerates Flynn of the charges in the indictment cited above: Strzok and Pientka both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying. Flynn struck Strzok as "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated." ..."
"... In fact, as noted by Sidney Powell, "the FBI and DOJ wrote an internal memo dated January 30, 2017, exonerating Mr. Flynn of acting as an "agent of Russia;" and, they all knew there was no Logan Act violation." ..."
"... The real problem for the Government's fraudulent case against Flynn are the 302s. There should only be one 302. Not at least four versions. The FBI protocol is to enter the 302 into the FBI Sentinel system within five days of the interview. In other words, the original 302 should have been put on the record on the 29th of January. But that original 302 is MISSING. The prosecutors claim they cannot find it. ..."
"... But the prosecutors finally did provide the defense, after repeated requests, multiple copies of 302s. They dated as follows--10 February 2017, 11 February 2017. 14 February 2017 and 15 February 2017. WTF??? This alone is prima facie evidence that something crooked was afoot. ..."
"... The final 302--dated 15 February 2017--painted General Flynn in the worst possible light. The "facts" of this 302 are not supported by the notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka. The conclusion is simple--the FBI fabricated a case against General Flynn. We now wait to see if Judge Sullivan will acknowledge this crooked conduct and exonerate the good General. Justice demands it. ..."
"... Poor George Popadopoulos, also "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated.", also had lawyers who rolled over to the FBI. If you read George's book, "Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump", the methods used on Flynn sound familiar. ..."
"... If the evidence provided by the defence in the Flynn case is even only a partial example of the capabilities and proclivities of the FBI, then how many other poor schmucks have been convicted and jailed unjustly at the hands of this organisation? ..."
"... The answer, given the size of the organisation must be : "thousands". The remedy is obvious and compelling if you want to remain something like a first world democracy. ..."
"... So instead of Flynn burning the agency down, they did just the opposite and got to him first. Just like Sen Schumer warned Trump: don't take on the IC, because they have six ways against Sunday to take you down. ..."
"... Maybe Flynn' s alleged post-inauguration audit plans is what triggered Brennan to get Obama to secretly keep his eyes on Flynn - maybe that was the second tier secret access they wanted, not necessarily Trump himself? ..."
"... Survival in DC is existential - my own in-house observation during the Watergate years. ..."
"... However, IMO the far more telling issue of the depths of IC's Coup effort. Are the exploits of Halper, Mifsud, MI6-CIA link. Which began back in 2015. This gives the impression, Flynn was being targeted for career destruction. Solely as retaliation for his departure from the Obama Administration, coupled with Flynn's open opposition to policies of Obama-Brennan (Iran-Syria-Libya). This took place way before he agreed to the NSA post with President Trump. ..."
"... Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for violating US security CFRs by knowing such conversations took place and knowing the contents thereof with out appropriate security clearances?? ..."
"... Many things about Spygate have puzzled me. The response by Trump after becoming POTUS to all the machinations by Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rosenstein, et al has been baffling. It is like he does not understand the powers of his office. And after he learned about the covert action action against his campaign and him, to then staff his administration with folks who were in cahoots with the putschists is frankly bizarre. ..."
"... ........ "CrowdStrike, the cyber-security company that is involved in all this over and over again, is a an American company founded by a Ukrainian, Dmitri Alperovitch, who is extremely anti-Russia and who delights in implicating Russia in the DNC hacking event that probably did not happen......" ..."
Sidney Powell, General Michael Flynn's magnificent lawyer, is in the process of destroying
the bogus case that Robert Mueller and his gang of legal thugs tried to sneak past appropriate
judicial review. To help you understand what she is doing we must first go back and review the
indictment of Flynn and then look at what Ms. Powell, aka Honey Badger, has forced the
prosecutors to admit.
Here are the nuts and bolts of the indictment
On or about January 24, 2017, defendant MICHAEL T. FLYNN did willfully and knowingly make
materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and representations . . . to agents of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation that:
(i) On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Government of Russia's Ambassador
to the United States ("Russian Ambassador") to refrain from escalating the situation in
response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day; and
FLYNN did not recall the Russian Ambassador subsequently telling him that Russia had chosen to
moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request.
(ii) On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the
vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution; and that the Russian
Ambassador subsequently never described_to FLYNN Russia's response to his request.
Let me make a couple of observations before we dig into the notes and the 302 that FBI
Agents Strzok and Pientka wrote up during and following their interview of Michael Flynn on
January 24, 2017. First, Michael Flynn did nothing wrong or inappropriate in speaking to
Russia's Ambassador Kislyak. He was doing his job as an incoming National Security Advisor to
President Trump. Second, not "recalling" what Ambassador Kislyak said (or did not say) on 22
December is not lying. Third, even if Flynn did ask the Russian Ambassador on the 29th of
December to "refrain from escalating the situation" in response to the U.S. sanctions imposed
by Barack Hussein Obama, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that is wise counsel
intended to defuse a situation.
Now, here is where the FBI, especially Agents Strzok and Pientka, are in so much trouble.
The day prior to the "interview" of General Flynn the FBI plotters met to discuss strategy.
According to Sidney Powell:
January 23, the day before the interview, the upper echelon of the FBI met to orchestrate it
all. Deputy Director McCabe, General Counsel James Baker, , Lisa Page, Strzok, David Bowdich,
Trish Anderson, and Jen Boone strategized to talk with Mr. Flynn in such a way as to keep from
alerting him from understanding that he was being interviewed in a criminal investigation of
which he was the target. (Ex.12). Knowing they had no basis for an investigation,6 they
deliberately decided not to notify DOJ for fear DOJ officials would follow protocol and notify
White House Counsel.
Peter Strzok was interviewed on 19 July 2017 by the FBI and, according to his affidavit,
pretended that he was asked on the 24th of January 2017 to interview General Flynn. He implied
this was a last minute request. But as noted in the preceding paragraph, which is based on an
interview of Strzok's mistress, Lisa Page, a meeting took place the day before to orchestrate
the ambush of General Flynn.
What is truly remarkable is that Peter Strzok stated the following, which exonerates Flynn
of the charges in the indictment cited above: Strzok and Pientka both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not
think he was lying. Flynn struck Strzok as "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated."
The fact that the FBI Agents Strzok and Pientka did not to show General Flynn the transcript
of his calls to refresh his recollection, nor did they confront him directly if he did not
remember, exposes this plot as a contrived scenario to entrap Michael Flynn rather than a
legitimate, legally founded investigation.
In fact, as noted by Sidney Powell, "the FBI and DOJ wrote an internal memo dated January
30, 2017, exonerating Mr. Flynn of acting as an "agent of Russia;" and, they all knew there was
no Logan Act violation."
The notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka during their interview of Michael Flynn are
damning for the FBI. These notes are Exhibits 9 and 10 in the sur sureply filed by Sidney
Powell on 1 November 2019. (I wrote recently on the fact that the FBI/DOJ mislabeled the notes
from this interview--see here). Neither Strzok nor Pientka recorded any observation that Flynn
lied about his contacts with Kislyak. Neither wrote down anything supporting the indictment by
the Mueller crowd that "Flynn lied." To the contrary, Strzok swore under oath that he did not
believe Flynn was lying.
The real problem for the Government's fraudulent case against Flynn are the 302s. There
should only be one 302. Not at least four versions. The FBI protocol is to enter the 302 into
the FBI Sentinel system within five days of the interview. In other words, the original 302
should have been put on the record on the 29th of January. But that original 302 is MISSING.
The prosecutors claim they cannot find it.
But the prosecutors finally did provide the defense, after repeated requests, multiple
copies of 302s. They dated as follows--10 February 2017, 11 February 2017. 14 February 2017 and
15 February 2017. WTF??? This alone is prima facie evidence that something crooked was
afoot.
The final 302--dated 15 February 2017--painted General Flynn in the worst possible light.
The "facts" of this 302 are not supported by the notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka. The
conclusion is simple--the FBI fabricated a case against General Flynn. We now wait to see if
Judge Sullivan will acknowledge this crooked conduct and exonerate the good General. Justice
demands it.
These are not my facts. They are the facts based on documents submitted on the record to
Judge Sullivan. I find it shocking that no journalist has had the energy or interest to cover
this. Just one more reminder of the putrid state of journalism and investigative reporting. The
charges levied against General Flynn by the Mueller prosecutors are without foundation. That is
the stark conclusion facing any honest reader of the documents/exhibits uncovered by the Honey
Badger. This kind of conduct by the FBI is just one more proof to support Colonel Lang's wise
observation that this institution, along with the CIA, should be burned to the ground and new
institutions erected in their stead that are committed to upholding the Constitution and
preserving the rights of the individual.
General Flynn was the National Security Advisor to the President. Among his duties he would
be expected to talk with foreign officials, including Russians, perhaps especially Russians.
My question is what was the predicating evidence that gave rise to opening a criminal case
with Flynn as the subject at all. What was the substantive violation; and why was there a
need to convene a meeting of high level Bureau official to discuss an ambush interview. What
was there to talk about in this meeting? My suspicion is that they expected, or hoped, at the
outset to leverage Flynn against Trump which makes the scheme worse, much worse
Re: predicate - IIRC, this is where the work of the FBI/CIA "ratfucker" Stefan Halper was
instrumental, having propagated the bogus claim that scholar Svetlana Lokhova was a Russian
agent with whom Gen. Flynn was having a sexual relationship.
There was a simpler time when even the least accomplished FBI Agent would have known enough
to ask Mr Halper for the circumstantial details as to how he acquired the news that Flynn had
any relationship at all with Lokhova, let alone a sexual relationship, who told him, how did
he know, why was he telling him, when, etc. The same questions should have been resolved with
respect to Lokhova before entertaining a conclusion that she was a Russian Agent of some
sort. Finally, even if the allegation against Flynn had been true, which had not been
established, and the allegation against Lokhova had been true, which as far as I know had not
been established, the Agents should have laid those cards before Flynn from the outset as the
reason he was being interviewed. If during the course of the interview he became suspect of
having done something illegal, he should have been told what it was and given all his rights,
including the right to an attorney. If the Agents suspected he was lying in matters of such
significant import that he would be charged for lying, they should have been given a specific
warning that lying was a prosecutable offense. That would have been playing it down the
middle. Since none of this appears to have been done, the question is why not. The leading
suspicion is that the carefully considered intent was to take down Flynn by any means
necessary to advance another purpose.
There are two separate issues: The Russian-Flynn Spying connection was established in London
back in 2015. IMO using Halper as an echo-chamber for Brennan's collusion fabrications. LTG
Flynn at that time was being set-up, for a retaliatory career strike(TS Clearance issues, I
submit).
The Flynn Perjury case was made in Jan 17 in DC, by the Secret Society, Comey, McCabe,
Yates, Strozk and the unwitting, SA Joe Pientka (hopefully). This trap was drafted by Comey,
specifically to take advantage of the newly elected President's inexperienced Cabinet, the WH
in-chaos. Chaos reportedly generated by a well timed Leak to the media. Which suggested that
LTG Flynn had Lied to VP Pence.
This FBI leak, now had the WH in a tail spin. Given the collusion beliefs at that time, had
VP Pence admitted that acting NSA Flynn, did in fact speak with the Russian Kislyak re:
Sanctions. The media would've screamed, the call demonstrated Russian Collusion.
Since VP Pence stated, he did not know that NSA Flynn had discussed the Sanctions with
Kislyak. The media created the image that Flynn had lied to the VP...
This was the "Pretext" which Defense Council Powell referred to. This is the opportune
moment, at which Comey sprang and later bragged about. Stating publicly that he took
advantage of a inexperienced Trump oval office in turmoil. Claiming he decided "Screw IT"
I'll send two agents in to question Flynn.
Without going through FBI-WH protocols. Because Comey knew that protocols would alert the
entire WH Staff. Making the FBI's hopes for a Perjury Trap against NSA Flynn, impossible.
Accordingly, AAG Yates and McCabe then both set the stage, with calls to WH Counsel
McGahn. Where they threatened charges against Flynn under the nonexistent "1799" Logan Act.
As well as suggesting that Flynn was now vulnerable to Extortion by Russian agents. Since the
Russians knew he had lied to the VP.
As Powell points out, by 24JAN17, the date of the Flynn interview. The entire world, knew
Flynn had Lied. Making the extortion threat rather bogus. In fact reports stated, at that
time even WHC McGahn had asked either Yates or McCabe (don't recall which). Why would the FBI
give a damn, what the NSA had told the VP? However the Bureau persisted and they won out.
McGahn is reported to have told Flynn, that he should sit down with these two FBI
agents...
Once Flynn sat down and gave a statement. FWIW, I think Andy McCabe was going to find a
Flynn misstatement or create one. Sufficient to justify the 1001 charge. It appears as though
McCabe took the later option and simply Created one.
My question is does some combination of incompetence and bubblethink naivete explain how at
the outset they could have gone all in on the Brennan/Halper information or did they just
cynically exploit the opportunity that had been manufactured in order to take it to the next
level -Trump. Taking it to the next level appears to be what drove the Papadopolis case where
similar procedural abuses occurred.
Poor George Popadopoulos, also "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated.", also had lawyers
who rolled over to the FBI. If you read George's book, "Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the
Plot to Bring Down President Trump", the methods used on Flynn sound familiar.
Since George only served two weeks, I wonder if it would be worth while for him to tackle
the FBI again?
PS When the FBI says you are not "sophisticated", does that mean that they view you as
easy to trick?
Papadopolis signed "confession" equally odd: string of disconnected facts topped off with
what appears almost to be an added "conclusion" allegedly based on these irrelevant string of
factual statements that damn him into eternity as well.
Was the conclusionary" confession" added later, or was it shoved in front of him to sign
as a unwitting last minute alteration to a previously agreed set of facts is pror statements
he had already agreed were true? Just me, but when I read this "confession some time ago, it
simply did not pass the smell test.
The signed "confession: basically appeared to be accusing Papadopolus and by extension the
Trump campaign of violating the Logan Act - violating Obama's exclusive right to conduct
foreign policy.
(A SCHIFF PARAPHRAse)
Yes I was in Russia
Yes, I ate pork chops for dinner
Yes. I endeavored to meet with Russian individuals
Etc - benign
Etc - benign
Confession - al of the above are true
Kicker: Final Statement I INTENTIONALLY MET WITH TOP LEVEL RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT AGENTS TO
DISCUSS US FOREIGN POLICY
Papadopoulos' "lies" rest on subjective interpretation. For instance, one of the "lies"
consist of a referral to Mifsud as "a nobody". A second "lie" is based on when he officially
joined the Trump campaign: George P says it was when he first went to Washington and attended
a campaign meeting, while the indictment says no it was when he participated in the phone
call which invited him on board (a difference of a couple of weeks). It is very very thin
gruel.
I wonder if SST is missing the bigger picture. If the evidence provided by the defence in the Flynn case is even only a partial example
of the capabilities and proclivities of the FBI, then how many other poor schmucks have been
convicted and jailed unjustly at the hands of this organisation?
The answer, given the size of the organisation must be : "thousands". The remedy is
obvious and compelling if you want to remain something like a first world democracy.
How many others have there been? The genesis of the USA v Flynn, was a CIA-FBI hybrid. An
international Co-Intel operation, aimed at targeting Donald Trump. As such "the Case" was
initiated from the top down, under the secrecy of a T/S Counter-Intelligence operation.
These are not the normal beginnings of a Criminal matter. Which originates with a filed
criminal Complaint, from the ground-up.
In short all of the checks and balances our federal statutes mandate. Steps where AUSA's,
Bureau ASAC's and District Judges must review and approve. Even before convening a GJ. Were
intentionally overridden or perjured by a select society of the highest officials inside DoJ.
As such there were no higher authorities nor any of the Higher Loyalty for Jim Comey to seek
his resolution from.
That is not the normal investigative process. This was a deliberate criminal act to target
an innocent man (actually several innocent men). As such IMO, the associated political
pressure, all of which was self-inflicted. Was the force which brought about the criminality
on the part of Comey, McCabe, et al.
So, FWIW, you don't see those levels of personal involvement in criminal investigations.
The classic, where the murder victim's brother is the town Sheriff. Hence you don't see cases
of innocent people being dragged off to the Dungeons. Certainly not intentionally and not in
the thousands, anyway.
On another blog, a commenter claimed Flynn was going to program audit the entire IC - money
spent and results obtained.
So instead of Flynn burning the agency down, they did just the opposite and got to him
first. Just like Sen Schumer warned Trump: don't take on the IC, because they have six ways
against Sunday to take you down.
Maybe Flynn' s alleged post-inauguration audit plans is what triggered Brennan to get
Obama to secretly keep his eyes on Flynn - maybe that was the second tier secret access they
wanted, not necessarily Trump himself?
Survival in DC is existential - my own in-house observation during the Watergate
years.
The reports I've read tell of a long and sorted history between LTG Flynn, John Brennan, DNI
Clapper and Obama. Some of the stories did remind me of the SST suggestion to, "Burn it all
down". The General also supported this idea that DoD, should be the lead agency in the IC and
CA. Since must of their modern day activity, does tend to be kinetic...
So LTG Flynn has made enemies in the Obama administration, CIA and DNI.
However, IMO the far more telling issue of the depths of IC's Coup effort. Are the
exploits of Halper, Mifsud, MI6-CIA link. Which began back in 2015. This gives the
impression, Flynn was being targeted for career destruction. Solely as retaliation for his
departure from the Obama Administration, coupled with Flynn's open opposition to policies of
Obama-Brennan (Iran-Syria-Libya). This took place way before he agreed to the NSA post with
President Trump.
Then there's also LTG Flynn's direct rebuttal of DDFBI Andy McCabe. Seems McCabe was
involved in a Bureau OPR dust-up over sexual harassment allegations. The female SA worked CT
and was an acquaintance of Gen Flynn's. Flynn then made a public statement of support for the
Agent. Which was reported to have angered Andy. Sydney Powell, suggests that McCabe was
overhead to have said words to the effect or, First we F--- Flynn, then we F--- Trump. During
one of his 7th floor, Secret Society meetings.
Again all of this happened, before General Flynn was Candidate Trump's NSA Designee. So
the Six ways to Sunday, warning does resonate re: LTG Flynn as well.
In my experience in the US armed forces.... having a top secret crypto clearance...
And later.... as a federal investigator...
I distinctly remember that conversations between the White house, particularly the
president and his national security chief are "top secret -- eyes only for the president"
So.....
Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for
violating US security CFRs by knowing such conversations took place and knowing the contents
thereof with out appropriate security clearances??
"Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for
violating US security CFRs.."
Many things about Spygate have puzzled me. The response by Trump after becoming POTUS to
all the machinations by Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rosenstein, et al has been baffling. It is
like he does not understand the powers of his office. And after he learned about the covert
action action against his campaign and him, to then staff his administration with folks who
were in cahoots with the putschists is frankly bizarre.
Does anyone have any explanation for the actions or inactions of Trump & Flynn?
"Does anyone have any explanation for the actions or inactions of Trump & Flynn?"
I have no comment relative to Flynn, but, in regards to Trump, IMO, Trump is stupid.
First, a little background. I did vote for Trump. I did have an hatred for national
politics ever since the Cheney "presidency". In that period, I was a dissident with a very
minor voice. But, I did study, as best as I could, the Bush (Cheney) and the Obama
presidency. It was reasonably clear that president's. didn't count. IMO the real power lay
with: a handful of Senate leaders, the CIA, the bureaucracy, and the powerful families that
controlled the major multi-national corporations, such as, Exxon Mobile. The preceding
constituted a powerful oligarchy that controlled the U.S. A dictatorship of sorts.
Trump had two major objectives for his presidency: MAGA and "drain the swamp". I concurred
with both objectives. After six months of the Trump presidency, and after observing his
choice of appointments and his actions, I concluded that he was a high school baseball player
trying to compete with the major leagues. He didn't know what he was doing (and, still
doesn't).
At that time, I concluded that if Trump really wanted to install MAGA and "drain the
swamp" he should have concluded way before putting his hat in the ring, that the only way to
accomplish his objective was to foster a coup after becoming president. Prior to his
presidency, he would had to select a team which would be his appointees and develop a plan.
After becoming president, he would have to ignore Congress and put his people in place
including in the DOD. The team would stay in control regardless of Congress' views.
Of course, this is a dictatorship, but is this any less obnoxious to our current oligarchs
dictatorship.
You're not wrong in criticizing Trump's personnel choices and inaction. When he entered
office he was warned about the SES/SIS holdovers and the need to get his own people in place.
He ignored that advice and is suffering the consequences. Trump played a character on TV of
being a shrewd, tough judge of talent and ability. In reality, he is a bit of a goofball.
That said, his basic policy positions are solid with respect to putting America first,
enforcing immigration laws, and disengaging from the foreign adventurism that has defined US
foreign policy for the last 75 years.
My hope is that he now finally recognizes the threat.
I prefer thinking of Donald Trump as a World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Famer as it fits
the context of what we are seeing more precise. Staged drama, personality pitted against
personality, all a great spectacle.
If it makes the denizens of DC fall on their fainting couches with the image all the
better.
Isn't Donald Trump suffering the same problem Jimmy Carter had that as a DC outsider he
isn't able hire talent and the establishment has made it clear that a position in the Trump
administration is a career killer?
Democrat's politics of personal destruction made it virtually impossible for Trump to hire or
appoint the requisite people for the task you described. RINO's wouldn't touch him and
Democrats were hell bent for revenge at any costs.
Amazing he did as well as he has done so far - considering his election was so toxic to
any possible insiders who could have offered the necessary experience to warn him where the
third rails were located.
Give him another four years and full control of GOP House and Senate back - this country
needs his energy and resoluteness to finally get the real work done. Patriots at every level
need to apply for appointed positions.
BTW: I was a rabid no-Trumper up to election night. Then Trump became my President. I have
not looked back.
Draining the Swamp can't be accomplished by hiring within the beltway or hiring any long-term
Democrat or Republican operative including members of Congress.
Trump should have recognized when he learned that his transition team was being spied on
that he had to hire people who believed in his agenda and had no ties to the Swamp.
By hiring folks like Haley, Pompeo, Bolton, Coats, Rosenstein, Wray, etc and not cleaning
house by firing entire swathes of the bureaucracy and then not using the powers of his office
to declassify but instead passing the buck on to Rosenstein, Sessions and Barr and only
tweeting witch hunt he has enabled the Swamp to run circles around him.
IMO, he is where he is because of his inability to put together a coherent team that
believes in his agenda and is willing to fight the Swamp with everything thy've got.
@joekovalski98: Pres. Trump came into office being very familiar with the intelligence
operation against him.
Enter Admiral (ret) Mike Rogers who travelled secretly without approval by Clapper to brief
the president of the spy operation.
Trump immediately move his administration to NJ.
Rogers and Flynn go back many years as Rogers was a protégé of Flynn. They
both extensively informed president Trump.
"Drain the swamp" is en-route carried out partially by our military and Flynn's former
DIA.
The stage was set and president Trump kept the left distracted via twitter while the
operation is underway between our military, white hats and their allies abroad.
Mifsud was arrested by the Italian intelligence agents 3 days ago and brought back to
Rome.
Trump is a long way from stupid - he has so far managed via twitter and his orthodox ways
for the deep state to unmask themselves. Hiring enemies at times is a way to confuse those
that try to destroy you.
Mifsud's arrest could be key to unraveling or should I say, the Unmasking of. Rather large
amounts of fraudulent intelligence that was laundered through the FISA Warrant Application
process.
The AG reportedly now has Mifsud's Cellphones (2), which coupled with Mifsud's interview
statements, if not his direct cooperation. Should reveal the CIA and/or SA Strozk, were
responsible for providing Mifsud with the false Intelligence. Which he then fed into their
Warrant Apps, through the person of George Papadopoulos.
Which in turn, could establish that Mifsud was never the alleged Russian Agent linked to
Putin. But rather a western intelligence asset, linked to Brennan. Thus destroying the
obvious Defensive strategy of Brennan, Comey and McCabe. Specifically the vaunted, "Hey who
knew the intelligence was bad? I was just doing my JOB!
I believe it was because the FBI was intentionally lying about their authority to monitor the
Flynn-Kysliak conversation. Claiming they were not monitoring the WH, rather they were
monitoring the Russian Ambassador and LTG Flynn was merely, Caught-up in that conversation.
Which at the time, was a good-enough-story. But recent disclosures seem to prove the 2 Agents
along with Comey, McCabe as well as AAG Sally Yates. All knew at the time of their "Pretext"
was establishing a Perjury Trap for the new NSA.
What set Brennan's hair on fire that instigated Brennan's secret memo to Obama who in turn
created and authorized this multi-nation, IC secret surveillance and entrapment operation?
When will we learn why Samantha Powers demanded hundreds of FISA unmasking requests during
the final hours of the Obama administration, after the election but before before the
inauguration of Donald J Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America.
Why have Joseph Mifsud and Crowdstrike, yet again, disappeared from media interest.
Why oh why, certain persons disappear from media interest? Why for example, did Ghislaine
Maxwell disappear from media? Is she not involved in lawsuits? Do courts not know where she
is now? The all-knowing Wikipedia English - does not know (as of today, I checked). The
answer to all these troubling questions is in the comments to the Colonels piece on John
Hannah. Am I becoming paranoid perhaps.?
If the media continues endlessly about the Ukraine phone call, the quid pro quo yet fails to
mention Crowdstrike "favor" in the same article, something is fishy. The phone call story did
not drop out of sight; just a very salient detail. In fact the substance of the phone call is
the story- and what Democrats are calling grounds for impeachment. Yet NO mention of the
Crowdstrike favor. I find this odd. Don't you?
Under the caption, "Nobody does it better" this explanation from Defense Counsel Powell's
04NOV19 Filing, pg 3 para 2
"The government has known since prior to January 24, 2017, that it intended to target Mr.
Flynn for federal prosecution. That is why the entire investigation" of him was created at
least as early as summer 2016 and pursued despite the absence of a legitimate basis. That is
why Peter Strzok texted Lisa Page on January 10, 2017: "Sitting with Bill watching CNN. A TON
more out. .
We're discussing whether, now that this is out, we can use it as a pretext to go interview
some people." 3 The word "pretext" is key. Thinking he was communicating secretly only with
his paramour before their illicit relationship and extreme bias were revealed to the world,
Strzok let the cat out of the bag as to what the FBI was up to. Try as he might, Mr. Van Grack cannot stuff that cat back into that bag.4
Former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe as much as admitted the FBI's intent to set up Mr.
Flynn on a criminal false statement charge from the get-go. On Dec. 19, 2017, McCabe told the
House Intelligence Committee in sworn testimony: "[T]he conundrum that we faced on their
return from the interview is that although [the agents] didn't detect deception in the
statements that he made in the interview . . . the statements were inconsistent with our
understanding of the conversation that he had actually had with the ambassador."
McCabe proceeded to admit to the Committee that "the two people who interviewed [Flynn]
didn't think he was lying, [which] was not [a] great beginning of a false statement case."
Ex. 1.
_____________
What's the saying? "Not much ambiguity there?"
Finally, on Nov 9, 2029 American Thinker in an article about Nancy Pelosi attempts at damage
control, someone in the media actually mentions Crowdstrike and the alleged " DNChacking"
........ "CrowdStrike, the cyber-security company that is involved in all this over and
over again, is a an American company founded by a Ukrainian, Dmitri Alperovitch, who is
extremely anti-Russia and who delights in implicating Russia in the DNC hacking event that
probably did not happen......"
Are we starting to witness some state cinture in Spain?
After yesterday warning, is the socialist government of Sánchez turning, at least a
bit, if only in form, socialist?
( after the advance of the "devotes of Trump´s night worship" in yesterday elections
and probably progession of Spanish policy investigation on Barcelona riots, two events that
reinforced each other? )
Spain criticizes the role of the Bolivian Army and Police in the resignation of President
Evo Morales, after protests against his re-election.
Spain joins the avalanche of international comdenations before the proceeding of the
Bolivian Army and Police at the juncture that the Latin American country is going through,
since, according to a statement issued on Monday by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
in this regard, that proceeding reminds past times in Latin American history, even more
when President Evo Morales opted for a new call for elections.
"Spain condemns that the process opened yesterday towards a new electoral call has been
distorted by the intervention of the Armed Forces and the Police, suggesting to Evo Morales
to submit his resignation", the note said.
Likewise, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls "all actors to avoid resorting
to violence" and "to guarantee the security of all Bolivians (...) including former
President Morales himself, his relatives and members of his administration".
For his part, the general secretary of the Spanish Unidas Podemos party, Pablo
Iglesias, has written on his Twitter account that "Coup d'etat in Bolivia. Shameful that
there are media that say the army makes the president resign. In the last 14 years Bolivia
has improved all its social and economic indicators. All our support to the Bolivian people
and Evo Morales".
The style of scaring the people is a total imitation from post-Maidan Ukraine, where
communists and other opposed factions in Rada were beaten, covered in paint and thrown in
waste containers...until they left the country...
Then Myrotvorets was launched and the first killings on those who dared to quition
Euromaydan events... Recall Alex Buzina... Any compromised intellectual will suffer the same
fate in Bolivia...
Guess who is behind this coup at the letter of the book...
Don't get me wrong Sasha, I don't think Evo's team objective, 2 weeks after they've win them,
was to repeat elections so soon. This is likely their best approach right now, for the sake
of Bolivians and their supporters. Not mentioning possible reaction a la Caracas.
#InfoMV Evo Morales denounced that his security personnel were offered 50 thousand dollars
for him to be delivered to violent opposition groups. He held Fernando Camacho and Carlos
Mesa responsible for what would happen to him or García Linera.
@Posted by: Vasco da Gama | Nov 10 2019 23:43 utc | 53
You seem to be unaware of the developments of events to this time, Evo called for
elections BEFORE he was oblied to resign by police and military rebels, and made leave the
country...
Elections now with every Evo´s supporter under menace of death would only throw a fake
result favourable to the opposition who did not manage to win elections democratically...
This is the same scenario than in the Ukraine, where representatives of the working people
were never more able to concur to elections and had to leave the country, remaining to be
elected only those puppets of oligarchs or the US...
Pasquinades posted by coupist opposition before Efvo´s resignation what ccan illustrate
why the government has resigned so fast...
Pure fascism....
What I told you? Here you have the Bolivian Myrotvorets .....
Traitor Tracking The population is asked to register all the social network publications of
the "Cyber llunkus". Take screenshots and copy the links of the publications and profiles
of the "Cyber Llunkus".
The M.A.S. ( Evo´s party ) is a criminal organization.
Once Evo Morales falls, a rake will be made to identify the traitorous of the people "Cyber
Llunkus" and imprison them through the location of their mobile devices.
Fake profiles will not save them.
#Civil Resistance Bolivia
Now that the US tells us the tale of democratic elections in Bolivia now...
A people's Counter-revolution that sweeps the Reactionaries down the drain once and for
all.
Chavez was keen to the CIA's modus and thus reformed the military in numerous respects,
particularly by making it impervious to corruption--AND--instituting the uniquely structured
Bolivarian Constitution. Evo's problems stem from the lack of extensive public support as
proven by the election results that kept him from instituting the sort of reforms Chavez
accomplished; and the same goes for all other Latin American nations. In a nutshell, the
Bolivian people squabbled too much amongst themselves and never constructed the type of
Revolutionary constitution and social system required to be resilient to outside
manipulation. Yes, Venezuela was very much a Bottom->Up remaking of society to the point
where the Comprador upper 10% didn't matter, which is why Chavez then Maduro left them to
their own devices. But elsewhere, the popular masses never generated the required solidarity
to prevent losing their hard won freedoms. Sure, it's possible to regain power through the
ballot box, but it can be just as easily lost as is happening now in Bolivia if preventative
measures aren't taken beforehand.
Nations must have constitutions that don't allow for rich minorities to gain control or to
allow them to begin in control as in the USA's case. But to institute such an instrument, the
popular masses must act as one and cast their factionalisms aside until this primary aspect
of consolidating power in their hands becomes the law of their land. Plus, they must again
drop their in-fighting when confronted by any reactionary threat and remember what the main
task is at all times--Maintenance of Freedom.
We all see what seems to be the demise of empire but facts on the ground tell a different
story today in Bolivia. I am sorry for the pain and suffering for many caused by my country
under the control of the global private finance cult. I continue to try and spread the word
about the perfidy of Western empire and will keep trying but am limited in my abilities.
I hope to live to see the demise of private finance led empire all over the world.
Humanity deserves a better future.
We all see what seems to be the demise of empire but facts on the ground tell a different
story today in Bolivia. I am sorry for the pain and suffering for many caused by my country
under the control of the global private finance cult. I continue to try and spread the word
about the perfidy of Western empire and will keep trying but am limited in my abilities.
I hope to live to see the demise of private finance led empire all over the world.
Humanity deserves a better future.
What saved Venezuela was the huge investing in education started with Chavez, in that they
counted with the help and advice of people from the Spanish left ...
Bolivian people, of the poor class, are mostly poorly educated people...and so easy to buy
and fool...as this images show...
Look that this people ransacking Evo´s home, they are not white patricios ...but
those who they have payed to do the dirty work...indigenous people poorly
dressed...collaborating in ovrthrowing the legitimate democratically elected from their
own...
Yeah..this time is no different from others, they always go straight to the throat of the
weak and poor...Totally depsicable...
To their own, earning points in the view of the world...
@ Sasha who wrote
"
What saved Venezuela was the huge investing in education started with Chavez, in that they
counted with the help and advice of people from the Spanish left ...
Bolivian people, of the poor class, are mostly poorly educated people...and so easy to buy
and fool...as this images show...
"
I agree, thank you for your commenting and want to add my perspective to that.
If you read many who come and comment at MoA that supposedly are "educated" you will
notice that they continue to think and write in terms of the conflict being between socialism
and capitalism in spite of myself, karlof1 and others that continually point out that China
is 80% capitalistic as are other "socialistic" countries but what matters is what part of the
social economy is socialism versus capitalism. That is why I continue to beat my drum about
the evil of global private finance that is the core problem with the social contract of the
West. Look at how many in the West are brainwashed to not understand the difference between
public/private finance and its effects on the whole culture and aggressive nature of the
society under that meme.
That, IMO, is the core education that all those in the West and all striving to throw off
the chains/economic jackboot of the West must learn and take to heart.
Very disappointing to hear about Evo...but this is just one round in a very long fight...
In Argentina we have a new government for the people...in Mexico also...Lula is out of
jail now in Brazil so eventually that will turn also...
The empire is rotting but is very dangerous right now because they are lashing out
everywhere...we see in Lebanon and Iraq they are not succeeding...
This is desperation we see folks...they are losing control quickly and are trying
to forestall the inevitable collapse of their global fascist dictatorship...
I think the end will come much sooner than they expect...the house of cards is teetering
badly...
Maidán script all the way....They do not have enough with hi resigning, they need
to wipe out such honest leader form the face of Earth, at least while the "new fake
elections" to maskerade the take over by the opposition are developed...as happened with
Lula....
Here, US Lawyer sees all the signature of the US around the place...as happens to
me...
A significant factor is that the anti-Morales opposition is based mainly in Santa Cruz
department in eastern Bolivia. This is the largest department (in territory and population)
in Bolivia and has significant natural gas reserves. The indigenous people living in that
department have virtually nothing in common with the highland indigenous people (Aymara and
Quechua speakers) who formed Morales' base.
Morales did not have a military background as Chavez did and we can presume he was never
able to cultivate a network of militias among the urban and rural working class that could
support and defend his government. Significantly it was the armed forces who asked Morales to
resign.
@Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 11 2019 1:34 utc | 72
Sorry...but the conflict is between socialism and capitalism...between the rich and the
working masses, especially those who work and still they remain poor....as has always
been....who says otherwise is only trying to fool the masses...
Of course, you people in this forum who live over the average peer, I do not try that you
understand...
You live in your world, looking your belly button, and the furthest you are willing to go is
complain here about the Outlaw US Empire...
Why do you not damn go tomorrow in the streets to protest this new coup by your fascist
administration?
Do not tell me, that would risk your privileged pensions...and all those expensive things
you do to your bodies...
Excuse me, but today, reading the same stupid things of always make me feel like throwing
up...
Fully support the findings of the @OAS_official report recommending new elections in
#Bolivia to ensure a truly democratic process representative of the people's will. The
credibility of the electoral system must be restored.
Will he still support new elections in the morning?
Meanwhile the protesters are calling MAS a criminal
organization so no doubt it'll be excluded from the new elections as happened to the
Party Of The Regions in Ukraine. The wonders of American "democracy".
Why was Evo Morales overthrown? He was nationalizing the highly profitable lithium
industry and planning to deal directly on the international market rather than exporting the
commodity at bargain prices to Western corporations"
"Bolivia has %43 of World's Lithium mines. Batteries from smartphones to Electric cars are
all made with Lithium. Evo Morales was investing in facilities to produce Lithium as a high
end export material rather than just exporting the mine itself."
Somewhere on his blog "Sic Semper Tyrannis", maybe earlier this year, Pat relates the tale
of how when working for the US Gov. in Bolivia he gave medical help to someone and was
rewarded with information which led to the capture of Che Guevara. This may be what Sasha is
referring to.
"The Hydrocarbons law (Law 3058, May 2005) and a subsequent Supreme Decree (May 2006)
require that companies sell all production to YPFB and that domestic market demand be met
before exporting hydrocarbons. Furthermore, these laws transfer the entire transport and
sales chain over to state control. After the law was enacted, hydrocarbon companies were
required to sign new contracts with YPFB, agreeing to pay 50 percent of gross production in
taxes and royalties."
"Prepared by our U.S. Embassies abroad. With its network of 108 offices across the United
States and in more than 75 countries, the U.S. Commercial Service of the U.S. Department of
Commerce utilizes its global presence and international marketing expertise to help U.S.
companies sell their products and services worldwide. Locate the U.S. Commercial Service
trade specialist in the U.S. nearest you by visiting http://export.gov/usoffices."
I usually try to read all the comments before making my first of the day, but I have yet to
do so, although I looked to see if anyone had linked to Escobar's
report on Lula and Brazil , which is an extremely important article for events within
Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and the rest of the world that's resisting the
Outlaw US Empire and its Neoliberal/Neofascist attack dogs.
The information Pepe provides is very important as it jibes with what Assad averred in
his RT
interview , for which I'm still looking for a transcript. Here's Pepe's warning about the
likely future course of events, which has CIA scrawled over every act:
"With the military betting on a strategy of chaos, augmented by Lula's immense social base
all over Brazil fuming about his return to prison and the financial bubble finally burst,
rendering the middle classes even poorer, the stage would be set for the ultimate toxic
cocktail: social 'commotion' allied with 'terrorism' associated with 'organized crime.'
"That's all the military needs to launch an extensive operation to restore "order" and
finally force Congress to approve the Brazilian version of the Patriot Act (five separate
bills are already making their way in Congress).
" This is no conspiracy theory. This is a measure of how incendiary Brazil is at the
moment, and Western mainstream media will make no effort whatsoever to explain the nasty,
convoluted plot for a global audience ." [My Emphasis]
Bolivia coup was orchestrated with direct assist of OAS analysis/report which identified
alleged voting fraud. OAS report focuses on a vote-counting system called TREP, which was
adopted by Bolivia and others in the region on direct advice of OAS. The TREP system is meant
to provide/ publicize initial results, but it is not "official". The official results come
from a slower and more thorough vote count process. The OAS claim of irregularities in the
TREP count is largely irrelevant, as it was never intended to be "official" or legally
reflect official results. There were no irregularities in the official count, won by Morales,
and the so-called "delay" was in fact the natural process of the slower moving count to
produce the official result.
While Trump denounced Morales, the US State Department stepped in to sanitize Washington's
position, with a senior official telling Reuters that the US has "no preference" among
opposition candidates. The spokesperson did say, however, that anyone who tried to
"distort" last month's vote should not be allowed to participate .
That's MAS banned from the election by the cunts in the fucking State Department. Imagine
if the Russian MFA announced that neither the Democratic nor Republican parties could field
presidential candidates in 2020. Trump is an idiot but the State Department, DoJ, and
Treasury are the real bastards. Forget the CIA, that's just a bunch of senile tossers who
have wet dreams about Cold War 2.0.
b mentioned lithium with reference to Bolivia in his 139 above
Nov 11, 2019 -- Bolivian Coup Comes Less Than a Week After Morales Stopped Multinational
Firm's Lithium Deal
"Bolivia's lithium belongs to the Bolivian people. Not to multinational corporate
cabals."
The Morales move on Nov. 4 to cancel the December 2018 agreement with Germany's ACI Systems
Alemania (ACISA) came after weeks of protests from residents of the Potosí area. The
region has 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats.
Among other clients, ACISA provides batteries to Tesla; Tesla's stock rose Monday after the
weekend.
As Bloomberg News noted in 2018, that has set the country up to be incredibly important in
the next decade:
Demand for lithium is expected to more than double by 2025. The soft, light mineral is
mined mainly in Australia, Chile, and Argentina. Bolivia has plenty -- 9 million tons that
have never been mined commercially, the second-largest amount in the world -- but until now
there's been no practical way to mine and sell it. . .
here
But Teslas catch fire....from ZPower--
Actually, lithium may be in trouble for vehicle batteries.
Just as lithium-ion (Li-ion) replaced nickel metal hydride (NiMH) before it and nickel
cadmium (NiCd) before that, silver zinc (AgZn) batteries are on track to replace Li-ion too,
according to a McGraw-Hill forecast as far back as 2010. Since then silver zinc has been
perfected and are on the market for rechargeable hearing-aid "button" batteries by ZPower LL
(Camarillo, Calif.) They are nonflammable and could provide up to 40 percent more run time
than lithium-ion batteries. . . here
Credit where its due: both Corbyn and Sanders have issued statements against the coup in
Bolivia.
On the other hand the recently re-elected, appalling government of Canada has backed it to
the hilt. Was probably involved in financing it. See yves engler https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/11/canada-backs-coup-against-bolivias-president/
The State Department which rarely misses a chance to discredit the democracy that it so
hates, is accusing Morales of 'distorting' the election result. Nobody is suggesting that he
didn't win the election, at most it is being claimed that his margin of victory, more than
10%, was exaggerated.
A similar, equally spurious claim was used to justify the coup against Aristide. There it was
not disputed that Lavelan candidates had won their senatorial elections but that their
victories were merely pluralities not majorities.
For this offence Canada, the US and (let it be recalled) Brazil occupied the country,
kidnapped Aristide and banned his party from running in future elections.
On November 7, 2019, the National Court of Justice of Ecuador ratified the preventive
detention of former president Rafael Correa , along with a number of his former officials.
Immediately after the court rendered its decision for pretrial detention, Correa rejected
accusations of bribery, illicit association and contributions to his political campaign between
2012 and 2016, while he was the leader of Alianza Patria Altiva i Soberana (PAIS). Correa
founded Alianza PAIS in 2006, as a democratic socialist political party with an objective to
achieve economic and political sovereignty, and foment a social and economic revolution in the
nation, which came to be known as The Citizens' Revolution (La Revolución
Ciudadana).
During his presidency, which lasted from January 15, 2007 to May 24, 2017, Correa
introduced a brand of 21 st century socialism to Ecuador, with a focus on improving
the living standards of the poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population. His
presidency was part of 'the revolutionary wave' in Latin America, referred to as 'Pink tide',
where a number of left-wing and socialist governments swept into power throughout the continent
during the 2000s, including Cristina Néstor Kirchner and Fernández de Kirchner in
Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Manuel Zelaya in
Honduras, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, and Hugo Chávez in
Venezuela. All of these governments were opposed to neo-liberal economic policies and American
imperialism.
While he was president, Correa raised taxes on the rich and cut down on tax evasion, and
increased public investment on infrastructure and public services, including publicly-funded
pensions, housing, free health care and education. His government ended up building many
schools in different parts of the nation, particularly the countryside, and provided students
with nearly all of the materials needed to further their studies. President Correa also more
than doubled the minimum wage, which contributed to significantly reducing socioeconomic
inequality. In 2018, a World Bank report explained that:
Ecuador has made notable improvements in reducing poverty over the last decade. Income
poverty decreased from 36.7 percent in 2007 to 21.5 percent in 2017. In addition, the share
of the population living in extreme poverty fell by more than half, from 16.5 percent in 2007
to 7.9 percent in 2017, representing an average annual drop of 0.9 percentage points. In
absolute numbers, these changes represent a total of 1.6 million individuals exiting poverty,
and about one million exiting extreme poverty over the last decade.[i]
Furthermore, the unemployment rate fell from an 'all time high of 11.86 percent in the first
quarter of 2004' to 'a record low of 4.54 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014'[ii]. The World
Bank also reported that Ecuador posted annual economic growth of '4.5 percent during 2001-2014,
well above the average for the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region of 3.3 percent.
During this period, real GDP doubled and real GDP per capita increased by 50 percent.'[iii]
On October 1, 2016, Correa announced the nomination of Lenín Boltaire Moreno
Garcés , who served as his vice president from 2007 to 2013, as his party's candidate
for the 2017 presidential election at the conference of Alianza PAIS. Moreno was elected
president, and it was expected that he would continue and build on Correa's left-wing economic
policies. However, within a few months of winning the election, president Moreno began to
dismantle many of the social, economic and political reforms enacted by Correa during his
decade as president. Contrary to Correa's government, many of the domestic policies pursued by
president Moreno included reducing public spending, weakening worker rights, and providing
significant tax cuts to the rich and large corporations. In other words, president Moreno has
gradually shifted Ecuador's left-wing policies to the political centre-right.
Moreno's presidency also shifted Ecuador's foreign policy stance, giving it a more
neo-liberal and pro-American orientation. When Correa's socialist government was in power,
Ecuador enjoyed close diplomatic and economic relations with Venezuela, and was more
independent of American hegemony. For example, president Correa closed a US military base in
Manta, Ecuador when Washington's lease expired in 2009. Prior to that, in 2007, Correa
stated:
We'll renew the [Manta air] base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami --
an Ecuadorean base if there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely,
they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States.[iv]
Subsequently, on September 18, 2009, he also said:
As long as I am president, I will not allow foreign bases in our homeland, I will not
allow interference in our affairs, I will not negotiate our sovereignty and I will not accept
guardians of our democracy.
Contrary to Correa, the US-Ecuador military relationship has expanded under the Moreno
government 'through training, assistance, and the reestablishment of an Office of Security
Cooperation at the U.S. Embassy in Quito.'[v]Ecuador and the US have also signed deals for the
purchase of weapons and other military equipment, and agreed to cooperate more closely in the
areas of security, intelligence, and counter-narcotics.
In 2011, president Correa expelled US ambassador Heather Hodges from Quito. Subsequently, in
2014, his government expelled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
from the country, where it had been operating since 1961 as part of John F. Kennedy's Alliance
for Progress (AFP)[vi]. USAID regularly exercises 'soft power' in Latin American nations in
order to help the US establish itself as an 'international police power'[vii]. In May 2019,
Moreno's government announced that USAID would return to Ecuador.
President Correa also became renowned for providing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with
political asylum in Ecuador's London embassy in 2012 to prevent his arrest and possible
extradition to the US. However, shortly after his election, there were indications that Moreno
might be willing to hand him over to authorities in the UK. In addition to calling Assange an
'inherited problem,' a 'spoiled brat' and a 'miserable hacker', Moreno accused him of
repeatedly violating his asylum conditions and of trying to use the embassy as a 'centre for
spying'[viii]. Then, on April 11, Assange's political asylum was revoked, which allowed him to
be forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy by British police.In response, Correa called
Moreno 'the greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history' for committing 'a crime
humanity will never forget'[ix].
President Correa's government supported the integration of South America countries into a
single economic and political bloc. However, since Moreno came to power, Ecuador has distanced
itself from the Venezuelan government, and withdrew from the Bolivarian Alternative for the
Americas[x](ALBA) in August 2018, as well as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) in
September 2019. UNASUR was established by 12 South American countries in 2008to address
important issues in the region without the presence of the United States. Currently, only five
members remain: Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela. The other seven members,
Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Paraguay, agreed to create the Forum for
the Progress of South America (PROSUR) in March 2019. The goal of this alternative organization
is to achieve the right-wing agenda in Latin America, as its members support neo-liberal
austerity measures and closer ties with Washington. It could be said that PROSUR aligns well
with the goals and objectives of the Monroe Doctrine.
Another major shift in president Moreno's political stance pertains to lawsuits brought
against Texaco/Chevron by the Correa government to obtain compensation for environmental
damages caused when the operations of Texaco (acquired by Chevron in 2001) dumped 16 billion
gallons of toxic wastewater in the Amazon region of Ecuador between 1964 and 1992, affecting
more than 30,000 Indigenous people and Campesinos in the area. 'Chevron left 880 pits full of
crude oil which are still there, the rivers are still full of hydrocarbon sediment and polluted
by the crude oil spills in Amazonia, which is one of the most biodiversity rich regions in the
world'[xi], and 'the damage has been left unrepaired for more than 40 years'[xii]. To raise
public awareness about this environmental disaster, president Correa's government established
an international campaign called the 'Dirty Hand of Chevron'. In 2011, the Ecuadorian
Constitutional Court ordered Chevron to pay $9.5 billion in compensation for social and
environmental damages it caused.
In September 2018, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), an agency of the United Nations
based in the Hague, Netherlands, ruled that the Ecuadorian court decision against Chevron was
illegal, because it was an outcome of fraud, bribery, and corruption. The PCA 'also ruled that
Ecuador will have to pay economic compensation'[xiii]to Chevron. 'The amount has not been
established yet, but Chevron requested that Ecuador assume the US$9.5 billion' awarded to
affected communities by the Ecuadorean court.[xiv]Following the PCA decision, the government of
president Moreno announced that:
the state will sue former President Rafael Correa and his government officials if Ecuador
lost the international arbitration process.[xv]
In this matter, president Moreno also accused Correa of 'failing to defend the country's
interests correctly and spending money on "The Dirty Hand of Chevron" campaign, which according
to the government sought to "manipulate national and international public opinion."'[xvi] In
reality, president Moreno supports the PCA decision, thereby prioritizing the interest of
Texaco/Chevron over those of his own citizens . In fact, his government has been attempting
to nullify the Constitutional Court ruling against Chevron. In response, former president
Correa has accused the Moreno government of 'doing homework ordered by (the United States Vice
President Mike) Pence'. Even some of Moreno's own cabinet ministers condemned the PCA ruling
and expressed their support for Ecuador's Constitutional Court for defending of the country's
nationals interest and the rights of the people of the Amazon.
Correa exhibited a hostile attitude towards the Bretton Woods Institutions during his
presidency. He sought to renegotiate Ecuador's external debt of US$10.2 billion, which he
called 'illegitimate' because 'it was accrued during autocratic and corrupt regimes of the
past. Correa threatened to default on Ecuador's foreign debt, and ordered the expulsion of the
World Bank's country manager'[xvii], which was carried out on April 26, 2007. His government
also opposed the signing of any agreements that would permit the IMF to monitor Ecuador's
economic plan. As a result of such actions on the part of Correa's government, 'Ecuador was
able to renegotiate its debt with its creditors and redirect public funds towards social
investments.'[xviii]
To the contrary, Moreno has enthusiastically embraced the IMF during his short time as
president. On March 1, 2019, Ecuador's central bank manager, Verónica Artola
Jarrín, and economy and finance minister, Richard Martínez Alvarado,submitted a
letter of intent to the IMF requesting a three-year $4.2 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF)
agreement. An EFF allows the IMF to assist countries that are facing 'serious medium-term
balance of payments problems.' More precisely, EFF is designed to:
to provide assistance to countries: (i) experiencing serious payments imbalances because
of structural impediments; or (ii) characterized by slow growth and an inherently weak
balance of payments position. The EFF provides assistance in support of comprehensive
programs that include policies of the scope and character required to correct structural
imbalances over an extended period.[xix]
The IMF agreement signed in March allowed Ecuador to borrow $4.2 billion. However, as is
always the case, the IMF agreement was not without conditionalities, as it required the
Ecuadorian government to implement a series of neo-liberal economic reforms. According to IMF
statements, these reforms aim to transform Ecuador's fiscal deficit into a surplus, reduce the
country's debt-to-GDP ratio, and increase foreign investment. On March 11, 2019, Christine
Lagarde, former Managing Director of the IMF, claimed that:
The Ecuadorian authorities are implementing a comprehensive reform program aimed at
modernizing the economy and paving the way for strong, sustained, and equitable
growth.[xx]
On March 11, 2019, Christine Lagarde also explained that:
Achieving a robust fiscal position is at the core of the authorities' program, which will
be supported by a three-year extended arrangement from the IMF. The aim is to reduce
debt-to-GDP ratio through a combination of a wage bill realignment, a careful and gradual
optimization of fuel subsidies, a reprioritization of capital and goods and services
spending, and a tax reform. The savings generated by these measures will allow for an
increase in social assistance spending over the course of the program. The authorities will
continue their efforts to strengthen the medium-term fiscal policy framework, and more
rigorous fiscal controls and better public financial management will help to enhance the
effectiveness of fiscal policy.[xxi]
Protecting the poor and most vulnerable segments in society is a key objective of the
authorities' program. In this context, the authorities plan to extend the coverage of, and
increase the nominal level of benefits under the existing social protection programs. Work is
also underway to improve the targeting of social programs.[xxii]
Ecuador's participation in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
represents another point of contention between Correa and the Moreno government. Ecuador was a
member of OPEC from 1973 and 1992. After a period of absence, it rejoined the organization in
2007 after Correa became president of the country. However, on October 1 st ,
president Moreno announced that Ecuador would once again end its membership in OPEC effective
January 1, 2020. Given Moreno's penchant for implementing neo-liberal economic policies, this
decision was likely based on the notion that freeing the country from the burden of having to
abide by quotas would bring fiscal sustainability to Ecuador. This is evidenced by the fact
that Ecuador contacted OPEC to request permission to produce above its quota in February 2019,
though it was never confirmed whether a response was received[xxiii]. While increasing
production in its Amazonian oil fields would likely bring more foreign investment to Ecuador
and open up new markets, it would also lead to serious conflicts between the Moreno government
and the indigenous people living in the area, who are strongly opposed to oil extraction.
In addition to announcing Ecuador's departure from OPEC, president Moreno also selected
October 1 st as the date to introduce Decree 883, a series of economic measures that
included ending longstanding subsidies for fuel, the removal of some import tariffs, and cuts
to the benefits and wages of public employees. In particular, the elimination of fuel
subsidies, which had been in place for 40 years, was instituted in order to meet IMF
requirements to keep the $4.2 billion programme on track, and to satisfy international
investors. The EFF agreement between the IMF and the Ecuadorean government also called for
thousands of public employees to be laid off, the privatization of public assets, the
separation of the central bank from the government, cutting public expenditures, and raising
taxes over the next three years. IMF representatives claim that these types of reforms bring
more foreign direct investment into the economy.
In fact, a close examination of the neo-liberal economic reforms recommended by the IMF in
many countries reveals that they are almost identical, meaning that they do not take the
diverse needs and realities of each country into account; rather, they are driven by the
interests of the countries and other stakeholders that provide the funds. Generally, the IMF's
recommendations[xxiv]consist of cutting deficits, liberalizing trade, privatizing state-owned
enterprises, reforming the banking and financial systems, increasing taxes, raising interest
rates, and reforming key sectors. However, countless studies have revealed that these types of
reforms, have raised the unemployment rate, created poverty, and have often preceded
recessions. On October 2, 2019, the IMF issued a press release on Ecuador stating that:
The reforms announced yesterday by President Lenin Moreno aim to improve the resilience
and sustainability of Ecuador's economy and foster strong, and inclusive growth. The
announcement included important measures to protect the poor and most vulnerable, as well as
to generate jobs in a more competitive economy.
The authorities are also working on important reforms aimed at supporting Ecuador's
dollarization, including the reform of the central bank and the organic code of budget and
planning.
IMF staff will continue to work closely with the authorities to improve the prospects for
all Ecuadorians. The second review is expected to be submitted to the Executive Board in the
coming weeks.[xxv]
President Moreno's decision to end the subsidies on fuel led to the prices of diesel and
petroleum increasing by 100% and 30%, respectively, overnight, which directly contributed to
significantly raising the costs of public transportation. In response, protests erupted against
Moreno's austerity measures on October 3 rd , featuring students, unions and
indigenous organizations. They declared an indefinite general strike until the government
reversed its neo-liberal adjustment package. Moreno's initial response was to reject the
ultimatum and state that he would 'not negotiate with criminals.'
The following day, on October 4, 2019, president Moreno declared a state of emergency under
the pretext of ensuring the security of citizens and to 'avoid chaos.' Nonetheless, the
protests continued and intensified to the point that the government was forced to relocate to
city of Guayaquil because Quito had been overrun by anti-government protestors. However, this
attempt to escape the protestors proved ineffective as taxi, bus and truck drivers blocked
roads and bridges in Guayaquil, as well as in Quito, which disrupted transportation
nationwide.
In the following days, thousands of demonstrators continued to demand the reversal of
austerity measures, as well as the resignation of the president. However, Moreno remained
defiant, refusing both demands under all circumstances. Subsequently, Ecuador's main oil
pipeline ceased operations after it was seized by indigenous protesters. Petro-Ecuador was
concerned that production losses could reach 165,000 barrels a day. Indigenous protesters also
occupied two water treatment plants in the city of Ambato. Meanwhile, violent clashes between
protesters and police resulted in seven deaths , about 2,000 injuries, and over 1,000
arrests. Eventually, Moreno's government was forced to back down and make concession with the
well -organised protesters.
On October 13, president Moreno agreed to withdraw Decree 883 and replace the IMF-backed
plan with a new proposal, involving negotiations with the Confederation of Indigenous
Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and other social groups. The following day, president Moreno
signed Decree 894, which reinstated the cancelled fuel subsidies. However, on October 23,
CONAIE released a statement informing the public that 'it paused talks with President Lenin
Moreno because of the government's "persecution" of the group's leaders [Jaime Vargas] since a
halt to violent anti-austerity protests.'[xxvi]
It is unlikely that president Moreno would be willing to give up on his austerity policies
or start the process of cancelling the IMF loan, given his apparent commitment to helping the
US realize the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine. Many of the reforms and policies that his
government has introduced will help keep Ecuador firmly entrenched in America's backyard for
years to come.
This is not a new development, as history has revealed that, for more than a century
, 'in Latin America there are more than enough of the kind of rulers who are ready to use
Yankee troops against their own people when they find themselves in crisis' (Fidel Castro,
Havana 1962). However, the eruption of protests in response to Moreno's neo-liberal reforms
suggests that he faces an uphill battle, as his fellow Ecuadorians do not appear to share his
enthusiasm for selling his country to external creditors and foreign influences. Although
Moreno has managed to successfully drive Rafael Correa out of Ecuador, the former president's
opposition to capitalism and imperialism remain strong among the population.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your
email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Global Research contributor Dr. Birsen Filip holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the
University of Ottawa.
Yes, the US and the EU betrayed the Iran deal the moment the ink was on the page and Trump's
actions merely formalized an open betrayal. However, with respect to Russia and China's
intentions regarding Iran, I surmise that they have realised that a bifurcation of the world
economy into a US sphere and a non-US sphere is now unavoidable and they are playing the long
game. By allowing the US/EU to continue threaten and harass Iran, violating their own
agreement, they are in effect allowing the Europeans to slit their own throats with respect
to their trustworthiness and independence, after all why sign an agreement with the EU if
they fold like a wet tissue the moment the Americans change their minds. Whereas the Russians
and Chinese give iron-clad guarantees and are dependable allies.
Further, the Russians and Chinese are under no formal obligations to defend Iran's
interest (and both states have prior, though minor, issues with Iran), so I imagine they see
the American's actions as useful for indirectly pressuring the Iranians into more favorable
trade and security relations. That having been said, I imagine the Chinese and Russians have
jointly agreed to some non-negotiable redlines regarding US actions towards Iran that they
will allow. Namely, I think if the US were to attack Iran they would start funneling arms to
them immediately and turn a blind eye towards Iranian counter moves in the rest of the Middle
East. Though I'm curious as to b's opinion on this matter, what does he think the Russians
and Chinese would do if the US attacked Iran or were crazy enough to invade?
I imagine the Chinese and Russians have jointly agreed to some non-negotiable redlines
regarding US actions towards Iran that they will allow.
I agree with that...
I imagine they [Russia and China] see the American's actions as useful for indirectly
pressuring the Iranians into more favorable trade and security relations.
I don't see this at all...I don't think trade has anything to do with it...security only
indirectly...
I think Russia and China would like to see Iran move toward a more mature diplomacy, that
is more in alignment with the impeccably legalistic position of the two powers that are
shaping the emerging new order...
The overarching aim for the duo is to restore a functioning international legal
order, as embodied in the creation of the UN and its charter...as well as the supreme
authority of the Security Council...
This order was the outcome of WW2 in which both China and Russia suffered greatly...and
both are adamant about restoring a genuine legal order where outlaw states cannot thumb their
nose with impunity...
The key here is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization...which is clearly the most
important supranational 'club' in the world...and only getting stronger...
Iran has been in the SCO 'waiting room' for a long time now...even Turkey will likely get
in sooner...
A couple of reasons for that, and it has to do with Iran's politics...
First, Iran is a theocracy at bottom...the state embodies many desirable aspects of
socialism in its functioning, but it also views itself as the 'defender' of world
Islam...anywhere, anytime...
This is not up to par to the diplomacy practiced by the likes of Putin and Xi...
For instance, the Iranians were quick to jump into the manufactured 'Rohingya crisis' in
Burma...which is clearly an agitation project designed to put a stick in the spokes of the
BRI...
China was surely irritated...
For Russia, another irritant coming from Iran is its maximalist approach to Israel...we
note that a large population of Israel is Russian-speaking...
Israel does have the right to exist in its pre-1967 borders, as established by UNSC 242
and other subsequent resolutions...[it must also withdraw unconditionally from those occupied
territories as per those resolutions, but, with the US backing, is ignoring international
law]...
So Iran is not quite up to par diplomatically as far as the two big powers shaping the new
world order are concerned...
However...I do not think that either Russia or China would try to exploit the pressure
on Iran by steering it towards the path they would like...I don't think they would make such
a linkage, as this itself is bad diplomacy...
The bottom line is that there is probably zero desire on either Russia or China's part to
exploit Iran's situation...this is not how these two powers operate...
"... From the 1950s, the anti-Soviet fervor of these New York City-based intellectuals prompted support for the early United States intervention in Vietnam. In the 1970s, the Socialist Party split up as some factions aligned with the New Left. The neocons formed the Social Democrats USA (SDUSA), only later abandoning their socialist party-building in favor of penetrating both the Democratic and Republican parties. In the 1970s, Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry "Scoop" Jackson and Representative William Hughes hired some leading second-generation neocons as foreign policy staffers, beginning a long, steady penetration of key Congressional committees. ..."
"... Does the permanent warfare of today's neocons differ in any real way from the Trotsky idea of permanent world revolution? Socialism has been replaced by democracy-promotion but that difference is small, particularly as the consequences continue to play out on the world stage. ..."
"... Antonio Gramsci quote" Trotskyist are the whores of the fascists". Globalist are modern day or post modern Trotskyist ..."
As the happy marriage of neoconservatives and Obama-era humanitarian interventionists continues to flourish in defense of American
permanent war deployments around the globe, it is a worthwhile moment to recall the roots of the neocons in the old left of the 1930s.
Neocon founders like Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Max Schachtman, Seymour Martin Lipset, Irving Howe, Nathan Glazer, and Gertrude
Himmelfarb were all anti-Soviet socialists from the 1930s, many of whom were followers of Leon Trotsky. Trotsky broke with Stalin
in the late 1930s over his emphasis on permanent world socialist revolution, as Stalin concentrated on the consolidation of "socialist
in one country"--the USSR.
From the 1950s, the anti-Soviet fervor of these New York City-based intellectuals prompted support for the early United States
intervention in Vietnam. In the 1970s, the Socialist Party split up as some factions aligned with the New Left. The neocons formed
the Social Democrats USA (SDUSA), only later abandoning their socialist party-building in favor of penetrating both the Democratic
and Republican parties. In the 1970s, Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry "Scoop" Jackson and Representative William Hughes hired
some leading second-generation neocons as foreign policy staffers, beginning a long, steady penetration of key Congressional committees.
At the Gerald Ford White House, successive chiefs of staff Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney organized a series of "intellectual
seminars" by Irving Kristol, further spreading neocon ideology within the foreign policy establishment. As Defense Secretary and
later as Vice President, Cheney continued to promote neocons to key posts and to advocate for neocon permanent warfare.
Early in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan launched "Project Democracy," to spread democracy around the globe through well-funded
programs including the National Endowment for Democracy, led by Carl Gershman, who has headed the NED since its founding in 1984
through to the present. Gershman was previously Executive Director of Social Democrats USA. NED has been a stronghold of neocons
from its inception.
While the anti-Soviet outlook of the neocons continued even after the Berlin Wall and the fall of Soviet communism, the focus
increasingly was on permanent warfare to promote democracy around the globe.
Does the permanent warfare of today's neocons differ in any real way from the Trotsky idea of permanent world revolution? Socialism
has been replaced by democracy-promotion but that difference is small, particularly as the consequences continue to play out on the
world stage.
"Does the permanent warfare of today's neocons differ in any real way from the Trotsky idea of permanent world revolution? Socialism
has been replaced by democracy-promotion but that difference is small, particularly as the consequences continue to play out on
the world stage."
I don't think the Democracy bit is much more than a fig leaf, it can quickly be discarded if votes do not
go as required. The aim seems to have more to do with removing unfriendly regimes and replacing them with compliant ones. It does
not work because the people/'voters' do not like the imposed elites and are inclined to vote by tribe/clan/religion, rather than
any western concept of party, the biggest block wins and lords it over the minority.
Irving was quite a character. A socialist who's eyes were not totally closed to the um, "contradictions" and stagnation inherent
in socialist economies. He spun his wheels mightily in the pages of Dissent trying to reconcile his socialist ideals with it's
fundamental conflict with human nature.
Ok, thus the essence of neoconism is Trotzkism and not Straussianism?
In other words, concerning the neoconservatives it makes no sense to look at the (Leo) Straussian angle? Arbitarily?
Now, considering their (not so prominent???) part in the US Culture War (still ongoing???) I am admittedly puzzled. If they
were leaning towards Strauss at one point in time, they may well have shifted from revolutionaries to counterevolutionaries at
one point in time. No?
They never did? They weren't impressed by their heroes death, but carried his legacy on? Nevertheless?
Actually, this is a recasting of the old Muslim idea of Dar al Salam and Dar al Harb. Western Diocletian states embodying the
House of Peace while the rest of mankind lives in the House of War. For Muslims, the idea was to bring the benefits of Islam to
non-Muslims. Here, it is to bring the benefits of Civilization to the barbarian hordes.
Fundamentally, neocon and their fellow travellers - an assortment of Protestants, Jews, Nihilists, Democrats, and Shoah Cultists
- are waging a relugious war that has failed and will fail against the particularities of mankind. Just like Islam failed to destroy
either Christianity or Hinduism, this Western errand will fail too.
I think these people are the type, subset pseudointellectuals, that just enjoy power and using it to stir the pot of humanity
for self-glorification.
IMO, they really believe in nothing else. They are, by nature, miserable craven control freaks that justify their activities
by hijacking whatever ideology is floating around in the zeitgeist that the dupes will follow; could be Islam, could be Christianity,
could be democracy, could be socialism. Makes no difference to them as long as they get to experience themselves as superior masters
of the world.
In Libya, in 2011, Democracy-promoters destroyed her so that Sarkozy and others in France, Spain, Italy, UK could steal her
wealth; reminiscent of Muslim invasions of India in search of war booty, rapine, and slaves, in the name of Islam.
So? This review of (important) history gives us no insight into why it happened or why we should care today. Yes, I agree that
these were bad people in the 1930s and they remained bad people when they moved (in theory) from the left wing to the right wing.
But that is all you have said. What were the motives? How was it done? Why were they able to find acceptance in both parties with
such a lousy history? How are they able to continue being accepted after such a lousy continuing history.
This account is all ad hominem, all about how a certain strain of ideologue has consistently advocated for policies of world-wide
control. The logical back story would be a Trotskyite coordinating presence, something I don't for a minute believe. Yet people
of this description are undeniably pervasive in the councils of state.
So what is the connection between advocates of US dominion and former advocates of world wide revolution? And, if it is just
a matter of attitudes toward power, why should we care? So some people 70 years ago (bad people, admittedly) had an influence
of some people today (also in my mind bad people). So? Were they the only people from that era who held such attitudes? Could
we not just as easily trace other genealogies for ideas of US domination? Do such ideas ever in history fail to materialize when
the power balances enable them?
So you don't like these people and you don't like where you think they came from. But do you have anything to say about why
they are so pervasive and what could be done about it?
Ah, the good old days. In the early 80's I would stop after work at the local newsstand and pick up Commentary, Dissent, Partisan
Review, National Interest, and so on. Whatever struck my fancy and for some reason, these did even though their circulation was
quite small. At the time I didn't not realize their commonality which came to me later in the 80's. The PBS movie/book, "Arguing
the World," which came out about 20 years ago, has a lot of the backstory.
A common thread is the desire to change the world though they had different views of what that "change" should be.
As for me, I was an accidental entrepreneur and generally liked Hayek's economic views. I'm also highly skeptical of idealist
and messianic movements like Mao's which the 60's had been rife with. But I loved readings all these rags with somewhat different
perspectives but a common thread that each seemed to think their "Truth" should rule. Seems to me the greatest evil gets perpetrated
by those that think they have found "The Way."
How much of neoconservatism cum liberal internationalism (foreign policy idealism aka Wilsonianism) is "spreading freedom and
democracy" and now much is neoliberal globalization as "making the world safe for capitalism"?
In either case the end in view is a Pax Americana where the US has permanent global dominance in accordance with the Wolfowitz
doctrine of not permitting a challenger to arise as a competitor.
If you go no further than Marxism, you will not understand what is happening. But to go further is to engage in thoughtcrime.
Fortunately, the Catholic scholar E. Michael Jones has written a great book on this. It is called The Jewish Revolutionary
Spirit: And Its Impact on World History. Incredibly, it has not been banned from Amazon yet. It is exhaustive, encyclopedic and
documented.
Jones has developed a following among young Catholics appalled at both the corruption in Rome and the corruption in American
society. These kids are the ones digging conservatism's grave, not the left. The left needs Conservative Inc to plays its role
and keep the show going for the benefit of older people who get all their information from television.
It has not been covered much by the media but TPUSA, a Trump-aligned youth organization, has been battered by audience after
audience on its recent campus tour. Yesterday in Los Angeles Donald Trump Jr was booed off the stage as he tried to promote his
latest book.
At first, TPUSA tried to blame campus leftwingers. This was an obvious lie, and so they began to call the audience Nazis. Then,
they accused them of being virgins. They tried to vet and plant questioners but when this failed they eliminated the Q&A altogether.
A similar episode happened the week before when Sebastian Gorka stupidly took on a 20 year-old Youtube personality with an audience
ten times larger than his own.
Post-WW2 Conservatives failed because they never understood what they were fighting, failed to wage culture war, and fooled
themselves into thinking that the fall of the Berlin Wall meant the end of struggle, when it only meant a change of theater.
"...appeared to have fallen from a balcony." I somehow doubt that.
"The NGO's funders currently include the British and German governments. The Trump administration froze US funding, which made
up about one-third of the total, without public explanation in early 2018, but resumed giving financial aid last month amid criticism
of its decision to withdraw US troops from north-eastern Syria."
I bet that pissed off the neocons to no end. He should stop it again. We can use the money at home.
"Does the permanent warfare of today's neocons differ in any real way from the Trotsky idea of permanent world revolution?"
Yes, profoundly. For starters, Permanent Revolution and world revolution were two separate Trotskyist doctrines.
Permanent Revolution was a doctrine eschewing the mainstream social-democratic strategy of supporting bourgeois-democratic revolutions
until the proletariat gained sufficient strength to gain state power. Trotsky contended that socialist - capitalist alliances
were inherently unstable and that bourgeois-democratic forces would inevitably align with the existing ruling order against the
proletariat. World revolution was a doctrine that a socialist revolution in Russia could not survive in isolation and revolutions
had to take place in more advanced countries, particularly Germany. That was given a messianic veneer of "proletarian internationalism"
and "world revolution." Such maximalism was opposed to realist expedients such as the New Economic Policy and the Rapallo Treaty
of 1924 that fostered economic relations between the Soviet Union and capitalist Germany.
Revolutionary movements have always drawn opportunists who saw them mainly as a shortcut to gaining power for themselves. The
ur-neocons were such a group. Their loyalty to Trotskyist ideology only lasted as long as they saw it as something that could
boost them into power. When better means in various apparatuses of US power presented themselves, they latched onto them under
the guise of "spreading democracy." That seems a cynical formulation, since the most consistent neocon ideological theme is that
the great unwashed masses are not to be trusted, so power must be arrogated to themselves.
"... the most consistent neocon ideological theme is that the great unwashed masses are not to be trusted, so power must be arrogated
to themselves." Isn't that the real ideology of all these factions? To my mind the rest is all just tactics.
I am genuinely unsure what the real distinctions are. The present American "conservative" idolizing of democracy and free market
economics seems about as sincere as the Communist ideal of economic control by the working classes. Many years ago I argued with
a (captured) VC political officer that the Vietnam war was just a fight between two elites over who would get to run things. He
was appalled by the idea. His claim to the moral high ground was based on two factors: the personal honesty of the Viet Cong cadre
and the party discipline that that guaranteed it. These seemed plausible at the time. Both went up in smoke almost as soon as
the victory had been won.
How different were the results of the war from those to be expected from a Southern victory? I haven't followed the subsequent
history in detail, but American Vietnamese acquaintances tell me that 40 years later everything is being run by Southerners. Not
identically the same Southerners, but ... And does anyone believe that a southern government securely established would not have
set about expelling the Chinese population that had accumulated during the years when the Vietnamese could not control their own
borders? (American media never said much about it, but the boat people were overwhelmingly Chinese victims of longstanding hatreds.)
So how different is the neocon vision from a Trotskyist vision in a world where direct control is no longer possible?
The dots I have yet to connect are those that trace the path by which the neoconservatives wandered from their socialist roots
to become the enforcers of the Western world's fundamentalist neoliberal ideology of political economy. How many of the dots pertaining
to the latter came to be embedded in the western industrialized world and most of the Global South were tied together for me by
the recent book Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism , by Quinn Slobodian. Several points jump
from the author's narrative. The neoliberal movement traces its origins to two citizens of the Austrian Empire who came of age
in the decades immediately before its collapse: Ludwig von Mises* (b 1881) and Frederick Hayek (b 1899). Both were of un-landed
noble families that had been promoted to that status just a generation or two before. Slobodian argues that the Empire's uniqueness
as a multi-cultural, multi-national entity held together by a common market with no internal tariffs and free migration within
the empire led them (and especially Hayek) to envision a similarly structured world economy. They and their disciples and successors
saw the making of that structure happen as their lives' work. The goal remained constant but the means of achieving it changed
with the times. First they saw the League of Nations as the potential vehicle until its collapse during the Second World War.
Next was the United Nation until it was "overrun" by new nations emerging from colonialism. The goal was largely achieved in the
late 20th century when General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) morphed into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994.
The most salient features of a neoliberal political economy are: free movement and safety of capital and protections for the ownership
rights of investors across borders; free migration of people across those same borders; also tariff-free trade among countries;
and the removal of economic policies and relationships from the purviews of sovereign countries and subordinate jurisdictions
within them.
Slobodian elaborates how as the neoliberal ideology became embedded in the world economy during the 20th century it was believed
by the movers and shakers (mostly implicitly but in some cases explicitly) that the lagging development status of the peoples
of the recently decolonized emerging countries were the results of racial and/or cultural weaknesses. There was little recognition
of the impacts of the cultural carnage and wealth extraction that were part and parcel of colonial enterprise. As a result, as
the institutions of radical neoliberalism took shape they consigned a secondary economic status to the countries of what is now
known as the Global South. The USA has been the leader in putting this ideology in place and has been aggressively looking out
for its own interests in the process, which is understandable.* However an unintended consequence has been an economically lagging
global south that has been prevented from industrializing enough to employ the millions of people whose farms have become uncompetitive
with highly industrialized USA and European agribusiness. These folks move off the land either to the growing megacities of the
Global South or, increasingly, into countries of the Global North by means either legal or illegal. Thus the Democratic Party
establishment's Kumbaya on immigration is not all sweetness, light and harmony. They're also doing the bidding of their neoliberal
masters.
Is Whistleblower Aid a Charity Fraud? by Larry C Johnson There has been a lot of
smoke and diversion put up with regards to alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella thanks to the
work of his lawyer, Mark Zaid, and the charitable foundation supporting this
effort--Whistleblower Aid. I think it is time to set the record straight and raise some serious
questions about both Ciaramella and the charity backing him.
Eric Ciaramella, according to various press reports, is a CIA intelligence analyst who also
has close ties to Democrats working against Donald Trump. Ciaramella worked at the National
Security Council on the Ukraine issue and had repeated contacts with individuals, such as DNC
operative Alexandra Chalupa, who were involved in the plot to smear Donald Trump as an agent of
Russia. It also is reported that Ciaramella was suspected of being the source for a false story
claiming that former FBI Director Comey was fired because Vladimir Putin told Trump to do it.
And, most importantly, Ciaramella was back at CIA Headquarters when Donald Trump spoke with
Ukraine's President Zelensky. He did not listen in on the call nor did he have access to the
transcript.
Here's the bottomline--Ciaramella, lacking first hand information, does not qualify as a
whistleblower. As a former intelligence analyst, like Ciaramella, I know that you must have
first hand information. What qualifies as first hand? You listened in on the conversation. You
read the transcript. Or, and no one has raised this, you have a piece of human or signals
intelligence that tells a different story from the publicized transcript. ZERO evidence for any
of this. Ciaramella's only qualification is that he does not like Trump and his policies
towards Ukraine.
Then there is the indisputable fact that the Ukrainian President is on the record, in
public, denying any pressure and denying any quid pro quo.
All of these facts justify bringing Mr. Ciaramella before Congress, putting him under oath
and getting him to explain the foundation for his claims. But Democrats and anti-Trumpers are
saying "no" and insisting that the identity of the whistleblower must be protected at all
costs. That is bunk. There is only one legitimate reason to keep the whistleblower's identity
secret--i.e., if he or she was undercover, either official or non-official. Ciaramella was not
undercover. He is no different from any other civil servant who works in any other part of the
Federal bureaucracy. He just happens to hold a Top Secret clearance.
I know several whistleblowers who have been vilified publicly by the very bureaucracies
where they exposed wrong doing--Bill Binney (NSA), Kirk Wiebe (NSA), Ed Loomis (NSA),
Russ Tice (NSA), Diane
Roark (Congress), John Kiriakou (CIA) and Peter Van Buren (State). In none of these
cases was there a public outcry to protect their identity. And there is one big difference
between these whistleblowers and Ciaramella--they had first hand knowledge about wrongdoing in
their respective organizations.
Which brings me to the not-for-profit organization that is backing Ciaramella--Whistleblower
Aid. According to Wikipedia :
In September 2017, Tye and lawyer Mark Zaid cofounded Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit law
firm.
But public records tell a different story. Whistleblower Aid is a "doing-business-as" name.
The incorporated name is Values United. It was
incorporated in Louisiana in April 2009 . The incorporation subsequently was revoked in
2013 and reinstated on 13 March 2017. Here is the Louisiana document:
Values United was granted 501 (c) (3) status on 30 March 2017 (you can find the determination
letter here .)
So, it was organized in March of 2017, not September. A minor point I suppose but a key
fact.
What do we find when we look at the 990 tax return required for not-for-profits? The DBA
name for Values United is Whistleblower Aid:
There is another oddity revealed in the tax return for Whistleblower Aid--huge liabilities.
Total assets at the end of 2017 are $133,106.00. Total liabilities? $752,823.00. Where was the
money going? Who was getting paid? And how is an organization with more than $600,000 in debt
able to stay afloat. True not-for-profits are supposed to operate according to strict oversight
and rules. Is Whistleblower Aid doing what it is chartered to do or is it acting as a partisan
political organization, something a charitable group is not allowed to do. It is worth looking
at.
and had repeated contacts with individuals, such as DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa
So, all roads, then, lead to a criminal undercover org of Taco Bell. When I thought it
couldn't get any more tragicomic, it did. Now Taco Bell's commercials chihuahua comes in mind
with "drop the Chalupa" line. I wonder what do they mean by "drop".
State attorney general offices provide charitable non-profit oversight and offer a complaint
process. George Soros has been campaigning to buy up AG offices, since they wield so much
power behind the spotlight. Someone is Louisiana needs to file an AG complaint.
Liabilities are explained on the attached schedules.
It appears the bulk of the liabilities (nearly $600k) are in the form of loans made TO
"Values United" by the principal officer and his father.
They appear to have financed the bulk of the activity for 2017 via the loans.
They must not have filed a tax return for 2018 (or the IRS hasn't posted it yet.)
Note sure what is going on, but it does appear to be strange. Hard to tell what exactly
they are spending the money on, other than nearly $300k for a flashy Media Strategy firm.
Yeah. Looks more like a vanity charity. Charity fraud shows up on the expenses side that
go to favored parties and has a lot of income that comes from "donors" that expect something
in return. Certain well known foundations by former presidents come to mind. Charitable
foundations are quite a racket.
Is it merely coincidence that it was transformed into "Whistleblower Aid" this late Spring
just when IC Inspector General Michael Atkinson was installed, the IG who changed whistle
blower policies which now no longer require firsthand knowledge ?
This sure seems like one of Chuck Schumer's "6 ways from Sunday" the IC is trying, to get
back at Trump. I wonder who funds this "charity"?
Am I mistaken or isn't this form, so conveniently revised just this past August, 2019, the
"whistleblower" form which now reflects the policy change of permitting secondhand
information?
Who backed the significant debt of this operation is an equally interesting question? . What
do the minutes of the board of directors meetings disclose. How did this significant debt
conform to its stated charitable intent, that allowed its IRS tax exempt status. How
"charitable" will it be if this organization defaults on this amount of debt? More
information, please.
Why do the names "Values United" and "Volunteers United" sound so much like a
counter-punch to "Citizens United", the anathema SCOTUS ruling to both Democrats and the big
public sector unions.
"Why do the names "Values United" and "Volunteers United" sound so much like a
counter-punch to "Citizens United", the anathema SCOTUS ruling to both Democrats and the
big public sector unions.
The post-Clinton Deomcratic Party establishment has adapted to the Citizens
United decision just fine, thank you very much. They just took their cue from Groucho Marx:
"These are my principles! You don't like them? I have others."
Out West we get two standard slurs against all conservatives (aka alt right, far right, right
wingers, Fox and Friends and white supremists:
Conservatives are tools of Citizen United and the Koch Bros. Boooo, hisss, booo!
Clinton swore the first thing she would do as POTUS was get a constitutional amendment
against Citizens United. You report an interesting change of heart. Tell me more. Why is
Citizens United now working for the Democrat Party - the post-Clinton Democrat party, soon to
become the Neo-Clinton party?
It seems to me that Trump is constantly on the back foot playing defense. He does not seem
proactive in countering his opposition and directly taking the fight to his opponents.
He didn't declassify initially to avoid accusations of obstruction of the Mueller special
counsel. Now that Mueller didn't lay the knockout punch, they've found another reason to
claim obstruction with the Ukraine quid pro quo. All along he knew that Rosenstein played him
by setting up Mueller, yet he did not fire him. Same with Wray. He's now passed the buck on
to Barr who has his own agenda and prerogatives.
With LTC Vindman's testimony out there he should be all over his insubordination and as
C-in-C should order his court martial.
The fact that none of the insiders in his administration have a paid any price for their
acts of leaking and stories of innuendo and fanning the flames to have him impeached is only
emboldening them to escalate and be even more brazen.
Many are hoping the Durham investigation will settle the score and that justice, while not
swift, is nevertheless sure. It'll be a huge disappointment (to say the least) if none of the
malefactors pay a hefty price.
A while back, it took me 2 years and lots of legal expenses to finally get satisfaction
from a flooring company, so I would expect something like SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY to take a
little longer!
Trump is always getting ahead of their game, as well as punching back defensively. He is
changing the dynamics. One must listen carefully. So little of his proactive charges filter
through the media - even WSJ and now Fox are playing mind games against Trump. Give Kellyanne
Conway some credit - she still gets ahead of the story like no one else.
Following a complaint, the Scottish Charity Regulator investigated and concluded that
certain aspects of the IOS activities could not be classed as charitable.
For Spook aficionados, interesting commentary on the alleged biological relationship to
the alleged "Whistleblower",Eric Ciaramella, and the former head of See Eye Aye
Counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton:
''Here's the bottomline--Ciaramella, lacking first hand information, does not qualify as a
whistleblower.''
'If' Ciaramella is the whistleblower who set him up to be the whistleblower?
Could it be whistleblower Lt. Vindman, who was there, or his twin brother who is a lawyer in
the NSC?
Currently staring in Congress Impeachment testimony against Trump
Lt. Vindman------------Ukraine Jewish refugee NSC
Amb Gordon Sondland----Russian Jewish refugee
Amb Marie Yovanovich- Russian Jewish refugee
Fiona Hill ------------Dual US-UK citizen. Studied under Richard Pipes, in 1998 at Harvard,
Russian expert.
Currently staring in Congress Impeachment testimony against Trump
Lt. Vindman-Russian---Ukraine Jewish refugee NSC
Amb Gordon Sondland----Polish/Russian Jewish refugee
Amb Marie Yovanovitch - Russian Jewish refugee
Fiona Hill --Dual US-UK citizen. Studied under Richard Pipes, in 1998 at Harvard, Russian
expert.
I have read the testimonies and several things jump out. All these people are outspoken
anti Russia activist and pro Ukraine. According to their statements Russia is the ultimate
evil. Vindman, Yovanovitch and Hill all use the same description...''Ukraine needs US aid
because it is fighting for US interest and against Russian aggression'. Their testimonies
were as much or more about why we should support Ukraine then about what Trump said or didn't
say.
This Trump coup is coming from the NSC and the State Department, not the CIA this
time.
Calling All Patriots to Intelligence War, with Special Guest, Bill Binney
Less than 24 hours after our Nov. 7 live "fireside chat" broadcast, YouTube said our video
was "was flagged for review" and they've made it unavailable for public viewing. While we're
in the process of appealing this, we've made our broadcast available in Vimeo.
Clearly we've struck a nerve! In this too hot for YouTube broadcast, LaRouchePAC's Barbara
Boyd is joined by William Binney (former NSA and member of the Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity, VIPS). They give the latest in the coup attempt against President
Donald Trump.
Mark Zaid, the attorney for the fake whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, laid out the entire
plot of what we now see unfolding before our eyes in a series of tweets, starting back in
January of 2017. Zaid tweeted: "the coup has started" and "impeachment will follow
ultimately." In July of 2017, Ciarmella said that CNN would play a key role in the coup and
that, "We will get rid of him, and this country is strong enough to survive even him and his
supporters." Zaid further promised that the coup would take place in a series of steps and
that as one member of RESIST, within the Administration fell, two others would take their
place.
Here's some more grit regarding Eric Ciaramella, and the coup against POTUS Trump
Facebook And YouTube Erase All Mentions Of Anti-Trump Whistleblower's Name. Not only are
Facebook and YouTube's standards a form of censorship, they are an example of partisanship on
the largest social media platforms in the world.
11 November 2019Ap Bu Nho - A Remembrance for Veteran's Day
Garryowen in Glory, the 7th Cavalry Regiment at Ap Bu Nho
By a quirk of fate, "D" 2/7 Cavalry, was given the chance to demonstrate the plausibility of
Spinoza's despair several weeks later. A Montagnard agent reported that the 141 st
NVA Regiment was temporarily in position just to the west of the Montagnard resettlement
village of Ap (village) Bu Nho about 20 kilometers southwest of Song Be. This village, like
several others in Phuoc Long province, had been created in the course of earlier years of war
and migration throughout Indochina. It was perfectly rectangular, three streets wide and five
hundred feet long with the long axis running east-west, with a dirt road extending to the tar
two lane road connecting Song Be with the south. The Song Be River passed north-south to the
west of the village. There was a roughly circular patch of woods just northwest of the village.
The wood was about one kilometer in diameter. The river ran along the west side of the wood. On
the eastern side of the wood, there was a large open "field" covered with grass nearly hip
high. The field extended along the whole northern side of the village out to the tar road and
beyond. The inhabitants were three or four hundred in number, living in tribal style in long
houses and other small flimsily built shacks. They had originally lived in the area of Camp
Roland in the northeastern corner of PhuocLongProvince, and had moved or been moved to this
site during the First Indochina War. They were S'tiengan people. The agent was one of them and
lived in Bu Nho.
I drove to Landing Zone "Buttons" with this information to visit the command post of the
Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, then operating out of the landing zone. In the underground
facility, I talked to the S-2 (Intelligence Staff Officer) of the battalion. I had been
providing this officer with information for some time. An example had been the information that
led to the BDA mission mentioned above. While we two intelligence officers were discussing the
report, the lieutenant colonel commanding 2/7 Cav entered the command post. He was new, having
arrived in country within the previous month, and having joined the battalion the week before.
In his late thirties, blond, and in his new found dignity, he had a "lean and hungry look." The
S-2 introduced me to him, told him how valuable the detachment's information had been in the
past. The Bn. CO seemed to have a hard time understanding who I was. In talking to me he seemed
to be more interested in "showing off" for his operations staff who had followed him into the
bunker than in listening. The idea of an intelligence officer resident in the province who had
brought him information seemed more than he could handle. After a few minutes, he tired of the
whole thing, and asked to be shown on the map. After a glance, he asked the S-3, another
superior being and soi-disant tactical virtuoso, what "D" Company was doing the next
day. The major said that "D" was in LZ "Buttons" resting and refitting. The CO casually said
"Well, put'em in there at first light." His finger indicated the big, grassy clearing in the
angle between Bu Nho and the round woods to the west. The S-2 looked at me, opened his mouth
and then said nothing.
I thought What the hell! I don't work for this man.. "Colonel," I began, "there is at
least a battalion of the 141 st NVA Regiment in that wood. They are the best troops
in the 7 th NVA Division, which is the best in their army. They have been in that
wood for at least two weeks. They will be ready." The CO was irritated. "That's all right,
Captain," he said. "You are really a captain, aren't you? We'll take it from here. Most of
these reports are untrue. Why, when I was here as an adviser in the Delta, none of the stuff we
got from you people was true." So, the man didn't believe the report and was just
looking for something for "D" Company to do. This was a delicate situation. "I must
protest, sir," I began. "I would be negligent..." "That will be all!" the CO barked. "Good
Day!" The sycophants on the staff bristled in the hope that their master would recognize them
as the good dogs they were.
I drove back to Song Be and called my higher headquarters to tell them that a disaster was
about to occur. The foreseeable reply from 525 th MIG in Saigon was that they would
not attempt to interfere with the exercise of command by a line officer in command of troops in
the field. I then asked for a helicopter to come to Song Be to be at my disposal the next day.
This was agreed. The "Huey" showed up early and I was sitting in the thing at 3,000 feet
listening to the 1 st Cavalry Division when the fire preparation of Ap Bu Nho
commenced.
" They will not grow old, as we who are left grow old,
Age will not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the mornings,
We shall remember them.."
A.E. Housman - inscribed in Washington Archat VMI
First, there was a lot of fire from corps heavy artillery batteries, including the one at
Victor 241 airfield. Then, there were Tacair fighter strikes with bombs and rockets, then there
was a massive fire preparation by armed helicopters, of which the 1 st Cavalry
Division had many. The bombs, shells, and rockets searched the round wood and the big, grassy
field. While the armed helicopters were still working on the patch of forest, the twenty odd
"Huey Slicks", (transports unarmed except for a machine gun on each side), swooped onto the
scene from the east, having picked up "D" Company at LZ "Buttons." Throughout the preparation,
there had not been a shot fired from the area under bombardment. I could hear the Cavalry
Division talking about it on the air. Their opinion was that this would be a "cold" LZ, and
that the enemy were not present. With mixed feelings, I watched the assault unfold. The landing
was in two columns of helicopters, which were perhaps fifty yards apart. There were about ten
helicopters in each column. The cavalry troops scrambled out and headed for the round wood.
The 141 st NVA Infantry Regiment had held its fire throughout the preparatory
bombardment, a remarkable display of fire discipline. Now, as the helicopters lifted in unison,
they opened fire in a roaring, ripping demonstration of just how much firepower a well trained
and disciplined light infantry force can possess. Four "Slicks" were shot down on the LZ. All
four exploded. It was not likely that anyone lived. The fire balls killed a number of "D"
Company men nearby. Several more helicopters were badly damaged and departed smoking. The NVA
had organized the defense of the wood in such a way that interlocking bands of machine gun fire
from log and earth bunkers cris-crossed out in the field. The guns appeared to have been laid
so that the fire was about two to three feet above the ground. The inevitable dips in the
ground (dead space) were filled with the fires of mortars shooting from positions behind the
bunker line. A general in the War Between the States remarked on a similar occasion that "not
even a chicken could live under that fire." It was thus. The NVA were all in the round wood.
The bunkers themselves, as later inspected, were solid with two layers of hardwood logs
separated by a foot of packed earth and with another layer of earth on top. They had firing
embrasures six inches high, were sited for mutual support and were staggered in depth. "D"
Company 2/7 Cavalry was "dead meat" out in that field in the bright sunlight. They could not
move forward and to move back meant rising which was certain death.
The fighters and armed helicopters returned to repeatedly bomb and rocket the woods. Corps
artillery joined in whenever the aircraft left off.. It did not help. 12.7 mm heavy machine
guns and RPG-7 teams engaged the aircraft from within the NVA position. The iron grip of the
141 st NVA held "D" Company fast. Everyone was pinned flat on the LZ, face to the
dirt.
Additional Cavalry troops began to be inserted into the fight. The rest of 2/7 Cav landed to
the east of "D" Company, 1/5 Cav landed north of the round wood, and 2/12 Cav landed to the
west of the Song Be river, west of the round wood. All these insertions were by helicopter.
What they discovered, as they closed on the wood, was that the 141 st had organized
the position for a 360 degree, all around defense. The fire and bunkers were just as solid on
the other sides as on the east. The position was so large and so well put together that it may
well have contained the whole 141 st Regiment. The reinforcements got nowhere. The
only difference between their situations and that of "D" Company was that they were not pinned
down at close quarters. All of these units took substantial losses in this fight.
Wounded from "D" Company crawled toward the eastern side of the clearing, toward the earthen
"dike" that carried the main north-south road. They could be seen with the naked eye from the
air. As some got across the road, Med-evac helicopters (Dustoffs) began landing in the fire
shadow of the road to pick them up. The warrant officer flying the 525 th MIG "Huey"
told me he intended to land to pick up wounded. Altogether, the strange helicopter with the
blue boomerang insignia on the tail boom, made four trips from LZ "Buttons" to Ap Bu Nho
carrying 2/7 Cav's wounded. After a while, the floor of the bird was slippery, and everyone in
back was busy trying to keep some of them alive long enough to deliver them to the medics. The
helicopter took a number of hits.
About four in the afternoon, the CO of 2/7 Cav made a fatal error. He requested a napalm
strike on the round wood. December was the height of the dry season, and the wind was blowing
steadily from the west. This could be seen by the direction that smoke was drifting across the
battlefield. The napalm strike went in, delivered by two F-4s. It may have done some damage to
the NVA, but what it did for certain was to light a grass fire that swept toward the east,
toward "D" Company. The Company now faced an ancient dilemma. My great-grandfather had spoken
of having faced the same problem in the Wilderness in 1864. The choice was to lie prone and
burn or stand and be shot. According to the medics, most preferred to be shot. In the course of
this process, "D" Company's commander, a young captain, who happened to be a Citadel man,
decided he had had enough. With his pockets full of grenades, he crawled as close as possible
to the nearest machine gun bunker, and with half a dozen of his men firing in support he rushed
the bunker throwing grenades, jumped down into the position and killed all within with his
pistol. With this crack in the enemy position, "D" Company moved forward behind him and by
nightfall had broken the outer defense perimeter of the 141 st . They held half a
dozen bunkers. The sun went down. The fight ended. All night long the Cavalry Division moved
forces into the area to finish the 141 st the next morning.
" Good! Whenever you find a real bastard, especially a dumb bastard
make sure you stake'em down, through the heart, through the heart!"
LTC (Ret.) Walter P. Langto his son, June, 1969
"It is not a mercy to tolerate incompetence in officers , think of the poor
men.."
Robert E. Lee , thinking of Bristoe Station
In the morning, the enemy had gone, departed, taking their dead and wounded with them. They
had slipped out through some gap in the surrounding lines and simply vanished. "D" Company was
extracted and mustered at LZ "Buttons" that afternoon. There were 12 men in the ranks. 52
killed and over 70 wounded was the "Butcher's Bill" at Ap Bu Nho. This may have been the worst
single day's bloodletting in the Seventh Cavalry since the Little Big Horn in 1876. There too,
they had been commanded by a fool. At the muster, the company commander, who was unscathed,
stood dry eyed before his remnant while strong men wept, among them, me. I asked the battalion
commander and the S-3 how they spelled their names and left. I would have happily killed them
both with my own hand, and they seemed to know that.
I sent a report of the action disguised as an intelligence report on the performance of the
141 st . It went to every echelon of command above 2/7 Cavalry. Under investigation
by division headquarters, the lieutenant colonel later claimed that the agent's report had been
a "provocation" intended to lure him into an ambush. The Division commander was not deceived.
525 th MIG saw through my subterfuge and I was admonished for responding to the
Operations side's attempt to scapegoat Intelligence for its own failure. This was the first
instance in which I saw this syndrome of the leadership of the intelligence community. I
continued to see it for the rest of my government career." from the memoir of W. Patrick
Lang
Colonel Lang,
This description brings tears to my eyes as well yours in that battle. It graphically
demonstrates the difference between auctoritas and podestas as well as much more. Thank you
for sharing, remembering, and reminding us.
I found the NVA to be a very worthy foe. I learned of the "hold them by the belt buckle"
tactic the hard way. Just south of the DMZ one of our companies stumbled into a Regimental
CP. The Marines were driven back by AK & MG fire. The Marines laid down in the elephant
grass about 50m in front of the forward bunkers while we ran air support "danger close".
After 3 flights of snake & napalm, the company assaulted again just before dark and was
met again with heavy fire. We evacuated our wounded & settled in for the night. When we
moved forward the next morning the scorched bunkers were empty. Trails in the grass showed
that when the Marines pulled back 50m, the NVA had crawled forward about 35m. After observing
a very close air strike, the NVA had crawled back into their buckers & thwarted our
second assault. Discipline & guts.
Booby,
I would say they were desperate. Did whatever they thought would get a edge over the US
troops. Considering the number of casualties they took, they never had a easy life.
desperate ? Think you're living in a parallel universe ... Maybe it's a consolation to you
and It does something for your ego, but not sure it's of any help when analyzing why that war
was lost.
Military medicine got steadily better throughout the 20th Century so the ratio of killed
to wounded became lower and lower. Medevac helicopters and forward surgical hospitals made a
big difference, but the 52 KIA here in tis one company were killed outright on the field of
battle. I do not know how many of the WIA died of their wounds. Remember there were a lot of
casualties in the other units of our encirclement. The NVA had a widely distributed system of
underground hospitals supplied through the Laos/Cambodia corridor (HCM Trail) but they had to
live long enough to be carried to them. I agree with Booby that the NVA were a remarkably
tough and dedicated enemy. pl
BTW, I have looked at this place in Google Earth. The Vietnamese government has built a
widespread network of hydroelectric dams in the highlands since the war. As a result the site
of this combat is buried under a prosperous Vietnamese town. This is one of the few instances
of the outright defeat of US forces in the field in the war, along with the loss of Lang Vei
SF camp and LZ Albany. At Song Be a few miles away there are actual memorials to the
protracted battle in February-March 1969 but not at this place. pl
Just finished watching an hour PBS episode
about James "Maggie" Magellas the most
decorated soldier in the history of the 82nd
Airborne. To paraphrase" How could I send
young 18 and 19 year olds to lead and I stay
in the rear. " A remarkable man for anytime,
he is still alive at 98. That we would have more
like him in all fields of endeavor.
Thank you Colonel. That story really brings it home to me. I was on a somewhat similar
disastrous mission during the 1972 NVA Easter offensive. The NVA had taken Quang Tri City,
and we were inserting South Vietnamese soldiers at key points around the city of Quang Tri to
cut off supplies. Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything about the tactical situation on
this particular mission. I was but a WO1 front seat co-pilot gunner in a Cobra gunship at the
time. On this particular mission, we (about 10 gunships as I recall) were gun cover for a US
Marine insertion of South Vietnamese marines. There were I think about 15 CH-54 Jolly Greens
full of the marines. At that time, because of the SA-7 heat-seekers, we had to fly low level.
We took massive fire beginning at least 8 or 10 klicks out from the LZ, and then the LZ was
hot. The US Marine pilots told us at least half of the troops were dead or wounded from
ground fire before they ever got to the LZ. Two of the Jolly Greens went down. Actually, I
never made it to the LZ. About 3 kicks out my pilot was hit and the command ship directed us
back to the staging area for the pilot to be attended to. His wound turned out to be
superficial and he was ok. Like I said, I don't know anything about the tactical situation,
but surely there must have been an intelligence failure. Either that, or they felt the risk
was worth the prize. They eventually re-took Quang Tri, but it was several months later.
"I was but a WO1 front seat co-pilot gunner in a Cobra gunship at the time."
WO1? Would there be backseat gunners too.
"At that time, because of the SA-7 heat-seekers, we had to fly low level. We took massive
fire beginning at least 8 or 10 klicks out from the LZ, and then the LZ was hot."
My guess at klicks or kicks, which you use later suggests a distance from a battlefield LZ
to an LZ with a slightly longer "life-span" then the battlefield LZ.
Got that completely wrong. Kicks, klicks?
Sounds like a dangerous missing anyway. You have to be low to target MANPAD's or whatever
it was, but this also endangers you heavily.
WO1 = Warrant Officer grade 1. After grade 1 they are called Chief Warrant officers, or
CW-2,3,and 4. 4 is the highest grade. About half the U.S. Army helicopter pilots were warrant
officers, and half commissioned officers. The warrants flew pretty much full time with no
other command duties, other than flight related command duties.
You can fly the Cobra from either seat, but the primary duty of the front seat is to man
the turret weapons. The back seat primary duty is to fly the aircraft and shoot the wing
store weapons which shoot in the same direction that the aircraft is pointing. The wing store
weapons are rockets and/or 20mm gatling gun. The turret weapons are the 6.62 gatling gun and
the 40mm grenade gun. You can shoot any of the weapons from either seat and fly the aircraft
from either seat, but those are the primary duties. The back seat cannot move the turret but
only fire it in the direction of the aircraft.
Its klicks, not kicks. Sorry for the typo. Its just slang for a kilometer.
When flying a few yards above the ground, tree tops, or buildings, it is more difficult
for a heat seeker to lock on to the heat. Of course then one is more vulnerable to small
arms, but they are the lesser of two evils. Our company commander and his crew were lost to
an SA-7 a few weeks prior to that particular mission.
Thanks FND, I realized at one point I may have read this not carefully enough: You really
made it quite clear with your "because of the FA-7 heat-seekers" - BECAUSE
In other words the Jolly Greens in your story above while higher where a good target for
the heat-seekers, while your mission partly was to ideally find and destroy them before they
could hit them. ...
The problem with trying to understand this as a layman is that there is a high chance you
misunderstand details in context.
What a great bird the Cobra was. The Marines didn't get the Cobra until '69.
When I was there (67-68)we had the huey gunships, and I first saw the Cobra being flown by
the 101st whose AO was next to ours in Northern I Corp. I was fortunate to fly it for over
2000 hours in the National Guard but never got to fly it in combat.
Thank you for posting this. Never having been in combat it is humbling to read what others
have endured, and in this as in many other situations having done so under incompetent
leadership.
all,
found this article that described the life of a VC (I think he may have joined to fight the
french ) fighter who joined the fight in 1950s and fought until the end.
Although the article has been written with a sense of humor in mind, I thought it was a
worthy read.
Indeed interesting, Aka. But strictly no surprise. ...
I encountered the same respect as Pat's shows here for his "battle counterpart", for loss
of a better term, among war correspondents for the ones killed reporting for the other side.
...
FND's comment above triggered memories of their stories and images combined with Pat's
story.
Were Jolly Green's the type of helicopters that did not only carry materials but also
journalists occasionally?
I may be mistaken but that was my basic google impression while looking into military
terms.
Yes, thanks, now I see something FND mentioned above. Although it leaves me at an odd as to
why it makes sense to be able to fly the type of helicopters he flew from both the front and
back-seat. Supposing the design was somewhat meant to help the crew.
Apparently, when I saw some photos years ago my attention was somewhere else. Or it wasn't
the focus of the image. And I cannot ask Horst anymore. Seems bigger then the one I had in
mind, anyway.
A "click" is US Army slang for a kilometer. A "WO1" is a warrant officer. That is a rank
between the enlisted ranks and the commissioned officers, lieutenants and up. The US Army and
US Marine Corps have warrant officer pilots as well as commissioned officer pilots. These
last are normally the commanders. "LZ" means "Landing Zone." This is the place where the
south Vietnamese Marines in this story were to be landed. pl
I looked up LZ. But I understand that LZ could have both a longer existence, or exist for
a slightly longer time then a single LZ for a specific battle. In which case the first type
of LZ would be the starting base? Like LZ "Buttons"?
More specifically were only "2/5 Cav" based at "Buttons" and the others were "inserted
(?)/were brought in" later, as support? Or was the whole 5 cav, I understand, located
there?
In the late '60's a Marine LtCol., William Corson, published a book "The Betrayal"
criticizing US strategy & tactics in VN. In the final chapter he hypothesized that the
Soviet Union could dramatically change the helicopter war in VN any time they wished by
giving the NVA the Strela shoulder fired AA missile. In the Easter Offensive, the Soviets
played that card. Helo & OV-10 losses in the Quang Tri area were devastating & forced
an immediate change of helo tactics. Fly low or die. It took us a decade to develop effective
counter-measures to these missiles.
Years later I had a SNCO who worked for me who had crewed a CH-46 inserting VN Marines
along the coast north of Quang Tri during '72. The LZ brief warned of a "dead" NVA tank in
the LZ. As his AC landed beside the "dead" tank, he saw the turret turn & he was looking
down the barrel. The tank fired; but, either it was too close to the helo or the thin
aluminum skin of the helo didn't activate the fuse & the round went through his AC as a
solid shot.
The SA-7s were indeed deadly. We would rather take our chances flying ground level. The guy
whose helicopter took the tank round is very lucky. I'm glad he and the others made it.
William Corson a very interesting person and I met him long after RVN days.
I had a 10 week course at Ft.Bliss on the REDEYE MANPAD after completing OCS and all my
classmates could do was think about these in the context of AirCav units.
I was in VN in '72 and remember the advent of the SA-7. as an immediate expedient defense
we threw thermite grenades out the doors when we saw one fired. I don't know if that worked
well, but I am still here. I also remember seeing an NVA team fir an RPG at a Cobra. The
missile did not arm and went right through the boom. pl
They also put what we called toilet bowles on the engine exhaust to direct the exhaust up to
the rotors so that the heat would be dispersed, but I don't think it worked that well.
In the largely helicopter transported war an LZ could be either a semi-permanent base for
aircraft as well as a convenient place where troops could be billeted and supplied or the
place where troops would be landed by air in a single operation as in the Quang Tri story. LZ
Buttons was named for some officer's girl friend. I think she was a Red Cross girl in Saigon.
2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment just happened to be based at LZ Buttons just then. During
the VN period US Army infantry and cavalry fighting as infantry were organized by battalions.
The regiment, as in this case, 5th Cavalry, only existed as a tradition. Armored Cavalry
sxisted as a whole regiment and the 11th Cavalry in VN (the Black Horse) were a formidable
group. The US Marines, who, I am sure you know are not part of the Army still had regimental
formations. pl
One lucky Cobra crew. Usually when a helo & an RPG met, it was catastrophic for the
helo. I hated being shot at with RPG's because the projectile moved slow enough that you
could see them coming. Time moves real slowly when you see one coming. I've had them pass
through my rotor disc & still don't understand how the projectile could make it through
without hitting or being hit by a rotor blade.
A CH-46 from my squadron became a part of Marine Corps history after being hit by an RPG
on Mutter's Ridge, just below the DMZ. The climax of the novel "Matterhorn" was based on this
incident. A Company was assaulting a hill that was an abandoned Marine LZ. The NVA were
fighting from the old Marine bunkers. The CH-46 was departing a neighboring hill with
Medevacs when it was hit in the aft pylon by an RPG & burst into flames. The pilot saw a
LZ directly below him & shot an emergency landing. The pilot was unaware that the NVA
held the hill & the Marines were assaulting the hill & engaged in close combat. The
NVA were startled by a flaming CH-46 crashing on them & their defense was disrupted. Some
NVA climbed aboard the burning helo & were trying to take the 50 caliber machine guns.
There was a gunfight between the crew & the NVA in the cabin of the helo. The Marines won
& the NVA abandoned the hill. The Grunts gave our squadron credit for capturing the hill
- a 1st & only in Marine Corps history.
Rumor was that it had to do with the woman's anatomy. I don't know. I didn't know her. At
Dien Bien Phu the French strongpoints were all named for De Castries' mistresses. Isabelle,
etc. V- 241 was a Japanese built airfield from WW2. pl
My oldest uncle was at Dien Bien Phu with "8e bataillon parachutiste de choc". He was one of
the few men in his unit to have survived the battle. I flew back with him to DBP in 2004 and
we visited the battlefield with an former viet Minh vet as a tour guide.
my uncle and him had fought against each other some 50 years earlier, in muddy trenches,
using grenades, flame throwers and bayonets and there they were, two old men, talking to each
other in broken french and broken Vietnamese, remembering those who had not been worn down by
age.
The Vietnamese were very gracious hosts to us, and my uncle had no hard feelings against
them. However, he never forgave the French army generals who had designed the battle plan,
totally underestimating the viet Minh. It is something he has passed onto me and its been
quite useful a reminder sometimes.
Thx for this piece PL !
Patrick's comment reminds me of my limits not only concerning the military but also
suggested by Patrick's comment below: the larger historical context during and after WWII in
which Viet Minh via Ho Chi Ming mutated into Viet Cong. ;)
P.L. and ALL: It has taken sometime for me to formulate a comment to this post and thread.
Why? First because it gives important insights that anyone in the US Army today of any rank
might learn from. Second, while I never served in RVN by spring summer 1968 Artillery OCS at
Ft. Sill was totally dedicated to furnishing officers for the war in RVN. 8 of the 110 in my
graduating class did not serve in RVN. I was one of the eight.
But two things stick in my mind from OCS. The first how to help create a firebase for an
artillery unit. And second how to defend an artillery firebase from ground assault.
Yes, realism had cretp into artillery by summer 1968 and no more emphasis on stopping Soviet
tank armies in northern Europe. 3 members of my OCS class were in firing batteries overrun by
NVA. I believe the two that survived both recieved Silver Stars. One of the survivors after
spiking guns survived by E&E. The other succeeded in defending his battery.
Receiving my draft notice on June 12th, having been married June 10th [and graduated from
Law School June 7th] I realized that despite two years of AFROTC and with rejections from
both the Navy and Air Force in hand over winter 1966-67 for reasons of vision I realized that
not being a Kennedy Father I was destined for RVN in one form or another. So I started
reading: first any Bernard Fall book or article I could get my hands on. Second, because the
Combat Arms were open to me through OCS [Army JAG was giving priority to those who signed up
for the longest service --often up to 10 years (and they almost all served in RVN] it seemed
wise to be in shape and learn how to survive. So before reporting on September 10th, 1967, to
Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri for Basic I read all of S.L.A Marshall's studies of combat in Viet
Nam. Reading some French I stumbled through the travails of the PARA against the Viet Minh. I
also read some biographies of Uncle HO!
THIS POST AND THREAD SHOULD BE POINTED OUT TO DoD leadership AS TO WHY THIS BLOG SHOULD BE
AVAILABLE TO ALL THROUGH its servers.
More later!
BTW there is a move on to ban flechette arty rounds under International Law!
It wasn't our battalion, but we lay alongside it,
So the story is as true as the telling is frank.
They hadn't one Line-officer left, after Arras,
Except a batty major and the Colonel, who drank.
'B' Company Commander was fresh from the Depot,
An expert on gas drill, otherwise a dud;
So Sergeant-Major Money carried on, as instructed,
And that's where the swaddies began to sweat blood.
His Old Army humour was so well-spiced and hearty
That one poor sod shot himself, and one lost his wits;
But discipline's maintained, and back in rest-billets
The Colonel congratulates 'B' Company on their kits.
The subalterns went easy, as was only natural
With a terror like Money driving the machine,
Till finally two Welshmen, butties from the Rhondda,
Bayoneted their bugbear in a field-canteen.
Well, we couldn't blame the officers, they relied on Money;
We couldn't blame the pitboys, their courage was grand;
Or, least of all, blame Money, an old stiff surviving
In a New (bloody) Army he couldn't understand.
Thank you for sharing this riveting excerpt from your memoir. Is this body of work to be
published by any chance? I for one would be grateful for the opportunity to read more of such
a fascinating life.
Brings back a lot of memories. In 1968 I was a senior in high school reading about the
marines at Khe Sahn. In 70-71 I was up on the DMZ with the 1st Bde, 5th Mech that had
replaced the 3rd Marine Division. Spent the first six months at Con Thien, Charlie 4, Dong
Ha, Quang Tri, patrols in the DMZ. Then got promoted to the General's security platoon just
in time to go west when the Vietnamese went into Laos. Got to visit Lang Vei, Khe Sanh, Camp
Carrol, all those places I had read about in high School.
Back in the states in 1972 in college reading again about Vietnam. How the PVA (I think
they prefer that to NVA) had come across the DMZ and captured the provincial capital of Quang
Tri. Went to visit the Traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall today. Didn't last 3 minutes.
This is how the Iraq vets must feel when they read about Ramadi, Fallujah, etc. Shades of
Manstein- Lost Victories?
We had a butter bar who continuously violated procedure by going out on the road before it
was swept in the morning. One day he took off with his driver and another EM, they hit a mine
and all died. Years later the Lt's brother found me via an internet site. His brother's
college fraternity was going to do a memorial tribute and he wanted to know what I knew. I
saw no value in telling him what really happened so I didn't. Nothing like this account but
it sticks with you.
Let me see. Bad judgment, trouble concentrating, impulsive, reckless, hot-tempered. I'd
say there was no telling how many American soldiers that battalion commander would have
gotten killed and maimed for no good reason on his way to the rank of colonel.
But he was stopped.
Another thought about your account: Somebody had to provide evidence that the Montagnard
agent had not given deliberately misleading intelligence -- that on the contrary he'd warned
that the enemy had been dug in for two weeks, a clear indication they were well-prepared for
an assault. So although you were admonished by 525th MIG, your subterfuge would have allowed
the operational upper echelon to include your report in their investigation. That might have
been the only way they could have nailed the CO, given his blame-shifting.
From my reading of an article by Thomas Ricks ("General Failure"), by the Vietnam War the
emphasis on accountability in the U.S. military was being replaced by careerism. So that CO
might have gotten away with it, if you had not filed a report.
In the ABN fight a cobra expended its load at the bunkers and then turned to leave. An NVA
RPG team standing on a bunker roof shot it through the boom. the rocket did not arm (too
close maybe?) and the Cobra staggered away heading for LZ Buttons. pl
I've heard a lot of stories like that. To be made of aluminum sheeting and rivets those birds
were amazingly resilient. I wasn't quite so lucky, the same thing happened to me but the shot
severed the tail rotor and we came crashing down. Fortunately there was no fire and no one
was seriously injured. After we were picked up a flight of F-4s naped the wreckage to prevent
the NVA from salvaging anything useful.
I've read this at least four times and still find it riveting. Think your memoirs should be
published.
I worked with a locomotive engineer who took a 50 caliber in the leg as a helicopter pilot
in VN. Don't know where or when. He was good natured and one of the best hogheads I worked
with.
FWIW this same Battalion (2/7 Cav) lost 155 KIA at LZ Albany in 1965. I became old at Ap
Bu Nho although there were worse fights. In my second tour I was often given the additional
job of recruiting NVA officers for our side from the RVN National Interrogation Center. I was
quite good at this. They were old soldiers like me pl
To the Col.
I was always amazed at the "Kit Carson Scouts with our Bn. They often walked point for us.
I'll always remember a platoon passing thru our position in the northern end of the Ashau
Valley. The 1st "Marine" thru the wire was a Kit Carson on point. It had been a long, hard
patrol. He approached me, threw down his NVA pack, looked me in the eye & smiled before
saying, "Maline Corps number 10 G**Damned Thou." A bitching Marine is a happy Marine.
I thought I remembered for many years that the Bn involved was 2/5 Cav but a historian
researching my time in VN proved to me that the unit was actually 2/7 Cav.
And I was spared to tell the tale. I must honor the dead of both sides. I remember seeing
a two man NVA RPG team mount the roof of a bunker to duel with a Cobra at a hundred yards or
so. Bullets from the Cobra's Gatling gun kicked up dust all around them They stood solidly
until they fired a round that wounded the Cobra. Foemen worthy of our steel.
Understanding What Sidney Powell is Doing to Kill the Case Against Michael Flynn by Larry
C Johnson
Sidney Powell, General Michael Flynn's magnificent lawyer, is in the process of destroying
the bogus case that Robert Mueller and his gang of legal thugs tried to sneak past appropriate
judicial review. To help you understand what she is doing we must first go back and review the
indictment of Flynn and then look at what Ms. Powell, aka Honey Badger, has forced the
prosecutors to admit.
Here are the nuts and bolts of the indictment
On or about January 24, 2017, defendant MICHAEL T. FLYNN did willfully and knowingly make
materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and representations . . . to agents of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation that:
(i) On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Government of Russia's Ambassador
to the United States ("Russian Ambassador") to refrain from escalating the situation in
response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day; and
FLYNN did not recall the Russian Ambassador subsequently telling him that Russia had chosen to
moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request.
(ii) On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the
vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution; and that the Russian
Ambassador subsequently never described_to FLYNN Russia's response to his request.
Let me make a couple of observations before we dig into the notes and the 302 that FBI
Agents Strzok and Pientka wrote up during and following their interview of Michael Flynn on
January 24, 2017. First, Michael Flynn did nothing wrong or inappropriate in speaking to
Russia's Ambassador Kislyak. He was doing his job as an incoming National Security Advisor to
President Trump. Second, not "recalling" what Ambassador Kislyak said (or did not say) on 22
December is not lying. Third, even if Flynn did ask the Russian Ambassador on the 29th of
December to "refrain from escalating the situation" in response to the U.S. sanctions imposed
by Barack Hussein Obama, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that is wise counsel
intended to defuse a situation.
Now, here is where the FBI, especially Agents Strzok and Pientka, are in so much trouble.
The day prior to the "interview" of General Flynn the FBI plotters met to discuss strategy.
According to Sidney Powell:
January 23, the day before the interview, the upper echelon of the FBI met to orchestrate it
all. Deputy Director McCabe, General Counsel James Baker, , Lisa Page, Strzok, David Bowdich,
Trish Anderson, and Jen Boone strategized to talk with Mr. Flynn in such a way as to keep from
alerting him from understanding that he was being interviewed in a criminal investigation of
which he was the target. (Ex.12). Knowing they had no basis for an investigation,6 they
deliberately decided not to notify DOJ for fear DOJ officials would follow protocol and notify
White House Counsel.
Peter Strzok was interviewed on 19 July 2017 by the FBI and, according to his affidavit,
pretended that he was asked on the 24th of January 2017 to interview General Flynn. He implied
this was a last minute request. But as noted in the preceding paragraph, which is based on an
interview of Strzok's mistress, Lisa Page, a meeting took place the day before to orchestrate
the ambush of General Flynn.
What is truly remarkable is that Peter Strzok stated the following, which exonerates Flynn
of the charges in the indictment cited above:
Strzok and Pientka both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not
think he was lying. Flynn struck Strzok as "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated."
The fact that the FBI Agents Strzok and Pientka did not to show General Flynn the transcript
of his calls to refresh his recollection, nor did they confront him directly if he did not
remember, exposes this plot as a contrived scenario to entrap Michael Flynn rather than a
legitimate, legally founded investigation.
In fact, as noted by Sidney Powell, "the FBI and DOJ wrote an internal memo dated January
30, 2017, exonerating Mr. Flynn of acting as an "agent of Russia;" and, they all knew there was
no Logan Act violation."
The notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka during their interview of Michael Flynn are
damning for the FBI. These notes are Exhibits 9 and 10 in the sur sureply filed by Sidney
Powell on 1 November 2019. (I wrote recently on the fact that the FBI/DOJ mislabeled the notes
from this interview--see here). Neither Strzok nor Pientka recorded any observation that Flynn
lied about his contacts with Kislyak. Neither wrote down anything supporting the indictment by
the Mueller crowd that "Flynn lied." To the contrary, Strzok swore under oath that he did not
believe Flynn was lying.
The real problem for the Government's fraudulent case against Flynn are the 302s. There
should only be one 302. Not at least four versions. The FBI protocol is to enter the 302 into
the FBI Sentinel system within five days of the interview. In other words, the original 302
should have been put on the record on the 29th of January. But that original 302 is MISSING.
The prosecutors claim they cannot find it.
But the prosecutors finally did provide the defense, after repeated requests, multiple
copies of 302s. They dated as follows--10 February 2017, 11 February 2017. 14 February 2017 and
15 February 2017. WTF??? This alone is prima facie evidence that something crooked was
afoot.
The final 302--dated 15 February 2017--painted General Flynn in the worst possible light.
The "facts" of this 302 are not supported by the notes taken by Agents Strzok and Pientka. The
conclusion is simple--the FBI fabricated a case against General Flynn. We now wait to see if
Judge Sullivan will acknowledge this crooked conduct and exonerate the good General. Justice
demands it.
These are not my facts. They are the facts based on documents submitted on the record to
Judge Sullivan. I find it shocking that no journalist has had the energy or interest to cover
this. Just one more reminder of the putrid state of journalism and investigative reporting. The
charges levied against General Flynn by the Mueller prosecutors are without foundation. That is
the stark conclusion facing any honest reader of the documents/exhibits uncovered by the Honey
Badger. This kind of conduct by the FBI is just one more proof to support Colonel Lang's wise
observation that this institution, along with the CIA, should be burned to the ground and new
institutions erected in their stead that are committed to upholding the Constitution and
preserving the rights of the individual.
General Flynn was the National Security Advisor to the President. Among his duties he would
be expected to talk with foreign officials, including Russians, perhaps especially Russians.
My question is what was the predicating evidence that gave rise to opening a criminal case
with Flynn as the subject at all. What was the substantive violation; and why was there a
need to convene a meeting of high level Bureau official to discuss an ambush interview. What
was there to talk about in this meeting? My suspicion is that they expected, or hoped, at the
outset to leverage Flynn against Trump which makes the scheme worse, much worse
Re: predicate - IIRC, this is where the work of the FBI/CIA "ratfucker" Stefan Halper was
instrumental, having propagated the bogus claim that scholar Svetlana Lokhova was a Russian
agent with whom Gen. Flynn was having a sexual relationship.
There was a simpler time when even the least accomplished FBI Agent would have known enough
to ask Mr Halper for the circumstantial details as to how he acquired the news that Flynn had
any relationship at all with Lokhova, let alone a sexual relationship, who told him, how did
he know, why was he telling him, when, etc. The same questions should have been resolved with
respect to Lokhova before entertaining a conclusion that she was a Russian Agent of some
sort. Finally, even if the allegation against Flynn had been true, which had not been
established, and the allegation against Lokhova had been true, which as far as I know had not
been established, the Agents should have laid those cards before Flynn from the outset as the
reason he was being interviewed. If during the course of the interview he became suspect of
having done something illegal, he should have been told what it was and given all his rights,
including the right to an attorney. If the Agents suspected he was lying in matters of such
significant import that he would be charged for lying, they should have been given a specific
warning that lying was a prosecutable offense. That would have been playing it down the
middle. Since none of this appears to have been done, the question is why not. The leading
suspicion is that the carefully considered intent was to take down Flynn by any means
necessary to advance another purpose.
There are two separate issues: The Russian-Flynn Spying connection was established in London
back in 2015. IMO using Halper as an echo-chamber for Brennan's collusion fabrications. LTG
Flynn at that time was being set-up, for a retaliatory career strike(TS Clearance issues, I
submit).
The Flynn Perjury case was made in Jan 17 in DC, by the Secret Society, Comey, McCabe,
Yates, Strozk and the unwitting, SA Joe Pientka (hopefully). This trap was drafted by Comey,
specifically to take advantage of the newly elected President's inexperienced Cabinet, the WH
in-chaos. Chaos reportedly generated by a well timed Leak to the media. Which suggested that
LTG Flynn had Lied to VP Pence.
This FBI leak, now had the WH in a tail spin. Given the collusion beliefs at that time, had
VP Pence admitted that acting NSA Flynn, did in fact speak with the Russian Kislyak re:
Sanctions. The media would've screamed, the call demonstrated Russian Collusion.
Since VP Pence stated, he did not know that NSA Flynn had discussed the Sanctions with
Kislyak. The media created the image that Flynn had lied to the VP...
This was the "Pretext" which Defense Council Powell referred to. This is the opportune
moment, at which Comey sprang and later bragged about. Stating publicly that he took
advantage of a inexperienced Trump oval office in turmoil. Claiming he decided "Screw IT"
I'll send two agents in to question Flynn.
Without going through FBI-WH protocols. Because Comey knew that protocols would alert the
entire WH Staff. Making the FBI's hopes for a Perjury Trap against NSA Flynn, impossible.
Accordingly, AAG Yates and McCabe then both set the stage, with calls to WH Counsel
McGahn. Where they threatened charges against Flynn under the nonexistent "1799" Logan Act.
As well as suggesting that Flynn was now vulnerable to Extortion by Russian agents. Since the
Russians knew he had lied to the VP.
As Powell points out, by 24JAN17, the date of the Flynn interview. The entire world, knew
Flynn had Lied. Making the extortion threat rather bogus. In fact reports stated, at that
time even WHC McGahn had asked either Yates or McCabe (don't recall which). Why would the FBI
give a damn, what the NSA had told the VP? However the Bureau persisted and they won out.
McGahn is reported to have told Flynn, that he should sit down with these two FBI
agents...
Once Flynn sat down and gave a statement. FWIW, I think Andy McCabe was going to find a
Flynn misstatement or create one. Sufficient to justify the 1001 charge. It appears as though
McCabe took the later option and simply Created one.
Excellent summation.
My question is does some combination of incompetence and bubblethink naivete explain how at
the outset they could have gone all in on the Brennan/Halper information or did they just
cynically exploit the opportunity that had been manufactured in order to take it to the next
level -Trump. Taking it to the next level appears to be what drove the Papadopolis case where
similar procedural abuses occurred.
Poor George Popadopoulos, also "bright, but not profoundly sophisticated.", also had lawyers
who rolled over to the FBI.
If you read George's book, "Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the
Plot to Bring Down President Trump", the methods used on Flynn sound familiar.
Since George only served two weeks, I wonder if it would be worth while for him to tackle
the FBI again?
PS When the FBI says you are not "sophisticated", does that mean that they view you as
easy to trick?
Papadopolis signed "confession" equally odd: string of disconnected facts topped off with
what appears almost to be an added "conclusion" allegedly based on these irrelevant string of
factual statements that damn him into eternity as well.
Was the conclusionary" confession" added later, or was it shoved in front of him to sign
as a unwitting last minute alteration to a previously agreed set of facts is pror statements
he had already agreed were true? Just me, but when I read this "confession some time ago, it
simply did not pass the smell test.
The signed "confession: basically appeared to be accusing Papadopolus and by extension the
Trump campaign of violating the Logan Act - violating Obama's exclusive right to conduct
foreign policy.
(A SCHIFF PARAPHRAse)
Yes I was in Russia
Yes, I ate pork chops for dinner
Yes. I endeavored to meet with Russian individuals
Etc - benign
Etc - benign
Confession - al of the above are true
Kicker: Final Statement I INTENTIONALLY MET WITH TOP LEVEL RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT AGENTS TO
DISCUSS US FOREIGN POLICY
Papadopoulos' "lies" rest on subjective interpretation. For instance, one of the "lies"
consist of a referral to Mifsud as "a nobody". A second "lie" is based on when he officially
joined the Trump campaign: George P says it was when he first went to Washington and attended
a campaign meeting, while the indictment says no it was when he participated in the phone
call which invited him on board (a difference of a couple of weeks). It is very very thin
gruel.
If the evidence provided by the defence in the Flynn case is even only a partial example
of the capabilities and proclivities of the FBI, then how many other poor schmucks have been
convicted and jailed unjustly at the hands of this organisation?
The answer, given the size of the organisation must be : "thousands". The remedy is
obvious and compelling if you want to remain something like a first world democracy.
How many others have there been? The genesis of the USA v Flynn, was a CIA-FBI hybrid. An
international Co-Intel operation, aimed at targeting Donald Trump. As such "the Case" was
initiated from the top down, under the secrecy of a T/S Counter-Intelligence operation.
These are not the normal beginnings of a Criminal matter. Which originates with a filed
criminal Complaint, from the ground-up.
In short all of the checks and balances our federal statutes mandate. Steps where AUSA's,
Bureau ASAC's and District Judges must review and approve. Even before convening a GJ. Were
intentionally overridden or perjured by a select society of the highest officials inside DoJ.
As such there were no higher authorities nor any of the Higher Loyalty for Jim Comey to seek
his resolution from.
That is not the normal investigative process. This was a deliberate criminal act to target
an innocent man (actually several innocent men). As such IMO, the associated political
pressure, all of which was self-inflicted. Was the force which brought about the criminality
on the part of Comey, McCabe, et al.
So, FWIW, you don't see those levels of personal involvement in criminal investigations.
The classic, where the murder victim's brother is the town Sheriff. Hence you don't see cases
of innocent people being dragged off to the Dungeons. Certainly not intentionally and not in
the thousands, anyway.
On another blog, a commenter claimed Flynn was going to program audit the entire IC - money
spent and results obtained.
So instead of Flynn burning the agency down, they did just the opposite and got to him
first. Just like Sen Schumer warned Trump: don't take on the IC, because they have six ways
against Sunday to take you down.
Maybe Flynn' s alleged post-inauguration audit plans is what triggered Brennan to get
Obama to secretly keep his eyes on Flynn - maybe that was the second tier secret access they
wanted, not necessarily Trump himself?
Survival in DC is existential - my own in-house observation during the Watergate
years.
The reports I've read tell of a long and sorted history between LTG Flynn, John Brennan, DNI
Clapper and Obama. Some of the stories did remind me of the SST suggestion to, "Burn it all
down". The General also supported this idea that DoD, should be the lead agency in the IC and
CA. Since must of their modern day activity, does tend to be kinetic...
So LTG Flynn has made enemies in the Obama administration, CIA and DNI.
However, IMO the far more telling issue of the depths of IC's Coup effort. Are the
exploits of Halper, Mifsud, MI6-CIA link. Which began back in 2015. This gives the
impression, Flynn was being targeted for career destruction. Solely as retaliation for his
departure from the Obama Administration, coupled with Flynn's open opposition to policies of
Obama-Brennan (Iran-Syria-Libya). This took place way before he agreed to the NSA post with
President Trump.
Then there's also LTG Flynn's direct rebuttal of DDFBI Andy McCabe. Seems McCabe was
involved in a Bureau OPR dust-up over sexual harassment allegations. The female SA worked CT
and was an acquaintance of Gen Flynn's. Flynn then made a public statement of support for the
Agent. Which was reported to have angered Andy. Sydney Powell, suggests that McCabe was
overhead to have said words to the effect or, First we F--- Flynn, then we F--- Trump. During
one of his 7th floor, Secret Society meetings.
Again all of this happened, before General Flynn was Candidate Trump's NSA Designee. So
the Six ways to Sunday, warning does resonate re: LTG Flynn as well.
In my experience in the US armed forces.... having a top secret crypto clearance...
And later.... as a federal investigator...
I distinctly remember that conversations between the White house, particularly the
president and his national security chief are "top secret -- eyes only for the president"
So.....
Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for
violating US security CFRs by knowing such conversations took place and knowing the contents
thereof with out appropriate security clearances??
"Why did FLynn not have the Secret Service Detail arrest Sztrok and company on the spot for
violating US security CFRs.."
Many things about Spygate have puzzled me. The response by Trump after becoming POTUS to
all the machinations by Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rosenstein, et al has been baffling. It is
like he does not understand the powers of his office. And after he learned about the covert
action action against his campaign and him, to then staff his administration with folks who
were in cahoots with the putschists is frankly bizarre.
Does anyone have any explanation for the actions or inactions of Trump & Flynn?
"Does anyone have any explanation for the actions or inactions of Trump & Flynn?"
I have no comment relative to Flynn, but, in regards to Trump, IMO, Trump is stupid.
First, a little background. I did vote for Trump. I did have an hatred for national
politics ever since the Cheney "presidency". In that period, I was a dissident with a very
minor voice. But, I did study, as best as I could, the Bush (Cheney) and the Obama
presidency. It was reasonably clear that president's. didn't count. IMO the real power lay
with: a handful of Senate leaders, the CIA, the bureaucracy, and the powerful families that
controlled the major multi-national corporations, such as, Exxon Mobile. The preceding
constituted a powerful oligarchy that controlled the U.S. A dictatorship of sorts.
Trump had two major objectives for his presidency: MAGA and "drain the swamp". I concurred
with both objectives. After six months of the Trump presidency, and after observing his
choice of appointments and his actions, I concluded that he was a high school baseball player
trying to compete with the major leagues. He didn't know what he was doing (and, still
doesn't).
At that time, I concluded that if Trump really wanted to install MAGA and "drain the
swamp" he should have concluded way before putting his hat in the ring, that the only way to
accomplish his objective was to foster a coup after becoming president. Prior to his
presidency, he would had to select a team which would be his appointees and develop a plan.
After becoming president, he would have to ignore Congress and put his people in place
including in the DOD. The team would stay in control regardless of Congress' views.
Of course, this is a dictatorship, but is this any less obnoxious to our current oligarchs
dictatorship.
You're not wrong in criticizing Trump's personnel choices and inaction. When he entered
office he was warned about the SES/SIS holdovers and the need to get his own people in place.
He ignored that advice and is suffering the consequences. Trump played a character on TV of
being a shrewd, tough judge of talent and ability. In reality, he is a bit of a goofball.
That said, his basic policy positions are solid with respect to putting America first,
enforcing immigration laws, and disengaging from the foreign adventurism that has defined US
foreign policy for the last 75 years.
My hope is that he now finally recognizes the threat.
I prefer thinking of Donald Trump as a World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Famer as it fits
the context of what we are seeing more precise. Staged drama, personality pitted against
personality, all a great spectacle.
If it makes the denizens of DC fall on their fainting couches with the image all the
better.
Isn't Donald Trump suffering the same problem Jimmy Carter had that as a DC outsider he
isn't able hire talent and the establishment has made it clear that a position in the Trump
administration is a career killer?
Democrat's politics of personal destruction made it virtually impossible for Trump to hire or
appoint the requisite people for the task you described. RINO's wouldn't touch him and
Democrats were hell bent for revenge at any costs.
Amazing he did as well as he has done so far - considering his election was so toxic to
any possible insiders who could have offered the necessary experience to warn him where the
third rails were located.
Give him another four years and full control of GOP House and Senate back - this country
needs his energy and resoluteness to finally get the real work done. Patriots at every level
need to apply for appointed positions.
BTW: I was a rabid no-Trumper up to election night. Then Trump became my President. I have
not looked back.
Draining the Swamp can't be accomplished by hiring within the beltway or hiring any long-term
Democrat or Republican operative including members of Congress.
Trump should have recognized when he learned that his transition team was being spied on
that he had to hire people who believed in his agenda and had no ties to the Swamp.
By hiring folks like Haley, Pompeo, Bolton, Coats, Rosenstein, Wray, etc and not cleaning
house by firing entire swathes of the bureaucracy and then not using the powers of his office
to declassify but instead passing the buck on to Rosenstein, Sessions and Barr and only
tweeting witch hunt he has enabled the Swamp to run circles around him.
IMO, he is where he is because of his inability to put together a coherent team that
believes in his agenda and is willing to fight the Swamp with everything thy've got.
@joekovalski98: Pres. Trump came into office being very familiar with the intelligence
operation against him.
Enter Admiral (ret) Mike Rogers who travelled secretly without approval by Clapper to brief
the president of the spy operation.
Trump immediately move his administration to NJ.
Rogers and Flynn go back many years as Rogers was a protégé of Flynn. They
both extensively informed president Trump.
"Drain the swamp" is en-route carried out partially by our military and Flynn's former
DIA.
The stage was set and president Trump kept the left distracted via twitter while the
operation is underway between our military, white hats and their allies abroad.
Mifsud was arrested by the Italian intelligence agents 3 days ago and brought back to
Rome.
Trump is a long way from stupid - he has so far managed via twitter and his orthodox ways
for the deep state to unmask themselves. Hiring enemies at times is a way to confuse those
that try to destroy you.
Mifsud's arrest could be key to unraveling or should I say, the Unmasking of. Rather large
amounts of fraudulent intelligence that was laundered through the FISA Warrant Application
process.
The AG reportedly now has Mifsud's Cellphones (2), which coupled with Mifsud's interview
statements, if not his direct cooperation. Should reveal the CIA and/or SA Strozk, were
responsible for providing Mifsud with the false Intelligence. Which he then fed into their
Warrant Apps, through the person of George Papadopoulos.
Which in turn, could establish that Mifsud was never the alleged Russian Agent linked to
Putin. But rather a western intelligence asset, linked to Brennan. Thus destroying the
obvious Defensive strategy of Brennan, Comey and McCabe. Specifically the vaunted, "Hey who
knew the intelligence was bad? I was just doing my JOB!
I believe it was because the FBI was intentionally lying about their authority to monitor the
Flynn-Kysliak conversation. Claiming they were not monitoring the WH, rather they were
monitoring the Russian Ambassador and LTG Flynn was merely, Caught-up in that conversation.
Which at the time, was a good-enough-story. But recent disclosures seem to prove the 2 Agents
along with Comey, McCabe as well as AAG Sally Yates. All knew at the time of their "Pretext"
was establishing a Perjury Trap for the new NSA.
What set Brennan's hair on fire that instigated Brennan's secret memo to Obama who in turn
created and authorized this multi-nation, IC secret surveillance and entrapment operation?
When will we learn why Samantha Powers demanded hundreds of FISA unmasking requests during
the final hours of the Obama administration, after the election but before before the
inauguration of Donald J Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America.
Why have Joseph Mifsud and Crowdstrike, yet again, disappeared from media interest.
Why oh why, certain persons disappear from media interest? Why for example, did Ghislaine
Maxwell disappear from media? Is she not involved in lawsuits? Do courts not know where she
is now? The all-knowing Wikipedia English - does not know (as of today, I checked). The
answer to all these troubling questions is in the comments to the Colonels piece on John
Hannah. Am I becoming paranoid perhaps.?
If the media continues endlessly about the Ukraine phone call, the quid pro quo yet fails to
mention Crowdstrike "favor" in the same article, something is fishy. The phone call story did
not drop out of sight; just a very salient detail. In fact the substance of the phone call is
the story- and what Democrats are calling grounds for impeachment. Yet NO mention of the
Crowdstrike favor. I find this odd. Don't you?
Under the caption, "Nobody does it better" this explanation from Defense Counsel Powell's
04NOV19 Filing, pg 3 para 2
"The government has known since prior to January 24, 2017, that it intended to target Mr.
Flynn for federal prosecution. That is why the entire investigation" of him was created at
least as early as summer 2016 and pursued despite the absence of a legitimate basis. That is
why Peter Strzok texted Lisa Page on January 10, 2017: "Sitting with Bill watching CNN. A TON
more out. .
. We're discussing whether, now that this is out, we can use it as a pretext to go interview
some people." 3 The word "pretext" is key. Thinking he was communicating secretly only with
his paramour before their illicit relationship and extreme bias were revealed to the world,
Strzok let the cat out of the bag as to what the FBI was up to. Try as he might, Mr. Van
Grack cannot stuff that cat back into that bag.4
Former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe as much as admitted the FBI's intent to set up Mr.
Flynn on a criminal false statement charge from the get-go. On Dec. 19, 2017, McCabe told the
House Intelligence Committee in sworn testimony: "[T]he conundrum that we faced on their
return from the interview is that although [the agents] didn't detect deception in the
statements that he made in the interview . . . the statements were inconsistent with our
understanding of the conversation that he had actually had with the ambassador."
McCabe proceeded to admit to the Committee that "the two people who interviewed [Flynn]
didn't think he was lying, [which] was not [a] great beginning of a false statement case."
Ex. 1.
_____________
What's the saying? "Not much ambiguity there?"
Finally, on Nov 9, 2029 American Thinker in an article about Nancy Pelosi attempts at damage
control, someone in the media actually mentions Crowdstrike and the alleged " DNChacking"
........ "CrowdStrike, the cyber-security company that is involved in all this over and
over again, is a an American company founded by a Ukrainian, Dmitri Alperovitch, who is
extremely anti-Russia and who delights in implicating Russia in the DNC hacking event that
probably did not happen......"
On November 7, 2019, the National Court of Justice of Ecuador ratified the preventive
detention of former president Rafael Correa , along with a number of his former officials.
Immediately after the court rendered its decision for pretrial detention, Correa rejected
accusations of bribery, illicit association and contributions to his political campaign between
2012 and 2016, while he was the leader of Alianza Patria Altiva i Soberana (PAIS). Correa
founded Alianza PAIS in 2006, as a democratic socialist political party with an objective to
achieve economic and political sovereignty, and foment a social and economic revolution in the
nation, which came to be known as The Citizens' Revolution (La Revolución
Ciudadana).
During his presidency, which lasted from January 15, 2007 to May 24, 2017, Correa
introduced a brand of 21 st century socialism to Ecuador, with a focus on improving
the living standards of the poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population. His
presidency was part of 'the revolutionary wave' in Latin America, referred to as 'Pink tide',
where a number of left-wing and socialist governments swept into power throughout the continent
during the 2000s, including Cristina Néstor Kirchner and Fernández de Kirchner in
Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Manuel Zelaya in
Honduras, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, and Hugo Chávez in
Venezuela. All of these governments were opposed to neo-liberal economic policies and American
imperialism.
While he was president, Correa raised taxes on the rich and cut down on tax evasion, and
increased public investment on infrastructure and public services, including publicly-funded
pensions, housing, free health care and education. His government ended up building many
schools in different parts of the nation, particularly the countryside, and provided students
with nearly all of the materials needed to further their studies. President Correa also more
than doubled the minimum wage, which contributed to significantly reducing socioeconomic
inequality. In 2018, a World Bank report explained that:
Ecuador has made notable improvements in reducing poverty over the last decade. Income
poverty decreased from 36.7 percent in 2007 to 21.5 percent in 2017. In addition, the share
of the population living in extreme poverty fell by more than half, from 16.5 percent in 2007
to 7.9 percent in 2017, representing an average annual drop of 0.9 percentage points. In
absolute numbers, these changes represent a total of 1.6 million individuals exiting poverty,
and about one million exiting extreme poverty over the last decade.[i]
Furthermore, the unemployment rate fell from an 'all time high of 11.86 percent in the first
quarter of 2004' to 'a record low of 4.54 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014'[ii]. The World
Bank also reported that Ecuador posted annual economic growth of '4.5 percent during 2001-2014,
well above the average for the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region of 3.3 percent.
During this period, real GDP doubled and real GDP per capita increased by 50 percent.'[iii]
On October 1, 2016, Correa announced the nomination of Lenín Boltaire Moreno
Garcés , who served as his vice president from 2007 to 2013, as his party's candidate
for the 2017 presidential election at the conference of Alianza PAIS. Moreno was elected
president, and it was expected that he would continue and build on Correa's left-wing economic
policies. However, within a few months of winning the election, president Moreno began to
dismantle many of the social, economic and political reforms enacted by Correa during his
decade as president. Contrary to Correa's government, many of the domestic policies pursued by
president Moreno included reducing public spending, weakening worker rights, and providing
significant tax cuts to the rich and large corporations. In other words, president Moreno has
gradually shifted Ecuador's left-wing policies to the political centre-right.
Moreno's presidency also shifted Ecuador's foreign policy stance, giving it a more
neo-liberal and pro-American orientation. When Correa's socialist government was in power,
Ecuador enjoyed close diplomatic and economic relations with Venezuela, and was more
independent of American hegemony. For example, president Correa closed a US military base in
Manta, Ecuador when Washington's lease expired in 2009. Prior to that, in 2007, Correa
stated:
We'll renew the [Manta air] base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami --
an Ecuadorean base if there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely,
they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States.[iv]
Subsequently, on September 18, 2009, he also said:
As long as I am president, I will not allow foreign bases in our homeland, I will not
allow interference in our affairs, I will not negotiate our sovereignty and I will not accept
guardians of our democracy.
Contrary to Correa, the US-Ecuador military relationship has expanded under the Moreno
government 'through training, assistance, and the reestablishment of an Office of Security
Cooperation at the U.S. Embassy in Quito.'[v]Ecuador and the US have also signed deals for the
purchase of weapons and other military equipment, and agreed to cooperate more closely in the
areas of security, intelligence, and counter-narcotics.
In 2011, president Correa expelled US ambassador Heather Hodges from Quito. Subsequently, in
2014, his government expelled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
from the country, where it had been operating since 1961 as part of John F. Kennedy's Alliance
for Progress (AFP)[vi]. USAID regularly exercises 'soft power' in Latin American nations in
order to help the US establish itself as an 'international police power'[vii]. In May 2019,
Moreno's government announced that USAID would return to Ecuador.
President Correa also became renowned for providing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with
political asylum in Ecuador's London embassy in 2012 to prevent his arrest and possible
extradition to the US. However, shortly after his election, there were indications that Moreno
might be willing to hand him over to authorities in the UK. In addition to calling Assange an
'inherited problem,' a 'spoiled brat' and a 'miserable hacker', Moreno accused him of
repeatedly violating his asylum conditions and of trying to use the embassy as a 'centre for
spying'[viii]. Then, on April 11, Assange's political asylum was revoked, which allowed him to
be forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy by British police.In response, Correa called
Moreno 'the greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history' for committing 'a crime
humanity will never forget'[ix].
President Correa's government supported the integration of South America countries into a
single economic and political bloc. However, since Moreno came to power, Ecuador has distanced
itself from the Venezuelan government, and withdrew from the Bolivarian Alternative for the
Americas[x](ALBA) in August 2018, as well as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) in
September 2019. UNASUR was established by 12 South American countries in 2008to address
important issues in the region without the presence of the United States. Currently, only five
members remain: Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela. The other seven members,
Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Paraguay, agreed to create the Forum for
the Progress of South America (PROSUR) in March 2019. The goal of this alternative organization
is to achieve the right-wing agenda in Latin America, as its members support neo-liberal
austerity measures and closer ties with Washington. It could be said that PROSUR aligns well
with the goals and objectives of the Monroe Doctrine.
Another major shift in president Moreno's political stance pertains to lawsuits brought
against Texaco/Chevron by the Correa government to obtain compensation for environmental
damages caused when the operations of Texaco (acquired by Chevron in 2001) dumped 16 billion
gallons of toxic wastewater in the Amazon region of Ecuador between 1964 and 1992, affecting
more than 30,000 Indigenous people and Campesinos in the area. 'Chevron left 880 pits full of
crude oil which are still there, the rivers are still full of hydrocarbon sediment and polluted
by the crude oil spills in Amazonia, which is one of the most biodiversity rich regions in the
world'[xi], and 'the damage has been left unrepaired for more than 40 years'[xii]. To raise
public awareness about this environmental disaster, president Correa's government established
an international campaign called the 'Dirty Hand of Chevron'. In 2011, the Ecuadorian
Constitutional Court ordered Chevron to pay $9.5 billion in compensation for social and
environmental damages it caused.
In September 2018, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), an agency of the United Nations
based in the Hague, Netherlands, ruled that the Ecuadorian court decision against Chevron was
illegal, because it was an outcome of fraud, bribery, and corruption. The PCA 'also ruled that
Ecuador will have to pay economic compensation'[xiii]to Chevron. 'The amount has not been
established yet, but Chevron requested that Ecuador assume the US$9.5 billion' awarded to
affected communities by the Ecuadorean court.[xiv]Following the PCA decision, the government of
president Moreno announced that:
the state will sue former President Rafael Correa and his government officials if Ecuador
lost the international arbitration process.[xv]
In this matter, president Moreno also accused Correa of 'failing to defend the country's
interests correctly and spending money on "The Dirty Hand of Chevron" campaign, which according
to the government sought to "manipulate national and international public opinion."'[xvi] In
reality, president Moreno supports the PCA decision, thereby prioritizing the interest of
Texaco/Chevron over those of his own citizens . In fact, his government has been attempting
to nullify the Constitutional Court ruling against Chevron. In response, former president
Correa has accused the Moreno government of 'doing homework ordered by (the United States Vice
President Mike) Pence'. Even some of Moreno's own cabinet ministers condemned the PCA ruling
and expressed their support for Ecuador's Constitutional Court for defending of the country's
nationals interest and the rights of the people of the Amazon.
Correa exhibited a hostile attitude towards the Bretton Woods Institutions during his
presidency. He sought to renegotiate Ecuador's external debt of US$10.2 billion, which he
called 'illegitimate' because 'it was accrued during autocratic and corrupt regimes of the
past. Correa threatened to default on Ecuador's foreign debt, and ordered the expulsion of the
World Bank's country manager'[xvii], which was carried out on April 26, 2007. His government
also opposed the signing of any agreements that would permit the IMF to monitor Ecuador's
economic plan. As a result of such actions on the part of Correa's government, 'Ecuador was
able to renegotiate its debt with its creditors and redirect public funds towards social
investments.'[xviii]
To the contrary, Moreno has enthusiastically embraced the IMF during his short time as
president. On March 1, 2019, Ecuador's central bank manager, Verónica Artola
Jarrín, and economy and finance minister, Richard Martínez Alvarado,submitted a
letter of intent to the IMF requesting a three-year $4.2 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF)
agreement. An EFF allows the IMF to assist countries that are facing 'serious medium-term
balance of payments problems.' More precisely, EFF is designed to:
to provide assistance to countries: (i) experiencing serious payments imbalances because
of structural impediments; or (ii) characterized by slow growth and an inherently weak
balance of payments position. The EFF provides assistance in support of comprehensive
programs that include policies of the scope and character required to correct structural
imbalances over an extended period.[xix]
The IMF agreement signed in March allowed Ecuador to borrow $4.2 billion. However, as is
always the case, the IMF agreement was not without conditionalities, as it required the
Ecuadorian government to implement a series of neo-liberal economic reforms. According to IMF
statements, these reforms aim to transform Ecuador's fiscal deficit into a surplus, reduce the
country's debt-to-GDP ratio, and increase foreign investment. On March 11, 2019, Christine
Lagarde, former Managing Director of the IMF, claimed that:
The Ecuadorian authorities are implementing a comprehensive reform program aimed at
modernizing the economy and paving the way for strong, sustained, and equitable
growth.[xx]
On March 11, 2019, Christine Lagarde also explained that:
Achieving a robust fiscal position is at the core of the authorities' program, which will
be supported by a three-year extended arrangement from the IMF. The aim is to reduce
debt-to-GDP ratio through a combination of a wage bill realignment, a careful and gradual
optimization of fuel subsidies, a reprioritization of capital and goods and services
spending, and a tax reform. The savings generated by these measures will allow for an
increase in social assistance spending over the course of the program. The authorities will
continue their efforts to strengthen the medium-term fiscal policy framework, and more
rigorous fiscal controls and better public financial management will help to enhance the
effectiveness of fiscal policy.[xxi]
Protecting the poor and most vulnerable segments in society is a key objective of the
authorities' program. In this context, the authorities plan to extend the coverage of, and
increase the nominal level of benefits under the existing social protection programs. Work is
also underway to improve the targeting of social programs.[xxii]
Ecuador's participation in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
represents another point of contention between Correa and the Moreno government. Ecuador was a
member of OPEC from 1973 and 1992. After a period of absence, it rejoined the organization in
2007 after Correa became president of the country. However, on October 1 st ,
president Moreno announced that Ecuador would once again end its membership in OPEC effective
January 1, 2020. Given Moreno's penchant for implementing neo-liberal economic policies, this
decision was likely based on the notion that freeing the country from the burden of having to
abide by quotas would bring fiscal sustainability to Ecuador. This is evidenced by the fact
that Ecuador contacted OPEC to request permission to produce above its quota in February 2019,
though it was never confirmed whether a response was received[xxiii]. While increasing
production in its Amazonian oil fields would likely bring more foreign investment to Ecuador
and open up new markets, it would also lead to serious conflicts between the Moreno government
and the indigenous people living in the area, who are strongly opposed to oil extraction.
In addition to announcing Ecuador's departure from OPEC, president Moreno also selected
October 1 st as the date to introduce Decree 883, a series of economic measures that
included ending longstanding subsidies for fuel, the removal of some import tariffs, and cuts
to the benefits and wages of public employees. In particular, the elimination of fuel
subsidies, which had been in place for 40 years, was instituted in order to meet IMF
requirements to keep the $4.2 billion programme on track, and to satisfy international
investors. The EFF agreement between the IMF and the Ecuadorean government also called for
thousands of public employees to be laid off, the privatization of public assets, the
separation of the central bank from the government, cutting public expenditures, and raising
taxes over the next three years. IMF representatives claim that these types of reforms bring
more foreign direct investment into the economy.
In fact, a close examination of the neo-liberal economic reforms recommended by the IMF in
many countries reveals that they are almost identical, meaning that they do not take the
diverse needs and realities of each country into account; rather, they are driven by the
interests of the countries and other stakeholders that provide the funds. Generally, the IMF's
recommendations[xxiv]consist of cutting deficits, liberalizing trade, privatizing state-owned
enterprises, reforming the banking and financial systems, increasing taxes, raising interest
rates, and reforming key sectors. However, countless studies have revealed that these types of
reforms, have raised the unemployment rate, created poverty, and have often preceded
recessions. On October 2, 2019, the IMF issued a press release on Ecuador stating that:
The reforms announced yesterday by President Lenin Moreno aim to improve the resilience
and sustainability of Ecuador's economy and foster strong, and inclusive growth. The
announcement included important measures to protect the poor and most vulnerable, as well as
to generate jobs in a more competitive economy.
The authorities are also working on important reforms aimed at supporting Ecuador's
dollarization, including the reform of the central bank and the organic code of budget and
planning.
IMF staff will continue to work closely with the authorities to improve the prospects for
all Ecuadorians. The second review is expected to be submitted to the Executive Board in the
coming weeks.[xxv]
President Moreno's decision to end the subsidies on fuel led to the prices of diesel and
petroleum increasing by 100% and 30%, respectively, overnight, which directly contributed to
significantly raising the costs of public transportation. In response, protests erupted against
Moreno's austerity measures on October 3 rd , featuring students, unions and
indigenous organizations. They declared an indefinite general strike until the government
reversed its neo-liberal adjustment package. Moreno's initial response was to reject the
ultimatum and state that he would 'not negotiate with criminals.'
The following day, on October 4, 2019, president Moreno declared a state of emergency under
the pretext of ensuring the security of citizens and to 'avoid chaos.' Nonetheless, the
protests continued and intensified to the point that the government was forced to relocate to
city of Guayaquil because Quito had been overrun by anti-government protestors. However, this
attempt to escape the protestors proved ineffective as taxi, bus and truck drivers blocked
roads and bridges in Guayaquil, as well as in Quito, which disrupted transportation
nationwide.
In the following days, thousands of demonstrators continued to demand the reversal of
austerity measures, as well as the resignation of the president. However, Moreno remained
defiant, refusing both demands under all circumstances. Subsequently, Ecuador's main oil
pipeline ceased operations after it was seized by indigenous protesters. Petro-Ecuador was
concerned that production losses could reach 165,000 barrels a day. Indigenous protesters also
occupied two water treatment plants in the city of Ambato. Meanwhile, violent clashes between
protesters and police resulted in seven deaths , about 2,000 injuries, and over 1,000
arrests. Eventually, Moreno's government was forced to back down and make concession with the
well -organised protesters.
On October 13, president Moreno agreed to withdraw Decree 883 and replace the IMF-backed
plan with a new proposal, involving negotiations with the Confederation of Indigenous
Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and other social groups. The following day, president Moreno
signed Decree 894, which reinstated the cancelled fuel subsidies. However, on October 23,
CONAIE released a statement informing the public that 'it paused talks with President Lenin
Moreno because of the government's "persecution" of the group's leaders [Jaime Vargas] since a
halt to violent anti-austerity protests.'[xxvi]
It is unlikely that president Moreno would be willing to give up on his austerity policies
or start the process of cancelling the IMF loan, given his apparent commitment to helping the
US realize the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine. Many of the reforms and policies that his
government has introduced will help keep Ecuador firmly entrenched in America's backyard for
years to come.
This is not a new development, as history has revealed that, for more than a century
, 'in Latin America there are more than enough of the kind of rulers who are ready to use
Yankee troops against their own people when they find themselves in crisis' (Fidel Castro,
Havana 1962). However, the eruption of protests in response to Moreno's neo-liberal reforms
suggests that he faces an uphill battle, as his fellow Ecuadorians do not appear to share his
enthusiasm for selling his country to external creditors and foreign influences. Although
Moreno has managed to successfully drive Rafael Correa out of Ecuador, the former president's
opposition to capitalism and imperialism remain strong among the population.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your
email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Global Research contributor Dr. Birsen Filip holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the
University of Ottawa.
HARPER: NEOCONS STILL PROMOTE PERMANENT REVOLUTION
As the happy marriage of neoconservatives and Obama-era humanitarian interventionists continues
to flourish in defense of American permanent war deployments around the globe, it is a
worthwhile moment to recall the roots of the neocons in the old left of the 1930s. Neocon
founders like Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Max Schachtman, Seymour Martin Lipset, Irving
Howe, Nathan Glazer, and Gertrude Himmelfarb were all anti-Soviet socialists from the 1930s,
many of whom were followers of Leon Trotsky. Trotsky broke with Stalin in the late 1930s over
his emphasis on permanent world socialist revolution, as Stalin concentrated on the
consolidation of "socialist in one country"--the USSR.
From the 1950s, the anti-Soviet fervor of these New York City-based intellectuals prompted
support for the early United States intervention in Vietnam. In the 1970s, the Socialist Party
split up as some factions aligned with the New Left. The neocons formed the Social Democrats
USA (SDUSA), only later abandoning their socialist party-building in favor of penetrating both
the Democratic and Republican parties. In the 1970s, Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry
"Scoop" Jackson and Representative William Hughes hired some leading second-generation neocons
as foreign policy staffers, beginning a long, steady penetration of key Congressional
committees.
At the Gerald Ford White House, successive chiefs of staff Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney
organized a series of "intellectual seminars" by Irving Kristol, further spreading neocon
ideology within the foreign policy establishment. As Defense Secretary and later as Vice
President, Cheney continued to promote neocons to key posts and to advocate for neocon
permanent warfare.
Early in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan launched "Project Democracy," to spread democracy
around the globe through well-funded programs including the National Endowment for Democracy,
led by Carl Gershman, who has headed the NED since its founding in 1984 through to the present.
Gershman was previously Executive Director of Social Democrats USA. NED has been a stronghold
of neocons from its inception.
While the anti-Soviet outlook of the neocons continued even after the Berlin Wall and the
fall of Soviet communism, the focus increasingly was on permanent warfare to promote democracy
around the globe.
Does the permanent warfare of today's neocons differ in any real way from the Trotsky idea
of permanent world revolution? Socialism has been replaced by democracy-promotion but that
difference is small, particularly as the consequences continue to play out on the world
stage.
"Does the permanent warfare of today's neocons differ in any real way from the Trotsky idea
of permanent world revolution? Socialism has been replaced by democracy-promotion but that
difference is small, particularly as the consequences continue to play out on the world
stage."
I don't think the Democracy bit is much more than a fig leaf, it can quickly be discarded if
votes do not go as required. The aim seems to have more to do with removing unfriendly
regimes and replacing them with compliant ones. It does not work because the people/'voters'
do not like the imposed elites and are inclined to vote by tribe/clan/religion, rather than
any western concept of party, the biggest block wins and lords it over the minority.
Irving was quite a character. A socialist who's eyes were not totally closed to the um,
"contradictions" and stagnation inherent in socialist economies. He spun his wheels mightily
in the pages of Dissent trying to reconcile his socialist ideals with it's fundamental
conflict with human nature.
Ok, thus the essence of neoconism is Trotzkism and not Straussianism?
In other words, concerning the neoconservatives it makes no sense to look at the (Leo)
Straussian angle? Arbitarily?
Now, considering their (not so prominent???) part in the US Culture War (still ongoing???)
I am admittedly puzzled. If they were leaning towards Strauss at one point in time, they may
well have shifted from revolutionaries to counterevolutionaries at one point in time. No?
They never did? They weren't impressed by their heroes death, but carried his legacy on?
Nevertheless?
Actually, this is a recasting of the old Muslim idea of Dar al Salam and Dar al Harb. Western
Diocletian states embodying the House of Peace while the rest of mankind lives in the House
of War. For Muslims, the idea was to bring the benefits of Islam to non-Muslims. Here, it is
to bring the benefits of Civilization to the barbarian hordes.
Fundamentally, neocon and their fellow travellers - an assortment of Protestants, Jews,
Nihilists, Democrats, and Shoah Cultists - are waging a relugious war that has failed and
will fail against the particularities of mankind. Just like Islam failed to destroy either
Christianity or Hinduism, this Western errand will fail too.
I think these people are the type, subset pseudointellectuals, that just enjoy power and
using it to stir the pot of humanity for self-glorification.
IMO, they really believe in nothing else. They are, by nature, miserable craven control
freaks that justify their activities by hijacking whatever ideology is floating around in the
zeitgeist that the dupes will follow; could be Islam, could be Christianity, could be
democracy, could be socialism. Makes no difference to them as long as they get to experience
themselves as superior masters of the world.
In Libya, in 2011, Democracy-promoters destroyed her so that Sarkozy and others in France,
Spain, Italy, UK could steal her wealth; reminiscent of Muslim invasions of India in search
of war booty, rapine, and slaves, in the name of Islam.
So? This review of (important) history gives us no insight into why it happened or why we
should care today. Yes, I agree that these were bad people in the 1930s and they remained bad
people when they moved (in theory) from the left wing to the right wing. But that is all you
have said. What were the motives? How was it done? Why were they able to find acceptance in
both parties with such a lousy history? How are they able to continue being accepted after
such a lousy continuing history.
This account is all ad hominem, all about how a certain strain of ideologue has
consistently advocated for policies of world-wide control. The logical back story would be a
Trotskyite coordinating presence, something I don't for a minute believe. Yet people of this
description are undeniably pervasive in the councils of state.
So what is the connection between advocates of US dominion and former advocates of world
wide revolution? And, if it is just a matter of attitudes toward power, why should we care?
So some people 70 years ago (bad people, admittedly) had an influence of some people today
(also in my mind bad people). So? Were they the only people from that era who held such
attitudes? Could we not just as easily trace other genealogies for ideas of US domination? Do
such ideas ever in history fail to materialize when the power balances enable them?
So you don't like these people and you don't like where you think they came from. But do
you have anything to say about why they are so pervasive and what could be done about it?
Ah, the good old days. In the early 80's I would stop after work at the local newsstand
and pick up Commentary, Dissent, Partisan Review, National Interest, and so on. Whatever
struck my fancy and for some reason, these did even though their circulation was quite small.
At the time I didn't not realize their commonality which came to me later in the 80's. The
PBS movie/book, "Arguing the World," which came out about 20 years ago, has a lot of the
backstory.
A common thread is the desire to change the world though they had different views of what
that "change" should be.
As for me, I was an accidental entrepreneur and generally liked Hayek's economic views.
I'm also highly skeptical of idealist and messianic movements like Mao's which the 60's had
been rife with. But I loved readings all these rags with somewhat different perspectives but
a common thread that each seemed to think their "Truth" should rule. Seems to me the greatest
evil gets perpetrated by those that think they have found "The Way."
How much of neoconservatism cum liberal internationalism (foreign policy idealism aka
Wilsonianism) is "spreading freedom and democracy" and now much is neoliberal globalization
as "making the world safe for capitalism"?
In either case the end in view is a Pax Americana where the US has permanent global
dominance in accordance with the Wolfowitz doctrine of not permitting a challenger to arise
as a competitor.
If you go no further than Marxism, you will not understand what is happening. But to go
further is to engage in thoughtcrime.
Fortunately, the Catholic scholar E. Michael Jones has written a great book on this. It is
called The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit: And Its Impact on World History. Incredibly, it has
not been banned from Amazon yet. It is exhaustive, encyclopedic and documented.
Jones has developed a following among young Catholics appalled at both the corruption in
Rome and the corruption in American society. These kids are the ones digging conservatism's
grave, not the left. The left needs Conservative Inc to plays its role and keep the show
going for the benefit of older people who get all their information from television.
It has not been covered much by the media but TPUSA, a Trump-aligned youth organization,
has been battered by audience after audience on its recent campus tour. Yesterday in Los
Angeles Donald Trump Jr was booed off the stage as he tried to promote his latest book.
At first, TPUSA tried to blame campus leftwingers. This was an obvious lie, and so they
began to call the audience Nazis. Then, they accused them of being virgins. They tried to vet
and plant questioners but when this failed they eliminated the Q&A altogether. A similar
episode happened the week before when Sebastian Gorka stupidly took on a 20 year-old Youtube
personality with an audience ten times larger than his own.
Post-WW2 Conservatives failed because they never understood what they were fighting,
failed to wage culture war, and fooled themselves into thinking that the fall of the Berlin
Wall meant the end of struggle, when it only meant a change of theater.
"...appeared to have fallen from a balcony." I somehow doubt that.
"The NGO's funders currently include the British and German governments. The Trump
administration froze US funding, which made up about one-third of the total, without public
explanation in early 2018, but resumed giving financial aid last month amid criticism of its
decision to withdraw US troops from north-eastern Syria."
I bet that pissed off the neocons to no end. He should stop it again. We can use the money
at home.
A beautiful public performance today by the Paris Opera's striking ballet dancers & orchestra. France's strike vs. austerity is bringing art back into the streets.
Jim's Editor's Notes are solely crowdfunded via PayPal
However, in addition to those thinks tanks funded by the state, there was a rapidly growing number of privately-owned analytical centers that were funded by special interests who decided to use these entities to advance their own agendas, thus indirectly influencing American domestic and foreign policies by launching various campaigns.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain .
