May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Neoliberalism -- a new, more dangerous form of Corporatism
The ideology that dare not speak it's name is actually a New, More Dangerous, Form of Corporatism. In essence neoliberalims is
an "internal colonialism" -- the colonialism applied to the host nation population, in which government becomes predatory and
policies are completely and intentionally
based on lies, on deception. In reality this "religion of freedom" (redefinition of the meaning of the word "freedom" and sophisticated
speculation on it is at the center of neoliberal religion) is a coercive cult enforced by corrupt, deceitful financial oligarchy with
the explicit goal of milking the common people (aka "deplorables"). "Free market" under neoliberalism actually means
"state enforced freedom of financial oligarchy to loot". They have money to hire intellectual prostitutes (aka professors
of economics) to do the dirty job of creating elaborate mathness and neoclassic economy based smoke screen over the lies
Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class
warfare. “There’s class warfare, all right, "Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war,
and we’re winning."
Keynes gave the capitalist ruling class tools to extend its existence, the neo-liberals, contemptuously
dismissed them as cowardly compromises -- "Real Men bust Unions" is the neo-liberal motto. Now the reckoning is coming and
Keynes is suddenly looking very clever. And modern.
Listen to this article 6 minutes 00:00 / 06:06 1x Earnings, valuation and rampant speculation have all played a role in the extraordinary bull market that began a year ago this week. The latest combination of the three has a troubling reliance on the speculative element. A broad framework for thinking about stocks can be derived from the late economist Hyman Minsky's three stages of debt. In the first stage, borrowers take on only what they can afford to repay in full from their earnings by the time the debt matures; a standard mortgage works like this. Earnings, valuation and rampant speculation have all played a role in the extraordinary bull market that began a year ago this week. The latest combination of the three has a troubling reliance on the speculative element. A broad framework for thinking about stocks can be derived from the late economist Hyman Minsky's three stages of debt. In the first stage, borrowers take on only what they can afford to repay in full from their earnings by the time the debt matures; a standard mortgage works like this. A broad framework for thinking about stocks can be derived from the late economist Hyman Minsky's three stages of debt. In the first stage, borrowers take on only what they can afford to repay in full from their earnings by the time the debt matures; a standard mortgage works like this. A broad framework for thinking about stocks can be derived from the late economist Hyman Minsky's three stages of debt. In the first stage, borrowers take on only what they can afford to repay in full from their earnings by the time the debt matures; a standard mortgage works like this. U.S. 10-year Treasury yield Source: Tullett Prebon As of March 24 % Pre-pandemic peak of S&P 500 2020 '21 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 S&P 500 forward price/earnings ratio Source: Refinitiv Note: Weekly data S&P 500 peak 2020 '21 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 The parallel in the stock market is stocks going up when earnings -- or rather the expectation of earnings, since the market looks ahead -- go up. There is a risk of course, just as there is with debt: The earnings might not appear, and the stock goes back down. But earnings offer the least risky form of gains, and one that we should welcome as obviously justified. From the low in the summer, 2020 earnings forecasts jumped more than 10%, and expectations for this year rose more than 8%. Stocks responded. In Minsky's second stage, borrowers plan only to repay the interest, and refinance when the main debt is due to be repaid; much company debt works like this. It is taken out with a plan to roll it over indefinitely. Interest rates matter a lot: If they go down when the company needs to refinance, it will pay less. The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might be hit no matter how earnings pan out. A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the The parallel in the stock market is stocks going up when earnings -- or rather the expectation of earnings, since the market looks ahead -- go up. There is a risk of course, just as there is with debt: The earnings might not appear, and the stock goes back down. But earnings offer the least risky form of gains, and one that we should welcome as obviously justified. From the low in the summer, 2020 earnings forecasts jumped more than 10%, and expectations for this year rose more than 8%. Stocks responded. In Minsky's second stage, borrowers plan only to repay the interest, and refinance when the main debt is due to be repaid; much company debt works like this. It is taken out with a plan to roll it over indefinitely. Interest rates matter a lot: If they go down when the company needs to refinance, it will pay less. The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might be hit no matter how earnings pan out. A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the In Minsky's second stage, borrowers plan only to repay the interest, and refinance when the main debt is due to be repaid; much company debt works like this. It is taken out with a plan to roll it over indefinitely. Interest rates matter a lot: If they go down when the company needs to refinance, it will pay less. The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might be hit no matter how earnings pan out. A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the In Minsky's second stage, borrowers plan only to repay the interest, and refinance when the main debt is due to be repaid; much company debt works like this. It is taken out with a plan to roll it over indefinitely. Interest rates matter a lot: If they go down when the company needs to refinance, it will pay less. The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might be hit no matter how earnings pan out. A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might be hit no matter how earnings pan out. A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might be hit no matter how earnings pan out. A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the The parallel in the stock market is the The parallel in the stock market is the hunt for the greater fool . Sure, GameStop < shares bear no relation to the reality < of the company, but I can make money from buying an overpriced stock if I can find someone willing to pay even more because they "like the stock." Wild bets became obvious this year, as newcomers armed with stimulus, or "stimmy," checks Wild bets became obvious this year, as newcomers armed with stimulus, or "stimmy," checks Wild bets became obvious this year, as newcomers armed with stimulus, or "stimmy," checks drove up the price of many tiny stocks, penny shares and those popular on Reddit discussion boards. Speculative bets such as the solar and ARK ETFs rallied up until mid-February, long after growth stocks peaked in August Price performance Source: FactSet *Russell 1000 indexes As of March 25, 7:02 p.m. ET % Invesco Solar Value* ARK Innovation Growth* Sept. 2020 '21 -25 0 25 50 75 100 125 The concern for investors: How much of the market's gain is thanks to this pure speculation, and how much to the justifiable gains of the improving economy and low rates? If too much comes from speculation, the danger is that we run out of greater fools and prices quickly drop back. The concern for investors: How much of the market's gain is thanks to this pure speculation, and how much to the justifiable gains of the improving economy and low rates? If too much comes from speculation, the danger is that we run out of greater fools and prices quickly drop back. me title= A look at how stocks moved through the pandemic suggests earnings and bond yields are still much more important than the gambling element for the market as a whole, but is still troubling. From the S&P peak in mid-February to the end of June, the story was of cratering earnings partly offset by higher valuations. The S&P was down 8%. Earnings forecasts for 12 months ahead fell 20%, while with 10-year yields down almost a full percentage point, valuations were up from a precrisis high of 19 times forecast earnings (itself the highest since the aftermath of the dot-com bubble) to 21 times. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. A look at how stocks moved through the pandemic suggests earnings and bond yields are still much more important than the gambling element for the market as a whole, but is still troubling. From the S&P peak in mid-February to the end of June, the story was of cratering earnings partly offset by higher valuations. The S&P was down 8%. Earnings forecasts for 12 months ahead fell 20%, while with 10-year yields down almost a full percentage point, valuations were up from a precrisis high of 19 times forecast earnings (itself the highest since the aftermath of the dot-com bubble) to 21 times. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. A look at how stocks moved through the pandemic suggests earnings and bond yields are still much more important than the gambling element for the market as a whole, but is still troubling. From the S&P peak in mid-February to the end of June, the story was of cratering earnings partly offset by higher valuations. The S&P was down 8%. Earnings forecasts for 12 months ahead fell 20%, while with 10-year yields down almost a full percentage point, valuations were up from a precrisis high of 19 times forecast earnings (itself the highest since the aftermath of the dot-com bubble) to 21 times. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. From the S&P peak in mid-February to the end of June, the story was of cratering earnings partly offset by higher valuations. The S&P was down 8%. Earnings forecasts for 12 months ahead fell 20%, while with 10-year yields down almost a full percentage point, valuations were up from a precrisis high of 19 times forecast earnings (itself the highest since the aftermath of the dot-com bubble) to 21 times. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. From the S&P peak in mid-February to the end of June, the story was of cratering earnings partly offset by higher valuations. The S&P was down 8%. Earnings forecasts for 12 months ahead fell 20%, while with 10-year yields down almost a full percentage point, valuations were up from a precrisis high of 19 times forecast earnings (itself the highest since the aftermath of the dot-com bubble) to 21 times. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP ( Mar 26, 2021 , www.wsj.com )
Five years ago, it seemed to many observers that something called "nationalism" had returned to U.S. politics and culture. After a
period stretching from the end of the Cold War to the election of
Donald
Trump
when Americans, or at least the elite, had been confident about economic globalization, internationalist foreign policy,
and mass immigration, it appeared that much of the Right was now rejecting that consensus. Crucial to this perceived shift was the
revival of the idea of America as a "nation," a specific place and distinct people whose values and political projects are not
necessarily addressed to the rights and needs of humanity as a whole.
After
Nationalism: Being American in an Age of Division
, by Samuel Goldman. University of Pennsylvania Press, 208 pp., $24.95.
Half a decade later, it is much harder to believe that nationalism is, or ever was, resurgent, or that it offers a way forward for
conservatives. Many Republican voters and politicians continue to support Trump, who has largely taken leave of his earlier
nationalist orientation in favor of railing against the 2020 election. A handful of think tanks and small magazines, such as
American
Affairs
, have separated themselves from the former president while persisting in efforts to sketch the possibilities for a
conservative nationalism after Trump. Other intellectuals on the Right are trying to imagine what comes, as political theorist
Samuel Goldman puts it, "after nationalism."
In his short new book,
After Nationalism
:
Being American in
an Age of Division
, Goldman argues that a renewal of nationalism is neither possible nor desirable. He supports this argument
with a historical account that distinguishes among three different understandings of "nation" that have shaped politics over the
past four centuries. The one closest in time to us -- and closest to the values of the centrist, anti-Trump conservative intellectual
class -- is "creedal nationalism," in which American identity is based on agreement with a "creed," a set of values derived from
founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
Creedal nationalism, which flourished in the mid-20th century, emphasized legal equality and some degree of economic equality. Its
adherents connected this egalitarianism to an interpretation of American history according to which our founding values, at first
applied only partially or even hypocritically, were over the course of many political struggles wrested from the control of white
land-owning elites and extended to all. As Goldman observes, that creedal account of identity as both a philosophical commitment to
certain ideas and the historical process of their realization was a powerful force for collective action. It told people that who
they were depended on what they believed and assured them that their beliefs had been, and therefore could continue to be, not
merely an abstract ideal or a vision of the past but a program for political change. They had an identity, an ideology, a history,
and a program for the future.
Goldman claims that the creedal form of nationalism was a "failure" and disappeared during the crisis of the 1960s and 1970s.
According to him, activists from racial, sexual, and other minorities contested its interpretation of American history, which they
came to see not as the gradual expansion of the democratic promise of our founding but as a series of conflicts between oppressors
and oppressed. Undermining faith in America's basic goodness, understood as its capacity to integrate an ever-widening circle of
people into an ever-expanding notion of freedom and equality, these activists also overloaded narratives of national history with
demands for inclusion of "their" perspectives. Histories written in the aftermath of this cultural revolution tended to be either
polemically "anti-American," a confusing muddle of multicultural perspectives, or both. But conservatives and old-fashioned liberals
have failed to produce a cohesive new narrative, resorting instead to unconvincing arguments about the need for politically useful,
if historically false, national myths that can generate consensus.
Creedal nationalism, however, may neither be as obsolete nor as opposed to multiculturalism and activist politics as Goldman
suggests. We seem, in fact, to be witnessing the emergence of a new form of woke creedalism: a historical account of American
identity organized around the efforts of minorities to overcome white supremacy, patriarchy, and other evils. Unlike the earlier
form of creedalism, this new iteration does not present America's founding ideals as essentially good -- it is more likely to see
them as irredeemably tainted by the original sins of slavery and colonialism. It does, however, have the same structure and purpose
as the earlier creedalism. It offers adherents a sense of who they are (victims of America), what they believe (a particularly
strident sort of American egalitarianism), where they have been (oppression), and what they must do (defeat, rule over, and
eventually assimilate or annihilate their oppressors). The identitarian Left does not operate in an era "after nationalism." Rather,
it promotes a form of creedal nationalism that defines itself against a certain understanding of America.
If the Left has not moved beyond nationalism, one may doubt that the Right will. Goldman calls on readers to imagine a new kind of
American identity divorced from any "coherent and enduring sense of shared identity and purpose." Such commitments, he insists, can
only fuel the culture wars by stoking debates about who Americans are and what they value. He urges us instead to move toward a
minimal loyalty to the liberal democratic process, which we should appreciate as a means of diffusing our political, cultural, and
ethical divisions and allowing us to live decently together.
This proposal, which amounts to an appeal to fellow conservative intellectuals to distance themselves further from nationalism, has
at least two problems. First, Goldman hopes people will stop looking to politics to express their cultural identities and turn
instead toward "associational" life: unions, churches, etc. But the associational life of much of working- and middle-class America
has been hollowed out in the last two generations, largely because of economic policies that have left average people facing lives
that are ever more isolated, precarious, and brief. Second, although he briefly acknowledges in his introduction the "impulses" and
"grievances" that lead the Republican Party to shift away from "globalism," Goldman seems by his conclusion to have forgotten that
Americans face serious material problems that cannot be solved without collective action through the state. Pursuing this collective
action will require a long and intense process of political mobilization that seems implausible if people are not united by a shared
belief similar in intensity to the creedal nationalism of the past -- and counter to the creedal nationalism of the contemporary
Left.
Blake Smith is a historian of modern France and a literary translator.
Neoliberal oligarchy fight against income redistribution by pushing perverted social justice
smoke screen and in effect can turn the USA in South Africa. Money quote from comments: "If I
read NASDAQ's proposal for Board representation in the Onion, I would have thought that even
these jokesters have exceeded the creativity threshold of ridiculousness I thought was possible."
and "What about the Mentally Ill? Do they get a seat? How about the Homeless?"
Three words about famele CEO and board room members: Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos. BTW what is
unclear in NASDAQ bold critical race theory support is: Can we exchange one black member for two
female members? Or not.
Also why stop at the boardrooms. Why not require the same in professional sport teams?
Nasdaq has, in its own words, embraced "the social justice movement." The
actual job of a stock exchange, however, is to ensure that trading is orderly and its listed
companies follow standard governance rules. But doing that doesn't earn the applause of the
political left. Progressive approval apparently means a lot to Nasdaq, which has officially
proposed to its regulator -- the Securities and Exchange Commission, newly chaired by Gary
Gensler -- to increase boardroom diversity through a "regulatory approach."
This proposal would require that Nasdaq-listed companies not only disclose the diversity
characteristics of their existing boards, but also retain "at least one director who
self-identifies as female," and "at least one director who self-identifies as Black or African
American, Hispanic or Latinx, Asian, Native American or Alaska Native, two or more races or
ethnicities, or as LGBTQ+."
Noncompliant firms must publicly "explain" -- in writing -- why they don't meet Nasdaq's
quotas. Nasdaq has, in its own words, embraced "the social justice movement."
The actual job of a stock exchange, however, is to ensure that trading is orderly and its
listed companies follow standard governance rules. But doing that doesn't earn the applause of
the political left. Progressive approval apparently means a lot to Nasdaq, which has officially
proposed to its regulator -- the Securities and Exchange Commission, newly chaired by Gary
Gensler -- to increase boardroom diversity through a "regulatory approach."
The Fed, in sync with the fiction writers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), reports
consumer inflation as honestly as Al Capone reported taxable income.
Vardaman 3 hours ago
"A basket of things no one actually buys, with prices we just pull out of our
asses..."
Glock 1 hour ago
Yep, the BLS uses the CPI-W to literally avoid raising SS payments. The real rate of
inflation for seniors is close to 10% as the things they spend most of their money on like
medical care, medicine, food and utilities have gone through the roof
While the government claims they are entitled to 1.5% or less COLA's out of which comes a
bigger deduction every year for Medicare. Scam artists.
Neoliberalism is the key reason fro the drop in life expectancy
Notable quotes:
"... Declines or stagnation in longevity can signal catastrophic events or deep problems in a society, researchers say. ..."
"... More deaths from homicide, diabetes and chronic liver disease -- which is related to heavy alcohol use -- also contributed to last year's life expectancy drop, the CDC said ..."
"... The declines were largest for Hispanic and Black people, who as population groups were disproportionately affected by the pandemic . The largest drop for any cohort was 3.7 years, for Hispanic men, bringing their life expectancy to 75.3 years of age. ..."
Life expectancy in the U.S. fell by 1.5 years in 2020, the biggest decline since at least
World War II, as the Covid-19 pandemic killed hundreds of thousands and exacerbated crises in
drug overdoses , homicides and some chronic diseases.
... ... ...
The full toll of the pandemic has yet to be seen, doctors and public-health officials said.
Many people skipped or delayed treatment last year for conditions such as diabetes or high
blood pressure and endured isolation, stress and interruptions in normal diet and exercise
routines.
"That has led to intermediate and longer-term effects we will have to deal with for years to
come," said Donald Lloyd-Jones, chair of the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern
University Feinberg School of Medicine and president of the American Heart Association.
Life expectancy is a measure of a nation's well-being and prosperity, based on mortality in
a given year. Declines or stagnation in longevity can signal catastrophic events or deep
problems in a society, researchers say. Life expectancy fell in the U.S. by 11.8 years in
1918, during a world-wide flu pandemic. Many victims were young.
... ... ...
More deaths from homicide, diabetes and chronic liver disease -- which is related to
heavy alcohol use -- also contributed to last year's life expectancy drop, the CDC said...
Life expectancy would have fallen even more, the CDC said, if not for decreases in mortality
due to cancer, chronic lower-respiratory diseases such as bronchitis, emphysema and asthma, and
other factors.
The declines were largest for Hispanic and Black people, who as population groups were
disproportionately affected by the pandemic . The largest drop for any cohort was 3.7
years, for Hispanic men, bringing their life expectancy to 75.3 years of age.
U.S. longevity had been largely stagnant since 2010, even declining in three of those years,
due in part to an increase in
deaths from drug overdoses , rising death rates
from heart disease for middle-aged Americans and other public health crises. "Getting back
to where we were before the pandemic is a very bad place," said Steven Woolf, director emeritus
of the Center on Society and Health at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine
and author of a recent study comparing the effects of the pandemic on life expectancy in the
U.S. and other high-income countries. "We've got a larger problem here."
... ... ...
Drug-overdose deaths rose nearly 30% last year, driven by a proliferation of the deadly
synthetic opioid fentanyl as well as stress, isolation and reduced access to treatment during
the pandemic, public-health experts said. One study published this month found a 28.3%
decline in initiation of addiction treatment in California from March through October
2020..... ...
Life expectancy for white people dropped 1.2 years to 77.6 years in 2020, the lowest level
since 2002.
What is missing from this article is a comparison of the US with other advanced economies in
Europe and Asia. What is disturbing is how the US spends the most and achieves less than our
economic peers starting with expected average longevity. We had the lowest longevity averages
pre-pandemic and now we have dropped further. This is happening despite the fact that our
health care spending is twice the per capita of other advanced economies (Approx. $11K in the
US vs. $6K based on 2019 data). Contributing to our dismal longevity statistics, with respect
to other wealthy economies, are the highest rates of drug overdose deaths and suicides by
gun. This is just the tip of a long list of sad statistics where we are unfortunately number
1 or close to it. The usual (partisan) response is to claim its government's fault or the
fault of a greedy healthcare system or just say the data is wrong. So far, none of these
strategies is working very well.
Dave Berg SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
Life expectancy is the wrong phrase. It's current average life duration. COVID will have no
impact on the life expectancy of babies being born right now. I have two new grandchildren,
their life expectancy will be impacted by things we don't even know about yet.
So go ahead and say whatever you want around all your networked devices, but don't be
surprised if bad things start happening.
I received another "Our Terms Have Changed" email from a Big Tech quasi-monopoly, and for a
change I actually read this one. It was a revelation on multiple fronts. I'm reprinting it here
for your reading pleasure:
We wanted to let you know that we recently updated our Conditions of Use.
What hasn't changed:
Your use constitutes your agreement to our Conditions of Use.
We own all the content you create on our platform, devices and networks, and are free to
monetize it by any means we choose.
We own all the data we collect on you, your devices, purchases, social networks, views,
associations, beliefs and illicit viewing, your location data, who you are in proximity to,
and whatever data the networked devices in your home, vehicles and workplaces collect.
We have the unrestricted right to ban you and all your content, shadow-ban you and all
your content, i.e., generate the illusion that your content is freely, publicly available,
and erase your digital presence entirely such that you cease to exist except as a corporeal
body.
What has changed:
If we detect you have positive views on anti-trust enforcement, we may report you as a
"person of interest / potential domestic extremist" to the National Security Agency and other
federal agencies.
Rather than respond to all disputes algorithmically, we have established a Star Chamber of
our most biased, fanatical employees to adjudicate customer/user disputes in which the
customer/user refuses to accept the algorithmic mediation.
If a customer/user attempts to contact any enforcement agency regarding our algorithmic
mediation or Star Chamber adjudication, we reserve the unrestricted rights to:
a. Prepare voodoo dolls representing the user and stick pins into the doll while
chanting curses.
b. Hack the targeted user's accounts and blame it on Russian or Ukrainian hackers.
c. Rendition the user to a corrupt kleptocracy in which we retain undue influence, i.e.,
the United States.
Left unsaid, of course, is the potential for "accidents" to happen to anyone publicly
promoting anti-trust enforcement of Big Tech quasi-monopolies. Once totalitarianism has been
privatized , there are no rules that can't be ignored or broken by those behind the curtain .
So go ahead and say whatever you want around all your networked devices, but don't be surprised
if bad things start happening.
Editor's note: this is satire. If I disappear, then you'll know who has no sense of irony or
humor.
Walmart Brings Automation To Regional Distribution Centers BY TYLER DURDEN SUNDAY,
JUL 18, 2021 - 09:00 PM
The progressive press had a field day with "woke" Walmart highly
publicized February decision to hikes wages for 425,000 workers to an average above $15 an
hour. We doubt the obvious follow up - the ongoing stealthy replacement of many of its minimum
wage workers with machines - will get the same amount of airtime.
As Chain Store
Age reports , Walmart is applying artificial intelligence to the palletizing of products in
its regional distribution centers. I.e., it is replacing thousands of workers with robots.
Since 2017, the discount giant has worked with Symbotic to optimize an automated technology
solution to sort, store, retrieve and pack freight onto pallets in its Brooksville, Fla.,
distribution center. Under Walmart's existing system, product arrives at one of its RDCs and is
either cross-docked or warehoused, while being moved or stored manually. When it's time for the
product to go to a store, a 53-foot trailer is manually packed for transit. After the truck
arrives at a store, associates unload it manually and place the items in the appropriate
places.
Leveraging the Symbiotic solution, a complex algorithm determines how to store cases like
puzzle pieces using high-speed mobile robots that operate with a precision that speeds the
intake process and increases the accuracy of freight being stored for future orders. By using
dense modular storage, the solution also expands building capacity.
In addition, by using palletizing robotics to organize and optimize freight, the Symbiotic
solution creates custom store- and aisle-ready pallets.
Why is Walmart doing this? Simple: According to CSA, "Walmart expects to save time, limit
out-of-stocks and increasing the speed of stocking and unloading." More importantly, the
company hopes to further cut expenses and remove even more unskilled labor from its supply
chain.
This solution follows tests of similar automated warehouse solutions at a Walmart
consolidation center in Colton, Calif., and perishable grocery distribution center in Shafter,
Calif.
Walmart plans to implement this technology in 25 of its 42 RDCs.
"Though very few Walmart customers will ever see into our warehouses, they'll still be able
to witness an industry-leading change, each time they find a product on shelves," said Joe
Metzger, executive VP of supply chain operations at Walmart U.S. "There may be no way to solve
all the complexities of a global supply chain, but we plan to keep changing the game as we use
technology to transform the way we work and lead our business into the future."
Walmart Brings Automation To Regional Distribution Centers BY TYLER DURDEN SUNDAY,
JUL 18, 2021 - 09:00 PM
The progressive press had a field day with "woke" Walmart highly
publicized February decision to hikes wages for 425,000 workers to an average above $15 an
hour. We doubt the obvious follow up - the ongoing stealthy replacement of many of its minimum
wage workers with machines - will get the same amount of airtime.
As Chain Store
Age reports , Walmart is applying artificial intelligence to the palletizing of products in
its regional distribution centers. I.e., it is replacing thousands of workers with robots.
Since 2017, the discount giant has worked with Symbotic to optimize an automated technology
solution to sort, store, retrieve and pack freight onto pallets in its Brooksville, Fla.,
distribution center. Under Walmart's existing system, product arrives at one of its RDCs and is
either cross-docked or warehoused, while being moved or stored manually. When it's time for the
product to go to a store, a 53-foot trailer is manually packed for transit. After the truck
arrives at a store, associates unload it manually and place the items in the appropriate
places.
Leveraging the Symbiotic solution, a complex algorithm determines how to store cases like
puzzle pieces using high-speed mobile robots that operate with a precision that speeds the
intake process and increases the accuracy of freight being stored for future orders. By using
dense modular storage, the solution also expands building capacity.
In addition, by using palletizing robotics to organize and optimize freight, the Symbiotic
solution creates custom store- and aisle-ready pallets.
Why is Walmart doing this? Simple: According to CSA, "Walmart expects to save time, limit
out-of-stocks and increasing the speed of stocking and unloading." More importantly, the
company hopes to further cut expenses and remove even more unskilled labor from its supply
chain.
This solution follows tests of similar automated warehouse solutions at a Walmart
consolidation center in Colton, Calif., and perishable grocery distribution center in Shafter,
Calif.
Walmart plans to implement this technology in 25 of its 42 RDCs.
"Though very few Walmart customers will ever see into our warehouses, they'll still be able
to witness an industry-leading change, each time they find a product on shelves," said Joe
Metzger, executive VP of supply chain operations at Walmart U.S. "There may be no way to solve
all the complexities of a global supply chain, but we plan to keep changing the game as we use
technology to transform the way we work and lead our business into the future."
when the tax rates increase even more, it just encourages automation or DIY (bring your own sheets to avoid paying the cleaning
fee), which just grinds down growth rather than accelerates it.
Notable quotes:
"... Applebee's is now using tablets to allow customers to pay at their tables without summoning a waiter. ..."
Companies see automation and other labor-saving steps as a way to emerge from the health crisis with a permanently smaller
workforce
PHOTO:
JIM THOMPSON/ZUMA PRESS
... ... ...
Economic data show that companies have learned to do more with less over the last 16 months or so. Output nearly
recovered to pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2021 -- down just 0.5% from the end of 2019 -- even though U.S.
workers put in 4.3% fewer hours than they did before the health crisis.
... ... ...
Raytheon Technologies
Corp.
RTX
0.08%
,
the biggest U.S. aerospace supplier by sales, laid off 21,000 employees and contractors in 2020 amid a drastic
decline in air travel. Raytheon said in January that efforts to modernize its factories and back-office operations
would boost profit margins and reduce the need to bring back all those jobs. The company said that most if not all
of the 4,500 contract workers who were let go in 2020 wouldn't be called back.
... ... ..
Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. HLT -0.78% said last week that most of its U.S. properties are adopting "a
flexible housekeeping policy," with daily service available upon request. "Full deep cleanings will be conducted
prior to check-in and on every fifth day for extended stays," it said.
Daily housekeeping will still be free for those who request it...
Unite Here, a union that represents hotel workers, published a report in June estimating that the end of daily
room cleaning could result in an industrywide loss of up to 180,000 jobs...
... ... ...
Restaurants have become rapid adopters of technology during the pandemic as two forces -- labor shortages that are
pushing wages higher and a desire to reduce close contact between customers and employees -- raise the return on such
investments.
...
Applebee's is now using tablets to allow customers to pay at their tables without summoning a
waiter.
The hand-held screens provide a hedge against labor inflation, said John Peyton, CEO of Applebee's
parent
Dine
Brands Global
Inc.
... ... ...
The U.S. tax code encourages investments in automation, particularly after the Trump administration's tax cuts,
said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the impact of
automation on workers. Firms pay around 25 cents in taxes for every dollar they pay workers, compared with 5 cents
for every dollar spent on machines because companies can write off capital investments, he said.
A lot of employers were given Covid-aid to keep employees employed and paid in 2020. I
assume somebody has addressed that obligation since it wasn't mentioned.
But, what happens to the unskilled workers whose jobs have been eliminated? Do Raytheon
and Hilton just say "have a nice life on the streets"?
No, they will become our collective burdens.
I am all for technology and progress and better QA/QC and general performance. But the
employers that benefit from this should use part of their gains in stock valuation to keep
"our collective burdens" off our collective backs, rather than pay dividends and bonuses
first.
Maybe reinvest in updated training for those laid off.
No great outcome comes free. BUT, as the article implies, the luxury of having already
laid off the unskilled, likely leaves the employer holding all the cards.
And the wheel keeps turning...
Jeffery Allen
Question! Isn't this antithetical (reduction of employees) to the spirit and purpose of
both monetary and fiscal programs, e.g., PPP loans (fiscal), capital markets funding
facilities (monetary) established last year and current year? Employers are to retain
employees. Gee, what a farce. Does anyone really care?
Philip Hilmes
Some of this makes sense and some would happen anyway without the pandemic. I don't need my room
cleaned every day, but sometimes I want it. The wait staff in restaurants is another matter. Losing
wait staff makes for a pretty bad experience. I hate having to order on my phone. I feel like I might
as well be home ordering food through Grubhub or something. It's impersonal, more painful than telling
someone, doesn't allow for you to be checked on if you need anything, doesn't provide information you
don't get from a menu, etc. It really diminishes the value of going out to eat without wait staff.
al snow
OK I been reading all the comments I only have a WSJ access as the rate was a great deal.
Hotel/Motel started making the bed but not changing the sheets every day for many years I am fine as
long as they offer trash take out and towel/paper every day
and do not forget to tip .
clive boulton
Recruiters re-post hard to fill job listings onto multiple job boards. I don't believe the reported
job openings resemble are real. Divide by 3 at least.
This medicine prevents many other drugs from getting into the body. If you take other drugs, check with your doctor or pharmacist
to see if you need to take them at some other time than barium suspension.
To prevent constipation or bowel block from barium
suspension, your doctor may have you use a laxative like
milk of magnesia or
lactulose after using barium suspension. Follow what your
doctor has told you.
Drink lots of noncaffeine liquids after using barium suspension unless told to drink less liquid by your doctor.
Some products have sorbitol in them. Very bad health
problems like low blood sugar
, bleeding, and kidney failure have happened
when people who are not able to break down fructose took a product with sorbitol in it. Talk with the doctor.
If you are 65 or older, use barium suspension with care. You could have more side effects.
Tell your doctor if you are pregnant, plan on getting pregnant, or are breast-feeding. You will need to talk about the benefits
and risks to you and the baby.
How is this medicine (Barium Suspension) best taken?
Use barium suspension as ordered by your doctor. Read all information given to you. Follow all instructions closely.
Be sure you know how to take barium suspension. Talk with your doctor if you have questions.
Shake well before use.
Most of the time, barium suspension is taken by mouth. Take as you have been told by your doctor.
Some brands of barium suspension are to be taken with food. Some brands may be taken with or without food. Ask your pharmacist
if you need to take your brand with food.
Some products may be used as an enema. If you are using barium suspension as an enema, it will be given rectally by your doctor.
As I often note here, when you push the pendulum to an extreme of wealth and income inequality, it will swing to the opposite
extreme minus a tiny bit of friction.
The depth of America's indoctrination can be measured by the unquestioned assumption that Capital should earn 15% every year,
rain or shine, while workers are fated to lose ground every year, rain or shine. And if wages should ever start ticking upward even
slightly, then the Billionaires' Apologists are unleashed to shout that higher wages means higher inflation, which will kill the
economic "recovery."
Said another way: if wages stagnate so workers lose ground every year as inflation in essentials rises, that's the way it should
be. If wages rise so workers can keep up with inflation, then that will trigger an inflationary death spiral.
That this indoctrination is so widely accepted reveals the success of America's Aristocracy in reshaping the narrative to make
their plundering appear to be "inevitable." But the siphoning of $50 trillion from workers to the Aristocracy, and the Nobility's
control of political power was anything but inevitable: it was engineered by policies that enriched billionaires, the top 0.01% Aristocracy,
and the top 10% who own 90% of America's productive capital.
There are some who blame the current plight of working Americans on structural changes in the underlying economy--on automation,
and especially on globalization. According to this popular narrative, the lower wages of the past 40 years were the unfortunate
but necessary price of keeping American businesses competitive in an increasingly cutthroat global market. But in fact, the $50
trillion transfer of wealth the RAND report documents has occurred entirely within the American economy, not between it and its
trading partners. No, this upward redistribution of income, wealth, and power wasn't inevitable; it was a choice--a direct result
of the trickle-down policies we chose to implement since 1975.
The net result of this four-decade siphoning of wealth/income from workers was recently documented by a Foreign Affairs article:
Monopoly Versus
Democracy :
Ten percent of Americans now control 97 percent of all capital income in the country. Nearly half of the new income generated
since the global financial crisis of 2008 has gone to the wealthiest one percent of U.S. citizens. The richest three Americans
collectively have more wealth than the poorest 160 million Americans.
Now the worm has finally turned, and workers are refusing to accept the Neofeudal dominance of the Aristocracy, not by open revolts
that the State can violently crush but by indirect means. Fed-up Boomers are retiring, fed-up Gen-Xers are cutting their hours, refusing
to go back to the office, starting their own enterprises and Millennials are assembling multiple income streams, building micro-houses,
and leveraging shortages of workers for higher wages.
The techno-fantasy that's Corporate America's fondest dream is automation of all labor: get rid of all human workers and just
manage the robots with loving care. But the reality is robots have limits, as I explain in my book
Will You Be Richer or Poorer? --limits imposed by physics and finance.
And so, weeping inconsolably, Corporate America continues exploiting its workforce with the usual threats: you're powerless because
we can automate your job or offshore it to Lower Slobovia.
Contrast this with the real world: a young man of my acquaintance recently took a job at a Corporate America Big Box outlet. His
wage was $12/hour, and all the power was of course in the hands of Corporate America: he had no power over his schedule, or anything
else.
In the script of the past four decades, Corporate America (while crushing small business and buying the best government money
can buy ) could keep the serfs slaving away for stagnating wages, all in service of maximizing corporate insiders' stock options,
buybacks and soaring profits.
This individual was tipped off to a much better opportunity, and when he gave notice to the Big Box manager, the manager corralled
him for two hours, first offering a $3/hour raise (25%) and then badgering him to stay on as a serf on the Big Box plantation. He
refused.
This is the pure distillation of Corporate America and the Aristocracy: if they'd offered this hard-working individual the 25%
raise after he proved his worth, then maybe he wouldn't have been so motivated to seek better opportunities elsewhere.
At long last, some the $50 trillion plundered from workers is trickling back to the people who actually create the income and
wealth. As a thought experiment, consider an economy in which farmers and workers reaped 15% gains annually like clockwork, and Corporate
America's insiders, financiers and speculators, and Wall Street's parasites all lost 15% of their wealth and income every year like
clockwork.
In other words, imagine the $50 trillion flowing back to those who generated it from those who looted it.
As I often note here, when you push the pendulum to an extreme of wealth and income inequality, it will swing to the opposite
extreme minus a tiny bit of friction. The serfs are quietly slipping away, and the Aristocracy, blinded by hubris and greed, believes
nothing will ever change because, well, their wealth and power is deserved . What they really deserve will manifest in the next four
years as the chairs at the banquet of consequences are shuffled.
... engineered by policies that enriched billionaires ...
90% to 95% of all legislation passed by Congress is special interest i.e. engineered to enrich billionaires.
GreatUncle 8 hours ago
He who makes the rules is always going to win especially when voting is total BS.
HRH of Aquitaine 2.0 7 hours ago
K Street is profitable. Not for the US Tax$lave of course.
alwaysfindasilverlining 7 hours ago
I've never seen a lobbyist get wealthy pandering the poors needs to corrupt politicians.
FoodStampPrez 7 hours ago
"When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences
of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."
Stop caring. Adjust according to their rules. It's the only way to survive.
Retired_Rat 7 hours ago (Edited) remove link
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
I am one of the early leavers from the rat race.... Not rich but am happy with a minimal lifestyle if it means I dont have
to work for the 0.1 per cent Man
Instagator 7 hours ago
Finally an article that states 0.1% instead of the 1% , even though 0.001% is actually who is in control. 1% is a doctor
and no they don't control the world. They are controlled by the Medical Industrial Complex.
There are only 50 families that control the world. Wake up people.
GoldmanSax 6 hours ago
The world economic forum is proof that wealthy robber barons are not happy with their profits alone. They are waging a war
on the planet. For this reason alone, a class struggle is inevitable. It is the planet vs the robber barons. . .
SexyJulian 42 minutes ago
The net result of this four-decade siphoning of wealth/income from workers was recently documented by a Foreign Affairs
article:
Monopoly
Versus Democracy :
During a Foreign Affairs event with various experts on stage 8 years ago(maybe 10) discussing current and future destabilizing
political and security events I asked the panel about the increasing income inequality. The crowd appreciated the question.
The panel had crickets. Over the next few years their mag shunned any objective reporting or interpretation of global events
in exchange for pure bullsht. Very similar to how even McNeil Lehrer went into propaganda mode after 9/11.
Keith Speights: Some findings were recently published in Nature magazine that
indicate that the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines may provide protection for
years.
Many investors are and were hoping for annual recurring revenue from these companies'
vaccines. Brian, how troublesome is this latest data for the prospects for Pfizer, BioNTech,
and Moderna?
Brian Orelli: There's a bit of an extrapolation going on here. The researchers looked at
memory B cells, which tend to provide more long-term protection than, let's say, antibodies.
They looked at those in the lymph nodes and found the cells were there as long as 15 weeks.
Typically, they'd mostly be gone by four to six weeks. So that's the basis of this claim
that it could offer protection for years. If true, that will be a big blow obviously to vaccine
makers, at least for Moderna and BioNTech.
Pfizer would be fine because it's so diversified. It's really hard to make an argument for
the valuations of Moderna and BioNTech right now if these vaccines are one and done over a
couple of years. They really need to have ongoing sales until they can get growth from other
drugs in their pipelines.
Speights: Brian, when I first saw the story, I went to check out to see how the stocks were
performing, and Moderna is up, BioNTech was barely changed, Pfizer barely changed. It seems to
me that investors really aren't making much of this news. Do you think that's the right take at
this point?
Orelli: I think it's still too early to be able to conclude that it's definitely going to
work for years. The other issue is that we're looking at, will those B cells actually protect
against the variants?
If they don't protect against the variants, then it doesn't really matter if you have B
cells in your lymph nodes. If they're not going to protect against the variants then we're
going to have to get a booster shot anyway.
Speights: Right. Obviously, if these vaccines provide immunity for multiple years, these
companies aren't going to make nearly as much money as they expect and a lot of investors
expect. So this is a big story to watch, but like you said, really, really early right now and
too soon to maybe go drawing any conclusions at this point.
Update (2130ET): Tucker Carlson responded to today's 'unmasking' - namely an Axios report
which accuses him of trying to set up an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"I'm an American citizen, I can interview whoever I want - and plan to," said the Fox News
host.
Presented without further comment, along with Carlson's sit-down with journalist Glenn
Greenwald, who broke the Edward Snowden revelations about domestic spying and other illicit
activities conducted by the US government.
Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a bombshell broadcast that an NSA
whistleblower had approached him with evidence that the National Security Agency
has been spying on his communications , with the intent to leak his emails to the press and
'take this show off the air.'
Today, Carlson told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo that the emails have in fact been leaked
to journalists - at least one of whom has contacted him for what we presume is an upcoming
article on their contents.
"I was in Washington for a funeral last week and ran into someone I know well, who said '
I have a message for you ,' and then proceeded to repeat back to me details from emails and
texts that I sent, and had told no one else about. So it was verified. And the person said
'the NSA has this,' and that was proven by the person reading back the contents of the email,
'and they're going to use it against you.'
To be blunt with you, it was something I would have never said in public if it was wrong,
or illegal, or immoral. They don't actually have anything on me, but they do have my emails.
So I knew they were spying on me, and again, to be totally blunt with you - as a defensive
move, I thought 'I better say this out loud.'"
"Then, yesterday, I learned that - and this is going to come out soon - that the NSA
leaked the contents of my email to journalists in an effort to discredit me. I know, because
I got a call from one of them who said 'this is what your email was about.'
So, it is not in any way a figment of my imagination. It's confirmed. It's true. They
aren't allowed to spy on American citizens - they are. I think more ominously, they're using
the information they gather to put leverage and to threaten opposition journalists, people
who criticize the Biden administration. It's happening to me right now..."
" This is the stuff of banana republics and third-world countries ," replied Bartiromo.
Note to Goldman: you're a bank. Stick to banky-stuff. Leave the fear **** and lies to
the professionals in the .gov and MSM.
p3scobar 7 hours ago
Goldman is the government... sooo.....
espirit 9 hours ago
If Goldman can give medical advice, so can I.
A Lunatic 9 hours ago remove link
Turning off the TV will neutralize the Delta Variant.
rag_house 9 hours ago
Just like 'Climate Change' you know it's contrived when the bankers start doing
'science.'
liberty2day 9 hours ago
when did they not?
rag_house 8 hours ago
Bankers aren't scientists. They simply dream up fake things they want to convince people
of and bribe people to try to make it seem real.
Enraged 9 hours ago remove link
Goldman Sachs Charged in Foreign Bribery Case and Agrees to Pay Over $2.9 Billion
The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Goldman Sachs (Malaysia) have admitted to conspiring to
violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with a scheme to pay over $1
billion in bribes to Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials to obtain lucrative business for
Goldman Sachs, including its role in underwriting approximately $6.5 billion in three bond
deals for 1Malaysia Development Bhd. (1MDB), for which the bank earned hundreds of millions
in fees.
bond prices have nothing to do with recovery [sic]
stock prices have nothing to do with growth, except growth of the money supply
Kreditanstalt 3 hours ago
"...the price of a beer or a McDonalds in 10-years time will be exactly the same as it
is today. (Which it won't.)"
But the type who buy US government bonds don't care about the price of burgers. They
only plan to flip the thing back to the next Greater Fool...or THE FED
Henry Simons and Irving Fisher supported the Chicago Plan to take away the bankers
ability to create money.
"Simons envisioned banks that would have a choice of two types of holdings: long-term
bonds and cash. Simultaneously, they would hold increased reserves, up to 100%. Simons saw
this as beneficial in that its ultimate consequences would be the prevention of
"bank-financed inflation of securities and real estate" through the leveraged creation of
secondary forms of money."
Bankers do need to ensure the money they lend out gets paid back to balance their
books.
Banking requires prudent lending.
If someone can't repay a loan, they need to repossess that asset and sell it to recoup
that money.
If they use bank loans to inflate asset prices they get into a world of trouble when
those asset prices collapse.
As the real estate and stock market collapsed the banks became insolvent as their assets
didn't cover their liabilities.
They could no longer repossess and sell those assets to cover the outstanding loans and
they do need to get the money they lend out back again to balance their books.
The banks become insolvent and collapsed, along with the US economy.
When banks have been lending to inflate asset prices the financial system is in a
precarious state and can easily collapse.
Cont ......
Sound of the Suburbs 2 hours ago
That was the 1920s.
What was the ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices that collapsed in Japan in 1991?
Japanese real estate.
They avoided a Great Depression by saving the banks.
They killed growth for the next 30 years by leaving the debt in place.
Japan could study the Great Depression to avoid this fate.
What was the ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices that collapsed in 2008?
"It's nearly $14 trillion pyramid of super leveraged toxic assets was built on the back
of $1.4 trillion of US sub-prime loans, and dispersed throughout the world" All the
Presidents Bankers, Nomi Prins.
We avoided a Great Depression by saving the banks.
We left Western economies struggling by leaving the debt in place, just like Japan.
It's not as bad as Japan as we didn't let asset prices crash in the West, but it is this
problem has made our economies so sluggish since 2008.
We, in turn, seem to have learnt something from Japan, as they did let asset prices
crash.
The banking system and the markets are still closely coupled.
Any significant fall in asset prices will feed back into the banking system.
We are trapped, and the only way to keep things from collapsing is to keep pumping in
more and more liquidity.
It's a choice
Let the assets bubbles collapse, and watch this feed back into the financial
system.
Keep the whole thing afloat, but make things worse in the long run as the bubbles
just get bigger and bigger.
We've gone for option two.
That's why the FED get so jittery when the markets start to fall.
During the coronavirus lockdowns there was no way the markets could be allowed to
reflect what was going on in the real economy.
The banking system would go down.
Sound of the Suburbs 1 hour ago remove link
They learnt from the mistakes of the 1920s and put regulations in place to ensure this
didn't happen again.
Financial stability arrived in the Keynesian era and was locked into the regulations of
the time.
"This Time is Different" by Reinhart and Rogoff has a graph showing the same thing
(Figure 13.1 - The proportion of countries with banking crises, 1900-2008).
Neoclassical economics came back and so did the financial crises.
The neoliberals removed the regulations that created financial stability in the
Keynesian era and put independent central banks in charge of financial stability.
Why does it go so wrong?
Richard Vague had noticed real estate lending balloon from 5 trillion to 10 trillion
from 2001 – 2007 and knew there was going to be a financial crisis.
Richard Vague has looked at the data for financial crises going back 200 years and found
the cause was nearly always runaway bank lending.
We put central bankers in charge of financial stability, but they use an economics that
ignores the main cause of financial crises, private debt.
Most of the problems are coming from private debt.
The technocrats use an economics that ignores private debt.
The poor old technocrats never really stood a chance.
But wait: wasn't this recent rise in wages in real terms being propagandized as a new boom
for the working class in the USA by the MSM until some days ago?
As
Peter Hitchens noted recently "the most bitterly funny story of the week is that a defector
from North Korea thinks that even her homeland is 'not as nuts' as the indoctrination now
forced on Western students."
One of Yeonmi Park's initial shocks upon starting classes at Colombia University was to be
met with a frown after revealing to a staff member that she enjoyed reading Jane Austen. "Did
you know," Ms. Park was sternly admonished, "that those writers had a colonial mind-set? They
were racists and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you."
But after encountering the new requirement for the use of gender-neutral pronouns, Yeonmi
concluded: "Even North Korea is not this nuts North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this
crazy." Devastatingly honest, but not exactly a compliment to what once might have been the
land of her dreams.
Sadly, Hitchens reports that her previous experience served Yeonmi well to adapt to her new
situation: "She came to fear that making a fuss would affect her grades and her degree.
Eventually, she learned to keep quiet, as people do when they try to live under intolerant
regimes, and let the drivel wash over her."
Eastern European readers will unfailingly understand what it is that Hitchens meant to
say.
And in the drive-through lane at Checkers near Atlanta, requests for Big Buford burgers and
Mother Cruncher chicken sandwiches may be fielded not by a cashier in a headset, but by a
voice-recognition algorithm.
An increase in automation, especially in service industries, may prove to be an economic
legacy of the pandemic. Businesses from factories to fast-food outlets to hotels turned to
technology last year to keep operations running amid social distancing requirements and
contagion fears. Now the outbreak is ebbing in the United States, but the difficulty in hiring
workers -- at least at the wages that employers are used to paying -- is providing new momentum
for automation.
Technological investments that were made in response to the crisis may contribute to a
post-pandemic productivity boom, allowing for higher wages and faster growth. But some
economists say the latest wave of automation could eliminate jobs and erode bargaining power,
particularly for the lowest-paid workers, in a lasting way.
"Once a job is automated, it's pretty hard to turn back," said Casey Warman, an economist at
Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia who has studied automation in the pandemic .
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=3533
The trend toward automation predates the pandemic, but it has accelerated at what is proving
to be a critical moment. The rapid reopening of the economy has led to a surge in demand for
waiters, hotel maids, retail sales clerks and other workers in service industries that had cut
their staffs. At the same time, government benefits have allowed many people to be selective in
the jobs they take. Together, those forces have given low-wage workers a rare moment of
leverage , leading to higher pay
, more generous benefits and other perks.
Automation threatens to tip the advantage back toward employers, potentially eroding those
gains. A
working paper published by the International Monetary Fund this year predicted that
pandemic-induced automation would increase inequality in coming years, not just in the United
States but around the world.
"Six months ago, all these workers were essential," said Marc Perrone, president of the
United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing grocery workers. "Everyone was calling
them heroes. Now, they're trying to figure out how to get rid of them."
Checkers, like many fast-food restaurants, experienced a jump in sales when the pandemic
shut down most in-person dining. But finding workers to meet that demand proved difficult -- so
much so that Shana Gonzales, a Checkers franchisee in the Atlanta area, found herself back
behind the cash register three decades after she started working part time at Taco Bell while
in high school.
"We really felt like there has to be another solution," she said.
So Ms. Gonzales contacted Valyant AI, a Colorado-based start-up that makes voice recognition
systems for restaurants. In December, after weeks of setup and testing, Valyant's technology
began taking orders at one of Ms. Gonzales's drive-through lanes. Now customers are greeted by
an automated voice designed to understand their orders -- including modifications and special
requests -- suggest add-ons like fries or a shake, and feed the information directly to the
kitchen and the cashier.
The rollout has been successful enough that Ms. Gonzales is getting ready to expand the
system to her three other restaurants.
"We'll look back and say why didn't we do this sooner," she said.
The push toward automation goes far beyond the restaurant sector. Hotels,
retailers ,
manufacturers and other businesses have all accelerated technological investments. In a
survey of nearly 300 global companies by the World Economic Forum last year, 43 percent of
businesses said they expected to reduce their work forces through new uses of
technology.
Some economists see the increased investment as encouraging. For much of the past two
decades, the U.S. economy has struggled with weak productivity growth, leaving workers and
stockholders to compete over their share of the income -- a game that workers tended to lose.
Automation may harm specific workers, but if it makes the economy more productive, that could
be good for workers as a whole, said Katy George, a senior partner at McKinsey, the consulting
firm.
She cited the example of a client in manufacturing who had been pushing his company for
years to embrace augmented-reality technology in its factories. The pandemic finally helped him
win the battle: With air travel off limits, the technology was the only way to bring in an
expert to help troubleshoot issues at a remote plant.
"For the first time, we're seeing that these technologies are both increasing productivity,
lowering cost, but they're also increasing flexibility," she said. "We're starting to see real
momentum building, which is great news for the world, frankly."
Other economists are less sanguine. Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology said that many of the technological investments had just replaced human labor
without adding much to overall productivity.
In a
recent working paper , Professor Acemoglu and a colleague concluded that "a significant
portion of the rise in U.S. wage inequality over the last four decades has been driven by
automation" -- and he said that trend had almost certainly accelerated in the pandemic.
"If we automated less, we would not actually have generated that much less output but we
would have had a very different trajectory for inequality," Professor Acemoglu said.
Ms. Gonzales, the Checkers franchisee, isn't looking to cut jobs. She said she would hire 30
people if she could find them. And she has raised hourly pay to about $10 for entry-level
workers, from about $9 before the pandemic. Technology, she said, is easing pressure on workers
and speeding up service when restaurants are chronically understaffed.
"Our approach is, this is an assistant for you," she said. "This allows our employee to
really focus" on customers.
Ms. Gonzales acknowledged she could fully staff her restaurants if she offered $14 to $15 an
hour to attract workers. But doing so, she said, would force her to raise prices so much that
she would lose sales -- and automation allows her to take another course.
Rob Carpenter, Valyant's chief executive, noted that at most restaurants, taking
drive-through orders is only part of an employee's responsibilities. Automating that task
doesn't eliminate a job; it makes the job more manageable.
"We're not talking about automating an entire position," he said. "It's just one task within
the restaurant, and it's gnarly, one of the least desirable tasks."
But technology doesn't have to take over all aspects of a job to leave workers worse off. If
automation allows a restaurant that used to require 10 employees a shift to operate with eight
or nine, that will mean fewer jobs in the long run. And even in the short term, the technology
could erode workers' bargaining power.
"Often you displace enough of the tasks in an occupation and suddenly that occupation is no
more," Professor Acemoglu said. "It might kick me out of a job, or if I keep my job I'll get
lower wages."
At some businesses, automation is already affecting the number and type of jobs available.
Meltwich, a restaurant chain that started in Canada and is expanding into the United States,
has embraced a range of technologies to cut back on labor costs. Its grills no longer require
someone to flip burgers -- they grill both sides at once, and need little more than the press
of a button.
"You can pull a less-skilled worker in and have them adapt to our system much easier," said
Ryan Hillis, a Meltwich vice president. "It certainly widens the scope of who you can have
behind that grill."
With more advanced kitchen equipment, software that allows online orders to flow directly to
the restaurant and other technological advances, Meltwich needs only two to three workers on a
shift, rather than three or four, Mr. Hillis said.
Such changes, multiplied across thousands of businesses in dozens of industries, could
significantly change workers' prospects. Professor Warman, the Canadian economist, said
technologies developed for one purpose tend to spread to similar tasks, which could make it
hard for workers harmed by automation to shift to another occupation or industry.
"If a whole sector of labor is hit, then where do those workers go?" Professor Warman said.
Women, and to a lesser degree people of color, are likely to be disproportionately affected, he
added.
The grocery business has long been a source of steady, often unionized jobs for people
without a college degree. But technology is changing the sector. Self-checkout lanes have
reduced the number of cashiers; many stores have simple robots to patrol aisles for spills and
check inventory; and warehouses have become increasingly automated. Kroger in April opened a
375,000-square-foot warehouse with more than 1,000 robots that bag groceries for delivery
customers. The company is even experimenting with delivering groceries by drone.
Other companies in the industry are doing the same. Jennifer Brogan, a spokeswoman for Stop
& Shop, a grocery chain based in New England, said that technology allowed the company to
better serve customers -- and that it was a competitive necessity.
"Competitors and other players in the retail space are developing technologies and
partnerships to reduce their costs and offer improved service and value for customers," she
said. "Stop & Shop needs to do the same."
In 2011, Patrice Thomas took a part-time job in the deli at a Stop & Shop in Norwich,
Conn. A decade later, he manages the store's prepared foods department, earning around $40,000
a year.
Mr. Thomas, 32, said that he wasn't concerned about being replaced by a robot anytime soon,
and that he welcomed technologies making him more productive -- like more powerful ovens for
rotisserie chickens and blast chillers that quickly cool items that must be stored cold.
But he worries about other technologies -- like automated meat slicers -- that seem to
enable grocers to rely on less experienced, lower-paid workers and make it harder to build a
career in the industry.
"The business model we seem to be following is we're pushing toward automation and we're not
investing equally in the worker," he said. "Today it's, 'We want to get these robots in here to
replace you because we feel like you're overpaid and we can get this kid in there and all he
has to do is push this button.'"
As of July 2, 2021 out of 4456 total deaths attributed to vaccination (of them 1890 after
vaccination with Pfizer), it looks like there were at least 36 death of people aged less then 30
years after vaccination with Pfizer vaccine (out of 61 total). Around 136 millions were fully
vaccinated,.
Other sources list higher figure (6113)
CDC- 6,113 DEAD Following COVID-19 Injections ("Besides the 6,113 deaths reported, there are
5,172 permanent disabilities, 6,435 life threatening events, and 51,558 emergency room visits."
)so my method of extracting those data from VAERS database might be wrong or not all death are
reported to VAERS.
Another 5 young people were crippled but survived (67 total).
Each year, more than 165 million Americans get the flu shot. There were 85 reported
deaths following influenza vaccination in 2017; 119 deaths in 2018; and 203 deaths in
2019
Between mid-December 2020 and April 23, 2021, at which point between 95 million and 100
million Americans had received their COVID-19 shots, there were 3,544 reported deaths
following COVID vaccination, or about 30 per day
In just four months, the COVID-19 vaccines have killed more people than all available
vaccines combined from mid-1997 until the end of 2013 -- a period of 15.5 years
As of April 23, 2021, VAERS had also received 12,618 reports of serious adverse events.
In total, 118,902 adverse event reports had been filed
In the European Union, the EudraVigilance system had as of April 17, 2021, received
330,218 injury reports after vaccination with one of the four available COVID vaccines,
including 7,766 deaths
In a May 5, 2021, Fox News report, Tucker Carlson asked the question no one is really
allowed to ask: "How many Americans have died after taking the COVID vaccine?"
1
Then there's not selling Syria the latest S#00 system to help keep Israel out of Syrian
skies. That tells me he's using Syria for personal / State gain and that is where he's wrong.
That's what makes him just another politician.
I totally get it, there are things that are puzzling to those of us in the audience,
watching the moves from afar.
An advanced S-300 or S-400 system could paint every F-16 as it took off from Israel. This
would be a red line for Israel and would bring in Uncle Shmuel.
Syria (and by extension Russia) has been allowing Israel to overfly her territory and bomb
Hezbollah installations.
It's puzzling – why would you allow a foreign power to bomb your territory, especially
if you have S-300's. The answer must be that Syria and Russia are holding back on purpose for
reasons only known to them. I can speculate, in that they don't want to give away military
capability unless the war goes hot.
Think about the situation now, as opposed to the 90's. Russia's military has been
modernized; Military physical fitness is up by 30% (better nutrition?); Foreign exchange is in
good shape; the economy is modernizing; food production is up – so Russia is no longer
food insecure; oil can be extracted at prices that Saudi cannot compete with; the Artic route
is opening up; national economy is more diversified thanks to the western sanctions; Yamal LNG
will be fueling Asia; Nordstream will be fueling Europe.
Little wonder that here and there sanity nostalgia is gripping the Western world, at least
those isolated portions of it that are not internalising the sinister "new normal." But it is
seemingly to no avail. All commanding positions are firmly in the hands of lunatics, who are
determined to turn a once great and exemplary civilisation into an asylum.
As George Orwell has taught us, language manipulation is at the frontline (yes, I have just
broken one of the cardinal rules of his "
Politics and the English Language ," but not his final injunction to "break any of these
rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous") of politicised mind-bending. The sort of
language we are permitted to use circumscribes the thinking that we shall be allowed to engage
in. The assault on language is, therefore, an integral component of the unrelenting warfare
being waged for the conquest and control of the mind. Word elimination and reassignment of
meaning, as Orwell also presciently noted, are essential elements of the campaign to reformat
the mind and eventually to subjugate it.
A breath-taking example of how this process works was recently unveiled by the thoroughly
brain-washed students of the once prestigious Brandeis University who, this time without
prompting from their faculty elders and betters, voted to ban from their campus such odious
words and phrases as "picnic" and "you guys," for being "oppressive". "Picnic" is prohibited
because it allegedly evokes the lynching of Blacks.
The precocious young intellectuals took pains to produce an entire list of objectionable
words and phrases, shocking award-winning novelist Joyce Carol Oates who tweeted in
bewilderment: "What sort of punishment is doled out for a faculty member who utters the word
'picnic' at Brandeis? Or the phrase [also proscribed – S.K.] 'trigger warning'? Loss of
tenure, public flogging, self-flagellation?"
All three punishments will probably be applied to reactionary professors who go afoul of the
list's rigorous linguistic requirements.
Not to be outdone by the progressive kids on the East Coast, avant-garde
California legislators have passed a law to remove the pronoun "he" from state legal texts.
The momentous reform was initiated by California's new attorney general, Rebecca Bauer-Kahan,
who after looking up the job requirements made the shocking discovery that the law assumed that
the attorney general would be a man.
Upon review, it turned out that the state code and other legal documents were enabling
unacceptable concepts by using pronouns "he," "him" and "his" when referring to the attorney
general and other state-wide elected officials. Appalled, Ms. Bauer-Kahan denounced these
linguistic lapses for not representing "where California is and where California is going." She
inarguably was right on that score at least, which has perhaps also something to do with the
massive exodus of California residents to less complicated parts of the country.
When lawmakers of a state which is rapidly turning into a North American Calcutta have no
concerns more pressing than to revise the use of pronouns in official documents, that sends a
clear message where that state is going, exactly as the smart and thoroughly up-to-date woman
said.
But as a Pakistani
immigrant father in Seattle, state of Washington, discovered to his chagrin, the linguistic
clowning can have very serious personal and political consequences. After checking in his
16-year-old autistic son for treatment in what he thought was a medical facility, Ahmed was
shocked to receive a telephone call where a social worker explained to him that the child he
had originally entrusted to the medical authorities as a son was actually transgender and must
henceforth, under legal penalty of removal, be referred to and treated as a "daughter."
Coming from a traditional society still governed by tyrannical precepts of common sense and
not accustomed to the ways of the asylum where in search of a better life he and his family
inadvertently ended up, the father (a title that like mother, now officially "number one
parent," is also
on the way out ) was able to conceive his tragic predicament only by weaving a complex
conspiracy theory:
"They were trying to create a customer for their gender clinic . . . and they seemed to
absolutely want to push us in that direction. We had calls with counsellors and therapists in
the establishment, telling us how important it is for him to change his gender, because
that's the only way he's going to be better out of this suicidal depressive state."
Since in the equally looney state of Washington the age when minors can request a
gender-change surgery without parental consent is 13, the Pakistani parents saw clearly the
writing on the wall and, bless them, they came up with a clever stratagem to outwit their
callous ideological tormentors. Ahmed "assured Seattle Children's Hospital that he would take
his son to a gender clinic and commence his son's transition. Instead, he collected his son,
quit his job, and moved his family of four out of Washington."
Perhaps feeling the heat from the linguistic Gestapo even in his celebrity kitchen, iconic
chef Jamie Oliver has come on board. Absurdly, Jamie vowed
fealty to the ascendant normal by dropping the term "Kaffir lime leaves" from his recipes ,
in fear that the alleged "historically racist slur" would offend South Africans. No evidence at
all has been furnished or demanded of complaints from South Africa in that regard. But it
speaks volumes that someone of Jamie's influence and visibility should nevertheless deem it
prudent to anticipate such criticism even though, should it have materialised, it of course
would not originate from South Africa but from white Western political correctness
commissars.
Jamie is now busy, but not just cooking. He is going over his previously published recipes
in order to expunge all offensive references to kefir leaves. Orwell aficionados will recall
this precious passage from 1984 : "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book
rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed,
every date has been altered." And now every recipe as well. The dystopia fits, does it not, to
a tee even something as seemingly trivial as a cooking show?
But it is not just recipes. Children's fairy tales are also fair game for 1984 revision.
Hollywood actress Natalie Portman ( Star Wars , The Professional , Thor ), inspired
apparently by the new cultural normal, has taken it upon herself not to write, but to re-write,
several classic fairy tales to make them "gender-neutral," so "children can defy gender
stereotypes." Predictably, pronouns were again a major target:
"I found myself changing the pronouns in many of their books because so many of them had
overwhelmingly male characters, disproportionate to reality," quoth Natalie as she put her
linguistic scalpel to such old favourites as The Tortoise and the Hare , Country Mouse and
City Mouse and The Three Little Pigs .
Need we go on, or does the sharp reader already get the general drift? How about
State University of New York student Owen Stevens , who was suspended and censured for
pointing out on his Instagram the ascertainable biological fact that "A man is a man, a woman
is a woman. A man is not a woman and a woman is not a man." (Owen was snitched on by fellow
students, readers from the former Eastern bloc will be amused to learn.) Or the Nebraska
university basketball coach who was suspended for using in a motivational speech the
mysteriously offensive word "plantation"? Or the hip $57,000-a-year NYC school that
banned students from saying "mom" and "dad" , from asking where classmates went on vacation
or wishing anyone "Merry Christmas" or even "Happy Holidays"? Or
female university student Lisa Keogh in Scotland who said in class "women have vaginas"
(who would be better informed than she on that subject?) and are "not as strong as men", who is
facing disciplinary action by the university after fellow classmates complained about her
"offensive and discriminatory" comments? Or
Spanish politician Francisco José Contreras whose Twitter account was blocked as a
warning for 12 hours after he tweeted what some would regard as the self-evident truth that
"men cannot get pregnant" because they have "no uterus or eggs"?
As
Peter Hitchens noted recently "the most bitterly funny story of the week is that a defector
from North Korea thinks that even her homeland is 'not as nuts' as the indoctrination now
forced on Western students."
One of Yeonmi Park's initial shocks upon starting classes at Colombia University was to be
met with a frown after revealing to a staff member that she enjoyed reading Jane Austen. "Did
you know," Ms. Park was sternly admonished, "that those writers had a colonial mind-set? They
were racists and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you."
But after encountering the new requirement for the use of gender-neutral pronouns, Yeonmi
concluded: "Even North Korea is not this nuts North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this
crazy." Devastatingly honest, but not exactly a compliment to what once might have been the
land of her dreams.
Sadly, Hitchens reports that her previous experience served Yeonmi well to adapt to her new
situation: "She came to fear that making a fuss would affect her grades and her degree.
Eventually, she learned to keep quiet, as people do when they try to live under intolerant
regimes, and let the drivel wash over her."
Eastern European readers will unfailingly understand what it is that Hitchens meant to
say.
ay_arrow
Plus Size Model 9 hours ago
No worries! We're talking about two different things. You explicitly mentioned meanings
of words in your initial post. Now you're also alluding to what a psyop officer would
describe as manipulating the cognitive environment of a target group. Cognitive
manipulation is a much larger toolbox and involves things like perception management,
information management, memory retrieval, what old timers refer to as symbol manipulation,
etc.
In psychological warfare literature, symbols are somewhat of a mental bookmark. You can
really mess people up by altering the bookmarks slightly or changing around the files they
reference in a prolonged campaign.
The Nazi swastika is probably the most successful symbol manipulation campaign ever. It
means different things to different people and these meanings have evolved substantially
over time. Each new generation and is indoctrinated with different presentations of the
swastika. The wide latitude of interpretation and extreme views associated with it have
consistently created huge social flash points over the past 90 years.
Lorenz Feedback 9 hours ago
I think somethings are being overlooked on this point, Semantic prosody concerns itself
with the way unusual combinations of words can create intertextual 'resonance' and can
suggest speaker/writer attitude and opinion. Consider the difference with using very
powerful versus utterly compelling when presenting an argument. Some words shape narratives
better than others and trigger a response well known to advertisers and propagandists...and
help shape public opinion.
Yes... changing the context of words has a huge impact...
ie the word white is now seen in the context of numerous pejoratives...
Cautiously Pessimistic 10 hours ago
I fit in here in America less and less with each passing year. I feel like a stranger in
my own country at times. I am sure that is by design.
Max Power 9 hours ago
On the other hand, as soon as people encounter real problems like hunger, bankruptcy, or
homelessness, all this ivy league brainwashing evaporates in an instance. Just a stupid
game played by wealthy white libtards believing in fairytales.
"... For now, loose monetary and fiscal policies will continue to fuel asset and credit bubbles, propelling a slow-motion train wreck. The warning signs are already apparent in today's high price-to-earnings ratios SPX , low equity risk premiums, inflated housing and tech assets COMP , and the irrational exuberance surrounding special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), the crypto sector BTCUSD, , high-yield corporate debt , collateralized loan obligations, private equity, meme stocks AMC, and runaway retail day trading. ..."
"... But meanwhile, the same loose policies that are feeding asset bubbles will continue to drive consumer price inflation, creating the conditions for stagflation whenever the next negative supply shocks arrive. Such shocks could follow from renewed protectionism; demographic aging in advanced and emerging economies; immigration restrictions in advanced economies; the reshoring of manufacturing to high-cost regions; or the balkanization of global supply chains. ..."
"... More broadly, the Sino-American decoupling threatens to fragment the global economy at a time when climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic are pushing national governments toward deeper self-reliance. ..."
"... Making matters worse, central banks have effectively lost their independence, because they have been given little choice but to monetize massive fiscal deficits to forestall a debt crisis. With both public and private debts having soared, they are in a debt trap. Central banks will be damned if they do and damned if they don't, and many governments will be semi-insolvent and thus unable to bail out banks, corporations, and households. The doom loop of sovereigns and banks in the eurozone after the global financial crisis will be repeated world-wide ..."
"... When former Fed Chair Paul Volcker hiked rates to tackle inflation in 1980-82, the result was a severe double-dip recession in the United States and a debt crisis and lost decade for Latin America. But now that global debt ratios are almost three times higher than in the early 1970s, any anti-inflationary policy would lead to a depression, rather than a severe recession. The question is not if but when. ..."
Roubini warns: After 'the Minsky Moment' crashes overheated speculative markets, 'the
Volcker Moment' will will arrive to crash the debt-burdened global economy
( Project Syndicate ) -- In
April, I
warned that today's extremely loose monetary and fiscal policies, when combined with a
number of negative supply shocks, could result in 1970s-style stagflation (high inflation
alongside a recession). In fact, the risk today is even bigger than it was then.
After all, debt ratios in advanced economies and most emerging markets were much lower in
the 1970s, which is why stagflation has not been associated with debt crises historically. If
anything, unexpected inflation in the 1970s wiped out the real value of nominal debts at fixed
rates, thus reducing many advanced economies' public-debt burdens.
The warning signs are already apparent in today's high price-to-earnings ratios, low
equity risk premiums, inflated housing and tech assets, and the irrational exuberance
surrounding special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), the crypto sector, high-yield
corporate debt, collateralized loan obligations, private equity, meme stocks, and runaway
retail day trading.
Conversely, during the 2007-08 financial crisis, high debt ratios (private and public)
caused a severe debt crisis -- as housing bubbles burst -- but the ensuing recession led to low
inflation, if not outright deflation. Owing to the credit crunch, there was a macro shock to
aggregate demand, whereas the risks today are on the supply side.
Worst of both
worlds
We are thus left with the worst of both the stagflationary 1970s and the 2007-10 period.
Debt ratios are much higher than in the 1970s, and a mix of loose economic policies and
negative supply shocks threatens to fuel inflation rather than deflation, setting the stage for
the mother of stagflationary debt crises over the next few years.
For now, loose monetary and fiscal policies will continue to fuel asset and credit
bubbles, propelling a slow-motion train wreck. The warning signs are already apparent in
today's high price-to-earnings ratios SPX , low equity risk
premiums, inflated housing and tech assets COMP , and the
irrational exuberance surrounding special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), the crypto
sector BTCUSD, ,
high-yield corporate debt , collateralized loan obligations, private equity, meme stocks
AMC, and runaway
retail day trading.
But meanwhile, the same loose policies that are feeding asset bubbles will continue to
drive consumer price inflation, creating the conditions for stagflation whenever the next
negative supply shocks arrive. Such shocks could follow from renewed protectionism; demographic
aging in advanced and emerging economies; immigration restrictions in advanced economies; the
reshoring of manufacturing to high-cost regions; or the balkanization of global supply
chains.
Recipe for macroeconomic disruption
More broadly, the Sino-American decoupling threatens to fragment the global economy at a
time when climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic are pushing national governments toward
deeper self-reliance. Add to this the impact on production of increasingly frequent
cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and the social and political backlash against
inequality, and the recipe for macroeconomic disruption is complete.
Making matters worse, central banks have effectively lost their independence, because
they have been given little choice but to monetize massive fiscal deficits to forestall a debt
crisis. With both public and private debts having soared, they are in a debt trap. Central
banks will be damned if they do and damned if they don't, and many governments will be
semi-insolvent and thus unable to bail out banks, corporations, and households. The doom loop
of sovereigns and banks in the eurozone after the global financial crisis will be repeated
world-wide
As inflation rises over the next few years, central banks will face a dilemma. If they start
phasing out unconventional policies and raising policy rates to fight inflation, they will risk
triggering a massive debt crisis and severe recession; but if they maintain a loose monetary
policy, they will risk double-digit inflation -- and deep stagflation when the next negative
supply shocks emerge.
But even in the second scenario, policy makers would not be able to prevent a debt crisis.
While nominal government fixed-rate debt in advanced economies can be partly wiped out by
unexpected inflation (as happened in the 1970s), emerging-market debts denominated in foreign
currency would not be. Many of these governments would need to default and restructure their
debts.
At the same time, private debts in advanced economies would become unsustainable (as they
did after the global financial crisis), and their spreads relative to safer government bonds
would spike, triggering a chain reaction of defaults. Highly leveraged corporations and their
reckless shadow-bank creditors would be the first to fall, soon followed by indebted households
and the banks that financed them.
The Volcker Moment
To be sure, real long-term borrowing costs may initially fall if inflation rises
unexpectedly and central banks are still behind the curve. But, over time, these costs will be
pushed up by three factors. First, higher public and private debts will widen sovereign and
private interest-rate spreads. Second, rising inflation and deepening uncertainty will drive up
inflation risk premiums. And, third, a rising misery index -- the sum of the inflation and
unemployment rate -- eventually will demand a "Volcker Moment."
When former Fed Chair Paul Volcker hiked rates to
tackle inflation in 1980-82, the result was a severe double-dip recession in the United States
and a debt crisis and lost decade for Latin America. But now that global debt ratios are almost
three times higher than in the early 1970s, any anti-inflationary policy would lead to a
depression, rather than a severe recession. The question is not if but when.
Under these conditions, central banks will be damned if they do and damned if they don't,
and many governments will be semi-insolvent and thus unable to bail out banks, corporations,
and households. The doom loop of sovereigns and banks in the eurozone after the global
financial crisis will be repeated world-wide, sucking in households, corporations, and shadow
banks as well.
As matters stand, this slow-motion train wreck looks unavoidable. The Fed's recent pivot
from an ultra-dovish to a mostly dovish stance changes nothing. The Fed has been in a debt trap
at least since December 2018, when a stock- and credit-market crash forced it to reverse its
policy tightening a full year before COVID-19 struck. With inflation rising and stagflationary
shocks looming, it is now even more ensnared.
So, too, are the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, and the Bank of England. The
stagflation of the 1970s will soon meet the debt crises of the post-2008 period. The question
is not if but when.
Nouriel Roubini is CEO of Roubini Macro Associates and chief economist at Atlas Capital
Team.
Australia's tertiary education system is large, complex, and poorly regulated. Its
government funding sources, governance structures and annual reporting requirements lack
transparency and are inconsistent between and within jurisdictions. Distorted government
priorities and discredited ideological fixations have created a dysfunctional system that
devalues the work of academics and professional staff while imposing ever higher burdens on
students to pay more for less.
These statements and
others like them reinforce a widely held perception that the Coalition is
focused solely on higher education's economic contribution to the nation. At the same time
as it has raised its expectations of commercial outcomes from higher education, it has imposed
a wide range of additional funding cuts to teaching and research.
It is therefore clear that it is not the Federal Government that will primarily bear the
burden of its tertiary education ambitions. That burden will continue to fall squarely upon
Australian academics, students and professional staff. The ways governance and funding are
currently structured virtually guarantees such an outcome.
However, the overall contribution to the higher education system from the Federal Government
has halved over the last thirty years, from
around 80% to less than 40% . It has been able to do this by clawing back a much higher
proportion of universities' teaching costs from domestic students. Most of this transfer of the
cost burden to students has happened under the Coalition.
Even though total government funding for the higher education system grew 114% in real terms
since 1989, increasing from
$5.6 billion to $12 billion in 2018-19 , the number of domestic students in the system grew
by 165%, increasing from around 410,000 in 1989 to 1,087,850
in 2019 .
Allocated funding for higher education in the 2019‒2020 Federal Budget was $17.7
billion. But again, this included funding of $5.8 billion for HECS-HELP loans. Therefore,
actual government funding was only $11.9 billion out of total revenue for the higher education
system of $36.73 billion for that financial year. In other words, less than a third of the
system's total revenue was provided by the Commonwealth that year, yet it continues to behave
as though its contribution is far higher.
The combination of reduced revenue from domestic tuition fees due to government funding cuts
and from international students due to COVID has inevitably forced all of Australia's public
universities to cut expenditure over the last twelve months.
By late March 2020, however, cost savings in the core functions of teaching and research
were being sought by university executives, even though the full financial implications of the
pandemic were still far from clear.
Because labour costs have sat at around 57% of total university expenditure for the last
decade, they are always at the top of managerial priorities for cost-cutting, rather than
their own inflated wages or
latest pet projects . Executives have imposed early retirement and redundancies on
thousands of staff with little or no consultation. Many more casual and contracted staff have
been laid off or had their positions terminated at the end of their contracts. All the
indications from university executives are that
many more jobs are on the chopping block .
Universities made at least
17,000 full-time equivalent positions redundant in 2020 . This constitutes around 13% of
the total tertiary workforce. However, given that around half of that workforce
is employed casually or on contract , and has been for at least a decade, the total job
losses probably translate to around 50-60,000 in total. In other words, these job cuts need to
be grasped in the context of the massive casualisation of university teaching and
administration over the last few decades.
According to Universities Australia (UA), there was
130,000 full-time equivalent staff directly employed in the system in 2017 . However, like
the universities themselves, UA is unwilling to publicly acknowledge the number of casuals
working in the system. In 2018, there were
94,500 people employed on a casual basis at Australian universities . It would seem
reasonable on that basis to conclude that as many as half of all casuals have either totally
lost any work they had, or have had their work hours significantly reduced. However, most
universities steadfastly refuse to make employee headcount data public, so the data we do have
is inaccurate.
This has been borne out by a recent study of Victorian public university job losses in 2020
published by accounting professors James Guthrie and Brendan O'Connell. They have found that
even in Victoria, where universities are obligated to publish their casual workforce figures,
universities used inconsistent terminology and different techniques for recording their
staffing numbers at the end of 2020 . One estimate
from early May that 7,500 university employees in Victoria lost their jobs in 2020 is
therefore almost certainly an underestimate. Guthrie and O'Connell also found that universities
are using accounting losses to justify reducing employment.
The release of twenty-one university annual reports over the last few weeks strongly
reinforces their observations. UTS professor John Howard argues that the figures reported in
these annual reports raise
serious questions about the extent to which the financial crisis of the tertiary system
has been exaggerated . He points out that all but one of these universities recorded cash
surpluses, which averaged around 3% of total revenue. However, eight of them posted deficits
after they included 'non-cash' expenses such as depreciation, amortisation and changes in
investment valuations: none of these categories of 'expenses' constitute tangible revenue
losses. The bulk of university 'losses' were in decreased returns on investments (around $600
million) and the depreciation of assets, which totalled more than $1.4 billion.
Howard also points out that Australian universities had accessible cash or cash equivalent
reserves of
$4.6 billion at the beginning of the pandemic . Their own estimates indicate revenue losses
in 2020-21 of $3.8 billion. In other words, most of Australia's public universities have ample
financial assets at their disposal to offset any short- to medium-term loss of revenue.
Depreciation, amortisation and finance costs have seen the most significant growth in
'expenses' over the last decade. According to Deloitte, this category of expenses has seen the
highest growth, at
7.5% as a year-on-year average . Universities' adoption of accrual accounting has enabled
them to write off the value of fixed assets more quickly to inflate their expense claims every
year. These inflated expenses are used as an excuse to sack staff and cut programs. Howard
argues that if public universities did not use this business accounting convention, none
of the twenty-one universities he studied would have recorded any earnings deficit in 2020
.
It should therefore be clear that the main problem public universities face is not a lack of
revenue, or a lack of disposable assets to ride through a crisis. Their main problem is a lack
of transparency and accountability at the executive level which has enabled them to misallocate
financial resources, together with a corporate governance regime that has empowered executives
to behave in this fashion. These two issues need to be front and centre of reform of the
Australian higher education system.
Dr Adam Lucas is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
at the University of Wollongong. Adam's contemporary research focuses on energy policy
responses to anthropogenic climate change and obstacles to a sustainable energy
transition.
The corporatization of Australia's public universities has been driven by government
funding cuts and regressive changes to how universities are governed. The rationale for
corporatization was that it would encourage universities to become more entrepreneurial by
turning vice-chancellors into CEOs and governing bodies into corporate boards. The resulting
hybrid has been very successful at promoting university 'brands' to international students but
has utterly failed to maintain a supportive and collegial work environment for staff and
students on university campuses.
While it is indisputable that most Australian universities have experienced huge
growth in international student revenues over the last decade, the billions of dollars in
'operating surpluses' that have flowed through the system during this time have not been
invested in expanding and developing academic workforces, or
lowering staff-student ratios , or increasing teaching and learning support for students.
Instead, those responsible for making these decisions have
spent billions of dollars on construction and marketing programs that laud their
institutions' world-class status (usually in the techno-sciences), while systematically
degrading the working conditions of academic and professional staff and the quality of
education received by students.
Resources critical to the performance of a wide range of tasks and initiatives are regularly
withheld for no good reason. Hiring freezes and the imposition of annual staff performance
assessments further contribute to the general atmosphere of fear and anxiety promoted by senior
management, who never appear to have the same performance metrics applied to them. Student and
staff services that had previously been free or subsidized have been monetized and privatized.
Professional services and expertise that could easily be sourced 'in-house' are routinely
outsourced to external consultants.
Few of these negative trends are captured in the metrics senior management regularly deploy
to spruik the virtues of their universities to students, parents and potential donors.
Preoccupied with 'cost recovery', 'performance metrics' and 'efficiency dividends', senior
managers and executives have reconstructed staff and students as revenue-generators who are
surplus to requirements if not producing financial surpluses and/or 'measurable outcomes' that
contribute to improved university rankings. International league tables, performance
monitoring, teaching and research excellence awards, and all the other 'metrics of excellence'
with which university executives and managers are currently obsessed are means to these
ends.
These legislative changes have been primarily motivated by a long-held belief within the
Coalition and certain elements of the Labor Party that universities should be run like
corporations. Those who have embraced this belief are convinced that business and industry
provide the best models for university governance because they always perform better than
public sector institutions.
Following the Dawkins reforms of Australia's higher education system in the early 1990s,
this item of faith has been progressively embedded in all of the administrative and managerial
functions of universities. As successive state and federal governments have continued to reduce
funding to the system they have sought to graft an increasingly Frankensteinian model of
'corporate governance' onto Australia's public universities.
For example, in 2012 the NSW Coalition Government inserted specific clauses in the
enabling
NSW legislation concerning university governance and finances which specify that appointed
members require financial and management experience, while those sub-clauses specifying
requirements for tertiary, professional and community experience have been removed. Similar
changes to university acts were made by the
WA Coalition Government in 2016 .
In a public corporation, the executive is accountable to shareholders and the board of
directors. Poor performance is questioned, and senior executives and managers can be removed if
the board or shareholders are unhappy with that performance. However, unlike corporate boards,
which are answerable to their shareholders, and to some extent, the public as 'clients' or
'consumers' of their goods and services, the accountability of university governing bodies is
effectively restricted to financial issues.
The auditors-general of each state and territory are empowered to annually scrutinize the
financial
accounts of all universities under their jurisdiction . Even so, it is highly unusual for
them to call universities to account for anything other than minor infringements of accounting
rules and standards. They have rarely shown any willingness to delve deeply into university
finances under their jurisdiction, despite some clear cases of
maladministration, mismanagement and even corruption . There is no evidence that any audits
have ever uncovered wrongdoing, conflicts of interest, or incidents of malfeasance, even though
we know from our own colleagues in administrative positions at multiple universities that such
behaviour is not at all uncommon.
Universities, therefore, have the worst of both worlds as far as their governance is
concerned. Staff and students have little or no say over how priorities are set and strategies
are pursued. They are subject to the whims of management, who generally regard academics as an
obstacle to the efficient running of 'their' universities, and who have no legitimate
contributions to make as far as they are concerned. They rarely admit to having made mistakes
or demonstrate any willingness to learn from them.
To illustrate this point, in the wake of COVID, it would make sense to proportionally cut
back on staffing and resources in those areas that had the highest proportions of international
students, and those related to their support and recruitment. However, there is no evidence
from any decisions made to date by university executives that these disciplines or activities
have borne the brunt of 'cost savings'. On the contrary, even prior to the current pandemic,
the arts, humanities and social sciences have been targeted for job cuts, including
non-replacement of tenured academics that have retired or resigned. In most of these instances,
the financial cases for these cuts have been based on decisions that have little or no evidence
to support them.
Many academics and students feel that senior managers target disciplines in these fields
because those who work and study in them are willing to speak out against management and
executive excesses. Critical thinking, teaching and research is deemed by university leaders to
be acceptable within those contexts,
but not when reflexively applied to their decision-making .
All of the distorted priorities that universities manifest today are an outcome of the
inappropriate and dysfunctional corporate governance and reporting models that successive
governments have imposed on universities throughout the country over many years. It is
noteworthy that Coalition governments throughout the country have made successive changes to
university acts that have the clear intention of disenfranchising staff and students from any
meaningful input into university governance.
It should be abundantly clear from all this that the existing legislation concerning
university governance is deeply flawed. It is an obstacle to better university governance and
degrades the value and quality of education for our young people and the next generation of
professionals. It also devalues the work of academic and professional staff and demonstrates no
capacity for critical self-reflection. It is therefore completely inadequate to the task of
confronting the enormous challenges that humanity faces in the twenty-first century.
We need to start a national conversation about the kinds of changes that are needed to bring
about genuine reform of Australia's higher education system. A good start would be to focus on
the ways in which university governing bodies are organized and constituted, with a particular
focus on how and why different categories of members are selected and represented.
Democratic accountability and transparency should be embedded in every new process and
structure.
Dr Adam Lucas is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social
Sciences at the University of Wollongong. Adam's contemporary research focuses on energy
policy responses to anthropogenic climate change and obstacles to a sustainable energy
transition.
The number of U.S. truck drivers sidelined due to substance abuse violations has surpassed
60,000 and continues to climb by roughly 2,000-3,000 per month, according to federal data. The
latest monthly
report by the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse, administered by the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration since January 2020, revealed that 60,299 CDL holders have a drug or
alcohol violation recorded in the clearinghouse as of June 1, up from 57,510 as of May 1 and up
from 18,860 recorded in the clearinghouse as of May 1, 2020.
Drivers with at least one substance abuse violation are barred from operating a commercial
truck until they complete a return-to-duty process, which includes providing a negative
follow-up test result. The percentage of drivers who are completing the RTD process has
steadily increased over the past year, however, from 5.2% as of May 1, 2020, to 22.1% as of May
1, 2021.
Marijuana consistently tops the list of substances identified in positive drug tests, far
outpacing cocaine and methamphetamine, the second- and third-highest drug violations,
respectively, among CDL holders.
The number of violations now recorded in the clearinghouse stands out for another reason:
It's coincidentally just a few hundred shy of an estimated number of drivers needed to fill a
shortfall of commercial drivers to keep pace with freight demand.
"According to a recent estimate, the trucking industry needs an additional 60,800 truck
drivers immediately -- a deficit that is expected to grow to more than 160,000 by 2028,"
testified American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear at a Capitol Hill
hearing on freight mobility in May.
"In fact, when anticipated driver retirement numbers are combined with the expected growth
in capacity, the trucking industry will need to hire roughly 1.1 million new drivers over the
next decade, or an average of nearly 110,000 per year."
Scopelitis Consulting Co-Director Sean Garney pointed out that the growing number of
prohibited drivers is not a bad thing from a safety standpoint.
"The database is doing what it's supposed to do, which is identify those who should not be
driving," Garney told FreightWaves. "Losing drivers due to positive drug tests may not
necessarily be a good thing for truck capacity, but I think what many others in this industry
also care about is safety."
"... De Garay explained that after receiving the second coronavirus vaccine dose, her daughter started developing severe abdominal and chest pains. Maddie described the severity of the pain to her mother as "it feels like my heart is being ripped out through my neck." ..."
"... The Ohio mother added her daughter experienced additional symptoms that included gastroparesis, nausea, vomiting, erratic blood pressure, heart rate, and memory loss. "She still cannot digest food. She has a tube to get her nutrition," De Garay said to Carlson. "She also couldn't walk at one point, then she could I don't understand why and [physicians] are not looking into why...now she's back in a wheelchair and she can't hold her neck up. Her neck pulls back." ..."
"... De Garay said she had joined a Facebook support group to help people cope with the unexpected events happening from the coronavirus vaccine trial, and she said it was shut down. "It's just not right," she said. ..."
"... Sen. Ron Johnson , R-Wis., has sent letters to the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna seeking answers about adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine following a June 28 press conference with affected individuals. The conference in Milwaukee included stories from five people, including De Garay ..."
"... The Wisconsin senator noted that some adverse reactions were detailed in Pfizer's and Moderna's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency use authorization (EUA) memorandums following early clinical trials ..."
"... Those reactions included nervous system disorders and musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders for the Pfizer EUA memo. The Moderna EUA memo included reactions such as nervous system disorders, vascular disorders and musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders, according to Johnson's letter. ..."
"... You missed the whole point! The issue is that the government is not acknowledging and and not reporting these side effects of the vaccine. Instead they are lying about the safety. If you are young, you are much more likely to get sick and injured by the vaccine than COVID. ..."
"... anyone under 25 should not get the vaccine because the percentages are about the same or worse having a negative impact from the vaccine versus the actual virus. ..."
"... With the Covid19 mortality rate among the children why even vaccinate? As a Chemist / Biochemist I learned that there is always unintended consequences. ..."
"... Vaccines may have long term effects that are not known today. ..."
"... The CDC's generic guidelines for getting a vaccine for any reason are very restrictive, first being, the disease you're getting vaccinated against has to pose a real, immediate danger. CV-19 poses virtually no danger whatsoever to kids under 14. Of all the deaths of children 14 and under in the last 18 months only .8% of them had a case of CV-19. That's 367 deaths out of over 46,000. (Data from CDC website) Forcing them to take an experimental vaccine that they absolutely don't need is criminal. As a parent, allowing your child to take the vaccine without spending a few hours doing some research is criminally negligent. This is like some terribly warped Kafka novel but it's real. ..."
Mother Stephanie De Garay joins 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' to discuss how her 12-year-old
daughter volunteered for the Pfizer vaccine trial and is now in a wheelchair.
An Ohio mother is speaking out
about her 12-year-old daughter suffering extreme reactions and nearly dying after volunteering
for the Pfizer coronavirus
vaccine trial.
Stephanie De Garay told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Thursday
that after reaching out to multiple physicians they claimed her daughter, Maddie De Garay,
couldn't have become gravely ill from the vaccine.
"The only diagnosis we've gotten for her is that it's conversion disorder or functional
neurologic symptom disorder, and they are blaming it on anxiety," De Garay told Tucker Carlson.
"Ironically, she did not have anxiety before the vaccine."
De Garay explained that after receiving the second coronavirus vaccine dose, her daughter
started developing severe abdominal and chest pains. Maddie described the severity of the pain
to her mother as "it feels like my heart is being ripped out through my neck."
The Ohio mother added her daughter experienced additional symptoms that included
gastroparesis, nausea, vomiting, erratic blood pressure, heart rate, and memory loss. "She still cannot digest food. She has a tube to get her nutrition," De Garay said to
Carlson. "She also couldn't walk at one point, then she could I don't understand why and
[physicians] are not looking into why...now she's back in a wheelchair and she can't hold her
neck up. Her neck pulls back."
Carlson asked whether any officials from the Biden administration or representatives from
Pfizer company have reached out to the family. "No, they have not," she answered.
"The response with the person that's leading the vaccine trial has been atrocious," she
said. "We wanted to know what symptoms were reported and we couldn't even get an answer on
that. It was just that 'we report to Pfizer and they report to the FDA.' That's all we
got."
After her heartbreaking experience, the Ohio mother said she's still "pro-vaccine, but also
pro-informed consent." De Garay mentioned she's speaking out because she feels like everyone
should be fully aware of this tragic incident and added the situation is being "pushed down and
hidden."
De Garay said she had joined a Facebook support group to help people cope with the
unexpected events happening from the coronavirus vaccine trial, and she said it was shut
down. "It's just not right," she said.
"They need to do research and figure out why this happened, especially to people in the
trial. I thought that was the point of it," De Garay concluded. "They need to come up with
something that's going to treat these people early because all they're going to do is keep
getting worse."
Sen. Ron
Johnson , R-Wis., has sent letters to the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna seeking answers
about adverse reactions to the COVID-19vaccine
following a June 28 press conference with affected individuals. The conference in Milwaukee
included stories from five people, including De Garay.
The Wisconsin senator noted that some adverse reactions were detailed in Pfizer's and
Moderna's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency use authorization (EUA) memorandums
following early clinical trials.
Those reactions included nervous system disorders and musculoskeletal and connective tissue
disorders for the Pfizer EUA memo. The Moderna EUA memo included reactions such as nervous
system disorders, vascular disorders and musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders,
according to Johnson's letter.
Pfizer and Moderna did not immediately respond to inquiries from Fox News about Johnson's
letters.
J jeff5150357 6 hours ago
My daughter had the same thing happen to
her after getting a flu vaccine 9 years ago. Within days of getting it, she went from being as
healthy as an ox to years of awful, unexplained illness. The short version is they concluded
that she had a severe adverse reaction to the vaccine, but from the delivery chemicals, not the
flu content itself. Formaldehyde was the likely major cause. Now she is getting ready to begin
college and is being required to get the Covid vaccine by her university and the NCAA for
athletics. It is causing her, my wife and I horrible anxiety and we feel like we are being
railroaded into something that could be very dangerous for her. Any discussion or concern
expressed on social media is immediately blocked. I know from years of working in the research
grants office at Yale University that the big pharma industry is powerful and will go to great
lengths to control the narrative. What I don't understand is why mainstream media and social
media are so willing to help them these days!
jeff5150357 4 hours ago
While the college experience is great for a young adult. I would look at getting a degree
online. Her future earnings will be based on her merit, not where she went to school. If
someone was telling me what to do with my personal health, and I was uncomfortable with their
prescription, I would follow my instincts.
LoraJane92649 jeff5150357 5
hours ago
If her flu vax is well documented she should be able to get a waiver. Hopefully you
have an able bodied family physician or medical team to advocate on your behalf.
G gunvald 7 hours ago
You know when you take it that there can be adverse
reactions. So, in that sense, you are informed. Any one of us could be the odd person. That
said, I have a problem with any child getting these vaccines, especially when most people
recover from the disease. It's one thing for me as an elderly person to make the decision to
take it as covid affects the elderly person more and I wanted to avoid that ventilator. Most of
my life has been lived and that's how I evaluated it. This will always come down to putting it
in God's hands.
TheTruthAsItIs gunvald 6 hours ago
You missed the whole point! The
issue is that the government is not acknowledging and and not reporting these side effects of the
vaccine. Instead they are lying about the safety. If you are young, you are much more likely to
get sick and injured by the vaccine than COVID.
D DontDestoryUSA
gunvald 4 hours ago
It's not being informed when you are forced to take a vaccination that they
clearly had trouble with past vaccination sounds like a lawsuit for the university is on the
horizon. With a big pay day
Tony5SFG 7 hours ago
"Ohio
mother said she's still "pro-vaccine, but also pro-informed consent." " And as a pediatrician
for over 40 yrs (retired now) and a 10 year member of my medical school's Institutional Review
Board (which had to approve all human research), THAT is a problem I have been bringing up As
far as requiring all young people, such as entering or in college, to get the vaccine Children
are a protected class and the informed consent for research on them is much more strenuous than
for adults And, requiring young people to take these new vaccines is the equivalent of doing
research on them. The issue of myocarditis is quite troubling. And while it has been seen in
natural infections, I have not yet seen an adequate risk - benefit evaluation regarding risking
natural infection versus vaccination And people say that the myocarditis is not severe, no one
can be sure of the long term effects of a young person getting it. The vaccines that we give
children have been used for decades and the risks/benefits have been well established
D DallasAmEmail Tony5SFG 6 hours ago
A friends daughter who just went through internship as
Physicians assistant based on the percentages in age groups believes anyone under 25 should not
get the vaccine because the percentages are about the same or worse having a negative impact
from the vaccine versus the actual virus. Yes, older age groups the percent having negative
impact from the virus is much greater than the vaccine, so yes older age groups should get the
vaccine. What really is bothersome is when Youtube removes Dr. Robert Malone video who helped
create the mrna vaccine express concern that normal testing has not happened and be cautious
about taking it, especially for the young.
marinesfather601 Tony5SFG 5
hours ago
With the Covid19 mortality rate among the children why even vaccinate? As a Chemist /
Biochemist I learned that there is always unintended consequences.
Hilltopper9 7 hours ago
Vaccines may have long term effects that are not known
today. The same could be said of all the chemicals we apply to our body daily through shampoos,
hair dyes, body lotions, and suntan lotions. Life's a gamble. It's up to each individual to
make the best decisions possible given the facts available.
A akbushrat
Hilltopper9 6 hours ago
The CDC's generic guidelines for getting a vaccine for any reason are
very restrictive, first being, the disease you're getting vaccinated against has to pose a
real, immediate danger. CV-19 poses virtually no danger whatsoever to kids under 14. Of all the
deaths of children 14 and under in the last 18 months only .8% of them had a case of CV-19.
That's 367 deaths out of over 46,000. (Data from CDC website) Forcing them to take an
experimental vaccine that they absolutely don't need is criminal. As a parent, allowing your
child to take the vaccine without spending a few hours doing some research is criminally
negligent. This is like some terribly warped Kafka novel but it's real.
F
Fauxguy930 Hilltopper9 5 hours ago
☢️ N-butyl-N-(4-hydroxybutyl)nitrosamine is a
nitrosamine that has butyl and 4-hydroxybutyl substituents. In mice, it causes high-grade,
invasive cancers in the urinary bladder, but not in any other tissues. It has a role as a
carcinogenic agent. Ingredient in all shots. How did a carcinogen get FDA approved, oh it was
an emergency.
R RussellRika 6 hours ago
I have a
twelve year old, and not a chance I'd allow her to volunteer for any vaccine trial, and
especially not this one. She very much wanted to get a vaccine, until she started reading about
some of the adverse reactions. Sorry, but I'm a child, the benefit does not outweigh the risk.
MrEd50 6 hours ago
I took the vaccine because I'm 60 years old and work with special ed kids. My 18 year old child
refuses to take it and I support him on this. COVID shouldn't be an issue for most of us.
The problem is that many people face long term unemployment without substantial emergency funds, which further complicates
already difficult situation.
Notable quotes:
"... More than 2K adults to were interviewed to try and ascertain how long they could survive without income. It turns out that approximately 72.4MM employed Americans - 28.4% of the population - believe they wouldn't be able to last for more than a month without a payday. ..."
Imagine you lost your job tomorrow. How long would you be able to sustain your current
lifestyle? A week? A month? A year?
As we await Friday's labor market update, Finder has just published the results of a recent
survey attempting to gauge the financial stability of the average American in the post-pandemic
era.
More than 2K adults to were interviewed to try and ascertain how long they could survive
without income. It turns out that approximately 72.4MM employed Americans - 28.4% of the
population - believe they wouldn't be able to last for more than a month without a payday.
Another 24% said they expected to be able to live comfortably between two months and six
months. That means an estimated 133.6MM working Americans (52.3% of the population) can live
off their savings for six months or less before going broke.
On the other end of the spectrum, roughly 8.7MM employed Americans (or 3.4% of the
population) say they don't need to rely on a rainy day fund since they have employment
insurance which will compensate them should they lose their job.
Amusingly, men appear to be less effective savers than women. Some 32.4MM women (26.7% of
American women) say their savings would stretch at most a month, compared to 40MM men (29.9% of
American men) who admit to the same. Of those people, 9.7MM women (8% of American women) say
their savings wouldn't even stretch a week, compared to 15.5MM men (11.6% of American men) who
admit to the same.
A majority of employed Americans over the age of 18 say their savings would last six months
at most. About 70.7MM men (52.8% of American men) and 62.8MM women (51.8% of American women)
fear they'd be in dire straits within six months of losing their livelihood.
Unsurprisingly, younger people tend to have less of a savings buffer - but the gap between
the generations isn't as wide as it probably should be.
While increasing one's income is perhaps the best route to building a more robust nest egg,
Finder offered some suggestions for people looking to maximize their savings.
1. Create a budget and stick to it
Look at your monthly income against all of your monthly expenses. Add to them expenses you
pay once or twice a year to avoid a surprise when they creep up. After you know where your
money is going, you can allot specific amounts to different categories and effectively track
your spending.
"... Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of private employers and their lobbyists. The American public is expected to sympathize more with the plight of wealthy business owners who can't find workers to fill their low-paid positions, instead of with unemployed workers who might be struggling to make ends meet. ..."
"... West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless benefits early in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work. That's what has made this great country." Interestingly, Justice owns a resort that couldn't find enough low-wage workers to fill jobs. Notwithstanding a clear conflict of interest in cutting jobless benefits, the Republican politician is now enjoying the fruits of his own political actions as his resort reports greater ease in filling positions with desperate workers whose lifeline he cut off. ..."
For the past few months, Republicans have been waging a ferocious political battle to end
federal unemployment benefits, based upon stated desires of saving the U.S. economy from a
serious labor shortage. The logic, in the words
of Republican politicians like Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, goes like this: "the government pays
folks more to stay home than to go to work," and therefore, "[p]aying people not to work is not
helpful." The conservative Wall Street Journal has been beating the drum for the same argument,
saying recently that it was a " terrible
blunder " to pay jobless benefits to unemployed workers.
If the hyperbolic claims are to be believed, one might imagine American workers are
luxuriating in the largesse of taxpayer-funded payments, thumbing their noses at the earnest
"job creators" who are taking far more seriously the importance of a post-pandemic economic
growth spurt.
It is true that there are currently millions of jobs going unfilled. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just
released statistics showing that there were 9.3 million job openings in April and that the
percentage of layoffs decreased while resignations increased. Taking these statistics at face
value, one could conclude this means there is a labor shortage.
But, as economist Heidi Shierholz explained in a New York
Times op-ed , there is only a labor shortage if employers raise wages to match worker
demands and subsequently still face a shortage of workers. Shierholz wrote, "When those
measures [of raising wages] don't result in a substantial increase in workers, that's a labor
shortage. Absent that dynamic, you can rest easy."
Remember the subprime mortgage housing crisis of 2008 when
economists and pundits blamed low-income homeowners for wanting to purchase homes they
could not afford? Perhaps this is the labor market's way of saying, if you can't afford higher
salaries, you shouldn't expect to fill jobs.
Or, to use the logic of another accepted capitalist argument, employers could liken the job
market to the surge pricing practices of ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft. After
consumers complained about hiked-up prices for rides during rush hour,
Uber explained , "With surge pricing, Uber rates increase to get more cars on the road and
ensure reliability during the busiest times. When enough cars are on the road, prices go back
down to normal levels." Applying this logic to the labor market, workers might be saying to
employers: "When enough dollars are being offered in wages, the number of job openings will go
back down to normal levels." In other words, workers are surge-pricing the cost of their
labor.
But corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling -- not because of a real
labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs. The U.S.
Chamber of Commerce
insists that "[t]he worker shortage is real," and that it has risen to the level of a
"national economic emergency" that "poses an imminent threat to our fragile recovery and
America's great resurgence." In the Chamber's worldview, workers, not corporate employers who
refuse to pay better, are the main obstacle to the U.S.'s economic recovery.
Longtime labor organizer and senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies Bill Fletcher Jr. explained to me in an email
interview that claims of a labor shortage are an exaggeration and that, actually, "we suffered
a minor depression and not another great recession," as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
In Fletcher's view, "The so-called labor shortage needs to be understood as the result of
tremendous employment reorganization, including the collapse of industries and companies."
Furthermore, according to Fletcher, the purveyors of the "labor shortage" myth are not
accounting for "the collapse of daycare and the impact on women and families, and a continued
fear associated with the pandemic."
He's right. As one analyst
put it, "The rotten seed of America's disinvestment in child care has finally sprouted." Such
factors have received little attention by the purveyors of the labor shortage myth -- perhaps
because acknowledging real obstacles like care work requires thinking of workers as real human
beings rather than cogs in a capitalist machine.
Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of
private employers and their lobbyists. The American public is expected to sympathize more with
the plight of wealthy business owners who can't find workers to fill their low-paid positions,
instead of with unemployed workers who might be struggling to make ends meet.
Already, jobless benefits were slashed to appallingly low levels after Republicans reduced a
$600-a-week payment authorized by the CARES Act to a mere
$300 a week , which works out to $7.50 an hour for full-time work. If companies cannot
compete with this exceedingly paltry sum, their position is akin to a customer demanding to a
car salesperson that they have the right to buy a vehicle for a below-market-value sticker
price (again, capitalist logic is a worthwhile exercise to showcase the ludicrousness of how
lawmakers and their corporate beneficiaries are responding to the state of the labor
market).
Remarkably, although federal jobless benefits are funded through September 2021,
more than two dozen Republican-run states are choosing to end them earlier. Not only will
this impact the bottom line for
millions of people struggling to make ends meet, but it will also undermine the stimulus
impact that this federal aid has on the economies of states when jobless workers spend their
federal dollars on necessities. Conservatives are essentially engaged in an ideological battle
over government benefits, which, in their view, are always wrong unless they are going to the
already privileged (remember the GOP's 2017
tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy?).
The GOP has thumbed its nose at federal benefits for residents before. In order to
underscore their ideological opposition to the Affordable Care Act, recall how Republican
governors
eschewed billions of federal dollars to fund Medicaid expansion. These conservative
ideologues chose to let their own
voters suffer the consequences of turning down federal aid in service of their political
opposition to Obamacare. And they're doing the same thing now.
At the same time as headlines are screaming about a catastrophic worker shortage that could
undermine the economy, stories abound of how American billionaires paid
peanuts in income taxes according to newly released documents, even as their wealth
multiplied to extraordinary levels. The obscenely wealthy are spending their mountains of cash on luxury
goods and fulfilling
childish fantasies of space travel . The juxtaposition of such a phenomenon alongside the
conservative claim that jobless benefits are too generous is evidence that we are indeed in a
"national economic emergency" -- just not of the sort that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants
us to believe.
West
Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless benefits early
in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work. That's what has
made this great country." Interestingly, Justice owns a resort that couldn't find enough
low-wage workers to fill jobs. Notwithstanding a clear conflict of interest in cutting jobless
benefits, the Republican politician is now enjoying the fruits of his own political actions as
his resort reports greater ease in filling positions with desperate workers whose lifeline he
cut off.
When lawmakers earlier this year
debated the Raise the Wage Act , which would have increased the federal minimum wage,
Republicans wagged their fingers in warning, saying higher wages would put companies out of
business. Opponents of that failed bill claimed that if forced to pay $15 an hour, employers
would hire fewer people, close branches, or perhaps shut down altogether, which we were told
would ultimately hurt workers.
Now, we are being told another story: that companies actually do need workers and won't
simply reduce jobs, close branches, or shut down and that the government therefore needs to
stop competing with their ultra-low wages to save the economy. The claim that businesses would
no longer be profitable if they are forced to increase wages is undermined by one
multibillion-dollar fact: corporations are raking in record-high profits and doling them out to
shareholders and executives. They can indeed afford to offer greater pay, and when
they do, it turns out there is no labor shortage .
American workers are at a critically important juncture at this moment. Corporate employers
seem to be approaching a limit of how far they can push workers to accept poverty-level jobs.
According to Fletcher, "This moment provides opportunities to raise wage demands, but it must
be a moment where workers organize in order to sustain and pursue demands for improvements in
their living and working conditions."
Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of "Rising Up With Sonali,"
a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing
fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute. This article was
produced by Economy for All , a project of the
Independent Media Institute.
"Objective judgement is our jugement about the people we do not like ;-)"
In view of the fact that Delta (Indian) variant can infect vaccinated with the first
generation of vaccines people Fauci statement "when you get vaccinated, you not only protect your
own health, that of the family, but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the
spread of the virus throughout the community." i obviously wrong.
Delta Covid-19 Variant Can Infect Vaccinated People
Those who don't get their news from mainstream media have been aware of Anthony Fauci's
connection to "gain of function" research for months. Now, mainstream media is picking it up so
the White House is scrambling.
For months, there wasn't a day that went by when Dr. Anthony Fauci wasn't doing multiple
interviews spreading fear of Covid-19, demanding people take the various "vaccines," and
changing his talking points from moment to moment on a slew of healthcare-related issues. We
saw a clear change last week when the White House's chief doc seemed to fly under the radar for
the first time since Joe Biden took office.
It all comes down to "gain of function" research that is almost certainly the cause of the
Wuhan Flu. Developed in the Wuhan Virology Lab, Covid-19 either escaped or was intentionally
released. While many in academia still hold onto the notion that the pandemic was started by
bats, they do so simply because it hasn't -- and likely cannot -- be completely ruled out as
long as the Chinese Communist Party has a say in the matter. But many are now accepting the
likelihood that it came from the Wuhan Virology Lab as a result of "gain of function"
research.
We also now know that Fauci has been a
huge proponent of this research and he participated
in funding it at the Wuhan Virology Lab.
More evidence is emerging every day despite the bad doctor's protestations. And when I say
"we also now know," that's to say more mainstream media watchers know. Those who turn to
alternative media have known about Fauci's involvement with the Wuhan Virology Lab for a
while.
They've been trying to cover their tracks. A bombshell revelation from The
National Pulse yesterday showed they realized this was going to be a problem long before
Rand Paul
or Tucker Carlson started
calling Fauci out.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology scrubbed the U.S. National Institutes of Health as one
of its research partners from its website in early 2021. The revelation comes despite Dr.
Anthony Fauci insisting no relationship existed between the institutions.
Archived versions of the Wuhan lab's site also reveal a research update – "
Will SARS Come Back? " – appearing to describe gain-of-function research being
conducted at the institute by entities funded by Dr. Anthony Fauci's National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
On March 21st, 2021, the lab's website listed six U.S.-based research partners:
University of Alabama, University of North Texas, EcoHealth Alliance, Harvard University, The
National Institutes of Health (NIH), the United States, and the National Wildlife
Federation.
One day later, the page was revised to contain just two research
partners – EcoHealth Alliance and the University of Alabama. By March 23rd,
EcoHealth Alliance was the sole partner
remaining .
The Wuhan Institute of Virology's decision to wipe the NIH from its website came amidst
heightened
scrutiny that the lab was the source of COVID-19 – and that U.S. taxpayer dollars
from the NIH may have funded the research. The unearthing of the lab's attempted coverup also
follows a heated
exchange between Senator Rand Paul and Fauci, who attempted to distance his organization
from the Wuhan lab.
Beyond establishing a working relationship between the NIH and the Wuhan Institue of
Virology, now-deleted posts
from the site also detail studies bearing the hallmarks of gain-of-function research
conducted with the Wuhan-based lab. Fauci, however, asserted to Senator Paul that "the NIH
has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of
Virology."
There is still a tremendous gap between those who know the truth about Fauci and those who
still think he's just a smart little guy who tells Joe Biden what to do when it comes to Covid.
As we've documented multiple times in the past, there seems to be a cult of personality
surrounding Fauci, or as many have called it, Faucism. He is practically worshipped as a savior
by millions who believe everything he says even if he contradicts something he had said in the
past.
Today, he was interviewed on CBS News during "Face the Nation." It was a softball interview,
as always, and at no point was "gain of function" research discussed. Instead, John Dickerson
tried to sound smart and Fauci gave him kudos in an odd back-and-forth promoting vaccines.
JOHN DICKERSON : So, if- if a person is deciding whether or not to get vaccinated, they
have to keep in mind whether it's going to keep them healthy. But based on these new
findings, it would suggest they also have an opportunity, if vaccinated, to knock off or
block their ability to transmit it to other people. So, does it increase the public health
good of getting the vaccination or make that clearer based on these new findings?
DR. FAUCI : And you know, JOHN, you said it very well. I could have said it better.
It's absolutely the case. And that's the reason why we say when you get vaccinated, you not
only protect your own health, that of the family, but also you contribute to the community
health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community. And in other words,
you become a dead end to the virus. And when there are a lot of dead ends around, the virus
is not going to go anywhere. And that's when you get a point that you have a markedly
diminished rate of infection in the community. And that's exactly the reason, and you said it
very well, of why we encourage people and want people to get vaccinated. The more people you
get vaccinated, the safer the entire community is.
JOHN DICKERSON : And do you think now that this guidance has come out on relaxing the
mass mandates if you've been vaccinated, that people who might have been hesitant before will
start to get vaccinated in greater numbers?
DR. FAUCI : You know, I hope so, JOHN. The underlying reason for the CDC doing this was
just based on the evolution of the science that I mentioned a moment ago. But if, in fact,
this serves as an incentive for people to get vaccinated, all the better. I hope it does,
actually.
Don't let the presence of this interview fool you. It was almost certainly scheduled before
the "gain of function" research discussion hit the mainstream. But as Revolver News reported
today, we should start seeing less and less of Fauci going forward.
What happened to the almighty Dr. Fauci? Last week he was on TV telling all of us that life
wouldn't get back to normal for at least another year or so, and this week he's pretty much
gone. So what happened?
Well, a lot, actually. The biggest turn for Fauci involves 3 little words: Gain of Function.
It was this past week when the "gain of function" dots were publicly connected to the good
doctor. This is nothing new for those of us on the right. Here on Revolver, we've covered
Fauci's gain of function research extensively and the evidence against him is very damning.
A couple of months ago Fox News Host Steve Hilton blew the lid off of Fauci's macabre
obsession (and funding) of research involving the manipulation of highly contagious viruses.
Hilton laid the groundwork, but it was Senator Rand Paul who called out Fauci and his ghoulish
research face to face during a Senate hearing.
But even more notable, is that the CDC just updated their guidelines on mask-wearing and
essentially ended the pandemic -- a pandemic that Fauci has been the proud face of for over a
year now -- and when that announcement hit, he was nowhere to be found. And his absence didn't
go unnoticed.
Yes indeed, you'd think that Fauci would have been front and center to discuss the CDC's new
guidelines the moment the news hit. The "Golden Boy" taking yet another victory lap. After all,
Fauci never misses a moment in the spotlight. But he was not hitting the airwaves with the
typical fanfare.
It is still very possible that Fauci can make a resurgence. His fan-base is up there with
Meghan Markle and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though even more devoted than the divas'. Unlike
other useful idiots, the White House will not be able to detach easily from Fauci, nor do they
want to. At this point, they're telling him to lay low and avoid any interviews in which they
do not have complete control over the "journalist" involved. John Dickerson has been a Democrat
Party pawn for decades.
Behind the scenes, they're already planning on ditching him. It will be done with all the
pomp one would expect for one of their heroes and will be used to mark the end of the
"emergency" in the United States. He'll still be promoting vaccines and will try to stay in his
precious limelight, but Democrats are ready to move on and open up the country. It has just
been too politically suicidal to persist with their lockdown mentality.
The key to seeing Fauci's narcissistic reign end is for patriots to continue to hammer him
on his involvement with developing Covid-19. His beloved "gain of function research" needs to
be explained to any who will listen. Then, maybe, Fauci will go away.
"... He defines "wokeism" as a creed that has arisen in America in response to the "moral vacuum" created by the ebbing from public life of faith, patriotism and "the identity we derived from hard work." He argues that notions like "diversity," "equity," "inclusion" and "sustainability" have come to take their place. ..."
"... "Our collective moral insecurities," Mr. Ramaswamy says, "have left us vulnerable" to the blandishments and propaganda of the new political and corporate elites, who are now locked in a cynical "arranged marriage, where each partner has contempt for the other." Each side is getting out of the "trade" something it "could not have gotten alone." ..."
"... Wokeness entered its union with capitalism in the years following the 2008 financial panic and recession. Mr. Ramaswamy believes that conditions were perfect for the match. "We were -- and are -- in the midst of the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer in history," he says. Barack Obama had just been elected the first black president. By the end of the crisis, Americans "were actually pretty jaded with respect to capitalism. Corporations were the bad guys. The old left wanted to take money from corporations and give it to poor people." ..."
"... The birth of wokeism was a godsend to corporations, Mr. Ramaswamy says. It helped defang the left. "Wokeism lent a lifeline to the people who were in charge of the big banks. They thought, 'This stuff is easy!' " They applauded diversity and inclusion, appointed token female and minority directors, and "mused about the racially disparate impact of climate change." So, in Mr. Ramaswamy's narrative, "a bunch of big banks got together with a bunch of millennials, birthed woke capitalism, and then put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption." Now, in Mr. Ramaswamy's tart verdict, "big business makes money by critiquing itself." ..."
"... Davos is "the Woke Vatican," Mr. Ramaswamy says; Al Gore and Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock , are "its archbishops." CEOs "further down the chain" -- he mentions James Quincey of Coca-Cola , Ed Bastian of Delta , Marc Benioff of Salesforce , John Donahoe of Nike and Alan Jope of Unilever -- are its "cardinals." ..."
"... He describes this sort of corporate imposition -- "a market force supplanting open political debate to settle the essence of political questions" -- as one of the "defining challenges" America faces today. "If democracy means anything," he adds, "it means living in a one-person-one-vote system, not a one-dollar-one-vote system." Voters' voices "are unadjusted by the number of dollars we wield in the marketplace." Open debate in the public square is "our uniquely American mechanism" of settling political questions. He likens the woke-corporate silencing of debate as akin to the "old-world European model, where a small group of elites gets in a room and decides what's good for everyone else." ..."
"... The wokeism-capitalism embrace, Mr. Ramaswamy says, was replicated in Silicon Valley. Over the past few years, "Big Tech effectively agreed to censor -- or 'moderate' -- content that the woke movement didn't like. But they didn't do it for free." In return, the left "agreed to look the other way when it comes to leaving Silicon Valley's monopoly power intact." This arrangement is "working out masterfully" for both sides. ..."
"... Coca-Cola follows the same playbook, he says: "It's easier for them to issue statements about voting laws in Georgia, or to train their employees on how to 'be less white,' than it is to publicly reckon with its role in fueling a nationwide epidemic of diabetes and obesity -- including in the black communities they profess to care about so much." (In a statement, Coca-Cola apologized for the "be less white" admonition and said that while it was "accessible through our company training platform," it "was not a part of our training curriculum.") ..."
"... Nike finds it much easier to write checks to Black Lives Matter and condemn America's history of slavery, Mr. Ramaswamy says, even as it relies on "slave labor" today to sell "$250 sneakers to black kids in the inner city who can't afford to buy books for school." All the while, Black Lives Matter "neuters the police in a way that sacrifices even more black lives." (Nike has said in a statement that its code of conduct prohibits any use of forced labor and "we have been engaging with multi-stakeholder working groups to assess collective solutions that will help preserve the integrity of our global supply chains.") ..."
"... Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at New York University Law School's Classical Liberal Institute. ..."
"... Seems to me in a nutshell he is saying that these woke corporations are all hypocrites. No surprise there hypocrisy is a defining characteristic of the woke left and you need to assume that characteristic yourself to be able to work within their bounds. ..."
"... Wokeists argue that theirs is not a religion because it doesn't center on a transcendent being. I see Wokeism as a religion that gathers multiple Secularist sects into a big tent. These sects include Environmentalism, Genderism, Anti-Racism, and more. ..."
"... One thing all religions share in common is the elevation of questionable premises to unassailable truths which they defend with religious zeal. Some questionable premises elevated to unassailable truths by Wokeism are that humans are making the Earth uninhabitable, gender is an individual choice, and race is the most important human characteristic. There are more. ..."
A self-made multimillionaire who founded a biotech company at 28, Vivek Ramaswamy is every
inch the precocious overachiever. He tells me he attended law school while he was in sixth
grade. He's joking, in his own earnest manner. His father, an aircraft engineer at General
Electric, had decided to get a law degree at night school. Vivek sat in on the classes with
him, so he could keep his dad company on the long car rides to campus and back -- a very Indian
filial act.
"I was probably the only person my age who'd heard of Antonin Scalia, " Mr. Ramaswamy, 35,
says in a Zoom call from his home in West Chester, Ohio. His father, a political liberal, would
often rage on the way home from class about "some Scalia opinion." Mr. Ramaswamy reckons that
this was when he began to form his own political ideas. A libertarian in high school, he
switched to being conservative at Harvard in "an act of rebellion" against the politics he
found there. That conservatism drove him to step down in January as CEO at Roivant Sciences --
the drug-development company that made him rich -- and write "Woke, Inc," a book that takes a
scathing look at "corporate America's social-justice scam." (It will be published in
August.)
Mr. Ramaswamy recently watched the movie "Spotlight," which tells the story of how reporters
at the Boston Globe exposed misconduct (specifically, sexual abuse) by Catholic priests in the
early 2000s. "My goal in 'Woke, Inc.' is to do the same thing with respect to the Church of
Wokeism." He defines "wokeism" as a creed that has arisen in America in response to the "moral
vacuum" created by the ebbing from public life of faith, patriotism and "the identity we
derived from hard work." He argues that notions like "diversity," "equity," "inclusion" and
"sustainability" have come to take their place.
"Our collective moral insecurities," Mr. Ramaswamy says, "have left us vulnerable" to the
blandishments and propaganda of the new political and corporate elites, who are now locked in a
cynical "arranged marriage, where each partner has contempt for the other." Each side is
getting out of the "trade" something it "could not have gotten alone."
Wokeness entered its union with capitalism in the years following the 2008 financial panic
and recession. Mr. Ramaswamy believes that conditions were perfect for the match. "We were --
and are -- in the midst of the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer in history," he says.
Barack Obama had just been elected the first black president. By the end of the crisis,
Americans "were actually pretty jaded with respect to capitalism. Corporations were the bad
guys. The old left wanted to take money from corporations and give it to poor people."
The birth of wokeism was a godsend to corporations, Mr. Ramaswamy says. It helped defang the
left. "Wokeism lent a lifeline to the people who were in charge of the big banks. They thought,
'This stuff is easy!' " They applauded diversity and inclusion, appointed token female and
minority directors, and "mused about the racially disparate impact of climate change." So, in
Mr. Ramaswamy's narrative, "a bunch of big banks got together with a bunch of millennials,
birthed woke capitalism, and then put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption." Now, in Mr.
Ramaswamy's tart verdict, "big business makes money by critiquing itself."
Mr. Ramaswamy regards Klaus Schwab, founder and CEO of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, as the "patron saint of wokeism" for his relentless propagation of "stakeholder
capitalism" -- the view that the unspoken bargain in the grant to corporations of limited
liability is that they "must do social good on the side."
Davos is "the Woke Vatican," Mr. Ramaswamy says; Al Gore and Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock , are "its
archbishops." CEOs "further down the chain" -- he mentions James Quincey of Coca-Cola , Ed Bastian of Delta , Marc Benioff of
Salesforce , John
Donahoe of Nike and
Alan Jope of Unilever
-- are its "cardinals."
Mr. Ramaswamy says that "unlike the investigative 'Spotlight' team at the Boston Globe, I'm
a whistleblower, not a journalist. But the church analogy holds strong." He paraphrases a line
in the movie: "It takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a village to abuse one. In
the case of my book, the child I'm concerned about is American democracy."
In league with the woke left, corporate America "uses force" as a substitute for open
deliberation and debate, Mr. Ramaswamy says. "There's the sustainability accounting standards
board of BlackRock, which effectively demands that in order to win an investment from
BlackRock, the largest asset-manager in the world, you must abide by the standards of that
board."
Was the board put in place by the owners of the trillions of dollars of capital that Mr.
Fink manages? Of course not, Mr. Ramaswamy says. "And yet he's actually using his seat of
corporate power to sidestep debate about questions like environmentalism or diversity on
boards."
The irrepressible Mr. Ramaswamy presses on with another example. Goldman Sachs , he says with obvious relish,
"is a very Davos-fitting example." At the 2020 World Economic Forum, Goldman Sachs CEO David
Solomon "issued an edict from the mountaintops of Davos." Mr. Solomon announced his company
would refuse to take a company public if its board wasn't sufficiently diverse. "So Goldman
gets to define what counts as 'diverse,' " Mr. Ramaswamy says. "No doubt, they're referring to
skin-deep, genetically inherited attributes."
He describes this sort of corporate imposition -- "a market force supplanting open political
debate to settle the essence of political questions" -- as one of the "defining challenges"
America faces today. "If democracy means anything," he adds, "it means living in a
one-person-one-vote system, not a one-dollar-one-vote system." Voters' voices "are unadjusted
by the number of dollars we wield in the marketplace." Open debate in the public square is "our
uniquely American mechanism" of settling political questions. He likens the woke-corporate
silencing of debate as akin to the "old-world European model, where a small group of elites
gets in a room and decides what's good for everyone else."
The wokeism-capitalism embrace, Mr. Ramaswamy says, was replicated in Silicon Valley. Over
the past few years, "Big Tech effectively agreed to censor -- or 'moderate' -- content that the
woke movement didn't like. But they didn't do it for free." In return, the left "agreed to look
the other way when it comes to leaving Silicon Valley's monopoly power intact." This
arrangement is "working out masterfully" for both sides.
The rest of corporate America appears to be following suit. "There's a Big Pharma version,
too," Mr. Ramaswamy says. "Big Pharma had an epiphany in dealing with the left." It couldn't
beat them, so it joined them. "Rather than win the debate on drug pricing, they decided to just
change the subject instead. Who needs to win a debate if you can just avoid having it?" So we
see "big-time pharma CEOs musing about topics like racial justice and environmentalism, and
writing multibillion-dollar checks to fight climate change, while taking price hikes that
they'd previously paused when the public was angry about drug pricing."
Coca-Cola follows the same playbook, he says: "It's easier for them to issue statements
about voting laws in Georgia, or to train their employees on how to 'be less white,' than it is
to publicly reckon with its role in fueling a nationwide epidemic of diabetes and obesity --
including in the black communities they profess to care about so much." (In a statement,
Coca-Cola apologized
for the "be less white" admonition and said that while it was "accessible through our company
training platform," it "was not a part of our training curriculum.")
Nike finds it much easier to write checks to Black Lives Matter and condemn America's
history of slavery, Mr. Ramaswamy says, even as it relies on "slave labor" today to sell "$250
sneakers to black kids in the inner city who can't afford to buy books for school." All the
while, Black Lives Matter "neuters the police in a way that sacrifices even more black lives."
(Nike has said in a statement that its code of conduct prohibits any use of forced labor and
"we have been engaging with multi-stakeholder working groups to assess collective solutions
that will help preserve the integrity of our global supply chains.")
... ... ...
Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
and at New York University Law School's Classical Liberal Institute.
Rod Drake 53 minutes ago
Seems to me in a nutshell he is saying that these woke corporations are all hypocrites. No
surprise there hypocrisy is a defining characteristic of the woke left and you need to assume
that characteristic yourself to be able to work within their bounds.
In addition, I have been
saying for some time discrimination based on political belief desperately needs to be
included as a prohibited basis. Where are the Republicans, while the greatest civil rights
violation of our time is going on right under their noses?
Terry Overbey 1 hour ago
I love reading stories about people who are willing to take on the woke political class. For
most people, even if they strongly disagree, their only option is to bite their tongue and go
along. People aren't stupid. If you buck the system, you don't get promoted, you don't get
good grades, you don't get into elite schools, you don't get the government job.
Thank you Mr Ramaswany.
James Ransom 1 hour ago
Well. If nothing else, he just sold me a book. I think we should say that "Wokeism" tries to
"Act Like" a religion, not that it is one. Because of this fakery, we do not need to give it
"freedom" in the sense that we have "Freedom of Religion."
These misguided Americans perhaps need to be exposed to a real religion. Christianity and
Buddhism would be good choices; I don't know about Hinduism, but my point is that "Wokeism"
is more like a mental disorder. We should feel sorry for its victims, offer them treatment,
but not let them run anything.
marc goodman 1 hour ago
Wokeists argue that theirs is not a religion because it doesn't center on a transcendent
being. I see Wokeism as a religion that gathers multiple Secularist sects into a big tent.
These sects include Environmentalism, Genderism, Anti-Racism, and more.
One thing all religions share in common is the elevation of questionable premises to
unassailable truths which they defend with religious zeal. Some questionable premises
elevated to unassailable truths by Wokeism are that humans are making the Earth
uninhabitable, gender is an individual choice, and race is the most important human
characteristic. There are more.
Humans need to believe in something greater than themselves. We fulfill this need with
religion, and historically, the "greater something" has been a transcendent being. Wokeism
fulfills this need for its adherents but without a transcendent being. Ultimately, Wokeism
will fail as a religion because it can't nourish the soul like the belief in a transcendent
being does.
Grodney Ross 2 hours ago (Edited)
Judgement will be passed in November of 2022. I don't see this as a Democrat vs Republican
issue. I think it's a matter of who is paying attention vs. those who are not. We live in a
society where, generally, the most strident voices are on the left, along with the most
judgmental voices. When the "wokeless" engage in a manner that conflicts with views of the
woke, they are attacked, be you from the left or the right, so you keep your mouth shut and go
about your day.
I believe that this coming election will give voice to those who are fatigued and fed up
with the progressive lefts venom and vitriol. If not, we will survive, but without a meaningful
first amendment,14th amendment, or 2nd amendment.
Barbara Helton 2 hours ago (Edited)
Being woke, when practiced by the wealthy and influential, can be extremely similar to
bullying.
Sounds like a great book for Tucker to recommend to that Army Chief of Staff!
Notable quotes:
"... I call it ROLE -- The Racism Of Low Expectations. This phenomenon has done ten times more to damage Black lives than can be attributed to CRT or institutionalized racism. ..."
"... A subset of ROLE is MVT. This is Manufactured Victimhood Theory. This comes about from influential Black "leaders" who, instead of teaching Blacks the truth about how to live good lives (work hard, develop skills, etc.), they told them to apply as their life strategy "say you are a victim." ..."
Recently the Joint Chiefs of Staff remarked that the US military should teach CTR to our
military essentially because they shoild teach all theories.
That doesn't make sense to me but I would like to put another theory into the public
sphere. I call it ROLE -- The Racism Of Low Expectations. This phenomenon has done ten times
more to damage Black lives than can be attributed to CRT or institutionalized racism.
A subset of ROLE is MVT. This is Manufactured Victimhood Theory. This comes about from
influential Black "leaders" who, instead of teaching Blacks the truth about how to live good
lives (work hard, develop skills, etc.), they told them to apply as their life strategy "say
you are a victim."
I am hoping that ROLE and MVT will become part of all aspects of American life -- all
levels of education, the military, businesses, the media, etc.
If the goal really is to improve Black lives, ROLE and MVT should be the rage over the
next few years.
Tom F
John Callahan 4 hours ago
Corporate America 'makes money critiquing itself.' The rest of us pay the price in
diminished freedom.
Wokeism is fascism dressed up in new clothes- the censorship, demonization of
groups and individuals and the physical violence against people and property remain the same.
Corporate America has one overriding interest- making money. Paying the left (and yes,
fascism is of the left) through critiquing itself and token monetary donations is a get out
of jail free card for Corporate America.
"Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily
subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it."
- Thomas Sowell
Dom Fried 4 hours ago
It will end the same. Almost, because there will be nobody to stop it.
Ed Baron 3 hours ago
Very well said, John. Fascism is a fundamental element or subset of Leftist or Marxist
thought. It demands conformity of the individual to the new "woke" state and it punishes any
who dissent. It's not incidental that American Leftists, including FDR, loved Mussolini prior
to WWII. That bromance has been washed clean, and attributed instead to the Right. Such a
typical transference technique used by Marxist.
Alex Guiness
I interpret your supposition 'White male global warming', as meaning White Males are
particularly flatulent hence are producing Green House Gases with their diets of greasy meats
(some on sticks), carnival funnel cakes, corn dogs, Philly cheese-steaks, Popeyes fried
chicken, all washed down with Bud Light. Would it kill them to have a salad now and then? How
can their spouses stand to be around them unless they are also consuming the same foods.
Imagine what it must be like at a sermon in a Lutheran Church, the whitest church of all.
They leave the doors open else a spark could set the whole place ablaze.
carol Perry
Thanks for today's chuckle Alex.
Alex Guiness
read my smurfs comment. i just posted it
Lynn Silton
Mr. Ramaswamy is right in every way! I don't belong to the Woke Church. I'll never join.
America is an inspirational country as is all it's written declarations. We, the people rule.
No religion can overrule it. We will not allow religious 'honor killings.' They are murder
here. We will not allow Wokism here it is the murder of our hopes and dreams which belong to
everybody regardless of appearance. I don't even know how appearance (of all things) became a
religion. The whole thing is so sick, people of all shades are speaking out and we will put
this crazy idea down. Here, we marry across all appearances. New people are often different
in appearance than parents. Woke will die of that alone. That's why we have an immigration
'problem' . People love our constitution and Declaration of Independence. People love that
they rule here, not the government. That's our creed and promise. Help protect it!!
Johnson &
Johnson has agreed to pay $230 million to the state of New York to resolve an opioid
lawsuit slated to go to trial Tuesday, as negotiations intensify with the company and three
drug distributors to clinch a
$26 billion settlement of thousands of other lawsuits blaming the pharmaceutical industry
for the opioid crisis.
Johnson & Johnson's New York deal removes it from a coming trial on Long Island but not
from the rest of the cases it faces nationwide, including a continuing trial in California. The
New York settlement includes an additional $33 million in attorney fees and costs and calls for
the drugmaker to no longer sell opioids nationwide, something Johnson & Johnson said it
already stopped doing.
States have been trying to re-create with the opioid litigation what they accomplished with
tobacco companies in the 1990s, when $206 billion in settlements flowed into state coffers.
More than 3,000 counties, cities and other local governments have also pursued lawsuits over
the opioid crisis,
complicating talks that have dragged on since late 2019 and that have been slowed down by
the Covid-19 pandemic.
VAERS data: "5,888 deaths", "19,597 hospitalizations", "43,891 urgent care", "58,800
office visits", "1,459 anaphylaxis", "1,737 Bell's palsy", "2,190 heart attacks" and "652
miscarriages". CDC says data is "unreliable". You choose who to believe.
WarrenLiz 16 hours ago
Over 15,472 dead from Jab in 27 EU countries, about half of Europe's 50 countries.
The EudraVigilance database reports that through June 19, 2021 there are 15,472 deaths
and 1,509,266 injuries reported following injections of four experimental COVID-19
shots:
The answer to Carlson's question is because.. it's a money grabbing death cult!.
Natural immun system is destroyed... just wait till next flu season or the next virus
they relase and see what death numbers we see!
racing_flowers 17 hours ago
Isn't it curious that the 3 big pharma Corps (think Vacc pushers) and the big 2 MSM
Corps are BOTH controlled by Blackrock Partners Hedge Fund...
Nona Yobiznes 18 hours ago remove link
Them going after the children makes me deeply suspicious. Nobody under 50, unless
they're made of blubber, dies from this. In 2020, there was practically zero excess death
for people younger than 70 years old in Sweden. These are their official statistics. For
the vast majority of people it's basically a flu you get for a couple days and you're over
it. What the **** is all this about? If the vaccine is only really good for preventing
hospitalizations, and doesn't stop you from spreading or from catching variants, what in
the hell are we giving kids vaccines when they are more likely to die from the regular flu?
It's freaky, and it stinks.
In the later years of an abusive relationship I was in, my abuser had become so confident in
how mentally caged he had me that he'd start overtly telling me what he is and what he was
doing. He flat-out told me he was a sociopath and a manipulator, trusting that I was so
submitted to his will by that point that I'd gaslight myself into reframing those statements in
a sympathetic light. Toward the end one time he told me "I am going to rape you," and then he
did, and then he talked about it to some friends trusting that I'd run perception management on
it for him.
The better he got at psychologically twisting me up in knots and the more submitted I
became, the more open he'd be about it. He seemed to enjoy doing this, taking a kind of
exhibitionistic delight in showing off his accomplishments at crushing me as a person, both to
others and to me. Like it was his art, and he wanted it to have an audience to appreciate
it.
I was reminded of this while watching a recent Fox News appearance by Glenn Greenwald where he
made an observation we've discussed here
previously about the way the CIA used to have to infiltrate the media, but now just openly
has US intelligence veterans in mainstream media punditry positions managing public
perception.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/jU58mrEpPvU
"If you go and Google, and I hope your viewers do, Operation Mockingbird, what you will
find is that during the Cold War these agencies used to plot how to clandestinely manipulate
the news media to disseminate propaganda to the American population," Greenwald
said .
"They used to try to do it secretly. They don't even do it secretly anymore. They don't
need Operation Mockingbird. They literally put John Brennan who works for NBC and James
Clapper who works for CNN and tons of FBI agents right on the payroll of these news
organizations. They now shape the news openly to manipulate and to deceive the American
population."
In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled " The CIA and the Media " reporting
that the CIA had
covertly infiltrated America's most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who
it considered assets in a program known as
Operation Mockingbird . It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media are meant to
report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the
agendas of spooks and warmongers.
Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and the public is too
brainwashed and gaslit to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like
The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news
pundits . The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor ,
and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence
agencies per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets
now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper,
Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha
Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash,
Susan Hennessey, Ned Price and Rick Francona, as are known
CIA assets like NBC's Ken Dilanian, as are
CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like
Tucker Carlson.
They're just rubbing it in our faces now. Like they're showing off.
And that's just the media. We also see this flaunting behavior exhibited in the US
government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a propaganda operation geared at
sabotaging foreign governments not aligned with the US which according to its own founding
officials was set up to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly. The late author and
commentator William Blum
makes this clear :
[I]n 1983, the National Endowment for Democracy was set up to "support democratic
institutions throughout the world through private, nongovernmental efforts". Notice the
"nongovernmental"" part of the image, part of the myth. In actuality, virtually every penny
of its funding comes from the federal government, as is clearly indicated in the financial
statement in each issue of its annual report. NED likes to refer to itself as an NGO
(Non-governmental organization) because this helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad
that an official US government agency might not have. But NGO is the wrong category. NED is a
GO.
"We should not have to do this kind of work covertly," said Carl Gershman in 1986, while
he was president of the Endowment. "It would be terrible for democratic groups around the
world to be seen as subsidized by the C.I.A. We saw that in the 60's, and that's why it has
been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that's why the endowment
was created."
And Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, declared in 1991:
"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."
In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED.
We see NED's fingerprints all over pretty much any situation where the western power
alliance needs to manage public perception about a CIA-targeted government, from Russia to
Hong
Kong to Xinjiang to the
imperial propaganda operation known as Bellingcat.
Hell, intelligence insiders are just openly running for office now. In an article titled "
The CIA
Democrats in the 2020 elections ", World Socialist Website documented the many veterans of
the US intelligence cartel who ran in elections across America in 2018 and 2020:
"In the course of the 2018 elections, a large group of former military-intelligence
operatives entered capitalist politics as candidates seeking the Democratic Party nomination
in 50 congressional seats" nearly half the seats where the Democrats were targeting
Republican incumbents or open seats created by Republican retirements. Some 30 of these
candidates won primary contests and became the Democratic candidates in the November 2018
election, and 11 of them won the general election, more than one quarter of the 40 previously
Republican-held seats captured by the Democrats as they took control of the House of
Representatives. In 2020, the intervention of the CIA Democrats continues on what is arguably
an equally significant scale."
So they're just getting more and more brazen the more confident they feel about how
propaganda-addled and submissive the population has become. They're laying more and more of
their cards on the table. Soon the CIA will just be openly selling narcotics door to door like
Girl Scout cookies.
Or maybe not. I said my ex got more and more overt about his abuses in the later years of
our relationship because those were the later years. I did eventually expand my own
consciousness of my own inner workings enough to clear the fears and unexamined beliefs I had
that he was using as hooks to manipulate me. Maybe, as humanity's consciousness continues to
expand , the same will happen for the people and their abusive relationship with the
CIA.
* * *
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The US is not capitalist. There are no "capitalist powers." There are only managerial
states. Read Orwell who, yes, was a socialist.
The US was overtaken by ex-Trotskyites in the form of Neocons, eg. Irving Kristol. They
redefined the US from a nation-state into an ideological state, as the Soviet Union had been.
But we do not have any particular ideology here; the ideology is always changing.
The US empire does not serve the interests of the American people, you'll agree. But it's
not as simple as "capitalism." These ideological battles are theatre. They are not the real
battles. They are pretend religions, like sports teams, which motivate and justify war for
two different elites.
Read James Burnham, another ex-Trotskyite, on Machiavellians and, separately, on the
managerial state. However, Burnham became something akin to a Neocon; so, certainly, don't
come to the same conclusions as he did.
The US is not capitalist. There are no "capitalist powers." There are only managerial
states. Read Orwell who, yes, was a socialist.
Posted by: Weaver | Jun 22 2021 19:35 utc | 15
This is a rather strange interpretation. The power of the managers stems fro the power of
large active shareholders, while the majority of shares may be passively owned by middle
class in the form of retirement savings. As it was explained: "Contrary to popular beliefs,
there are no bulls and bears on Wall Street, but sheep and wolves. And the money is not made
by the bah bah crowd", followed by the distinction between "smart money" and the rest of
investors. The financial games that we discussed in the case of Boeing may seem stupid in
terms of "maximizing long term stock value", but excellent for providing gains for active
investors who got artificial run-up in stock prices followed by selling to the "bah bah
crowd".
Traders are addicted to trading, much like murderers fixate on murdering. The traders
noticed a slight change in the Fed's tone and sold anything tied to inflation. They whacked
gold good. Then they went after the other commodities. When they were done there, they went
after value stocks, before finishing the week by blasting a bunch of cyclical names.
25 play_arrow
ted41776 5 hours ago
the only kind of ism that has exist is sociopathism
they always end up at the top of any power pyramid and make the rules that apply to all
others but not them
same as it always was and same as it always will be
NoDebt 4 hours ago
Traders are addicted to trading, much like murderers fixate on murdering
A line I wish I had come up with.
lambda PREMIUM 4 hours ago
This was already modeled and formalized: The Gambler Fallacy.
It seems that the wokesters who claim that they are "anti-racists" still can't tolerate the
memory of a man who defeated history's most murderous racist. The Thursday defacing of a statue
in Canada is the latest effort to cancel Hitler's implacable foe.
A Downtown statue of Sir Winston Churchill has been vandalized after someone dumped red paint
all across the replica of the former British prime minister...
Churchill, who served as prime minister from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955, is
seen as a national hero for his leadership during the Second World War but held many views
that would be deemed racist.
Perhaps the 20th century's greatest adversary of communist and fascist dictatorships,
Churchill has of course been found wanting by today's dictators of political fashion. This
week's vandalism follows several such instances over the last year involving a U.K. statue of
Churchill in London's Parliament Square. In Canada, Mr. Labine reports:
Elisebeth Checkel, the president of the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Edmonton, said this
is the first instance of the statue being vandalized that she's heard of and was disappointed
to see it happen.
She said Churchill has a complicated legacy and believes it is important to look at him in a
balanced way.
"If we look at any historical figure, we will find the same thing," Checkel said. "If we look
at almost any person from the 1880s, we would find their views were if not repugnant to us
nowadays, we would find they were disagreeable for sure. If you look at Churchill's later
actions and life as he grew, as we all hope to do, his views did change. The balance should
be celebrated because without Churchill we would not even have the right to protest in this
country."
Licia Corbella
writes in the Calgary Herald that this week's vandalism of the statue is "another act of
woke totalitarianism." She adds:
Mark Milke, president of the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Calgary, says it's chilling to
contemplate what the world would be like now had Churchill not been there.
"Imagine if Churchill hadn't been there and the United Kingdom either did a peace treaty with
Hitler or fell during an invasion," said Milke...
"Nazi Germany would have controlled much of Europe... with the Soviet Union controlling the
other half and Imperial Japan raping Asia. Canada and the U.S. would have been pretty much
alone in the world..."
"Churchill is not a Civil War general from the South fighting to protect slavery. He's not
Joseph Stalin or Chairman Mao or Adolf Hitler," continued Milke.
No he's not. In fact Churchill was a stalwart opponent of the ideologies promoted by all
three of the 20th century's most infamous mass murderers. "For the historically illiterate who
like to throw paint on statues," Ms. Corbella notes the bloody legacy of Churchill's enemies
and adds:
What never seems to get mentioned is these statues are works of art. This destruction is not
unlike the Taliban destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. These woke folk are
Talibanesque.
As for Churchill, Ms. Corbella asks: "If we allow his legacy to be torn down, whose, pray
tell, can stand?"
Fortunately Ms. Corbella is not standing alone. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney tweets :
People should continue to debate Churchill's complex legacy & record, but vandalizing
public property like this is shameful.
No member of the greatest generation can meet the standards of contemporary wokeness. But we
should still honour those who secured our peace and freedom.
Canadian Parliament member Pierre Poilievre adds :
Don't schools teach history anymore?
Now the woke warriors attack the statue of Winston Churchill--the greatest anti-fascist of
all time. He beat Hitler and Mussolini for crying out loud.
Do these vandals wish he had lost?
Coincidentally it was on this day 81 years ago when Churchill addressed the British House of
Commons after the German army had overrun France. Said
Churchill:
I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival
of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of
our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be
turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If
we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward
into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United
States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new
Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British
Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their
finest hour."
If wokesterism could last for a thousand years, would it ever result in a great
civilization?
In IT corporate honchos shamelessly put more then a dozen of very specific skills into the
position rescription and want a cog that hit that exactly. they are not interested in IQ, ability
to learn and such things. that want already train person for the position to fill, so that have
zero need to train this persn and they expect that he will work productively from the day
one.
But corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling -- not because of a
real labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs.
Duh. This is so blindingly obvious, but NC is the only place that seems to mention this
fact.
Here in the UK, the outmigration of marginally paid workers from Eastern Europe and the
resultant "labour shortage" triggered by Brexit has made it abundantly clear that Blair's
change to open borders was not from any idealistic considerations but as a way of importing
easily exploited labor.
Business leaders quoted in the the tsunami of hand-wringing MSM articles about the current
catastrophe are offering such helpful solutions as allowing housekeepers to use pools and
gyms in off hours, free meals to waiters, etc. Anything but a living wage.
" I don't actually see any untruths to the GOP talking points. "
"" Workers are less likely to accept a job while receiving Gov't benefits" and "workers are
less likely to accept low wage crappy jobs ".
Well,if u can survive on a $300/week program that ends after several weeks pass,bless u.
No one else in America can. That's a $7.50 hr full time "summer job" with no pension or
medical benefits that teenagers with no dependents,few bills n maintenance issues might be
interested in; adults with adult responsibilities,no way. That so called RepubliCons, the
"economics experts", can make such a fraudulent claim n anyone out of elementary school
believes it has a quantum particle of reality or value is . well I'll just say a sad n
unbelievable situation.
They get 300 dollars plus regular UI. They can also get Medicaid and CHIP, or if they are
still making too much they are eligible for Obamacare exchange. Plus they're eligible for
SNAP and housing vouchers
There is one significant fallacy in this article: The author conflates Republican
opposition to enhanced benefits with opposition to unemployment benefits overall.
I very much stand with labour over business on most (probably all) points, but the
Republican argument is to end the enhanced benefits in most cases – Not to abolish
unemployment assistance. They believe the role of government is to step in to help pay basic
bills in the event of unemployment, but oppose the current higher level of benefit due to the
market distortions it causes (Hence the appearance of the term 'labour shortage'.)
I agree that it basically forces mcdonalds et al to up their wages if they want to do
business, which should be a positive for society, but I find it unlikely that the author
could have unintentionally mistunderstood the argument on such a fundamental level, and all
it does is try to drive a wedge further between each side of the argument.
Anyone that believes that workers supported their jobs being sent overseas is either
demented or delusional or suffers from a mental hernia. The same goes for the common working
stiffs supporting massive immigration to help drive down their ability to demand a livable
wage.
American labor has been sold down the river by the International Labor Leaders,
politicians and the oligarchy of US corporate CEO's.
======
Got a new hip recently. Do your P.T., take it easy, follow the warnings of what not to do
until you heal and you should discover that decades feel like they are lifted off your
shoulders.
Sierra,
You've made a very interesting point that actually never occurred to me and one in which I
never seen fully examined.
Exploiting labour and outsourcing it are two sides of the same coin with the same goal in
mind, diverting revenue streams into the C-suite and rentier class.
Obviously you cannot outsource most of the workers in the hospitality industry or the
non-virtual aspects of world's oldest profession, but a lot of the tech industry and the
virtual aspects of the latter are very amenable to being shipped overseas.
Immigrants are extremely visible and an easy target, while outsourcing is essentially an
impossible to contain concept that creates real world hardship.
Dear NC readers, do you know of any studies comparing and contrasting the economic impact of
immigration and/or limiting it and outsourcing?
Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the
perspective of private employers and their lobbyists.
You are acting if economists and lobbyists are separate groups, as opposed to largely a
subset thereof. Funny how a field entirely based on the study of incentives claims incentives
don't distort their policy prescriptions, isn't it?
As for low-paid jobs, they are traditionally the last resort of immigrants and other
marginalized populations, but the anti-immigration push that began under Obama, and
enthusiastically continued by Trump and Biden, has perfectly predictable consequences.
One factor not mentioned is many free-riding businesses refuse to pay for training, then
wonder why there are no trained workers to hire.
Now, there are definitely fields where there is a genuine and deliberate labor shortage.
Usually white-collar credentialed professions like medical doctors and the AMA cartel.
Economics is not based on incentives. That's behavioral economics. I hate to quote Larry
Summers, but this is Summers on financial economics:
Ketchup economists reject out of hand much of this research on the ketchup market. They
believe that the data used is based on almost meaningless accounting information and are
quick to point out that concepts such as costs of production vary across firms and are not
accurately measurable in any event. they believe that ketchup transactions prices are the
only hard data worth studying. Nonetheless ketchup economists have an impressive research
program, focusing on the scope for excess opportunities in the ketchup market. They have
shown that two quart bottles of ketchup invariably sell for twice as much as one quart
bottles of ketchup except for deviations traceable to transaction costs, and that one
cannot get a bargain on ketchup by buying and combining ingredients once one takes account
of transaction costs. Nor are there gains to be had from storing ketchup, or mixing
together different quality ketchups and selling the resulting product. Indeed, most ketchup
economists regard the efficiency of the ketchup market as the best established fact in
empirical economics.
Happy to see you back at a keyboard, and hoping your recovery is progressing well. I had
the misfortune of spending two days in the hospitals while they got my blood chemistry
strightened out. Here's the kicker; the hospitalist, who I saw 3 times, submitted a bill for
a whopping $17,000. Just yesterday, the practice she works for submitted a bill that was
one-tenth her charges for the work she did, yet her bill is still sitting waiting to be
processed.
OMG, how horrible. HSS is a small hospital for a big city like NYC, only 205 beds and 25
operating rooms. No emergency room. They are not owned by PE and so I don't think play
outsourcing/markup games (they are very big on controlling quality, which you can't do if you
have to go through middlemen for staffing). Some of the MDs do that their own practices
within HSS but they are solo practitioners or small teams, which is not a model that you see
much of anywhere outside NYC
The last time I was hospitalized, all the hospitalists were in the employ of the hospital,
now they are in the employ of a nationwide hospitalist practice, which has all the smell of
private equity around it. I'm really beginning to think that a third party focusted on
healthcare might have a real shot at upsetting the political order – maybe it's time to
drag out your skunk party for 2024.
As for low-paid jobs, they are traditionally the last resort of immigrants and other
marginalized populations, but the anti-immigration push that began under Obama, and
enthusiastically continued by Trump and Biden, has perfectly predictable
consequences.
Well I'm sorry you can't find easily exploitable labor, except I'm not immigrants face the
same ridiculous costs, and weren't hispanic workers more heavily impacted by covid due
to those marginal jobs (I'll switch your dynamic to low wage workers , and
marginal jobs, thanks), so by your logic more should have been let in to die from
these marginal jobs? but yeah we need more PMC except we don't Now, there are definitely fields where there is a genuine and deliberate labor shortage.
Usually white-collar credentialed professions like medical doctors and the AMA
cartel."
Last I checked it was private equity, wall st and pharmaceutical companies and their
lobbyists that drive up costs so labor needs to charge more.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
How much of this is over specification on the part of employers in the ad for the job? We
want the perfect candidate who can do the job better than we can with no training .
OMG this is such a long-standing pet peeve! We've commented on this nonsense regularly.
Companies took the position that they don't have to train and now they are eating their
cooking.
The mismatch between job openings and job applicants is not just about wages.
In fact, if companies were willing to take a chance on people who didn't exactly match the
job requirements, the likely effect would be to raise the wages some of those that did not
qualify under the over exacting job requirements. [And likely paying these new employees less
than they had contemplated paying the perfect candidate.]
But that seems like someone making the hiring decision might, just possibly, be seen as
taking a risk.
At my empolyer we know we can't find any colleges that teach mainframe skills, so we bring
in graduates who are willing to learn those skills – we submit them to a 3-month
bootcamp and then there's a long period of mentorship under a senior person to their group
that has an opening. Since everybody and their dog are now moving headfirst into DevOps,
where all the tooling is in somewhat less ancient software, they get exposed using those
Eclipse/VScode-based tools and are able to come up to speed somewhat quicker. Still, no one
in corporate America dares to bite the bullet and re-platform their core systems with few
exceptions (SABRE) for fear of losing all the institutional knowledge that's in software,
rather than wetware (humans).
Just think what is happening right now with everyone holding an Indian outsourcing
contract. You don't have individual's cellphone numbers over in India, which would cost you
an arm and a leg to call, never mind what's going on in their facilities.
On the other hand, there's something to be said for employers not training their staffs.
In the SF Bay Area computer industry, employees and independent contractors alike continually
race to train themselves in the new technologies that seem to crop up like mushrooms after a
rain. Many companies train their customers–and charge them for it–before they'll
train their staffs. This is a principal reason there's a market for contractors. Training
oneself in new technologies lays a base for opportunities that don't appear if you spend a
decade in the same job (unless, like mainframe programming, your job is so old it's new). I
suppose this is a beneficial side of capitalism?
I get that you want experience for mid to senior level jobs but the experience
requirements for what are ostsensibly entry-level jobs have gotten absurd. The education
requirements have also gotten out of hand in some cases.
That being said, a lot of the shortages are in low-wage, part-time jobs so the issue isn't
necessarily ridiculous requirements, like you sometimes see for entry level white collar
jobs, but wages that are too low and awful working conditions.
How many people want to be treated like dirt–be it by customers, management, or
both–for not much more than minimum wage if they have other options?
A wage increase will help fill these jobs but there also needs to be a paradigm shift in
how employees are treated–the customer is not always right and allowing them to treat
employees in ways that would not be tolerated in other businesses, and certainly not in many
white-collar workplaces is a huge part of the problem and why these jobs have long had
high-turnover.
It never ends – when it was about immigrant labor under George B junior – I
think – the call was
-- - They do jobs that Americans won't -- or something to that effect.
It always bothered me that the sentence was never, in my mind, completed. It should have been
said
-- They do jobs that Americans won't do at that pay level. --
The tax system, economic system and higher education departments have been perverted by the
continuous bribery and endowments by the rentier class to our elected law makers and dept
heads for decades –
The creditor, debtor relationships distorted for eons.
The toll takers have never, in history, been in any higher level of mastery than they are
now.
It is not to throw out the constitution but, to throw out those who have perverted it.
The construction industry knows how to exploit immigrant labor, documented as well as
undocumented. I'm sure most peole born here refuse to work for the same wages.
The exploitation occurs on many levels. For small residential jobs, a lot of wage theft
occurs. For larger jobs, a lot of safety regs get ignored. When you have a population that
won't use the legal avenues available to other citizens to push back against abuse you can
get a lot done :/
When I go looking for a job if a degree isn't required I am very unlikely to pursue it
further. Same if the list of 'required' is overly detailed. I'm making assumptions in both of
these cases (that might not be correct) about pay, benefits, work environment, etc. and what
is actually going on with a job listing. Why? Chiefly my likelihood of actually getting a
reasonable offer. I expect either being seen as overqualified in the first case or the job
only being listed because of some requirement in the second.
I have to wonder if many places know how to hire. This is made much more difficult by
years of poorly written (maybe deceptive) job postings. You probably know many of the
phrases; flexible schedule, family ___, reliable transportation required, and so on. Its no
surprise if puffery doesn't bring back the drones.
If we're playing with statistics. How many of these posted job openings, how many
interviews did the companies offer v. how many offers were made until the position was
filled? If position remains open, has the company increased the base pay offer? guaranteed an
increased min. number of weekly hours? offered bonuses or increased benefits? How many times
has this same job opening using the original posting criteria been re-posted? Is this a real
single job opening that the company plans to fill in real time or just a posting that they
keep opening because they have high turnover? etc., etc., etc.
The real problem with this workers are lazy meme is that it is repeated and repeated all
year long on the local news from the viewpoint of business. It has filtered down to local
people. I hear them repeating what the local news said without giving it any critical
thought. Even those who say that we need unions and believe themselves to be on the side of
workers.
Ear wigs are good for businesses. Insidious for workers.
In the UK, in the days of Labor Strive, before Neo-liberalism , there was always newspaper
reports about "Labor Strife" and "bolshy workers." Never once did the press examine
Management had behaved and caused the workers to become "bolshy" – a direct reaction to
Management's attitudes and behavior, probably based on the worst attributes of the UK's class
system.
Definition: A bolshy person often argues and makes difficulties.
Management get the workers (Their Attitudes) it deserves.
I recommend reading "The Toyota Way" to explore a very successful management style.
This song is getting a probably getting more hits these days
Take this job and Shove It https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjEauGiRLo
But I hear lots of businesses will close to to no labor, so when they close they can go work
for 7.25 an hour for one of their competitors who also needs laborors Solidarinosc!
If businesses are suffering, it's restaurants and small scale enterprise. The Covid
response was tailored to the needs of economy of scale mega biz. They likely knew multitides
of mom-n-pops would go away- and they have. But that's fine.
So if state governments can turn down federal unemployment supplements because they want
labor to go back to work for unlivable wages this means the federal government can do nothing
about it. When push comes to shove the question that must be settled is, Is it a human right
to receive employment assistance until a job is found that pays a livable wage? (Not even a
republican will actually say No). So then that puts all the stingy states on notice that
there is a human rights issue here. States will have the choice to either let businesses shut
down for lack of workers, or states can subsidize minimum wages and benefits. If states
choose, in desperation, to subsidize minimum wages, then the states can apply to the feds to
be compensated. The thing that is needed in the interim, between when the real standoff
starts and ends, is a safety net for workers who are being blocked by the state from
receiving unemployment benefits. I say call in the national guard. This is a human rights
issue.
The real exploitation happened when we allowed companies to delocalize, manufacture
product in China and sell it here with no strings attached.
James Goldsmith seems like a prophet now, he was so absolutely right.
Wow. The Clinton flack was insufferable. AND WRONG about pretty much everything. Goldsmith
was brilliant. I wasn't paying enough attention at he time, but how many high profile people
were making the arguments he was making?
I'm surprised that nobody has taken the opportunity to comment on how this discussion
shows how hypocritical Biden and the democrats were not to press for raising the minimum
wage.
The pretense (which they must have coached the "Senate scholar" on) was that raising the
minimum wage was not related to revenue (i.e., a revenue bill). But of course it is! Right
now, paying below-poverty wages enabled Walmart and other employers to make the government
pay part of their wage bill. Higher minimum wages would raise these government aid recipients
out of the poverty range, saving public revenue.
That is so obvious that the failure of the Democrats to make the point shows that they really
didn't want to raise wages after all.
I didn't expect much from Biden but he's even worse than I thought. Along with those
bought senators hiding behind Joe Manchin. Depressing to think how much worse everything will
become for working people here.
When I think about how they're complaining about Manchin now when there was a serious
primary challenge against him last year, and how the Democrat organization rallied around
Manchin and not his challenger, it is disgusting to see Slate/The Guardian/NYT/other "Blue no
matter who" mouth breathers write articles asking what can be done to salvage a progressive
agenda from the curse of bipartisanship.
I had given up on national politics long before the 2020 election circus but this latest
has confirmed my resolve. The destruction of the Democrat party can't come soon enough.
If I call them Hypocritics, when I never believed them in the first place, will they feel
any shame at all? Or must I be part of their class for them to feel even the tiniest of
niggles?
Perhaps they'll feel ashamed once they cut the check for the $600 they shorted us this
winter. Or maybe that they are reneging on the extended unemployment benefits early or
One side makes you sleep on a bed of nails and swear allegiance.The other side generously
offers to help you out, no strings attached, but you might bleed out from the thousands of
tiny means-testing cuts. Each side want the lower tiers to face the gauntlet and prove one's
worthiness, hoping to convince us that a black box algorithm is the same thing as a jury of
peers.
Exactly right! And keep in mind deluge of op-eds telling us that Biden is a
transformational president! The same authors presented a deluge of op-eds telling us how
Senator Sanders was to radical for the American people after he did well in early primaries.
That the reforms he supported like Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, lowering drug
costs, help with daycare, doing something about climate change etc. were reforms that the
people would never accept because the people value their freedom and don't want to live in a
socialistic country.
It looks like none of the promises Biden made during the campaign will be implemented by
President Biden. That why he is in the White House.
Would a lot of these positions be filled if the US had single payer healthcare or similar?
Would workers accept low paying positions if they didn't have to lose so much of their pay to
crappy health insurance?
At our local Petsmart they cut staff during the pandemic. They laid off all full time
workers
And are only hiring back part time. I knew several of the laid off people and they are not
coming back. Two of the people that worked full time have found other jobs one with slightly
better pay the other with slightly better benefits. We are in California where rent is very
high so another person we know decided to use this as a chance to relocate to another state
where housing is less expensive. Our older neighbor retired, although vaccinated now, he
decided it just wasn't safe and after the CDC told everyone to take off their mask off. He is
glad he just decided to live on a little less money. I suspect there are a lot of reasons as
Yves stated above for a lack of workers, but this "they are lazy" trope is capitalistic
nonsense.
Some highlights:
>> everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will
never be industrious.
-- Arthur Young; 1771
>>Even David Hume, that great humanist, hailed poverty and hunger as positive
experiences for the lower classes, and even blamed the "poverty" of France on its good
weather and fertile soil:
'Tis always observed, in years of scarcity, if it be not extreme, that the poor labour more,
and really live better.
>>Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society It
is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no
riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of
wealth.
I'll just point out, per the Old Testament, that wage, debt and rent slavery were the
exception, not the norm (as they are in the US) for citizens (Hebrews) in ancient
Israel/Judah.
That's because the assets in ancient Israel/Judah were roughly equally owned by all
citizens with provisions in the OT Law (eg. Leviticus 25, eg. Deuteronomy 15, eg. Deuteronomy
23:19-20) to keep it that way in the long run (but less than 50 years).
Contrast that to US where we have privileges for a private credit cartel, aka "the banks",
and no limits to the concentration of land ownership and the roots of our problems are
evident.
So begging for better jobs for citizens is, in the Biblical context, pathetically weak tea
indeed.
On a personal note I had a great job interview Thursday at the local food co-op. This is
my first in person interview since I was terminated without cause by IBM (after almost 24
years there in a server development job) almost a year ago. Despite applying for over 100
positions. I'm over 60 and haven't worked in a year so I admit I'm grateful to even get the
chance.
I have another interview with them next week and hoping to start soon as a produce clerk
making $13.50 an hour. If I can get on full time they offer a decent insurance plan including
dental. The HR person acknowledged that I was "wildly overqualified" but encouraging. The
possibility of getting health care is key; my IBM Cobra benefits will start costing me almost
$1400/monthly for myself and my husband in September after the ARA subsidy expires.
I've adjusted my expectations to reinvent myself as a manual laborer after decades in
fairly cushy corporate life. I've managed to keep my health and physical capacity so somewhat
optimistic I can meet the job requirements that include lifting 50 lb boxes of produce. But
we'll see.
You mean you haven't had a job in a year since it's highly doubtful that you have not done
any work in a year; eg. cooking, cleaning, shopping, car maintenance, gardening,
chauffeuring, mowing the lawn, home maintenance and caring for others count as work.
We need to stop conflating work (good) with wage slavery as if the former necessarily
requires the latter.
Okay sure. I haven't earned in a year. But it's still a problem I'm trying to sort
out best as I can.
Since I still live in the US where earning is highly correlated with insurance
coverage, and I still have about 5 years until we're both qualified for Medicare this may
turn out to be a great thing that has happened.
And since I don't see a path out of wage slavery today I'll be happy to accept almost any
offer from the food co-op. It's a union job with decent pay and benefits and may offer other
opportunities in the future. They mostly buy and sell products that are locally made so that
makes it easier too. The money we are all enslaving each other over is staying around here as
much as possible. Okay.
Good luck! Fyi i strongly suggest u look into taking your IBM pension asap as 1. It will
minimally impact your taxes as u r now earning less n 2. How many more years do u think it
will be there? ( I usually recommend most people take their social security at 62 for similar
reasons but in your case I'd do your research b4 making any move like that. ) Take a blank
state n Fed tax form n pencil in the new income n see what the results are.
Btw truly wonderful people are involved in food co-ops,enjoy!
No one really questions the idea of maximising profit.
How do you maximise profit?
You minimise costs, including labour costs, i.e. wages.
Where did the idea of maximising profit comes from?
It certainly wasn't from Adam Smith.
"But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and
fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and
high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to
ruin." Adam Smith
Exactly the opposite of today's thinking, what does he mean?
When rates of profit are high, capitalism is cannibalising itself by:
1) Not engaging in long term investment for the future
2) Paying insufficient wages to maintain demand for its products and services
Today's problems with growth and demand.
Amazon didn't suck its profits out as dividends and look how big it's grown (not so good on
the wages).
The benefits of the system can be passed upwards in dividends or downwards in wages.
Both actually detract from the money available for re-investment as Jeff Bezos knows only too
well.
He didn't pay dividends, and paid really low wages, to maximise the amount that he could
re-invest in Amazon and look how big it's grown.
The shareholders gains are made through the value of the shares.
Jeff Bezos hopes other people are paying high enough wages to buy lots of stuff from Amazon;
his own workers don't have much purchasing power.
Where do the benefits of the system go?
Today, we pass as much as possible upwards in dividends.
In the Keynesian era they passed a lot more down in wages.
> Jeff Bezos hopes other people are paying high enough wages to buy lots of stuff from
Amazon; his own workers don't have much purchasing power.
You are missing the tree in the forest. Jeff hopes other people will pay a high enough
price for Amazon stawk. We already know Jeff doesn't give a shit about the stuff he sells, or
the inhumane working conditions that go along with the low pay and short "career". I mean,
not even the nastiest farmer would treat his mules like that, even if mules were easy and
cheap to come by.
We don't think people should get money when they are not working.
Are you sure?
What's the point in working?
Why bother?
It's just not worth all the effort when you can make money doing nothing.
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned"
income.
They love easy money.
With a BTL portfolio, I can get the capital gains on a number of properties and extract
the hard earned income of generation rent at the same time.
That sounds good.
What is there not to like?
We love easy money.
You've just got to sniff out the easy money.
All that hard work involved in setting up a company yourself, and building it up.
Why bother?
Asset strip firms other people have built up, that's easy money.
"West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless
benefits early in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work.
That's what has made this great country."
Have you had a look around recently?
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned"
income.
America is not about work at all.
The US is largely about exploiting or being exploited with most of US doing both.
We should resent an economic system that requires we exploit others or be a pure victim
ourselves.
That said and to face some truths we'd rather not, the Bible offers some comfort, eg:
Ecclesiastes 7:16 Do not be excessively righteous, and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin
yourself?
Ecclesiastes 5:8-9 If you see oppression of the poor and denial of justice and righteousness in the province,
do not be shocked at the sight; for one official watches over another official, and there are
higher officials over them. After all, a king who cultivates the field is beneficial to the
land.
Nonetheless, we should support economic justice and recognize that most of us are net
losers to an unjust economic system even though it offers some corrupt compensation* to
divide and confuse us.
*eg positive yields and interest on the inherently risk-free debt of a monetary
sovereign.
Jim Justice made his money the old fashioned way, he inherited it:
From Wiki: James Conley Justice II (born April 27, 1951) is an American businessman and
politician who has been serving as the 36th governor of West Virginia since 2017. With a net
worth of around $1.2 billion, he is the wealthiest person in West Virginia. He inherited a
coal mining business from his father and built a business empire with over 94 companies,
including the Greenbrier, a luxury resort.
I wonder how much of this is also related to a change in the churn we assume existed
pre-pandemic? For example, the most recent JOLTS survey results from April
2021 show the total number of separations hasn't really changed but the number of quits
has increased.
So, one possible interpretation of that would be employers are less likely to fire people
and those who think they have skills in demand are more interested in leaving for better
opportunities now. That makes intuitive sense given what we've been through. If you had a
good gig and it was stable through 2020 you had very little reason to leave it even if an
offer was better with another company. That goes double if you were a caregiver or had
children. Which of course is why many women who were affected by the challenges of balancing
daycare and a career gave up.
This is also my experience lately. While it's only anecdotal evidence, we're having a hard
time hiring mid career engineers. Doesn't seem like pay is the issue. We offer a ton of
vacation, a separate pool of sick time, decent benefits, and wages in the six figures with a
good bonus program. We're looking to hire 3 engineers. We can't even get people to apply. In
2019 we could be sure to see a steady supply of experienced candidates looking for new
opportunities. Now? If you have an engineering position and your company is letting you work
from home it seems you don't have a good reason to jump.
Look no further than Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio. They had only half the
staff they normally need at $10 an hour. So they double the wage to $20 an hour and filled
every job in less than a week. The Conservaturds will never admit they are lying.
As a small business owner providing professional services I am grateful for the comment
section here.
I have called professional peers to get a behind the corporate PR perspective of their
businesses. Although anecdotal, the overall trend in our industry is to accept the labor
shortage and downsize. Most firms have a reliable backlog of work and will benefit from an
infrastructure bill. Our firm has chosen to downsize and close vacant positions.
Remote work, although feasible, has employees thinking they are LeBron James, regardless
of their skill set. Desperate employers are feeding their belief. Two years from now it will
be interesting to see if these employees they fail forward. Company culture minimized
employee turnover pre-covid. This culture has little meaning to an employee working in his
daughter's playroom.
For context, in California, I believe the median income for licensees is approximately
$110,000 with lower level technicians easily at $75k in the urban areas.
Lastly, the "paltry" $300 per week is in additional to the state unemployment checks and
is not subject to taxes. As stated previously, $300 is equal to $7.50 per hour. Federal
minimum wage is $7.25 and is adopted by many states minimum, for what it's worth.
With respect, I do not see any there there in the comment. Adjusted for inflation the
minimum wage at its height in 1968 at 1.60, would be just under $13 per hour today. However,
even at $15 in California, it is inadequate.
Anyone making anything like the minimum wage would not be working from home, but would be
working in some kind of customer service job, and would find paying for adequate food,
clothing, and shelter very difficult. Not in getting any extras, but only in getting enough
to survive. People, and their families, do need to eat.
If the response of not paying enough, and therefore not getting new hires, is to downsize,
perhaps that is good. After all no business deserves to remain in business, especially if the
business model depends on its workers being unable to survive.
I am also fed up with the "lazy worker" meme. Or rather, propaganda. People are literally
exhausted working 2 or 3 lousy jobs and no real healthcare. Equally irritating to me is a
misguided notion that we have some magically accessible generous safety net in the US. As
though there aren't thousands and thousands on waiting lists for government subsidized
housing. Section 8 vouchers? Good luck.
We've ended "welfare as we [knew] it" (AFDC) thanks to Bill Clinton and then the screw was
turned tightly by Junior Bush (no child care, but go to work.) The upshot was bad news for
kids.
Seems to me one of the few things left is the food stamp program, and I can't imagine how
that's been reconfigured. Whomever gave that fantastic list of goodies people can get in the
US with a mere snap of the fingers isn't in the real world, imho.
Ok! Yves, lovely to see you again, my friend! (Cue the Moody Blues ) Get well!
Here is my story.
I am 56 years old, on dialysis and I was collecting SSI of 529 a month.
I was living with and taking care of my mother in her home because she had dementia.
She died in December and I had to start paying the bills. In March I inherited her IRA which
I reported to SS. I was able to roll it over into my own IRA because I am disabled, due to
the Trump tax law changes.
I reported the changes in a timely manner and because I couldn't afford to live here without
a job, I took a part time job for 9 an hour.
So now, because I inherited my mother's IRA and have too much resources I no longer qualify
for SSI and have been overpaid to the tune of almost 2 grand, which I am assuming I will have
to pay back. I have no idea how that works either. Do they just grab money out of your
account? Anyone who knows please tell me.
I would run, run, run to the nearest public assistance counselor or lawyer. In the San
Francisco Bay Area, it is should not be too hard to find one. They saved me. There are also
in California several state websites. There was a useful to me benefits planning site (It only covers nine states though).
The rules for SSI (Supplemental Security Income), SSDI (Social Security Disability
Insurance), Social Security, Medi-Cal or Medicaid, and Medicare are each different. Each
state has its own modifications as well, so that is fifty additional sets of modified rules
especially for the medical benefits. If they are determined to claw back the money, how it is
done might depend on the individual state. It is truly a maze of flycatchers and trapdoors
out for you and your money.
The overworked benefits clerks often do not have the knowledge to deal with anything even
slightly unusual and are not encourage or at least discouraged from finding out due to
the never shrinking pile, not from anyone's malice. This means you could lose benefits
because they did not know what they were doing or just by mistake. So, it is up to you to
find those nonprofit counselors or the for profit lawyer to help you through the laws, rules,
and whatever local regulations there are. Hopefully, you will not have to read through some
of the official printed regulations like I did. If wasn't an experience paper pusher.. The
average person would have been lost. Intelligence and competence has nothing to do with.
Hell, neither does logic, I think.
In my case, when I inherited a retirement account, SSDI was not affected, because of how
the original account was set up. However, SSDI is different from SSI although both have
interesting and Byzantine requirements. I guess to make sure we are all "deserving" of any
help.
So don't ask anonymous bozos like me on the internet and find those local counselors. If
it is nonprofit, they will probably do it completely free. If needed, many lawyers, including
tax lawyers, and CPAs will offer discounted help or will know where you can go.
What is the floor on wages?
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Set disposable income to zero.
Minimum wages = taxes + the cost of living
So, as we increase housing costs, we drive up wages.
The neoliberal solution.
Try and paper over the cracks with Payday loans.
This what we call a short term solution.
Someone has been tinkering with the economics and that's why we can't see the problem.
The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by
removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with
"capital".
They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the Classical
Economists as this is where rentier activity in the economy shows up.
It's so well hidden no one even knows it's there and everyone trips up over the cost of
living, even the Chinese.
Angus Deaton rediscovers the wheel that was lost by the early neoclassical economists. "Income inequality is not killing capitalism in the United States, but rent-seekers like
the banking and the health-care sectors just might" Angus Deaton, Nobel prize winner.
Employees get their money from wages and the employers pay the cost of living through wages,
reducing profit.
This raises the costs of doing anything in the US, and drives off-shoring.
The Chinese learn the hard way.
Davos 2019 – The Chinese have now realised high housing costs eat into consumer
spending and they wanted to increase internal consumption. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNBcIFu-_V0
They let real estate rip and have now realised why that wasn't a good idea.
The equation makes it so easy.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
The cost of living term goes up with increased housing costs.
The disposable income term goes down.
They didn't have the equation, they used neoclassical economics.
The Chinese had to learn the hard way and it took years, but they got there in the end.
They have let the cost of living rise and they want to increase internal consumption.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
It's a double whammy on wages.
China isn't as competitive as it used to be.
China has become more expensive and developed Eastern economies are off-shoring to places
like Vietnam, Bangladesh and the Philippines.
Comments for this article are pretty instructive about the particular strata of US population
mindset right now. Reminds the mood of dissidents in the USSR.
Tucker Carlson dropped several bombshells on his show Tuesday night, chief among them was
from a Revolver News report that the FBI was likely involved in organizing the Jan. 6 Capitol
'insurrection,' and were similarly involved in the kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor
Gretchin Whitmer .
" Why are there so many factual matters that we don't understand about that day? " asked
Carlson.
" Why is the Biden administration preventing us from knowing? Why is the administration
still hiding more than 10,000 hours of surveillance tape from the US capitol on January 6th?
What could possibly be the reason for that - even as they call for more openness... they could
release those tapes today, but they're not. Why?"
Carlson notes that
Revolver News has dissected court filings surrounding the Capitol riot, suggests that
unindicted co-conspirators in the case are likely to have been federal operatives.
We at Revolver News have noticed a pattern from our now months-long investigation into 1/6
-- and in particular from our meticulous study of the charging documents related to those
indicted. In many cases the unindicted co-conspirators appear to be much more aggressive and
egregious participants in the very so-called "conspiracy" serving as the basis for charging
those indicted.
The question immediately arises as to why this is the case, and forces us to consider
whether certain individuals are being protected from indictment because they were involved in
1/6 as undercover operatives or confidential informants for a federal agency.
Key segment from Tucker:
"We know that the government is hiding the identity of many law enforcement officers that
were present at the Capitol on January 6th, not just the one that killed Ashli Babbitt.
According to the government's own court filing, those law enforcement officers participated
in the riot - sometimes in violent ways . We know that because without fail, the government
has thrown the book at most people who were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6. There was a
nationwide dragnet to find them - and many are still in solitary confinement tonight. But s
trangely, some of the key people who participated on Jan. 6 have not been charged ."
Look at the documents , the government calls those people 'unindicted co-conspirators.'
What does that mean? Well it means that in potentially every case they were FBI operatives
... in the Capitol, on January 6th."
"For example, one of those unindicted co-conspirators is someone government documents
identify only as "person two." According to those documents, person two stayed in the same
hotel room as a man called Thomas Caldwell - an 'insurrectionist.' A man alleged to be a
member of the group "The Oathkeepers." Person two also "stormed the barricades" at the
Capitol on January 6th alongside Thomas Caldwell. The government's indictments further
indicate that Caldwell - who by the way is a 65-year-old man... was led to believe there
would be a "quick reaction force" also participating on January 6th. That quick reaction
force Caldwell was told, would be led by someone called "Person 3," who had a hotel room and
an accomplice with them . But wait. Here's the interesting thing. Person 2 and person 3 were
organizers of the riot . The government knows who they are, but the government has not
charged them. Why is that? You know why. They were almost certainly working for the FBI. So
FBI operatives were organizing the attack on the Capitol on January 6th according to
government documents. And those two are not alone. In all, Revolver news reported there are
"upwards of 20 unindicted co-conspirators in the Oath Keeper indictments, all playing various
roles in the conspiracy, who have not been charged for virtually the exact same activities
and in some cases much, much more severe activities - as those named alongside them in the
indictments."
Revolver , meanwhile, has important questions about January 6th
In the year leading up to 1/6 and during 1/6 itself, to what extent were the three primary militia groups (the Oath Keepers,
the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters) that the FBI , DOJ , Pentagon and
network news have labeled most
responsible for planning and executing a Capitol attack on 1/6 infiltrated by agencies of the
federal government, or informants of said agencies?
Exactly how many federal undercover agents or confidential informants were present at the
Capitol or in the Capitol during the infamous "siege" and what roles did they play (merely
passive informants or active instigators)?
Finally, of all of the unindicted co-conspirators referenced in the charging documents of
those indicted for crimes on 1/6, how many worked as a confidential informant or as an
undercover operative for the federal government (FBI, Army Counterintelligence, etc.)?
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has demanded an explanation from FBI Director Christopher Wray:
We recommend you read the entire
Revolver piece, which includes the fact that at least five individuals involved int he
"Whitmer Kidnapping Plot" were undercover agents and federal informants .
_Rorschach 7 hours ago
Just remember folks
a Klan meeting is always 33 FBI agents
and 2 ACTUAL white supremacists
Dragonlord 7 hours ago
No CIA? I am disappointed.
_Rorschach 7 hours ago (Edited)
Glowies are never at the meetings
theyre busy planting bombs for the false flag afterwards
Misesmissesme 6 hours ago
90% of "terrorists" would never commit acts of terror if the US Guv wasn't coercing them
to commit said acts. The wrong people are in jail.
Wonder who in government started the ball rolling on 9/11 before it got away from
them?
Sedaeng PREMIUM 6 hours ago
it never got away from them! They directed through and afterwards... Patriot act just
'happened' to be on standby just in case? ha!
Not Your Father's ZH 6 hours ago (Edited)
Amid this chronic Machiavellian conniving, here are creatures who know how to act
right:
"Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from
people killing, stealing, shouting and doing things historians usually record; while on the
banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry
and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the
banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks of the river." ~ Will
Durant, "The Story of Civilization"
"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a
monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss , the abyss also gazes into you." - Friedrich
Nietzsche
"Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy, but sorrow.
There is no humor in Heaven." ― Mark Twain
thomas sewell 6 hours ago
everything in the USA is bull sheet. its all polluted with mind fook.
the last 1+ year has gone beyond any psycho drama i could ever imagine.
krda 5 hours ago
Didn't Brennan issue the 9/11 hijackers' visas?
zedwork 1 hour ago
Yes, but no planes. That would have been way too risky when you can just add them into
the live feed later using CGI.
Bob Lidd 1 hour ago
You mean like what happen in the 1993 WTC bombing.....??
How there hasn't been a day of reckoning yet is beyond me.
SexyJulian 6 hours ago
And stacks of bricks.
E5 5 hours ago
The FBI does not have the right to commit a crime. They chose to run an operation they
should disavow all agents involved and they know it. Arrest them.
With Wray out there spreading fear about the Great White Supremacy Threat, you can bet
the FBI is working overtime to make something newsworthy happen. Remember folks: 3
"militia" = 2 FBI informants + 1 patsy
Until the JFK murder/coup is brought to light, you can bet it's all hoax, including
Trump being an 'outsider'. He's not. He did everything Israel told him to do.
GhostOLaz 3 hours ago
America's perception of the FBI comes from TV "programs", not history or reality.
Joiningupthedots 1 hour ago
"Why is the administration still hiding more than 10,000 hours of surveillance tape from
the US capitol on January 6th?"
For the same reason the UK government wont release the Skripal Tapes from Salisbury,
UK.......LMAO.
Its an inside job........OBVIOUSLY!
Faeriedust 2 hours ago
So. Incidents are being staged and then used as excuses for more draconian State
security powers. How is this different from the behavior of known historical groups such as
the SS and the KGB? How can this be interpreted except as the actions of a totalitarian
State?
Sizzurp PREMIUM 6 hours ago
Scary stuff. They manufacture their own crimes to suit their political narrative and
agenda. This is straight out of the Nazi playbook.
Garciathinksso 6 hours ago
this is SOP for FBI, long rich history of manufacturing crimes and low, mid and high
level corruption . Prior to that the BOI was even worse.
JaxPavan 7 hours ago remove link
The chickens coming home to roost.
This was a "color revolution" by us, against us. And, it was designed to fail. Like a
freakish side show.
Why? Let off political steam. Keep all the people in their respective aisle of the
democan and republicrat uniparty bus. Distract political attention away from the full
****** plandemic lockdowns. Keep the rest of the world agape for a few more years thinking
things will fall apart on their own, while their resources are extracted. . .
Jam 47 minutes ago
This scam getting some press now is better late than never, but not by much. Some of
these media types being all surprised by this must have lived pretty sheltered lives and
are lacking any street smarts. This set up was obvious since day one, this is the same
bunch that won't call out these crooks for rigged elections.
Oxygen Likes Carbon 48 minutes ago
It should be painfully clear that with the level of surveillance in 2021, nobody can
walk into high security governmental building, without being arrested. Let alone organize a
mass demonstration then go into Capitol Building during the day, while the politicians
being there, to take ... selfies.
... without some help, or coordination from some governmental services.
anti-bolshevik 7 hours ago (Edited)
Replace 'unindicted co-conspirators.' with Agent Provocateurs.
The entire chain-of-command that authorized / planned / executed / gave material support
to this Operation should be indicted and prosecuted.
In this course of its investigation, researchers at Fordham discovered that EVERY
SINGLE ONE of the 138 terrorist incidents recorded in the USA between 2001-2012 involved
FBI informants who played leading roles in planning out, supplying weapons, instructions
and even recruiting Islamic terrorists to carry out terrorist acts on U.S. soil.
Enraged 56 minutes ago
With FBI Director Comey, Assistant Director McCabe, and FBI agent/covert CIA agent
Strzok acting against President Trump, this should be considered treasonous, and hopefully
they will be prosecuted.
The question is who authorized the latest actions on January 6 since Comey, McCabe, and
Strzok were fired.
Conductor "Corn Pop" Angelo 38 minutes ago
I can think of two to start with. Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi. Both refused
additional security even after being told that the latest intel suggested there was going
to be a protest at the capital building on Jan 6th. The two were offered National Guard
troops, in addition to Capital Police, to help out, but refused. IIRC, both the Senate and
House Sgt at Arms lost their jobs over this, too
Make it three, Mayor Bowser had the same intel and did nothing
Andro1345 7 hours ago
These are old tricks by the FBI. They have been just as bad as the CIA for years.
So many instances going back so far. They plan things, set it up, help to encourage and
supply sheep to do these things. If I had someone trying to encourage me to get on board
something similar my first guess would be a government operative, seriously.
WeNamedTheDogIndiana 1 hour ago
I attended protests after the election, and it was obvious to be that the rallies at our
state capitol were infiltrated by FBI/deep state stooges. A number of them were talking
civil war, and said it too boldly in my opinion, and then many of them were carrying AKs,
when that was not necessary.
The only rally that I attended that seemed uncorrupted was the first protest in DC a few
weeks after the election.
taketheredpill 7 hours ago
Don't be shocked if the FBI funded some of the trips, hotels etc.
And for sure the FBI operatives "wound up" the participants...
But you won't find out for 10 years.
Alfred 7 hours ago
Not just infiltrated.
The FBI actually creates the organizations they then infiltrate.
Someone goes on a good rant here or there, can expect to be befriended by someone of
like mind. Thereafter that someone undergoes radicalization and then organization via FBI
sting ops. They get funding, they get resources, they get ready, they get busted.
Ha! It's all shake-n-bake, baby!
ProudZion 6 hours ago
...The proud boys was led by a FBI agent....
Mad Muppet PREMIUM 1 hour ago
They're called Agents Provacateurs and it's nothing new. The Government always initiates
the violence they say they want to prevent.
Ms No PREMIUM 1 hour ago remove link
"Informants" is a very misleading title. They aren't out there ferretting info of people
up to no good. It's more an infiltration and steering game and always has been.
They are basically agents without the boundaries of law. Good front guys too. They will
keep them out of trouble and protect them if they can but if it gets too hot they are
expendable and even easily patsied. It's all actually actually technically illegal because
even when they do real informant work it's actually entrapment.
We used to be protected from these things and now you see the reason behind that.
Nothing is new it just has different names and since it's always avoided by media, some of
it doesn't even have proper names, at least for the public.
It's basically false flag color revolution operations.
QuiteShocking 6 hours ago (Edited) remove link
The USA's standing in the world is vastly diminished by the continue lies and
mischaracterizations of what happened on Jan 6th by the democrats. The police officer died
from a stroke and not from the rioters. The unarmed white woman was executed by capital
police and no one was held responsible. The democrats have continued to blatantly lie and
mislead on what really happened on Jan 6th for political gain...
Max21c 7 hours ago
We recommend you read the entire
Revolver piece, which includes the fact that at least five individuals involved int
he "Whitmer Kidnapping Plot" were undercover agents and federal informants .
People were already aware that the FBI kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor
Gretchen Whitmer was an FBI thing from the start and all throughout. Just as many if not
most of these things are as they involve the secret police creating the plots and then
unraveling the plots they've created and managed and orchestrated all along the way.
Angular Momentum 7 hours ago
The states need to outlaw entrapment in cases like that. The FBI moles need to be
punished as severely as the dupes.
junction 7 hours ago
The FBI and the CIA apparently fund the so-call White Supremacist organizations. Your
tax dollars at work. Meanwhile, total silence for a decade from the FBI as Jeffrey Epstein
ran a transnational white slavery operation out of his Manhattan mansion, aided by the
Israeli Mossad.
Max21c 7 hours ago
The intelligence community and secret police community were well aware of what was going
on with the Epstein operation. It's not just the US side either as the UK and Israelis were
aware of it also.
Uncle Sugar PREMIUM 7 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Trump is better than Xiden, but
He left Chris Wray running the FIB
He didn't prosecute Comey, Brennan, anyone
He pushed the "Vax"
He spent worse than a drunken sailor
Conclusion - He's not the answer
OldNewB 6 hours ago
He should have pardoned Snowden.
otschelnik 7 hours ago
Well looks like the DOJ is bringing back the Obummer spygate team. John P. Carlin who
was head of DOJ/National Security Division is now deputy AG. He let the FBI give 4 civilian
contractors access to the NSA database for 702 inquiries, which Admiral Rogers stopped.
Also back is Lisa Monoco who oversaw the FISA warrants for Carter Page, and now she's going
to be heading up Garland's domestic terror task force.
That's all very ominous.
Farmer Tink 4 hours ago
I didn't realize that Carlin was back. He tried to defend his actions in the annual
report to the FISA court but Adm. Mike Rogers, on whose watch the NSA found out what the
DOJ was doing, carried the day. I also didn't realize that Lisa Monaco was the one in
charge of those illegal Page warrants. It's just sickening that they are being rewarded.
Thanks for the info.
glenlloyd 2 hours ago (Edited)
With such a high percentage of those 'involved' in the "insurrection" (said loosely
here) and the so called Whitmer kidnapping being from FBI / CIA / other intelligence
agencies AND those same people end up apparently being in leadership roles in these groups
that are supposedly going to be doing the kidnapping and insurrecting, then it's really
hard not to come to the conclusion that the fault was with the FBI et al.
It just seems like the FBI et al were way more involved in this than they should have
been, if you're going to suggest that it was the others that are to blame. The tough pill
to swallow is the claim that it was the people the FBI et al infiltrated and coerced into
do these things, that are to blame.
Things really do stink with this.
newworldorder 5 hours ago
How are these actions are not "entrapment."
InfiniteIntellRules 5 hours ago
I will stop, just too many tales of FBI corruption. Last 1
Under COINTELPRO, FBI agents infiltrated political groups and spread rumors that loyal
members were the real infiltrators. They tried to get targets fired from their jobs, and
they tried to break up the targets' marriages. They published deliberately inflammatory
literature in the names of the organizations they wanted to discredit, and they drove
wedges between groups that might otherwise be allied. In Baltimore, the FBI's operatives in
the Black Panther Party were instructed to denounce Students for a Democratic Society as "a
cowardly, honky group" who wanted to exploit the Panthers by giving them all the violent,
dangerous "dirty work." The operation was apparently successful: In August 1969, just five
months after the initial instructions went out, the Baltimore FBI reported that the local
Panther branch had ordered its members not to associate with SDS members or attend any SDS
events.
EVERY MAJOR EVENT. EVERY SINGLE TIME.
heehaw2 6 hours ago
All happened under Trumps watch. He said he was going to lead the March to Capital
building, then totally disappeared.
MrNoItAll 7 hours ago
Got to hand it to them. Those Fed guys sure know how to stage a riot to get media
attention and shape public opinion. How else could they explain why all the guard troops
were needed in D C. When getting them there could have been the primary goal of this staged
event.
lightwork 7 hours ago
In the early 70's it seemed that a government informant/ mole was instrumental in the
activities of virtually every left wing group in the country. It became common knowledge
that whomever was most vocal and advocated the most activist positions was usually "that
guy". It was effective since paranoia caused most groups to disintegrate.
otschelnik 8 hours ago remove link
Probably more snitches than that.
Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell who is one of the lucky few released but still charged is a
former FBI contractor who had top secret security clearance according to his lawyer.
Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio who was arrested 2 days before the riot for vandalism (burning
a BLM banner), had been an informer to the FBI and law inforcement in Florida, according to
his lawyer.
They forgot Antifa and BLM in their list of groups.
State sponsored terrorist groups favored by Liberal Elites and their secret police are
generally omitted and immune.
heehaw2 6 hours ago
George Bush Senior, then head of CIA was in Dallas when JFK was assinated. Ol George
announced as President the New World order
QE49er 6 hours ago
Reichstag Fire style false flag.
Ruff_Roll 6 hours ago
It makes perfect sense that FBI or government supported operatives were acting as agents
provocateurs on 1/6, organizing and instigating the riot, and subsequently let off as
"unindicted co-conspirators." Pelosi was probably in on it, too.
TheySayIAmOkay 7 hours ago
This is the biggest "duh" ever. Of course the government is involved. Just like they
were in 9/11. Just like they were stealing the election. Just like they are in at least
some of these mass shootings (the FBI was warned about the Parkland shooter multiple
times). Just like they will be in the next big incident that massively strips rights from
the people.
The Deep State is real. And it is the upper echelons of the FBI, DHS, CIA, ATF, etc.
They are the shadow government that wags the tail. They can do whatever they want and
nobody can do anything about it. Do you think if Ted Cruz or Nancy Pelosi killed someone
they'd get away with it? No. They are figures. The limits of their power can be stripped
with a single, stupid, scandal. How about John Brennan? I have absolutely no doubt in my
mind he could. Because who will hold him accountable? Nobody in the CIA or FBI went down
for not listening to the FBI agent about the 20th hijacker. Mueller got PROMOTED! He's deep
state. Brennan was regional chief of the CIA in Riyadh leading up to 9/11. He got...
PROMOTED! Deep state.
3-fingered_chemist 7 hours ago
The fact the Capitol had essentially zero security the day all members were present to
tally the EC votes and people still think this wasn't faked?
Jim in MN 7 hours ago
Speaking as someone who actually attended the earlier 'Stop the Steal' rally in DC, I
said at the time that the Jan. 6th event didn't smell right and felt like a setup.
Recommended that folks stay away, expect trouble and stay frosty at that time.
Note that the FBI was/is also deeply involved in the BLM riots. AKA a criminal
conspiracy to destabilize US civil order. Of course a lot of mayors and police chiefs are
also involved in that criminal conspiracy.
The more you know.....
jammyjo 7 hours ago
FBI is making contact with unstable people, and do nothing but keep them on a list of
"assets" to be activated when needed.
Patmos 7 hours ago
Gives new meaning to false narrative. More than just spin, they actually create the
events themselves. Not quite a false flag, because nothing really happened.
Is anyone involved going to stand up and say no? Or have they all just decided to
reserve themselves to being corrupt little b!tches?
Feck Weed 7 hours ago
FBI is the US domestic secret police force for the Globalist Empire. Nationalism is the
enemy of the globalists...
"... During the 2018 conference "Imagining the Next Flu Pandemic - and Preventing it!" Baric uses the graphics to extrapolate investment assistance on how to "make money in the next pandemic" by showing which stocks and industries soared during the Ebola crisis. ..."
"... Before pointing out that "there are real mutual funds for outbreak preparedness Baric adds that the abovementioned sectors and firms would "probably do very well." He also added "Some items are successful. "It was the same thing in 1918, with masks, and it's the same thing today." According to Baric, pandemics are periods of fortune, amid times of societal instability, there is a potential for people to achieve political, financial, and personal gain, and this will almost certainly happen. ..."
"... Baric said if one wants to make money from the pandemic then purchase stock in firms that create Lab coats and protective clothes, or firms that develop antiviral medications for that epidemic. ..."
During the 2018 conference "Imagining the Next Flu Pandemic - and
Preventing it!" Baric uses the graphics to extrapolate investment assistance on how to "make
money in the next pandemic" by showing which stocks and industries soared during the Ebola
crisis.
China's 2018 leaked video of Wuhan Institute of Virology concludes that the COVID-19
originated from China's Wuhan lab and during the 2018 conference, Dr. Ralph Baric of the Wuhan
Institute of Virology, a collaborator and gain-of-function advocate, gave attendees advice on
how to "make a profit" in the next pandemic.
Wuhan lab's researchers immediately started brainstorming ways of making money from a
pandemic. Baric shows a slide titled "Global Catastrophe: Opportunities Exist" during his 2018
conference "Imagining the Next Flu Pandemic – and Preventing it!" He uses the graphics to
extrapolate investment assistance on how to "make money in the next pandemic" by showing which
stocks and industries soared during the Ebola crisis.
Before pointing out that "there are real mutual funds for outbreak preparedness Baric
adds that the abovementioned sectors and firms would "probably do very well." He also added
"Some items are successful. "It was the same thing in 1918, with masks, and it's the same thing
today." According to Baric, pandemics are periods of fortune, amid times of societal
instability, there is a potential for people to achieve political, financial, and personal
gain, and this will almost certainly happen.
Baric said if one wants to make money from the pandemic then purchase stock in firms
that create Lab coats and protective clothes, or firms that develop antiviral medications for
that epidemic.
Let us preface our inflation note with one of our favorite quotes:
"World War II was transitory"
– GMM
Inflation has eroded my purchasing power in my transitory life. Bring back the $.35 Big Mac,
which was only about 20% of the minimum wage. Now? About 40-50%... Enough to spark a
revolution?
There are also Bagdad Bobs from IEA " "World oil supply is expected to grow at a faster rate
in 2022, with the US driving gains of 1.6 million bpd from producers outside the OPEC alliance.
"
"... Just in time for Pride Month, a new exchange traded fund aims to connect with LGBTQ investors. ..."
"... LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings partners with Harris Poll to annually survey 150,000 self-identifying LGBTQ constituents across the U.S. for their views about a company's brand awareness, brand image, brand loyalty and how the firm supports the community. As noted in its prospectus , 25% of the index's weighting is derived from that survey data. ..."
Just in time for Pride Month, a new exchange traded fund aims to connect with LGBTQ investors. Two previous efforts failed to
attract enough assets.
The fund, LGBTQ + ESG100 ETF LGBT,
, launched in late May, is a passively managed, large-cap index fund that holds the top 100 U.S. companies that most align with
the LGBTQ community.
In 2019, two LGBTQ-focused ETFs were delisted: ALPS Workplace Equality Portfolio ETF and InsightShares LGBT Employment Equality
ETFs. Like this new fund, both were mostly U.S. large-cap, passive index ETFs comprising companies that received high or perfect
marks for workplace equality in the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality
Index , a benchmark for corporate LGBTQ policies.
The first ETF stuck around for five years, but the second barely made it two years, even though it was launched with much fanfare
by UBS. Neither gained many assets.
Bobby Blair, CEO and founder of LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings, which launched the fund with issuer ProcureAM, says community input on
holdings makes this fund different.
LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings partners with Harris Poll to annually survey 150,000 self-identifying LGBTQ constituents across the U.S.
for their views about a company's brand awareness, brand image, brand loyalty and how the firm supports the community. As noted in
its prospectus
, 25% of the index's weighting is derived from that survey data.
... the LGBTQ + ESG100 has an annual expense ratio of 0.75%.
Early in the pandemic, I had been furiously writing articles about lockdowns. My phone rang
with a call from a man named Dr. Rajeev Venkayya. He is the head of a vaccine company but
introduced himself as former head of pandemic policy for the Gates Foundation.
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Emmanuel Macron slapped in face during visit to town The G7 summit: What you need to know
Awake: Gina Rodriguez On What Drew Her To The Film Awake: Lucius Hoya On How He Prepared For
His Role NOW PLAYING
I did not know it then, but I've since learned from Michael Lewis's (mostly terrible) book
The Premonition that Venkayya was, in fact, the founding father of lockdowns. While working for
George W. Bush's White House in 2005, he headed a bioterrorism study group. From his perch of
influence "" serving an apocalyptic president" he was the driving force for a dramatic change
in U.S. policy during pandemics.
He literally unleashed hell.
That was 15 years ago. At the time, I wrote about the changes I was witnessing, worrying
that new White House guidelines (never voted on by Congress) allowed the government to put
Americans in quarantine while closing their schools, businesses, and churches shuttered, all in
the name of disease containment.
I never believed it would happen in real life; surely there would be public revolt. Little
did I know, we were in for a wild ride"¦
The Man Who Lit the Match
Last year, Venkayya and I had a 30-minute conversation; actually, it was mostly an argument.
He was convinced that lockdown was the only way to deal with a virus. I countered that it was
wrecking rights, destroying businesses, and disturbing public health. He said it was our only
choice because we had to wait for a vaccine. I spoke about natural immunity, which he called
brutal. So on it went.
The more interesting question I had at the time was why this certified Big Shot was wasting
his time trying to convince a poor scribbler like me. What possible reason could there be?
The answer, I now realized, is that from February to April 2020, I was one of the few people
(along with a team of researchers) who openly and aggressively opposed what was happening.
There was a hint of insecurity and even fear in Venkayya's voice. He saw the awesome thing
he had unleashed all over the world and was anxious to tamp down any hint of opposition. He was
trying to silence me. He and others were determined to crush all dissent.
This is how it has been for the better part of the last 15 months, with social media and
YouTube deleting videos that dissent from lockdowns. It's been censorship from the
beginning.
For all the problems with Lewis's book, and there are plenty, he gets this whole backstory
right. Bush came to his bioterrorism people and demanded some huge plan to deal with some
imagined calamity. When Bush saw the conventional plan" make a threat assessment, distribute
therapeutics, work toward a vaccine" he was furious.
"This is bulls**t," the president yelled.
"We need a whole-of-society plan. What are you going to do about foreign borders? And
travel? And commerce?"
Hey, if the president wants a plan, he'll get a plan.
"We want to use all instruments of national power to confront this threat," Venkayya
reports having told colleagues.
"We were going to invent pandemic planning."
This was October 2005, the birth of the lockdown idea.
Dr. Venkayya began to fish around for people who could come up with the domestic equivalent
of Operation Desert Storm to deal with a new virus. He found no serious epidemiologists to
help. They were too smart to buy into it. He eventually bumped into the real lockdown innovator
working at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.
Cranks, Computers, and Cooties
His name was Robert Glass, a computer scientist with no medical training, much less
knowledge, about viruses. Glass, in turn, was inspired by a science fair project that his
14-year-old daughter was working on.
She theorized (like the cooties game from grade school) that if school kids could space
themselves out more or even not be at school at all, they would stop making each other sick.
Glass ran with the idea and banged out a model of disease control based on stay-at-home orders,
travel restrictions, business closures, and forced human separation.
Crazy right? No one in public health agreed with him but like any classic crank, this
convinced Glass even more. I asked myself, "Why didn't these epidemiologists figure it out?"
They didn't figure it out because they didn't have tools that were focused on the problem. They
had tools to understand the movement of infectious diseases without the purpose of trying to
stop them.
Genius, right? Glass imagined himself to be smarter than 100 years of experience in public
health. One guy with a fancy computer would solve everything! Well, he managed to convince some
people, including another person hanging around the White House named Carter Mecher, who became
Glass's apostle.
Please consider the following quotation from Dr. Mecher in Lewis's book: "If you got
everyone and locked each of them in their own room and didn't let them talk to anyone, you
would not have any disease."
At last, an intellectual has a plan to abolish disease" and human life as we know it too! As
preposterous and terrifying as this is "" a whole society not only in jail but solitary
confinement" it sums up the whole of Mecher's view of disease. It's also completely wrong.
Pathogens are part of our world; they are generated by human contact. We pass them onto each
other as the price for civilization, but we also evolved immune systems to deal with them.
That's 9th-grade biology, but Mecher didn't have a clue.
Fanatics Win the Day
Jump forward to March 12, 2020. Who exercised the major influence over the decision to close
schools, even though it was known at that time that SARS-CoV-2 posed almost risk to people
under the age of 20? There was even evidence that they did not spread COVID-19 to adults in any
serious way.
Didn't matter. Mecher's models" developed with Glass and others" kept spitting out a
conclusion that shutting down schools would drop virus transmission by 80%. I've read his memos
from this period" some of them still not public" and what you observe is not science but
ideological fanaticism in play.
Based on the timestamp and length of the emails, he was clearly not sleeping much.
Essentially he was Lenin on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution. How did he get his way?
There were three key elements: public fear, media and expert acquiescence, and the baked-in
reality that school closures had been part of "pandemic planning" for the better part of 15
years. Essentially, the lockdowners, over the course of 15 years, had worn out the opposition.
Lavish funding, attrition of wisdom within public health, and ideological fanaticism
prevailed.
Figuring out how our expectations for normal life were so violently foiled, how our happy
lives were brutally crushed, will consume serious intellectuals for many years. But at least we
now have a first draft of history.
As with almost every revolution in history, a small minority of crazy people with a cause
prevailed over the humane rationality of multitudes. When people catch on, the fires of
vengeance will burn very hot.
The task now is to rebuild a civilized life that is no longer so fragile as to allow insane
people to lay waste to all that humanity has worked so hard to build.
Nicholas Megaw in London Sun, June 6, 2021, 8:00 PM
The UK's competition regulator has been accused of "putting foxes in charge of the henhouse"
after asking the banking industry's own lobby group to design a supervisory body to combat the
dominance of big banks. Dozens of organisations including fintech start-ups, established tech
groups like Experian and Equifax, consumer representatives and a cross-party group of MPs have
raised concerns over the Competition and Markets Authority's plan to use proposals drawn up by
UK Finance as the basis for a consultation on the future of so-called open banking rules. Open
banking forces banks to share valuable customer data with other financial services providers,
allowing smaller firms to make faster lending decisions or offer new services such as budgeting
tools.
China's Foreign Ministry blasted the resurgent interest in the Covid-19 lab-origin theory,
noting that the journalist behind a report about Wuhan scientists falling ill is the same one
who peddled lies that led to the Iraq War.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin took aim at Michael R. Gordon, a national
security correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and one of the authors of the report that
added fuel to speculation about Covid-19's lab origin.
"Not long ago, Michael R. Gordon, an American journalist, by quoting a so-called
"˜previously undisclosed US intelligence report,' hinted [at] a far-fetched connection
between the "˜three sick staff' at the Wuhan lab and the Covid-19 outbreak," Wang said
at a briefing on Friday.
"Nineteen years ago, it was this very reporter who concocted false information by citing
unsubstantiated sources about Iraq's "˜attempt to acquire nuclear weapons,' which
directly led to the Iraq War," he charged, referring to the 2003 US invasion.
The WSJ
piece , published on May 23, cites "a previously undisclosed US intelligence report" as
saying that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell seriously ill in
November 2019 with symptoms "consistent" with Covid-19 as well as a seasonal flu.
The report got picked up by other mainstream media, which recently began shifting their
coverage on Covid-19's origins from outright dismissing theories that the virus was man-made
to admitting that a lab leak remains a possibility.
Furthermore, I wouldn't personally point to Gordon as the source for the "Wuhan Lab Leak
Hypothesis" "" I would point to the Jewish neocon Josh Rogin.
Rogin, like Gordon, spent years promoting various atrocity hoaxes in the Middle East and
pushing wars for Israel, and is the original source for the version of the "Wuhan Lab theory,"
that is currently circulating, writing a
Washington Post column promoting the hoax on April 14, 2020.
The point of course is that everywhere you look, there are neocons "" most of them Jewish ""
promoting this Wuhan Lab stuff. They are the absolute source of the claim "" they and a Falun
Gong Hong Kong CIA feminist woman, Li-Meng Yan.
She is claiming to be a "whistleblower," despite the fact that she in no way meets the
definition of that term. The term necessarily implies insider knowledge "" usually, a
whistleblower is an employee or former employee of the organization they are blowing the
whistle on.
Though none of the media promoting her says it outright, there is an implication that she
worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. She did not. She worked at a university in Hong Kong
when she was funded by Steve Bannon to write a paper making the claim that the supposed
coronavirus is a Chinese bioweapon.
Bannon has recently been associated with Guo Wengui, a billionaire who was exiled from China
for fraud and various crimes. In June of last year, Bannon declared that Guo is now the real
ruler of China in a bizarre video on a boat.
While they were on the boat in front of the Statue of Liberty saying they were going to
"overthrow the government of China," they flew planes around with signs announcing their new
government.
No one understood what was going on, and even Fox News
reported on "confusion" regarding the banners and the livestream on the boat. The
livestream has since been deleted, and there is no news from the Federal State of New China.
But there is a Wikipedia page documenting this
incredibly strange event.
Guo also runs a fake news website (I use that term in the most literal sense) where he
published the Hunter Biden footjob videos.
The point is: this is a very weird operation, and it is absurd to take a person funded by
these people seriously, as Tucker Carlson shamefully has.
(I'm not attacking Tucker over this, he's overall great and is sometimes just really slow on
the uptake, unfortunately "" but it is shameful to get involved with a Hong Kong woman who was
literally given money by Steve Bannon and his "Federation of New China" group to write a fake
science paper.)
To pretend that she is a whistleblower, to pretend that political organizations funding
papers with a predetermined outcome is serious science, is non-serious behavior.
The first time I heard the Wuhan lab leak theory it was being promoted by neocon extremist
Tom Cotton. It was then promoted by neocon extremist Mike Pompeo, who was then in the process
of trying to start a war with China. Now, it is being promoted by the Jews of CNN.
There is no one involved in claiming that the supposed coronavirus came from a Chinese lab
who doesn't have vested interests in starting a war with the Chinese. This goes for all of
these Jews, as well as Steve Bannon, who has actually declared "overthrowing the government of
China" (his words) to be his goal.
It's very obvious to see how people who want a war with China would use this hoax, and it is
great that China is making the link to the Iraqi WMD hoax. It truly is the same thing.
The United States is a country with a lot of problems. None of those problems are the fault
of China. China is not promoting gay sex to children, they are not flooding us with millions of
brown people, they did not steal our election, they did not take all of our freedoms and
collapse the economy.
Our enemies are domestic and they are Jewish. Any attempt to fear-monger and attack China is
intended as a distraction from what is going on in this country, and intended to stoke a
war.
Furthermore, this "lab leak" nonsense is designed to get people to continue to believe in
this coronavirus hoax.
Though none of the media promoting her says it outright, there is an implication that
she worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. She did not. She worked at a university in
Hong Kong when she was funded by Steve Bannon to write a paper making the claim that the
supposed coronavirus is a Chinese bioweapon.
Bannon has recently been associated with Guo Wengui, a billionaire who was exiled from
China for fraud and various crimes. In June of last year, Bannon declared that Guo is now
the real ruler of China in a bizarre video on a boat.
This style of presentation is updated "internet culture" gonzo that stands on the
shoulders of Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and in a sense Mark Twain.
That fact that today's Anglospheric system no longer has a place within itself for this
type of "dominant narrative-jamming" creativity, and to write like this means one has chosen
to become a hunted outcast, means this culture is in a death spiral. It's no longer a
self-renewing organism, but simply a collection of isolated biomass units used and thrown
away by the masters.
"Nineteen years ago, it was this very reporter who concocted false information by citing
unsubstantiated sources about Iraq's "˜attempt to acquire nuclear weapons,' which
directly led to the Iraq War," he charged, referring to the 2003 US invasion.
Either the neo-cons thought no one would notice or the noe-cons didn't notice
themselves.
I'm leaning towards the latter, especially with sloppy drunk Steve Bannon and a "Falun
Gong Hong Kong CIA feminist woman" in the mix. Is this really the best they can do?
These times we're living in are absolutely surreal. Not surprised though, we've been doing
this for a long time now. Alas, a great many of my fellow White Americans will fall for it
completely & be all in for a war with China. None of them ever even contemplating what
that would mean for us & the world. But, these are the same people who boast "we're
number one" when we rank at or near the bottom in positive stats for all developed nations,
beset with crippling societal ills. The same people who think we can vote ourselves out of
this mess & Trump will win in "˜24 & somehow save the day. The same people who
think our best days are ahead when our productivity base has been utterly gutted, our
infrastructure is collapsing & our ability to maintain it & the skill set needed to
sustain that productivity/infrastructure is slipping away. The same people who boast of "muh
freedoms" when their freedoms & their children's future is being pulled from right under
their feet. The same people who think we'll always be on top even when every example of
history shows that every empire in history has collapsed. We're racing toward a cliff but
they still think "god" is on their side & won't let it happen or we'll stay on top
because, well, "we're America"..
Utter denial & abject delusion seem to be a central aspect of our people..
" There is no one involved in claiming that the supposed coronavirus came from a Chinese
lab who doesn't have vested interests in starting a war with the Chinese. This goes for all
of these Jews, as well as Steve Bannon, who has actually declared "overthrowing the
government of China" (his words) to be his goal."
" History often repeats itself, first as a tragedy and second as a farce"
Karl Marx.
The tragedy of the WMD of Iraq follows many other tragedies that got young Americans to
spill their blood for the sake of special interests making a killing as war profiteers. The
farce of " China spread the Corona virus will the biggest tragedy to hit America if the
waning bald eagle tries to poke the rising dragon.
Andrew Anglin, is one of the few American journalists who stand boldly for the truth. Not
bad for someone labelled a Neo Nazi by Wikipedia.
"The problem of empires is that they think they are so powerful that they can afford
small inaccuracies and mistakes. "But problems keep piling up. And, at some point, they are
no longer able to cope with them. And the United States is now walking the Soviet Union's
path, and its gait is confident and steady."
The current consensus that Covid was likely a Wuhan lab leak was triggered by an article
by Nicholas Wade, a former science writer for the NY Times and an impeccably
establishmentarian journalist. Previous attempts by right wingers or maverick scientists to
advance this hypothesis were ignored or scorned by the establishment press. Wade could not be
so easily dismissed. His article, plus the release of emails by Fauci acknowledging the
possibility of a lab-created virus (which he publicly ridiculed) and the revelation that
Fauci had funded bat research at Wuhan, have changed the game entirely. My own suspicion is
that the Biden administration is preparing to throw Fauci under the bus and has signaled the
press that he is now fair game. He has served his purpose and can now be used as a scapegoat.
It is unlikely that the Wuhan release will ever be definitively proven. It is more important
to realize that this research is not restricted to Wuhan or China and that steps should be
taken to shut down all such research world-wide, including the USA, lest we have a succession
of these disasters.
The USA has been using bio-warfare for 200 years plus and can NEVER be trusted not to
carry on such research. It controls c.200 labs, worldwide, where research into pathogens and
vectors, particularly arthropods, and the collection of pathogens, is carried out. It used
biological agents in Korea in the early 50s, and against Cuba (African Swine Fever and
dengue) in the 70s, and God knows where else, and against its own people, most infamously the
Tuskegee syphilis abomination. And it is responsible for SARS CoV2, you can be sure.
The West has been trying to bring down China since they tried to turn them all into opium
addicts. Americans were complicit with the British in this and many of the so-called deep
state players made their money from the opium trade. Apparently the same families control the
present day drugs trade and the laundering of the profits from it; the so-called drug cartels
are mostly minor actors well below those who run the operation at the top. Members of the
cartels are often sacrificed but those at the top remain the same.
@Ber t we have is the Josh Hawley demand to declassify everything related to Covid from
day-1, and since he made that proposal, it has been crickets from everyone else, which is
again indicative that no one in the power elite has any incentive or goal to do more than
batter their usual targets.
All that said "" the best practices at this stage of overwhelming deception is to start
with what we can in fact establish and prove as actual plain fact, and proceed from there. If
you start from what you suspect or theorize, you will soon be enmeshed in fevered
propositions ("missiles hit the pentagon on 9/11") that crap all over the genuine facts and
do nothing but hand-craft a made-to-order, wild goose chase. This is very welcome by those
who want to control the entire denouement, to serve their own agenda.
"¦ many other tragedies that got young Americans to spill their blood for the
sake of special interests making a killing as war profiteers.
Agree the main thrust of your post, Joe.
It is also worth remembering that very many innocent souls in countries across the world
have been going about their daily lives when they were attacked, maimed and killed, their
houses destroyed, infrastructure wrecked etc by those same young Americans. Some countries at
this very hour are occupied and are being looted by the same.
Perhaps not a comfortable thought for Americans to add in as they see their country now
descending into certifiable lunacy.
But what goes around does have a habit of coming around, sooner or later.
@Anon t Ron Unz has been saying from the beginning. If you look at it geostrategically,
this is most plausible conclusion. They released the virus in China but those who created it
suffered a massive blowback and even worse China came out of it even stronger than ever
before. They were hoping China would crumble but instead got stronger while they weakened.
That's why they are fanning out a major Anti-China propaganda campaign to contain her now
openly with an overwhelming support of western citizens. This frenziness displayed by western
politicians is the reflection that China is on the verge an unstoppable economic powerhouse
within a few years and they need to put the brakes right now. It is an implicit admission of
desperation. The tussle between China and the US is going to dramatically intensify.
A country can't bring another country down by giving it "Most Favored Nation Trading
Status".
Then sending all it's major corporations there to make big deals.
And how has it served the United States where practically every item, pill in the US is
"Made in China"?
The American people were sold out decades ago in order for the 1% and their Congressional
lackeys to make major bucks. We were even working with them to create a deadly virus!
The problem with conspiracy theories (CIA invented term to whitewash CIA participation in
killing of JFK) that some of them in ten to twenty years no longer viewed as conspiracies. They
enter mainstream.
An online poll this week from Ipsos reported 15% of Americans agree that the government,
media and financial worlds are controlled by Satan-worshiping pedophiles. Not 15% of
Republicans or conservatives, but of Americans. That's a lot.
... ... ...
America is a lonely place. When you hold to a conspiracy theory, you join a community.
You're suddenly part of something. You have new friends you can talk to on the internet ...
... One of the enduring and revealing songs of America asks "Which side are you on / Which
side are you on? / You go to Harlan County / There is no neutral there / You'll either be a
union man / Or a thug for J.H. Blair."
... ... ...
Conspiracy believers don't believe what the mainstream media tell them. Why would they?
Newsrooms are undergoing their own revolution, with woke progressives vs. journalistic
traditionalists, advocacy versus old-school news values. It is ideological. "We are here to
shape and encourage a new reality." "No, we are here to find and report the news." It is
generational: The young have the upper hand and the Slack channel. The woke are winning.
...
When you think your country has grown completely bizarre...Think of what normal human beings
have been asked to absorb the past year. The whole country was shut down and everyone was told
to stay in the house. They closed the churches, and the churches agreed. There was no school
and everyone made believe""really, we all made believe!""screens were a replacement. A bunch of
13-year-old girls in the junior high decided they were boys and started getting shots, and no
adults helped them by saying, "Whoa, slow down, this is a major life decision and you're a
kid." The school board no longer argues about transgender bathrooms, they're on to transgender
boys wanting to play on the girls team. Big corporations now tell you what you should think
about local questions, and if this offends you, they don't care. There were riots and protests
last summer and local government seemed overwhelmed.
"The bots' mission: To deliver restaurant meals cheaply and efficiently, another leap in
the way food comes to our doors and our tables." The semiautonomous vehicles were
engineered by Kiwibot, a company started in 2017 to game-change the food delivery
landscape...
In May, Kiwibot sent a 10-robot fleet to Miami as part of a nationwide pilot program
funded by the Knight Foundation. The program is driven to understand how residents and
consumers will interact with this type of technology, especially as the trend of robot
servers grows around the country.
And though Broward County is of interest to Kiwibot, Miami-Dade County officials jumped
on board, agreeing to launch robots around neighborhoods such as Brickell, downtown Miami and
several others, in the next couple of weeks...
"Our program is completely focused on the residents of Miami-Dade County and the way
they interact with this new technology. Whether it's interacting directly or just sharing
the space with the delivery bots,"
said Carlos Cruz-Casas, with the county's Department of Transportation...
Remote supervisors use real-time GPS tracking to monitor the robots. Four cameras are
placed on the front, back and sides of the vehicle, which the supervisors can view on a
computer screen. [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and
in-field team looking for the robot."] If crossing the street is necessary, the robot
will need a person nearby to ensure there is no harm to cars or pedestrians. The plan is to
allow deliveries up to a mile and a half away so robots can make it to their destinations in
30 minutes or less.
Earlier Kiwi tested its sidewalk-travelling robots around the University of California at
Berkeley, where
at least one of its robots burst into flames . But the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In
about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000
deliveries...
"Kiwibot now offers their robotic delivery services in other markets such as Los Angeles
and Santa Monica by working with the Shopify app to connect businesses that want to employ
their robots." But while delivery fees are normally $3, this new Knight Foundation grant "is
making it possible for Miami-Dade County restaurants to sign on for free."
A video
shows the reactions the sidewalk robots are getting from pedestrians on a sidewalk, a dog
on a leash, and at least one potential restaurant customer looking forward to no longer
having to tip human food-delivery workers.
Just to stay at the oil field – Meth addiction and overtime work goes hand in
hand.
Meth and it's derivates was the drug of the 50s in Germany during rebuilding from the war
(Pervitin, Weckamin). They have been legal until the 70s.
It's the easy way first – just take it and you can work longer. Want to drive a truck
16 hours? Just throw a few Pervitins. Side effects and addiction come later. And the unclean
stuff from the black market kills people faster.
Just in time for Pride Month, a new exchange traded fund aims to connect with LGBTQ investors. Two previous efforts failed to
attract enough assets.
The fund, LGBTQ + ESG100 ETF LGBT,
+0.91%
, launched in late May, is a passively managed, large-cap index fund that holds the top 100 U.S. companies that most align with
the LGBTQ community.
In 2019, two LGBTQ-focused ETFs were delisted: ALPS Workplace Equality Portfolio ETF and InsightShares LGBT Employment Equality
ETFs. Like this new fund, both were mostly U.S. large-cap, passive index ETFs comprising companies that received high or perfect
marks for workplace equality in the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality
Index , a benchmark for corporate LGBTQ policies.
The first ETF stuck around for five years, but the second barely made it two years, even though it was launched with much fanfare
by UBS. Neither gained many assets.
Bobby Blair, CEO and founder of LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings, which launched the fund with issuer ProcureAM, says community input on
holdings makes this fund different.
LGBTQ Loyalty Holdings partners with Harris Poll to annually survey 150,000 self-identifying LGBTQ constituents across the U.S.
for their views about a company's brand awareness, brand image, brand loyalty and how the firm supports the community. As noted in
its prospectus
, 25% of the index's weighting is derived from that survey data.
... the LGBTQ + ESG100 has an annual expense ratio of 0.75%.
LONDON (Reuters) -The United States, Britain and other large, rich nations reached a
landmark deal on Saturday to squeeze more money out of multinational companies such as Amazon
and Google and reduce their incentive to shift profits to low-tax offshore havens.
Hundreds of billions of dollars could flow into the coffers of governments left
cash-strapped by the COVID-19 pandemic after the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies agreed
to back a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15%.
Facebook said it expected it would have to pay more tax, in more countries, as a result of
the deal, which comes after eight years of talks that gained fresh impetus in recent months
after proposals from U.S. President Joe Biden's new administration.
"G7 finance ministers have reached a historic agreement to reform the global tax system to
make it fit for the global digital age," British finance minister Rishi Sunak said after
chairing a two-day meeting in London.
The meeting, hosted at an ornate 19th-century mansion near Buckingham Palace in central
London, was the first time finance ministers have met face-to-face since the start of the
pandemic.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the "significant, unprecedented commitment" would
end what she called a race to the bottom on global taxation.
German finance minister Olaf Scholz said the deal was "bad news for tax havens around the
world".
Yellen also saw the G7 meeting as marking a return to multilateralism under Biden and a
contrast to the approach of U.S. President Donald Trump, who alienated many U.S. allies.
"What I've seen during my time at this G7 is deep collaboration and a desire to coordinate
and address a much broader range of global problems," she said.
Ministers also agreed to move towards making companies declare their environmental impact in
a more standard way so investors can decided more easily whether to fund them, a key goal for
Britain.
... ... ...
Key details remain to be negotiated over the coming months. Saturday's agreement says only
"the largest and most profitable multinational enterprises" would be affected.
European countries had been concerned that this could exclude Amazon - which has lower
profit margins than most tech companies - but Yellen said she expected it would be
included.
How tax revenues will be split is not finalised either, and any deal will also need to pass
the U.S. Congress.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said he would push for a higher minimum tax, calling
15% "a starting point".
Some campaign groups also condemned what they saw as a lack of ambition. "They are setting
the bar so low that companies can just step over it," Oxfam's head of inequality policy, Max
Lawson, said.
But Irish finance minister Paschal Donohoe, whose country is potentially affected because of
its 12.5% tax rate, said any global deal also needed to take account of smaller nations.
The G7 includes the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and
Canada.
Nicholas Megaw in London Sun, June 6, 2021, 8:00 PM
The UK's competition regulator has been accused of "putting foxes in charge of the henhouse"
after asking the banking industry's own lobby group to design a supervisory body to combat the
dominance of big banks. Dozens of organisations including fintech start-ups, established tech
groups like Experian and Equifax, consumer representatives and a cross-party group of MPs have
raised concerns over the Competition and Markets Authority's plan to use proposals drawn up by
UK Finance as the basis for a consultation on the future of so-called open banking rules. Open
banking forces banks to share valuable customer data with other financial services providers,
allowing smaller firms to make faster lending decisions or offer new services such as budgeting
tools.
"The bots' mission: To deliver restaurant meals cheaply and efficiently, another leap in
the way food comes to our doors and our tables." The semiautonomous vehicles were
engineered by Kiwibot, a company started in 2017 to game-change the food delivery
landscape...
In May, Kiwibot sent a 10-robot fleet to Miami as part of a nationwide pilot program
funded by the Knight Foundation. The program is driven to understand how residents and
consumers will interact with this type of technology, especially as the trend of robot
servers grows around the country.
And though Broward County is of interest to Kiwibot, Miami-Dade County officials jumped
on board, agreeing to launch robots around neighborhoods such as Brickell, downtown Miami and
several others, in the next couple of weeks...
"Our program is completely focused on the residents of Miami-Dade County and the way
they interact with this new technology. Whether it's interacting directly or just sharing
the space with the delivery bots,"
said Carlos Cruz-Casas, with the county's Department of Transportation...
Remote supervisors use real-time GPS tracking to monitor the robots. Four cameras are
placed on the front, back and sides of the vehicle, which the supervisors can view on a
computer screen. [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and
in-field team looking for the robot."] If crossing the street is necessary, the robot
will need a person nearby to ensure there is no harm to cars or pedestrians. The plan is to
allow deliveries up to a mile and a half away so robots can make it to their destinations in
30 minutes or less.
Earlier Kiwi tested its sidewalk-travelling robots around the University of California at
Berkeley, where
at least one of its robots burst into flames . But the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In
about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000
deliveries...
"Kiwibot now offers their robotic delivery services in other markets such as Los Angeles
and Santa Monica by working with the Shopify app to connect businesses that want to employ
their robots." But while delivery fees are normally $3, this new Knight Foundation grant "is
making it possible for Miami-Dade County restaurants to sign on for free."
A video
shows the reactions the sidewalk robots are getting from pedestrians on a sidewalk, a dog
on a leash, and at least one potential restaurant customer looking forward to no longer
having to tip human food-delivery workers.
The problem with conspiracy theories (CIA invented term to whitewash CIA participation in
killing of JFK) that some of them in ten to twenty years no longer viewed as conspiracies. They
enter mainstream.
An online poll this week from Ipsos reported 15% of Americans agree that the government,
media and financial worlds are controlled by Satan-worshiping pedophiles. Not 15% of
Republicans or conservatives, but of Americans. That's a lot.
... ... ...
America is a lonely place. When you hold to a conspiracy theory, you join a community.
You're suddenly part of something. You have new friends you can talk to on the internet ...
... One of the enduring and revealing songs of America asks "Which side are you on / Which
side are you on? / You go to Harlan County / There is no neutral there / You'll either be a
union man / Or a thug for J.H. Blair."
... ... ...
Conspiracy believers don't believe what the mainstream media tell them. Why would they?
Newsrooms are undergoing their own revolution, with woke progressives vs. journalistic
traditionalists, advocacy versus old-school news values. It is ideological. "We are here to
shape and encourage a new reality." "No, we are here to find and report the news." It is
generational: The young have the upper hand and the Slack channel. The woke are winning.
...
When you think your country has grown completely bizarre...Think of what normal human beings
have been asked to absorb the past year. The whole country was shut down and everyone was told
to stay in the house. They closed the churches, and the churches agreed. There was no school
and everyone made believe""really, we all made believe!""screens were a replacement. A bunch of
13-year-old girls in the junior high decided they were boys and started getting shots, and no
adults helped them by saying, "Whoa, slow down, this is a major life decision and you're a
kid." The school board no longer argues about transgender bathrooms, they're on to transgender
boys wanting to play on the girls team. Big corporations now tell you what you should think
about local questions, and if this offends you, they don't care. There were riots and protests
last summer and local government seemed overwhelmed.
Customers wouldn't have to train the algorithm on their own boxes because the robot was made
to recognize boxes of different sizes, textures and colors. For example, it can recognize both
shrink-wrapped cases and cardboard boxes.
... Stretch is part of a growing market of warehouse robots made by companies such as 6
River Systems Inc., owned by e-commerce technology company Shopify Inc., Locus Robotics Corp. and Fetch
Robotics Inc. "We're anticipating exponential growth (in the market) over the next five years,"
said Dwight Klappich, a supply chain research vice president and fellow at tech research firm
Gartner Inc.
As fast-food restaurants and small businesses struggle to find low-skilled workers to staff
their kitchens and cash registers, America's biggest fast-food franchise is seizing the
opportunity to field test a concept it has been working toward for some time: 10 McDonald's
restaurants in Chicago are testing automated drive-thru ordering using new artificial
intelligence software that converts voice orders for the computer.
McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski said Wednesday during an appearance at Alliance Bernstein's
Strategic Decisions conference that the new voice-order technology is about 85% accurate and
can take 80% of drive-thru orders. The company obtained the technology during its 2019
acquisition of Apprente.
The introduction of automation and artificial intelligence into the industry will eventually
result in entire restaurants controlled without humans - that could happen as early as the end
of this decade. As for McDonald's, Kempczinski said the technology will likely take more than
one or two years to implement.
"Now there's a big leap from going to 10 restaurants in Chicago to 14,000 restaurants
across the US, with an infinite number of promo permutations, menu permutations, dialect
permutations, weather -- and on and on and on, " he said.
McDonald's is also exploring automation of its kitchens, but that technology likely won't be
ready for another five years or so - even though it's capable of being introduced soooner.
McDonald's has also been looking into automating more of the kitchen, such as its fryers
and grills, Kempczinski said. He added, however, that that technology likely won't roll out
within the next five years, even though it's possible now.
"The level of investment that would be required, the cost of investment, we're nowhere
near to what the breakeven would need to be from the labor cost standpoint to make that a
good business decision for franchisees to do," Kempczinski said.
And because restaurant technology is moving so fast, Kempczinski said, McDonald's won't
always be able to drive innovation itself or even keep up. The company's current strategy is
to wait until there are opportunities that specifically work for it.
"If we do acquisitions, it will be for a short period of time, bring it in house,
jumpstart it, turbo it and then spin it back out and find a partner that will work and scale
it for us," he said.
On Friday, Americans will receive their first broad-based update on non-farm employment in
the US since last month's report, which missed expectations by a wide margin, sparking
discussion about whether all these "enhanced" monetary benefits from federal stimulus programs
have kept workers from returning to the labor market.
Michael Hudson appeared
again on Moderate Rebels in an examination of Biden's policy direction, some of
which are clearly a continuity from Trump and others Neoliberal Obaman. This observation and
the following discussion reveals the modus behind what was initially Trumpian:
"So if you look at the sanctions against Russia and China as a way to split Europe and
make Europe increasingly dependent on the United States, not only for gas, and energy, but
also for vaccines."
Hudson calls it "the intellectual property monopoly" which was a major point in the
rationale he produced for his Trade War with China. But as we've seen, the global reaction
isn't as it was during the previous era from 1970-2000:
"So what we're seeing is an intensification of economic warfare against almost all the
other countries in the world, hoping that somehow this will divide and conquer them,
instead of driving them all together ." [My Emphasis]
And what we're seeing is the latter occurring as the Outlaw US Empire's Soft Power rapidly
erodes. As with their initial program, the discussion is long and involved.
And since I've been absent, I should suggest reading Escobar's latest bit of
historical review , which I found quite profound and an interesting gap filler in the
historical narrative of Western Colonialism.
If we take ZH commentariat opinions as a representative sample of the US conservatives
opinion, Fauci days are now numbered. And not only because he over 80.
Speaking to Laura Ingraham, Paul asserted that "The emails paint a disturbing picture, a
disturbing picture of Dr. Fauci, from the very beginning, worrying that he had been funding
gain-of-function research. He knows it to this day, but hasn't admitted it."
The Senator also urged that Fauci's involvement has not been adequately investigated because
in the eyes of Democrats "he could do no wrong".
Paul pointed out that Fauci was denying that there was even any funding for gain of function
research at the Wuhan lab just a few weeks back, a claim which is totally contradicted by his
own emails in which he discusses it.
"In his e-mail, within the topic line, he says "˜acquire of perform research.' He was
admitting it to his non-public underlings seven to eight months in the past," Paul
emphasised.
The Senator also pointed to
the email from Dr. Peter Daszak , President of the EcoHealth Alliance, a group that
directly funded the Wuhan lab gain of function research, thanking Fauci for not giving credence
to the lab leak theory.
Ingraham asked Paul if Fauci could face felony culpability, to which the Senator replied "At
the very least, there is ethical culpability," and Fauci should be fired from his government
roles.
Earlier Paul had reacted to Amazon pulling Fauci's upcoming book from pre-sale:
In softball interviews with MSNBC and CNN Thursday, Fauci dismissed the notion that his
emails show any conflicts of interest, and claimed that it is in China's "best interest" to be
honest about the pandemic origins, adding that the US should not act "accusatory" toward the
communist state.
Roger Stone was given 9 years for lying to Congress. Fauci should be on the same
hook.
truth or go home 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Looks like Fauci is going the way of Gates, but he won't be arrested, because he is
doing the bidding of the overlords.
What could he be arrested for? Let's see: Misappropriation of government funds, lying to
a senator under oath, covering up a criminal operation, operating a conspiracy to deceive
the people of the United States.
Seems like Rand is willing to nail Fauci to the wall, but he is not willing to go after
the big kahuna - the entire hoax - the fake vaxxes, the fake lockdowns, the fake "cases",
the fake death count, the elimination of flu...
Lucky Guesst 10 hours ago
Fauci is owned by big pharma. All the major news channels have at least one big pharma
rat on the board. MSM continues to push the vaccines. They are all in bed together and need
busted up if not taken out.
SummerSausage PREMIUM 15 hours ago
2012- Fauci says weaponized virus research may produce a pandemic but it would be worth
it.
Jan 9, 2017 NIAD memo recommends lifting ban on funding weaponized virus research. Fauci
controls the funds.
Jan 4, 2017 - CIA/FBI/DNC - under Obama's direction are told, essentially, to get
Trump.
Obama is behind release of this virus, creating pandemic panic and lockdown to
facilitate stealing the 2020 election.
OBAMA must be investigated.
play_arrow
CheapBastard 10 hours ago
"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak
it."
~ Anonymous
serotonindumptruck 17 hours ago remove link
Call me a pessimist, but I predict no accountability, no malfeasance, no criminal
charges will be filed against Fauci.
We've all witnessed similar criminal behavior being perpetrated by the wealthy elite
which result in no consequences.
Why should this be any different?
(((They))) now know that (((they))) can lie to us with impunity, and get away with
it.
alexcojones 16 hours ago
New Nuremberg Needed Now.
Fauci in the witness chair.
"So, Dr. Fauci, your decisions, your outright lies, led to thousands, perhaps millions
of unnecessary deaths."
Baric & Batwoman published their chimeric coronavirus with ACE2 receptor access in
2015. Funded by Fauci, of course.
Kevin 3 hours ago (Edited)
That document only shows that Gain Of Function research exists - not that the deaths,
falsely attributed to covid are due to the product of that research.
What self-respecting, lab-created, killer virus, supposedly so deadly that it warrants
the shutting down of the entire planet, is incapable of doing any more damage than the flu
does every year?
In the case of the UK, and according to its own official figures, it hasn't even been
able to do that compared to its history of seasonal flu.
So, 2020 was just a blip compared to the past and most of that blip in increased deaths
was due to the insane policies imposed rather than any lab-created Fluzilla. If you
subtract the deaths that occurred due to:
1. Kicking seniors out of hospital and dumping them into nursing homes where they died
because they no longer got the treatment they needed but where they could infect the other,
previously healthy residents.
2. The many tens of thousands of people who had life-saving surgeries and procedures
cancelled.
3. The huge increase in suicides.
..... I doubt there would even be that blip.
If those historically, insignificant 2020 death figures are due to a lab-created,
chimeric coronavirus then that's an epic fail of the scientists and an enormous waste of
money for their education and the G.o.F. research.
However, it has conned enough idiots into believing that there was a Fluzilla in 2020
and got them to beg for jabs that might be how a lab created, chimeric coronavirus with
ACE2 receptor access gets into their bodies and kills them.
The new con that it was a leaked GoF bio-weapon that caused the 2020 'pandemic' is just
a lie upon a lie.
But it will persuade many of the gullible and fence-sitters to get jabbed because they
will have accepted (subconsciously), that the Fluzilla must have existed last year and that
the only way to combat such a bio-weapon is to jab themselves with poison. Ironically, that
will create in their bodies what they fear most.
Befits 9 hours ago remove link
No, you are not thinking clearly. The Covid death numbers were clearly and horrifically
inflated
1) The CDC changed how death certificates were recorded. Co-morbidities ( cancer,
congestive heart failure, COPD for example) that co- morbidity was listed as cause of death
in part one of the death certificate for 2 decades until the CDC changed death
certificates. If that person had for example a flu At that time ( cough, stuffy nose etc)
it might be listed as a contributing factor ( part 2 of death certificate) person died of
co- morbidity but flu was a contributing factor. The CDC reversed these to make sure Covid
was the cause of death- but truth was people died with Covid not from Covid.
2) 95% of Covid listed deaths actually died of co- morbidities- with Covid not from
Covid. The CDC published that only 5% of " Covid " deaths had only Covid- the other 95% had
on average 4 co- morbidities. In other words their cause of death was co- morbidity not
Covid.
3) personal experience. I was a nurse. A close friend's brother had cancer for 7 years-
in and out of remission. He was " diagnosed with Covid via PCR, almost no symptoms but for
a slight cough and runny nose in March 2020. In April his cancer came back his liver shut
down and he was dead by May 2020. He died from liver cancer but his death was recorded as
Covid 19 simply because he had tested positive 60 days before on a Covid PCR test. This is
the fraud the CDC perpetrated.
4) Hospitals received greatly enhanced financial renumeration if a patient was "
diagnosed" with Covid. Compare hospital reimbursement ( Medicare) for a hospitalized Covid
patient v influenza patient - similar symptoms- on or off respirator. Bottom line the
medical system was financially rewarded for diagnosing " Covid" v influenza. Indeed the
hospital did not even have to confirm a " Covid diagnosis with the fraudulent PCR test to
diagnose Covid- just " symptom" based.
5) The PCR test can not diagnose any viral illness- simply by amplification cycles (30
plus) you can " find" Covid from a dead, partial RNA fragment. As Kary Mullis, Nobel prize
inventor of PCR testing said PCR testing is NOT a diagnostic tool. Hospitals and docs,
universities and public health departments, corporations, the CDC, FDA, used false PCR
testing to financially enrich themselves while destroying the lives and livelihoods of
millions inc careers of medical truth- tellers.
Fauci, the CDC, and the FDA knows all of this. Crimes v humanity trials must be
undertaken v every medical person- from Big Pharma, CDC, FDA, Doctor, nurse, hospital
administrator, public health official, corporate leader etc who used this Covid plandemic
for personal benefit or whom through their actions harmed another.
SoDamnMad 17 hours ago
Watch Tucker Carlson's expose on "Why they lied for so long" At 3:29 he goes into Peter
Danzak getting 27 "scientists" to write in the Lancet that the Covid virus didn't come from
the Wuhan Lab but rather from nature (with the HIV spliced into the genome). But he also
tells individuals at UNC NOT to sign the letter so that their gain-of-function research
isn't tied into this. His e-mail goes to Ralph Baric, Antoinette Baric, as well as Andre
Alison and Alexsei Chmura at EcoHealthAlliance who Fauci got the money to for funding GOF
Chinese research.
Fauci is 80. Why was he allowed to stay on so long?
He controls $32 billion in annual grants that all US scientists and researchers depend
on.
There's a whole lot more corruption to explore.
CatInTheHat 8 hours ago remove link
This whole thing feels CONTRIVED
Why does this even matter anymore?
China is NOT the problem here and focusing on CHINA DISTRACTS from a few things
here.
1 FORT DETRIK. A nefarious US BIOWEAPONS lab that Fraudci worked at for 20 years. FD
also works in conjunction with DARPA
2. Whenever it's WAPO or Buzzfeed (FFS!) who breaks a story related to the Rona, I am
convinced that the elite have called them up to DISTRACT the public from something more
important. Maybe that Fort Detrik was the source of the virus transferred to China via the
US MIC/CIA and the Wuhan military games in China in Nov of 2019. 2 weeks later the first
cases showed up at Wuhan.
3. This VACCINE has now killed over 5000 people and since the rollout for children
between 12-16, several hundred have now been hospitalized with MYOCARDITIS OR
PERICARDITIS.. In Israel a study conducted as the vax rolled out in YOUNG MEN, it was
revealed that one in 3,000 was suffering from MYOCARDITIS within 4 days of the jab.
MSM is now reporting on adolescents in several states hospitalized with INFLAMMATION.
... Which they blame on RONA. FUNNY how every one of those states have rolled out the jab
for CHILDREN
WE are being massively LIED too.
Also, Biden's press secretary PSAKI LIED when she said, today, that 63% of the
population has had the jab.
Wrong. Only 41% of the US population has had BOTH jabs. Anti gun Biden is now offering
guns in exchange for a vax in Virginia. And anti marijuana Biden offering MJ in AZ for
those who take the jab. Why the desperation?
For more perspective on the massive deaths piling up due to this jab, in 1976, when 50
people were killed after the Swine flu jab IT WAS PULLED FROM THE MARKET.
Many thousands who have not had the jab are reporting illness after being in close
contact with those who are vaxxed.
Lots and lots to DISTRACT from
WAKE UP PEOPLE!!
ableman28 10 hours ago
True story....one of my VC firms investments was approached by the defense department to
create a wearable lapel style detector for chemical and biological weapons that would work
in very low concentrations giving people time to put on their CBW gear. Our investee said
sure, we'll take a crack at it, but where are we going to get all the biological and
chemical agents to test it with. The DOD response was don't worry, we have everything
you'll need. And they did.
The US bio weapons program was supposedly terminated by Nixon in 1969. And our official
policy is that we don't research or stockpile such things. ********.
Armed Resistance 15 hours ago (Edited) remove link
This virus was engineered at Ft. Detrick. It's the same place that made the
military-grade Anthrax the deep state sent to Tom Daschle and others in government post
9/11 to gin up more fear.
This was a Fauci-coordinated deep state bio weapon they released in Wuhan to kick off
the scamdemic and the "great reset". Releasing it China gave some cover to the deep state
and the people there are under total control of the state. The rest is just filler. Always
about more control.....
BeePee 15 hours ago
The virus was not engineered at Ft. Detrick.
You are a CCP troll.
Sorry you have such a low pay grade job.
Armed Resistance 15 hours ago (Edited)
Anybody who Questions the deep state is a CCP troll? Look in the mirror. You're the one
running cover for these satanists! You rack up downvotes like Jordan did points! ZH'ers can
spot a troll a mile away son.
louie1 PREMIUM 14 hours ago (Edited)
The US way is to put the perpetrators in charge of the inuiry to control the outcome.
Dulles, Zellick, Fauci
Mighty Turban of Gooch 11 hours ago
Our government is corrupt. As long as the Democrats and the MSM have Fauci's back, he
has nothing to worry about no matter what he's done.
He's just a typical lying bureaucrat and lying to the public thru the media outlets, as
we have seen countless times now by countless government 'officials', is not a crime. Lying
under oath however is. But now days we see these guys get away with that too without
consequence.
So don't hold your breath. There is absolutely nothing that can take these guys out.
Even if they throw one of their own under the bus, the best you can ever hope for is a
resignation as criminal charges would never happen.
dustinthewind 16 hours ago (Edited)
"The CDC Foundation operates independently from CDC as a private , nonprofit 501(c)(3)
organization incorporated in the State of Georgia."
"Because CDC is a federal agency , all scientific findings resulting from CDC research
are available to the public and open to the broader scientific community for review."
"The Board of Directors of the CDC Foundation today named Judith A. Monroe, MD, FAAFP,
as the new president and CEO of the CDC Foundation . Monroe joins the CDC Foundation from
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ), where she leads the agency's Office
for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support."
Gates is the largest private donor of the CDC and WHO. Gates is part of the World
Economic Forum who controls Fauci which using US taxpayers funds did gain of function
studies first in the US and caught moved to China where it was intentionally leaked to
blame the Chinese. John Kerry is also part of the WEF and is their man in Washington
calling the war mongering narrative against both China and Russia. Gates funded Imperial
College and Ferguson to write the code that was fake and used by many countries to justify
lockdowns. Gates is the largest ag landowner and wants to ban meat. Who just got hacked and
now it is blamed on Russia? Boris is destroying the UK and after a call from Gates gave 500
million pounds to vaccinate third world countries and lockdowns. Both fathers were tied to
Rockefeller Institute. Rand, connect the dots!
Fauci is under attack globally and has shown himself to be unreliable and should be
fired "" PERIOD! All the emails that have come out from an
FOIA request are interesting, and it shows he has information that was credible
concerning a leak from the lab in Wuhan. Let me make this PERFECTLY clear! This was NOT a
DELIBERATE leak by the Chinese government. If China wanted to really hurt the West, the
technology is there where a virus can be used as a delivery system, and as such, it can be
designed to attack specific genetic sequences meaning that it could target just Italian,
Greeks, English, Germans, or whoever.
COVID-19, based upon everything I see from our model and reliable sources, was created
in a lab and was DELIBERATELY unleashed to further this Great Reset. I BELIEVE someone from
this agenda bribed a lab technician to release it in the local community. China did NOT
benefit from this pandemic. The only ones who benefitted were the World Economic Forum
(WEF) consortium, which I know sold stocks and bonds ahead of the crash. They are also in
league with the World Health Organization (WHO), and the head of the WHO is a politician
and not even a doctor. That is like putting me in charge of surgery at a hospital. How can
Tedros Adhanom be in such a position with no background in the subject matter? Tedros appears at the World
Economic Forum and has participated in its agenda. The WHO should be compelled to turn over
ALL emails and communication ASAP. My bet is they pull a Hillary"¦Oh sorry. They
were hacked by Russians who destroyed everything.
The World Economic Forum is at the center of everything. When will someone investigate all
of these connections right down to creating the slogan, Build Back Better? Of course, they
will call this a conspiracy theory so they can avoid having to actually investigate
anything. My point is simple: produce the evidence and prove this is just a conspiracy
theory.
'John Kerry's Think Tank Calls for War With Russia Over Climate Change'
" America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent
national security threat it is."" John Kerry
Recently-appointed Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry has announced his
intention of dealing with the pressing issue of global warming as a national security
concern. "America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent
national security threat it is," the 76-year-old former Secretary of State wrote. "I am
proud to partner with the President-elect, our allies, and the young leaders of the climate
movement to take on this crisis." Kerry is a founding member of the Washington think tank,
the American Security Project (ASP) , whose board is a who's who of retired generals,
admirals and senators.
For the ASP, the primary objectives were:
A huge rebuilding of the United States' military bases,
Countering China in the Pacific,
Preparing for a war with Russia in the newly-melted Arctic.
The ASP recommends "prioritizing the measures that can protect readiness" of the
military to strike at any time, also warning that rising sea levels will hurt the combat
readiness of the Marine Expeditionary Force. Thus, a rebuilding of the U.S.' worldwide
network of military bases is in order.
Fort Detrik a US BIOWEAPONS lab working in tandem with the Wuhan lab. The US is the
leader in BIOWEAPONS research and has 100's of labs across the US and in other
countries.
FRAUDCI having worked at FD for 20 years.
MommickedDingbatter 12 hours ago
Without Nuremberg trials 2.0, this is all meaningless.
Nycmia37 16 hours ago remove link
Follow the science, lol. Just ask yourself who controls the science?? Big drug pharmas,
people is so stupid they believe in everything doctors tell them. The vast majority are on
the field to get rich and enjoy from the big bonuses and trips they get paid in order to
promote a drug. If they speak out they get called a conspiracy person. Nobody cant go
against this mafia because they have the total control, media, politicians, government. We
the people have to self educate about health and finance otherwise we will become zombies
like the majority of people.
SoDamnMad 7 hours ago remove link
Here are the 27 starting with Peter Daszak who signed THE LANCET letter saying ," We
stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not
have a natural origin. "
Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance, New York
Charles Calisher, Colorado State University
Dennis Carroll, Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, Texas
Fauci is protected at the very highest levels of the oligarchy. So regardless of these
revelations nothing serious will ever happen to him. At worst, he will step down and retire
to his villa in the south of France. Then the controlled MSM will refuse to mention him
again.
Clearing 17 hours ago
Gee, while you're at it, sue Fauci in his individual capacity. He doesn't get immunity
for lying. See below:
In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle that grants government
officials performing discretionary (optional) functions immunity from civil suits unless
the plaintiff shows that the official violated "clearly established statutory or
constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known". It is a form of
sovereign immunity less strict than absolute immunity that is intended to protect officials
who "make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions" extending to "all
[officials] but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law " Qualified
immunity applies only to government officials in civil litigation, and does not protect the
government itself from suits arising from officials' actions.
DemandSider 3 hours ago (Edited)
"PCR is separate from that, it's just a process that's used to make a whole lot of
something out of something. That's what it is. It doesn't tell you that you're sick and it
doesn't tell you that the thing you ended up with really was going to hurt you or anything
like that," Mullis said.
-Nobel Prize winning inventor of PCR being used as a "test" to perpetuate the scamdemic.
Mr. "small government" Rand Paul is only making it worse.
Almachius 2 hours ago
Never mind Fauci. White Supremacists are the greatest threat to America.
Obiden said so.
And Obiden is an honourable man.
Fiscal Reality 14 hours ago
Fauci doesn't give a crap what happens. He got his book deal payoff. He's praying to get
fired so he can cash in on his taxpayer funded pension and get a $10 million contract with
CNN.
2types PREMIUM 13 hours ago
Amazon pulled his book from presale so says the article. Probably in his best interest
to keep his mouth shut right now. Anything he says can and will be used against him. On
second thought.... maybe that's why water carrier Bezos suspended sales?
the OMB expects slower growth in the long run. It projects gross domestic product growth
running slightly over 2% on average annually between fiscal 2022 and 2031, while the
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office pegs growth at less than 2% on average over the same
window. Either growth rate is anemic, making more "broadly shared prosperity" unlikely as
well.
...
It may be that raising federal spending turns out to be a winning formula for Democrats in
2022. Then again, it may not. Especially since Mr. Biden would hike taxes high enough to eat up
more GDP than in any 10-year period in American history, according
to the American Action Forum's Gordon Gray. The spending binge would also increase the nation's
public debt to 117% of GDP""greater than the previous record GDP percentage that Washington
clocked in the year after World War II.
Recent polling suggests the Democrats' approach may not help them in the midterms.
... Democrats may be counting on Republicans to emphasize "culture war" issues rather than
deliver a focused, principled attack on the president's orgy of spending and tax increases.
This isn't to suggest issues like defunding the police, critical race theory and border
security are unimportant. But in 2022, as in most years, the economy will likely be the real
congressional battleground. The sooner Republicans recognize that, the better.
Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of
"The Triumph of William McKinley" (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
I don't believe policies matter any more. In 2020, democrats secured a permanent upper hand
for themselves which is mail-in ballots.
Kenneth Johnson
WSJ headline---"Yes, It's Still The Economy, Stew ped"
If....by the summer of 2022....inflation is 4%+....we're in a recession....and
unemployment is 6%+....the Democrats will lose the midterms....I hope.
If none of those things is true....they may 'dodge a bullet'.
Any other opinions?
Ron Hoelscher
They have lost the culture war and do not seem to realize it.
As far as spending, when an economy evolves to have very few people controlling the 90% of
the economy then the governing party must resort to handouts to the 90% to stay in power.
I think the Romans called it "bread and circuses." Trump was the circus, now people want
some bread.
Abridged version. See the original for full version.
Notable quotes:
"... In October 2014, the Obama administration imposed a moratorium on new funding for gain-of-function research projects that could make influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses more virulent or transmissible. But a footnote to the statement announcing the moratorium carved out an exception for cases deemed "urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security." ..."
"... the review process shrouded in secrecy. "The names of reviewers are not released, and the details of the experiments to be considered are largely secret," said the Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Marc Lipsitch, whose advocacy against gain-of-function research helped prompt the moratorium. ..."
"... In May 2014, five months before the moratorium on gain-of-function research was announced, EcoHealth secured a NIAID grant of roughly $3.7 million, which it allocated in part to various entities engaged in collecting bat samples, building models, and performing gain-of-function experiments to see which animal viruses were able to jump to humans. The grant was not halted under the moratorium or the P3CO framework. ..."
"... Shi Zhengli herself listed U.S. government grant support of more than $1.2 million on her curriculum vitae: $665,000 from the NIH between 2014 and 2019; and $559,500 over the same period from USAID. At least some of those funds were routed through EcoHealth Alliance. ..."
"... EcoHealth Alliance's practice of divvying up large government grants into smaller sub-grants for individual labs and institutions gave it enormous sway within the field of virology. The sums at stake allow it to "purchase a lot of omertà" from the labs it supports, said Richard Ebright of Rutgers. ..."
"... now the spin doctors come around pointing the finger at china. Sure, china may have done the experimentation and research, but where did the funding, research resources, training, and direction come from? ..."
"... The US banned bioweapon development (in the US) and moved it to China with Fraudci in charge so that they could do human experiments and make lots of money on GMO "vaccines" And now the US is trying to spin the story and put the blame on China ..."
As the NSC tracked these disparate clues, U.S. government virologists advising them flagged
one study first submitted in April 2020. Eleven of its 23 coauthors worked for the Academy of
Military Medical Sciences, the Chinese army's medical research institute. Using the
gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, the researchers had engineered mice with humanized
lungs, then studied their susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2. As the NSC officials worked backward
from the date of publication to establish a timeline for the study, it became clear that the
mice had been engineered sometime in the summer of 2019, before the pandemic even started. The
NSC officials were left wondering: Had the Chinese military been running viruses through
humanized mouse models, to see which might be infectious to humans?
In October 2014, the Obama administration imposed a moratorium on new funding for
gain-of-function research projects that could make influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses more
virulent or transmissible. But a footnote to the statement announcing the moratorium carved out
an exception for cases deemed "urgently necessary to protect the public health or national
security."
In the first year of the Trump administration, the moratorium was lifted and replaced with a
review system called the HHS P3CO Framework (for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and
Oversight). It put the onus for ensuring the safety of any such research on the federal
department or agency funding it. This left the review process shrouded in secrecy. "The names
of reviewers are not released, and the details of the experiments to be considered are largely
secret," said the Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Marc Lipsitch, whose advocacy against
gain-of-function research helped prompt the moratorium. (An NIH spokesperson told Vanity
Fair that "information about individual unfunded applications is not public to preserve
confidentiality and protect sensitive information, preliminary data, and intellectual
property.")
Inside the NIH, which funded such research, the P3CO framework was largely met with shrugs
and eye rolls, said a longtime agency official: "If you ban gain-of-function research, you ban
all of virology." He added, "Ever since the moratorium, everyone's gone wink-wink and just done
gain-of-function research anyway."
British-born Peter Daszak, 55, is the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a New York
City–based nonprofit with the laudable goal of preventing the outbreak of emerging
diseases by safeguarding ecosystems. In May 2014, five months before the moratorium on
gain-of-function research was announced, EcoHealth secured a NIAID grant of roughly $3.7
million, which it allocated in part to various entities engaged in collecting bat samples,
building models, and performing gain-of-function experiments to see which animal viruses were
able to jump to humans. The grant was not halted under the moratorium or the P3CO
framework.
By 2018, EcoHealth Alliance was pulling in up to $15 million a year in grant money from an
array of federal agencies, including the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland
Security, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to 990 tax exemption
forms it filed with the New York State Attorney General's Charities Bureau. Shi Zhengli herself
listed U.S. government grant support of more than $1.2 million on her curriculum vitae:
$665,000 from the NIH between 2014 and 2019; and $559,500 over the same period from USAID. At
least some of those funds were routed through EcoHealth Alliance.
EcoHealth Alliance's practice of divvying up large government grants into smaller sub-grants
for individual labs and institutions gave it enormous sway within the field of virology. The
sums at stake allow it to "purchase a lot of omertà" from the labs it supports, said
Richard Ebright of Rutgers. (In response to detailed questions, an EcoHealth Alliance
spokesperson said on behalf of the organization and Daszak, "We have no comment.")
In July, the NIH attempted to backtrack. It reinstated the grant but suspended its research
activities until EcoHealth Alliance fulfilled seven conditions, some of which went beyond the
nonprofit's purview and seemed to stray into tinfoil-hat territory. They included: providing
information on the "apparent disappearance" of a Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher, who
was rumored on social media to be patient zero, and explaining diminished cell phone traffic
and roadblocks around the WIV in October 2019.
Ebright likened Daszak's model of research -- bringing samples from a remote area to an
urban one, then sequencing and growing viruses and attempting to genetically modify them to
make them more virulent -- to "looking for a gas leak with a lighted match." Moreover, Ebright
believed that Daszak's research had failed in its stated purpose of predicting and preventing
pandemics through its global collaborations.
It soon emerged, based on emails obtained by a Freedom of Information group called U.S.
Right to Know, that Daszak had not only signed but organized the influential Lancet
statement, with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific
unanimity.
Under the subject line, "No need for you to sign the "Statement" Ralph!!," he wrote to two
scientists, including UNC's Dr. Ralph Baric, who had collaborated with Shi Zhengli on the
gain-of-function study that created a coronavirus capable of infecting human cells: "you, me
and him should not sign this statement, so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn't
work in a counterproductive way." Daszak added, "We'll then put it out in a way that doesn't
link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice."
Baric agreed, writing back, "Otherwise it looks self-serving and we lose impact."
Baric did not sign the statement. In the end, Daszak did. At least six other signers had
either worked at, or had been funded by, EcoHealth Alliance. The statement ended with a
declaration of objectivity: "We declare no competing interests."
Daszak mobilized so quickly for a reason, said Jamie Metzl: "If zoonosis was the origin,
it was a validation of his life work . But if the pandemic started as part of a lab leak, it
had the potential to do to virology what Three Mile Island and Chernobyl did to nuclear
science." It could mire the field indefinitely in moratoriums and funding restrictions.
In a CNN interview on March 26, Dr. Redfield, the former CDC director under Trump, made a
candid admission: "I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of
this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped." Redfield added that he
believed the release was an accident, not an intentional act. In his view, nothing that
happened since his first calls with Dr. Gao changed a simple fact: The WIV needed to be ruled
out as a source, and it hadn't been.
After the interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from
strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists,
some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just "wither and die."
Peter Daszak was getting death threats too, some from QAnon conspirators.
Inside the U.S. government, meanwhile, the lab-leak hypothesis had survived the transition
from Trump to Biden. On April 15, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the House
Intelligence Committee that two "plausible theories" were being weighed: a lab accident or
natural emergence.
Even so, lab-leak talk was mostly confined to right-wing news outlets through April,
gleefully flogged by Tucker Carlson and studiously avoided by most of the mainstream media. In
Congress, the Energy and Commerce Committee's Republican minority had launched its own inquiry,
but there was little buy-in from Democrats and the NIH didn't provide responses to its lengthy
list of demands for information.
The ground began to shift on May 2, when Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times
science writer known in part for writing a controversial book about how genes shape the social
behavior of different races, published a lengthy
essay on Medium. In it, he analyzed the scientific clues both for and against a lab leak,
and excoriated the media for its failure to report on the dueling hypotheses. Wade devoted a
full section to the "furin cleavage site," a distinctive segment of SARS-CoV-2's genetic code
that makes the virus more infectious by allowing it to efficiently enter human cells.
Within the scientific community, one thing leapt off the page. Wade quoted one of the
world's most famous microbiologists, Dr. David Baltimore, saying that he believed the furin
cleavage site "was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus." Baltimore, a Nobel Laureate
and pioneer in molecular biology, was about as far from Steve Bannon and the conspiracy
theorists as it was possible to get. His judgment, that the furin cleavage site raised the
prospect of gene manipulation, had to be taken seriously.
Weedlord Bonerhitler, 1 hour ago
Gain of function research is weaponization. We are under attack by a biological weapon
designed in a laboratory to kill people. We are, in effect, at war.
KickIce, 1 hour ago, (Edited)
With who, Washington DC? FWIW, that would be my pick.
ted41776, 1 hour ago
Yes, except "we" moved this "research" to china many years ago to speed up the weaponization
of bioweapons. the original researchers came to the us from nazi Germany after WW2 (Project
Paperclip). it wasn't moving fast enough here because of that whole experimenting on humans
thing was looked down upon here in the US (at least in the past). so "we" hired china what "we"
couldn't do domestically on "our" own.
And now the spin doctors come around pointing the finger
at china. Sure, china may have done the experimentation and research, but where did the
funding, research resources, training, and direction come from?
gregga777, 1 hour ago
Gain of function research is weaponization
It's also insane. Hey, look at what we did! We made smallpox* in our gene sequencing
laboratory. Oops! It's release into the 'wild' was an unfortunate accident.
Anyone engaged in the research & development of making viruses or bacteria more lethal
or the resurrection of presumably extinct pathogens (e.g., smallpox*) are International War
Criminals. They should be arrested and placed on trial in a suitable jurisdiction. At the very
least they should be barred forever from working in any kind of even remotely related
laboratory research.
*The complete gene sequence of smallpox is apparently freely available over the
Internet.
is an example of GOF engineering that bat lady Shi Zhengli participated in, engineering
chimeras of SARS and SARS like coronaviruses and splicing with HIV to make it more
transmissible to humans.
Pax Romana, 1 hour ago
10 page article could have been condensed into one sentence: Fort Detrick -> Canadian Lab
-> Wuhan -> Spooks -> Election Fraud -> Vax -> State Control
ted41776, 1 hour ago
The US banned bioweapon development (in the US) and moved it to China with Fraudci in charge
so that they could do human experiments and make lots of money on GMO "vaccines" And now the US is trying to spin the story and put the blame on China
no, this covaids was MADE IN THE USA even if it was produced and manufactured in China under
US funding, direction, and supervision
brian91145, 1 hour ago
100% right that is the truth that everyone will know very soon
ted41776, 1 hour ago, (Edited)
not sure if it will make any difference
911: US training and funding bin laden for over a decade? WMDs, they got WMDs! pools of
molten metal caused by... kerosene (jet fuel)? building 7...
we gotta get that f||cker bin laden though
bammy arming cartels (fast and furious) and guns they got from him used to kill americans
(including cops and border patrol)? crickets
there is no election fraud, after seeing them spend 4 years trying to overthrow a president
who allegedly used fraud and russian collusion to get elected?
and on and on and on, the neverending 24/7 stream of lies and distortion
unfortunately, truth has become pretty worthless in this sick reality most people live
in
konputa, 1 hour ago
Designed in the US, manufactured in China. We've known this since early 2020.
CheapBastard, 1 hour ago
(((Vanity Fair))) has the same editorial weight that Teen Vogue has.
The article is meant to obfuscate the truth, not clarify it.
CheapBastard, 51 minutes ago, (Edited)
The author carefully avoids inconvenient but important truths including::
Fauci funded the Wuhan bioweapons lab thru NIH (proven by emails) Fauci lied repeatedly from
day#1 about the characteristics and origin of the deadly virus (also proven by emails) the
WHO lied repeatedly about the origin the involvement of Gates in this entire fiasco
S.Parker, · 1 hour ago
Fort Detrick, USA
Handful of Dust, · 4 minutes ago
· Bumbler-in-Chief Biden in the White House Backs 'Incredible' Dr. Anthony Fauci;
Refuses Comment on Explosive Emails Exposing the Lies & Deceit
Its a book! Damn Tylers it will take me days to read. · The Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 states:
"Whoever knowingly develops, produces, stockpiles, transfers, acquires,
retains, or possesses any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system for use as a weapon, or
knowingly assists a foreign state or any organization to do so, shall be fined under this title
or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both."
Weedlord Bonerhitler, 1 hour ago
Don't need a next leak. Just need time for the leaky vaccines to do their work. A
vaccine that doesn't stop transmission and merely reduces symptoms, is not a vaccine, but an
evolutionary pressure upon the virus.
This is Marek's disease, found in chickens. A few decades ago, it was fairly
benign, but then it was treated with a vaccine that merely reduced symptoms to a minimum
without stopping the virus. Now, after evolving over a few decades while butting heads with
that leaky vaccine, it's so deadly to chickens that any unvaccinated flocks tend to be wiped
out by it, making vaccinating every chicken on Earth a necessity.
This is our future. They want people completely dependent on their vaccines to
survive.
The book is very weak. I agree that it was "dumb, distasteful, and highly overrated." Both the novel and the film romanticize sociopathic
violence and as such as distasteful. The wantonness of the film is nauseating...
But the urban dysfunctional and corrupt hell which the described neoliberal societies in summer of 2020 with with social cohesion
and morals falling so low that society can't even neither with banksters crimes, with the corruption of intelligence agencies, as well
as the street gangs violence makes film like an early warning about the dangers of neoliberalism.
It might also interpreted as a parable of what might happen with countries which rely on violence international politics.
Notable quotes:
"... the movie's sugar coating of violence and vicious sexuality, its romanticized depiction of the protagonist, Alex, and the critical acclaim and popularity, which the movie achieved, actually demonstrated how thoroughly society was degenerating into the amoral dystopia which Burgess had envisioned in his novel. ..."
"... The problem is that Kubrick seems to take pleasure in creating the violence and rape scenes which throws the whole movie off. ..."
"... psychopath obviously on the way to find a comfy place for himself in the new society of total hypocrisy. Clockwork Orange describes to a large extent the GloboHomo society of today, but with pre-cyberpunk and pre-great replacement instruments and concepts. ..."
"... The hypocrisy is on the part of Kubrick who pretends to be criticizing degenerate morals while at the same time catering to them. ..."
"... Pornography that pretends to criticize pornography had a particularly odious run with Netflix pedo-perverse "Cuties" last year. ..."
"... Degeneracy among the chattering classes has been with us since the beginning of man. I can't speak for Burgess but I've seen enough of Kubrick's work to find him a somewhat insightful and self-aware pervert and weirdo at best. ..."
"... Alex is a psychopath that is unleashed by the elimination of traditional morality. This new society that embraces tolerance to the point of mindlessness becomes his playground. ..."
"... I suppose it is pretty tough these days to be a mass murderer on a global scale without Harvard or Yale on your resume. In the old days, Truman was able to drop 2 atomic bombs and firebomb Dresden with merely a degree from Spalding's Commercial College. ..."
"... One of the best sociopath roles. Maybe the most disturbing. Willams' best role. ..."
"... The tendency of sociopaths to flourish in our current system is an argument to change the system not an argument to compete to have better sociopaths in charge of our movement. ..."
"... Sociopaths need not flourish in every system. It really depends on the criteria for selection. One of the problems with empowering the masses is that it gives a role to people with average and below-average levels of discernment in choosing who rises to the top, and that virtually guarantees that sociopathic con artists will rise into positions of prominence. ..."
For years now, readers have been urging me to review Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), which adapts Anthony
Burgess' 1962 novel of the same name. I have resisted, because although A Clockwork Orange is often hailed as a classic, I
thought it was dumb, distasteful, and highly overrated, so I didn't want to watch it again. Of course I had first watched it decades
ago. But maybe I would see it differently if I gave it another chance. So I approached it with an open mind. But I was right the
first time.
A Clockwork Orange is set in Great Britain in a not-too-distant future. Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his three buddies are
violent hooligans who engage in rape, assault, robbery, and wanton destruction. The movie opens with an amphetamine-fueled crime
spree. They beat up an old drunk, brawl with another gang, run people off the road while joy riding, then use a confidence trick
("There's been a terrible accident. Can I come in and use your phone?") to invade a couple's home, whereupon they beat the man, rape
his wife, and trash the place. The whole sequence is deeply distasteful. Violent sociopaths like Alex and his friends should simply
be killed.
Alex is high-handed and cruel to his buddies as well, using treachery and violence to assert dominance over them. This merely
breeds resentment. One night they decide to rob a wealthy woman's house. The old accident trick does not work, so Alex breaks in.
There is a struggle. She attacks him with a bust of Beethoven, so he kills her with a sculpture of a penis. Hearing sirens, he exits,
whereupon his ex-friends clobber him with a bottle and leave him for the police.
Let that be a lesson to you.
Alex is imprisoned for murder. He seeks to ingratiate himself with the authorities by feigning Christian piety. (As a violent
sociopath, he finds the Old Testament more to his liking.)
When a new Left-wing government comes into power, they want to free up prison space for political prisoners, so they introduce
an experimental cure for his violent sociopathy: the Ludovico technique, which is basically a form of Pavlovian conditioning. Alex
is the test subject. He is injected with a nausea-producing drug then forced to watch films of violence, including sexual violence.
Eventually, he can't even think of violence without becoming violently ill. Pronounced cured, he is released into society.
Newly paroled, Alex bumps into the bum that he assaulted, who recognizes him and wants revenge. He calls together his fellow bums
to beat Alex, whose Ludovico conditioning makes it impossible for him to fight back.
Ironic, huh?
Let that be a lesson to you.
When the mob of hobos is broken up by two cops, they turn out to be two of Alex's old gang, the very ones he humiliated. Eager
to exact further revenge, they beat him mercilessly and abandon him in the countryside. Alex is helpless to resist.
Ironic, huh?
Let that be a lesson to you.
Alex wanders through the countryside until he takes refuge at the home of the very couple he and his gang brutalized. Ironic,
huh? The husband was crippled by the beating. The wife has died and been replaced with a gigantic muscular dork named Julian. The
husband figures out who Alex is and drugs him. Then he and some of his friends, who oppose the government that introduced the Ludovico
technique, try to drive Alex to commit suicide, hoping to create a scandal that will embarrass the government. Alex throws himself
from a window and is severely injured but does not die.
To contain the scandal, the Justice Minister throws the cripple in prison and tries to win Alex's favor by tending to his wounds.
While unconscious, he is also given brain surgery to reverse the Ludovico technique. The happy ending is that Alex returns to being
a violent sociopath, but this time he will enjoy the patronage and protection of the state. Thus the tale veers from pat moralism
to pure cynicism in the end. Apparently, the book's final chapter was "redemptive," but this was omitted as being contrived -- as
if that weren't true of the whole story.
But isn't this all redeemed by a "deep message" about human freedom? No, not really, because the moral psychology of A Clockwork
Orange is remarkably crude.
The Ludovico technique is based on the observation that normal people have a distaste for violence and cruelty directed at the
innocent. Then it simply ignores the fact that normal people don't necessarily have a distaste for violence, even cruelty, directed
at bad people. It also reverses cause and effect, reasoning that since normal people feel distaste at violence, if they can
create a mechanical association between violence and sickness, that will somehow make Alex a morally normal person, curing him of
his violent sociopathy.
Of course, this whole theory completely ignores the element of empathy. Normal people feel disgust with violence and cruelty because
they can empathize with the victims. Sociopaths lack empathy, and the Ludovico technique does not change that. Alex does not feel
sick with empathy for victims, he just feels sick. And his physiological response makes no moral distinctions between violence meted
out to the deserving and the undeserving. When he is attacked, he can't defend himself, because even violence in self-defense makes
him sick.
Of course utter stupidity is no objection to most progressive social uplift schemes, so it doesn't exactly make such a "cure"
for crime implausible.
Burgess's "deep" objection to the Ludovico technique is equally crude and dumb, but in a different way. The prison chaplain argues
that the Ludovico technique is evil because it takes away Alex's freedom, which takes away his humanity. Alex, being a sociopath,
takes pleasure in hurting innocent people. The Ludovico treatment teaches him to feel disgust at violence.
But if this is a dehumanizing assault on freedom, what are we to make of our own disgust with Alex's behavior? Is that also a
dehumanizing form of unfreedom? Presumably so.
Does this mean that when Alex becomes a violent sociopath again his humanity has been restored? Presumably so.
Since Alex the sociopath can contemplate violence without any feelings of disgust, whereas normal people cannot, does this mean
that Alex is both more free and more human than normally constituted people? If so, this is a pretty good example of a reductio
ad absurdum .
The Ludovico technique and Burgess' alternative both depend on a pat dualism between body and mind, which leaves no place for
what the ancients called virtues and the moderns called moral sentiments. For the ancients, virtue is rooted in habit. For moral
sentiments theorists, our ability to perceive the good is caught up in feelings like empathy and disgust. But to the Ludovico technique,
virtue is indistinguishable from Pavlovian conditioning, and moral sentiments are indistinguishable from a sour stomach. From the
chaplain's point of view, the freedom of the mind is so separate from the body, habit, and feeling that a sociopath's lack of virtue
or moral sentiment actually make him freer and thus more human than morally healthy people.
But isn't Kubrick's treatment of this material brilliant? No, not really. Kubrick's treatment of sex and violence veers between
the pornographic and cartoonish. The entire movie is crude and cynical parody, with an ugly cast, grotesque costumes, hideous sets,
and dreadful over-acting. The whole production reminded me of the comics of R. Crumb, who puts his prodigious talent to work churning
out pornography, grotesquerie, and world-destroying cynicism. Crumb obviously hates America. He especially hates women. Likewise,
the director of A Clockwork Orange obviously hates everything about Great Britain. He also takes particular pleasure in the
mockery and degradation of women. Handling such material with technical skill does not redeem it. Indeed, by making it seductive,
Kubrick actually it makes it worse.
A Clockwork Orange is violence-porn and porn-porn combined with a middle-brow, moralistic "message" and some classical
music. But these function merely as an alibi, like the interviews in Playboy . A Clockwork Orange is obscene in the
literal sense of the word: it should not be watched.
The Burgess novel explored a simple question: is it good enough if someone does the right thing (abhors gratuitous violence
and carnage) for the wrong reason (Pavlovian programming).
The novel incorporated a bastardized lexicon with a short unnecessary dictionary at the very end to help the reader along.
As with his also futuristic Wanting Seed, Burgess's Clockwork is a satire of the absurd lefty politics of his day. The novel has
aged well, as sixty years later the lefty politics of the day are even more absurd.
When Kubrick's movie version of "The Clockwork Orange" premiered, Burgess was asked what he thought of it. After a half century,
I cannot recall Burgess's exact words but they were to the effect that the movie perfectly illustrated the points he had made
in his novel.
Most naively interpreted this as an endorsement of the movie. However, Burgess was adept with words. I understood this to be
a subtle barb. Burgess's words had an alternative implication, i.e. that the movie's sugar coating of violence and vicious
sexuality, its romanticized depiction of the protagonist, Alex, and the critical acclaim and popularity, which the movie achieved,
actually demonstrated how thoroughly society was degenerating into the amoral dystopia which Burgess had envisioned in his novel.
OTOH, my personal opinion is that despite the moral repugnance which the movie engendered for me it is, like all of Kubrick's
movies, a cinematic masterpiece. It's an unfortunate fact that some art can be immoral and even hostile to truth yet still have
aesthetic virtue.
The problem is that Kubrick seems to take pleasure in creating the violence and rape scenes which throws the whole movie
off.
It's like he can't decide if Alex should be his unique and wonderful self even if it means raping and killing people. The scene
of him of setting his rank in the gang is a celebration of violence as an art form.
Kubrick clearly thought that Alex beating the woman with a giant d-k must have been great fun and anyone in the stodgy British
chattering class probably had it coming anyways. There seems to be nothing wrong with cruising the British countryside for a bit
of the ultraviolence as long as you have style and can show off your good taste by listening to Beethoven.
Are we supposed to pity Alex when the husband tries to kill him? Kubrick seems to think so but who could blame a husband that
wants to avenge his wife? According to Kubrick he is really boring and went gay anyways.
The movie is a mess but still worth watching as a sort of shock to the senses. Some say the book is better which while true
on a story level it's also a bit of chore since there is so much fictitious slang. My copy in fact had a compendium slang dictionary.
So you spend half the time looking up all these words that the author made up. Fun.
What I don't get is why anyone would want you to review the movie. I would put it towards to top of the 70s rape and violence
trash heap but that isn't saying much. If anything I have more respect for the blatantly violent biker flicks like Wild Angels
because they at least aren't trying to pretend that they have some deep message about society.
It's one of those movies that would have much worse reviews if a famous director wasn't attached to it. Great acting by Malcom
though and a shame he was surrounded by amateurs.
@Rahanpsychopath obviously
on the way to find a comfy place for himself in the new society of total hypocrisy. Clockwork Orange describes to a large extent
the GloboHomo society of today, but with pre-cyberpunk and pre-great replacement instruments and concepts.
The hypocrisy is on the part of Kubrick who pretends to be criticizing degenerate morals while at the same time catering
to them.
It would be like creating a movie about the degenerate nature of porn but the first 20 minutes is a gang bang. Oh but the main
characters will later change and find complexity in their predicament. It's a social criticism of modern society you see.
This had to be one of the dumbest movies that I ever TRIED to watch. Was underway on a ship and they played this movie for
us to watch, got up and left after only maybe 15-20 minutes into the film. "Overrated" is too mild a word for it. GARBAGE FILM.
Out of 5 stars I don't even give it half a star.
Good review. I will add one positive point: It is relevant to current events. Roger Ebert pointed out that Kubrick is playing
with the idea that in a world where the ruling pattern of thought is criminal insanity, one might as well be criminally insane.
This turned out to be prescient, because the conversion to woke insanity has taken hold. I could give dozens of examples, but
I will stay with the Beethoven theme of the movie. Beethoven has recently been proclaimed an "above average " composer, and a
supremicist, worthy of cancellation. Oxford is now debating canceling musical notation if the world is crazy, might as well join
them.
@Mr. Ed is meaningless, the
client of the police algorithm is a woman with testicles, which she had implanted just to enjoy the testosterone boost, but still
identifies as a woman. Just like everyone, she only has virtual sex, because real sex is for degenerate fascist perverts known
as "piggies". The moment a piggie man and a piggie woman start making out, the closest electronic gadgets start blasting feminist
propaganda on how disgusting and humiliating it is for a woman to be banged by a man.
And of course, the new iPhuck 10 is a semi-AI sex toy for the upper middle classes, which randomly goes into various BDSM and
fetish modes, in order to comply with diversity mandates.
One reading of the film is as a dark, slanted allegory for England's history as a conquering nation from 1066 to its eventual
post-WW2 shrinking to be too afraid to fight or conquer anymore.
The droogs represent England, or English martial spirit. As the the film begins, they assault an old drunk hobo singing Molly
Malone (representing Ireland), a group of similar ruffians (representing Scotland) who are about to rape a girl and jump off a
stage (the Scottish Highlands, or perhaps just north of the English border generally) to fight the English, and, finally, successful
assault against a cultured, peace-loving old man and his beautiful wife (representing either Wales or France). In all the assaults,
the ruffians make no apologies, and, in fact, later, in sequence are seen walking around wearing various hats of other martial
nations, showing the same conquering, harsh martial spirit has been alive in others.
All of this is brought to a halt when their schemes get them caught. The leader of the martial spirit is brainwashed to hate
violence (English pols who apologize for creating an Empire and conquering and/or are now too milquetoast to fight, like Chamberlain),
while his former fellow cohorts abuse him (internal civil strife), as does his former victims (victim culture).
But there is an upside(?). By bringing him so low, the conditioning is broken, and his old violent martial spirit returns.
Anyway, that was just my symbolic reading, ignoring the other readings I've had of the film.
Pornography that pretends to criticize pornography had a particularly odious run with Netflix pedo-perverse "Cuties" last
year.
Degeneracy among the chattering classes has been with us since the beginning of man. I can't speak for Burgess but I've
seen enough of Kubrick's work to find him a somewhat insightful and self-aware pervert and weirdo at best.
I've always known this movie was trash and avoided it like the plague. What demented person's have been "urging" the author
to review it? Do they need somebody else's approval before they watch it? I never understood these type of people who make degenerate
movies like this and those by Quentin Terantino into movie classics. Who wants to watch more degeneracy when we already live in
a degenerate society? Just turn on the news and get your thrills.
A must read. Tip: Download his entire website (whitenationalism.com
), ((they)) are trying to scrub it off the web it seems. BTW below : Inner party/ IP–> Chosenites
Some snippets
"The very aversion therapy that the inner party psychiatrist was administering to Alex late in the movie to curb his criminality,
Kubrick was administering to his fellow tribesmen right from the opening scene, to curb their liberal universalist illusions.
The setting is in a future time in which the people speak a language which is a mixture of English and Russian. The protagonist,
Alex, is a high school dropout born and raised in a public housing project. Alex is what you would call a tabula rasa – a blank
slate – from a cultural standpoint. His parents have no culture at all, they are remarkably obedient and dull witted. Both parents
work and both spend all their free time in front of the telly, being passively entertained.
Alex's parents are exactly what the inner party wishes us all to become.
They work, they consume, and they are passive and obedient, with no thoughts of their own.
They are new socialist man – interchangeable parts with no sense of their own group identity or uniqueness – no traditions,
no culture, and no reactionary and troublesome notions to pass on to their children.
But their only son is another story altogether. He very much prefers active entertainment."
snip
"Differences in aesthetic preference and perception provoke and sharpen conflict rather than reduce it. Indeed, this idea
that high art is a universal which can lead humans into a uniform brotherhood of man is absurd. Thus, Kubrick's message that high
art is a differentiating mechanism – fraught with potential for conflict and competition – is broadly consistent with Professor
Geoffrey Miller's thesis in The Mating Mind, that our brains evolved primarily as ornaments of fitness in the highly competitive
sexual selection process.
Siamese twin to the Freudian attack is the Freudian promise, namely that peace and universal harmony can be attained through
sexual liberation and "free love." – if only sex can be stripped of the competitive and aggressive baggage imposed by repressive
society.
Alex's denoument occurs at another home invasion fraught with symbolic content. The home is occupied by a conspicuously IP
looking woman (the cat lady) with her house decorated with a conspicuously IP collection of erotic art objects and paintings.
When Alex enters, she becomes remarkably aggressive and assaultive, swinging a bust of Beethoven (his [European] art) as a
weapon against him, as he grabs one of her large phallic sculptures (her [Jewish] art) and deploys it to defend himself.
As this sexual/artistic combat is danced out to the tune of Rossini's Thieving Magpie, Kubrick explodes the Freudian myth of
peace and harmony through free sex so popular among his own tribesmen, ."
This is a pretty good assessment of Clockwork Orange. I think the movie could be used as a gauge of one's own growth. The first
time I saw it I was in my late teens. It wasn't that impressive but I sat through it and took in its lessons. I have watched it
maybe 3 times since then. The last time I watched it, somewhere in my mid-thirties, I didn't even want to finish it. I found it
that distasteful. In a similar way as a movie called Vulgar that was released about 20 years ago.
Last year's Joker movie was much less stomach turning than either of those movies.
I was around 15 when this movie came out and I never had a desire to see it because of its violence and homo/glitter rock make
up of the protagonist/antagonist played by Malcolm McDowell.
I've seen some of it over the last 50 years and still agree with the article even though I find some of the scenes now humorously
entertaining.
Now lets talk about Kubrick. He has made a number of great movies, Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, etc. but where would he
be if not for Jewlywood? Yeah sure he started small but with hymie $ backing $. I put it to you that if he weren't a JOO (but
also being a Jew, lol) he would have been jerking off to boy porn or otherwise in the Bronx until his death. (Wry grin)
To sum up, a society that rejects morality and meaning in favor of utilitarianism (symbolized by the drab, horrible architecture),
hedonism (the ready availability of drugs and the tasteless, obscene decoration), and situational expediency, builds itself a
nightmare world, in which there is no beauty, subtlety, meaning, or decency. Its denizens are hopeless slaves to base instincts
and the fads of the moment.
Does any of that seem to resonate with our current situation?
It doesn't matter if backdrop resonates with our current situation or appears prophetic.
The problem is that Kubrick pandering to the same moral degeneracy that he is also trying to criticize.
Alex is a psychopath that is unleashed by the elimination of traditional morality. This new society that embraces tolerance
to the point of mindlessness becomes his playground.
Kubrick takes advantage of that same extreme tolerance by selling rape and violence. The first third of the movie depicts Alex
as the protagonist even though he rapes and kills for his own pleasure. It's acknowledged that he has access to a normal life
and rejects it on the basis of it being too conforming. How many movies lure the audience into celebrating a rapist as an individualist?
Later after the treatment fails we are supposed to identify with him as a victim of society. What about the people that he
raped and murdered? Are they not victims? We are supposed to forget about that and view him as morally superior to the system
that tried reprogramming him. Well this is exact same moral relativism that created the dystopia in the first place.
The truth is that Kubrick likes the world of Alex and would prefer living there over some stodgy traditional society. Sure
you might get raped or murdered by an individualist but you were probably some faceless chattering class White that lacked taste
and had it coming anyways.
Kubrick liked to shock people – he studied it, not just the photographic techniques, but also the psychology of inducing maximum
fear and terror in his audience. He hoped this would make his films more memorable, and it obviously did, while arguably better
films, such as
are almost completely forgotten now. Watched about 1/2 hour of Orange on video before turning it off. Can't imagine why anyone
would want to subject themselves to that on the big screen. 2001 is a masterpiece.
I suppose it is pretty tough these days to be a mass murderer on a global scale without Harvard or Yale on your resume.
In the old days, Truman was able to drop 2 atomic bombs and firebomb Dresden with merely a degree from Spalding's Commercial College.
1. One can turn a sociopath into a normal person by making him sick while showing him movies of sex and violence. In other
words, there's no difference between empathy and/or good character and a sour stomach.
2. Freedom of choice is a necessary condition for morality and humanity (the old libertarian apology for moral laxness), which
means that sociopaths are better moral agents and more human than gentlemen, who through habit and moral sentiment are less "free"
to behave dishonorably.
3. A movie that decorates rape, wanton cruelty, cartoonish acting, and crude parody with little sprigs of middle-brow moralizing
is redeemed by it.
The tendency of sociopaths to flourish in our current system is an argument to change the system not an argument to compete
to have better sociopaths in charge of our movement.
Sociopaths need not flourish in every system. It really depends on the criteria for selection. One of the problems with
empowering the masses is that it gives a role to people with average and below-average levels of discernment in choosing who rises
to the top, and that virtually guarantees that sociopathic con artists will rise into positions of prominence.
The White Nationalist movement needs to weed out sociopathic types. Let the system have them.
@Priss Factor to the rest
of the gang betraying him and leaving him to the police. In short, he's a lousy leader, and his gang are lousy followers, because
sociopaths lack fellow feeling, which makes it impossible for them to feel loyalty and solidarity and difficult for them to understand
one another.
Hitler, by contrast, built a movement that grew into millions and inspired fanatical loyalty, in large part because he was
highly empathetic: he cared about people, understood people, and made people feel visible and understood by him. I know words
like "sociopath" or "madman" are thrown around constantly as insults, but they also mean things in the real world, and they don't
fit Hitler.
The problem for White Nationalism and the dissident right is these movements attract very low-quality sociopaths. If you
look at very successful political movements (such as neoconservatism) you'll find that they attract sociopaths of much higher
quality.
No, extreme Jews are supported by rich Jews, whereas 'extreme' whites are rejected by successful whites.
Most Neocons are silly people. But they got backing.
Even is 'extreme' whites were all high-quality, they would be rejected by moneyed whites because Jews control the gods.
@Oscar Peterson imagine a
future with a wife and son. It's an abrupt change in 10 pages and Alex retains the self-pity that makes you wonder whether that
could really happen."
This is the version I read, and it is vital to the story.
ACO was published in 1962, and was astonishingly prescient. The movie inspired 1970's punk attitudes and the enormous cultural
impact which reverberates to this day. The Sex Pistols and 'Anarchy in the UK' were Alex' character for those who couldn't get
enough of him.
Like the protagonist, we can all look at our younger selves and see a different person. Johnny Rotten, like a real life Alex,
eventually got old, and now he waxes nostalgic for old England.
As long as it your socio-path, doing your dirty work, nobody cares about a sociopath. At one time 90% of the US supported the
Bush/Cheney invasion of Iraq, but now you cant find anyone who will state they did and they were wrong. Kubrick is brilliant because
he exposed our collective schizophrenia by letting us know how much we enjoy it.
Trevor Lynch: "Alex is part of a group of four, and when he starts acting the leader of the other three, he's brutal and high-handed,
which leads immediately to the rest of the gang betraying him and leaving him to the police. In short, he's a lousy leader "
Hitler could be treacherous and brutal too. Alex miscalculated, whereas Hitler, in the night of the long knives, didn't miscalculate.
The moral would seem to be that when you betray somebody, don't leave them alive so they can take revenge. Thus, you could say
that Alex's mistake was that he wasn't sociopathic enough . But then, not everyone can be a Hitler.
Trevor Lynch: "I know words like "sociopath" or "madman" are thrown around constantly as insults, but they also mean things
in the real world, and they don't fit Hitler. "
Their meaning is in their social significance. They mean "I don't like you", and mark someone as outgroup. But there is no
objective definition of mental health, only various types of animal behavior. Either the behavior helps the animal survive, or
it doesn't. Raised in brutality, one becomes brutal. Raised in a technological society, we get the kind of "normal" white people
who celebrate their own racial destruction. In such an environment, "normality" is overrated. By feeding into this mentality,
your review is counterproductive.
Trevor Lynch: "The tendency of sociopaths to flourish in our current system is an argument to change the system not an argument
to compete to have better sociopaths in charge of our movement. "
Cast out all the wolves, and you are left with only sheep.
Cast out all the wolves, and you are left with only sheep.
There are wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs to protect the flock.
In a well-run society, the sheepdogs cull the wolves. Healthy people don't need sociopaths. They need us.
The story of the Rohm purge is not Hitler calculatingly betraying Rohm, but Rohm betraying Hitler, who hesitated to believe
the worst of Rohm until it was almost too late.
There is no question that large corporations absolutely dominate our society today. They
control what we eat, they control what we watch on television, they own most of the stores that
we shop at, they provide the energy that our nation depends upon, and they make almost all of
the products that we use. Tens of millions of Americans make a living by serving these colossal
firms, and at this point some of the biggest corporations are larger than many small countries.
But of course the corporations aren't the top of the food chain. They have owners, and there
are 3 giant financial companies that the global elite use to control 88 percent of the
corporations that are currently listed on the S&P 500.
According to Wikipedia
, BlackRock had $8.67 trillion in assets under management as of January 2021
BlackRock, Inc. is an American multinational investment management corporation based in
New York City. Founded in 1988, initially as a risk management and fixed income institutional
asset manager, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with $8.67 trillion in assets
under management as of January 2021.[citation needed][6] BlackRock operates globally with 70
offices in 30 countries and clients in 100 countries.[7]
Vanguard is nearly as big. According to Wikipedia , Vanguard had $6.2
trillion in assets under management as of January 2021
The Vanguard Group, Inc. is an American registered investment advisor based in Malvern,
Pennsylvania with about $6.2 trillion in global assets under management, as of January 31,
2020.[5] It is the largest provider of mutual funds and the second-largest provider of
exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the world after BlackRock's iShares.[6] In addition to mutual
funds and ETFs, Vanguard offers brokerage services, variable and fixed annuities, educational
account services, financial planning, asset management, and trust services. Several mutual
funds managed by Vanguard are ranked at the top of the list of US mutual funds by assets
under management.[7]
... ... ...
Being the largest owner of a publicly traded company doesn't mean that you can do whatever
you want, but it does give you enormous power.
BlackRock and Vanguard were among the major shareholders whose votes helped to install two
new members on ExxonMobil's board of directors, dealing the oil giant a major defeat in the
election of board members at this year's annual (virtual) shareholders meeting.
The two fund giants, which together own approximately 14% of ExxonMobil shares, according
to reports, supported portions of a dissident slate of board nominees brought by a Engine No.
1, an activist, purpose-driven investment firm that sees ExxonMobil's response to the global
climate crisis as far too weak to help achieve net zero emissions by 2050, putting
shareholder value at risk. Engine No. 1 put forth a slate of four nominees, all with
experience in the oil and gas or renewable energy industry.
ExxonMobil did not want these new board members, but now they have been forced to take
them.
y_arrow
Dragonlord 16 minutes ago (Edited)
If you add Fidelity and BNY Mellon , its even greater.
Rainman 19 minutes ago
It's a stronger and better republic since Glass-Steagall got flushed out 2 decades ago
< snark maximo >
Tesla completely transformed the automotive landscape when it introduced the Roadster, pioneering the mass-market electric car and
reinventing
the car as we know
. It sold the first widely-available EV, and it did it with a product that you could easily live with every
day. The company has done more to further the electric game than anyone else and deserves total credit for making EVs a part of the
discussion when it comes to the future of the automobile.
Tesla
has
changed the world. It's also doomed.
The last mainstream automaker to be launched from scratch in the United States was Saturn, a heavily subsidized child of the GM
family. Even with those deep pockets, it failed. History is littered with dead automotive brands. The list of deceased automakers is
also replete with visionary leaders who pioneered new tech and aimed to dominate the luxury market.
The automobile game is tough. The dirty secret is
that the big brands only make around 6% margin on every car they sell
This is all to say: we've been here before. Hudson, Tucker, DeLorean (
twice!
),
Packard, and more. The stories here are all different in their specifics, with some succumbing to shady government dealing, others
losing to price wars. While the immediate causes of their failures might be unique, the fact that they failed certainly is not.
The consumer automobile game is devilishly tough. The dirty secret of the car making world is that the big brands only make around
6% margin on every car they sell. That's a pathetic amount of profit when compared to other well-known brands like Nike, Apple, or
Disney. Shoes, upscale electronics, and entertainment (as well as scores of other industries) all offer double the profit margins,
faster production times, less regulation, and fewer unionized workforces. Building cars is dumb. Car companies make billions of
dollars in profits because they sell so many cars, not because each car is so profitable. And therein lies the rub for Tesla.
Why Tesla is doomed
The only way to be successful at car manufacturing is to do it at a very large scale. You have to sell hundreds of thousands, if not
millions of cars per year to be stable. In 2018,
Tesla
shifted a total of 245,240 cars
. The
Tesla
Model 3
also became the best-selling luxury automobile in United States; last year was fantastic for Tesla. It also took the
company to the very brink of imploding.
Scaling up production lines and capacity is the activity that is killing Tesla, but scaling up further is the only thing that can
save it. The company is at the low point of a "production valley" where becoming capable of building 300,000 cars has made them
wildly unprofitable, but the only way to get to profit is to build even more capacity to enable it to make 700,000 – 1,000,000 cars.
Tesla could potentially have, or raise, the billions needed to do this. It could, that is, if the company could concentrate on doing
one thing at a time.
Tesla's worst enemy is Elon Musk. The serial entrepreneur has an affliction that many serial entrepreneurs have: Shiny Thing
Syndrome. Mr. Musk loves to chase after new challenges and novel projects. Tesla is currently producing 3 different cars, wall
chargers, charging stations, electric semi-trucks, photovoltaic roofs, and spearheading autonomous technology. Throw in the odd
flamethrower
,
underground
tunnels
, and a new
insurance
product
(not to mention
Space
X
), and you see a leader not focused on doing the hard work of pushing his company through a crisis of scale, but a man obsessed
with moon-shots and new projects.
Scaling up production is the activity that is
killing Tesla, but scaling up further is the only thing that can save it
It should be noted that Musk has never operated any business at this scale before. Running a nimble online service such as Paypal is
a very different thing than running a multinational car manufacturer -- especially one that is exclusively pursuing new technologies.
Quite frankly, Musk is not qualified to be CEO of Tesla any longer, and the mismatch of his skills to the company's needs could not
be worse timed for Tesla.
In the next 12 months, practically all other major global auto manufacturers have plans to release their own electric cars. Tesla
ate their lunch last year when it became the best-selling luxury car, but at that time, it was the only EV game in town. More
worryingly, the most common Tesla owner complaints happen to be the areas that traditional car companies excel at:
Fit
and finish
,
service
infrastructure
, and execution on timelines. When Porsche announced its
Taycan
electric sedan
, its #1 source of reservations was from current Tesla owners. This is a surefire sign that the Tesla customer
base is eager to upgrade to something better.
China, the world's largest car market, and the savior of many global brands, cannot save Tesla. Indeed, the current trade war
between the U.S. and China is
hurting
Tesla more
than any other car company. The current price for a Tesla Model 3 in China is approximately $73,000, with roughly
$30,000 of that price being the result of China's import tariffs. In January, Elon Musk broke ground on a Gigafactory in China, and
the total investment in the project is expected to exceed $4 billion,
according
to Goldman Sachs
. That is an amount of money Tesla, quite frankly, doesn't have to spend. After a disastrous first quarter 2019,
the company quickly raised $2.35 billion in stock and debt. Even with this recent cash infusion, Musk told employees the company
would be
out
of cash in 10 months
if spending continued at current levels.
The end of Tesla
Tesla will not go bankrupt. It cannot go bankrupt. At the moment, the company is still well-placed to raise another funding round
and could likely even do as many as three more funding events before investors stop lining up. Failure for Tesla won't happen
tomorrow, but it is coming. More and more evangelists are changing their tunes as competition in EVs gets fiercer. Wall street is
losing patience with broken promises and erratic CEO behavior. And the everyday consumer is finding more electric car options that
tempt their dollar now that Tesla is not the only game in town. No, Tesla's end will not happen tomorrow, nor will it be a dramatic
collapse.
Telsa is too valuable a brand to disappear in a cloud of Chapter 11 smoke. Again, history bears this out. The vast majority of
automotive brands from years past were acquired or absorbed into larger brands, where some succeeded brilliantly (Dodge) and others
slowly morphed into something unrecognizable (Hudson). Arguably, the Tesla brand is the most valuable piece of Tesla's balance sheet
as other manufacturers have caught up with their hard technology (batteries, chargers), and are rapidly chasing down their soft
technology (
Autopilot
).
The Tesla brand is global in reach, and still viewed favorably overall by the public.
The endgame for Tesla is an acquisition. It is the way of the automotive jungle -- the circle of corporate life, as it were. The
unknowable part at the moment is exactly who will acquire Tesla, as the list is quite long. Another car company is the reflexive
bet, but Silicon Valley and Chinese auto manufacturers are all likely bidders as well. Apple
already
offered to buy Tesla
back in 2013 for more than the company is worth at the time of this story. The field of suitors is wide
open, and the eventual winner could well come as a surprise to the everyday public.
Regardless of who steps up to the plate, it will be very surprising if the transaction is labelled as an acquisition. No -- this will
be a "merger" or "partnership" to protect egos and that all-important Tesla brand (again, the most valuable asset on their books).
Any upcoming news of a partnership with a Toyota or a Mercedes should not be seen as a life preserver thrown out in good faith, but
a wholesale pirate sacking of the company. Musk will quietly slip away to chase his shiny things, popping in for product launches
and tweetstorms, but the adults will be put in charge and set a profitable course. What happens after that, no one can know.
Before the pitchforks come out, make no mistake: The world is a better place for Tesla having existed. Electric cars are no longer
made out of old Porsche 914s by a guy in a shed. We are moving toward an electric future, all thanks to underdog Tesla. The world,
and Americans especially, are enamored with an underdog story. But more often than not, the underdog loses. That's why they are
underdogs. In the best of worlds, Tesla can influence Mercedes or a Chinese company from the inside to really nail electric cars and
make them the most affordable option for consumers. I hope that comes to pass for all our sakes.
Money quote from comments: "When news of this proposed standard came out, I read the actual
standard because I wanted to see if it really was that bad. Things were reported like, "Saying
an answer is 'wrong' is racist. There is no right and wrong in math, just shades of truth."
These kinds of things are worrisome. So I read a good chunk of the proposal, and I couldn't
find anything like that. Instead, I found their point was that anyone has the capability of
learning math, and so we should be teaching it to everyone. If people aren't learning it, then
that's a problem with our teaching methods.
Not sure Google and Apple will be happy. Clearly programming languages are racists as almost
all of them were created by white guys and they disproportionally punish poor coders...
A plan to reimagine math instruction for 6 million California students has become
ensnared in equity and fairness issues -- with critics saying proposed guidelines will hold
back gifted students and supporters saying it will, over time, give all kindergartners through
12th-graders a better chance to excel. From a report: The proposed new guidelines aim to
accelerate achievement while making mathematical understanding more accessible and valuable to
as many students as possible, including those shut out from high-level math in the past because
they had been "tracked" in lower level classes. The guidelines call on educators generally to
keep all students in the same courses until their junior year in high school, when they can
choose advanced subjects, including calculus, statistics and other forms of data
science.
Although still a draft, the Mathematics Framework achieved a milestone Wednesday, earning
approval from the state's Instructional Quality Commission. The members of that body moved the
framework along, approving numerous recommendations that a writing team is expected to
incorporate. The commission told writers to remove a document that had become a point of
contention for critics. It described its goals as calling out systemic racism in mathematics,
while helping educators create more inclusive, successful classrooms. Critics said it
needlessly injected race into the study of math. The state Board of Education is scheduled to
have the final say in November.
When news of this proposed standard came out, I read the actual standard because I wanted to
see if it really was that bad. Things were reported like, "Saying an answer is 'wrong' is
racist. There is no right and wrong in math, just shades of truth." These kinds of things are
worrisome.
So I read a good chunk of the proposal, and I couldn't find anything like that. Instead, I
found their point was that anyone has the capability of learning math, and so we should be
teaching it to everyone. If people aren't learning it, then that's a problem with our teaching
methods.
I also found that instead of getting rid of calculus, they are suggesting that you learn
calculus as a Junior or Senior in high school. This seems fine to me.
Does the curriculum for grades 1-10 have the appropriate foundational education for kids in
grades 11-12 to actually succeed in a calculus class? Because if not, then the notion that any
significant portion of juniors and seniors will be able take a calculus class is just a
fantasy. Re:
That is the goal, but I am not enough of an expert to know whether they reached their goal
or not. Re:
Reading (mostly skimming) through chapter 8 (about grades 9-12), a couple things stick
out:
First off, they define three different possible "pathways" for grades 9-10, which seems
completely in opposition to goal of a "common ninth- and tenth- grade experience." It sounds
like they envision that some high schools will only provide a single pathway while others will
provide multiple ones -- but it seems incredibly obvious that that's going to put students on
different tracks.
in 40 years since I did it. (I have been helping my kids.)
Which is a problem, because the world has changed with the advent of computers.
So they work on quite difficult symbolic integrations. But absolutely nothing on numerical
methods (and getting the rounding errors correct) which is far more useful in the modern
world.
For non-specialist students, there is almost nothing on how to really build a spreadsheet
model. That again is a far more useful skill than any calculus or more advanced algebra.
And then Re: I can't believe this
white supremacy I doubt they could get AP Calculus to work. It's going to have to be an
easier version of pre Calculus. Because of how they schedule the classes today, some kids take
summer courses so that they can get the prerequisites in time. Keeping everyone at the same
slow pace is painful for the stronger students. I'm wondering if they are having trouble
finding teachers who are qualified to teach math. Kumon The ones
whose parents can send them to Kumon or Russian Math after school, will have the capacity.
Those who cant even if they were smart enough for the accelerated program under current system
wont. With any law follow the money- see who will make money from this. Re:I can't believe
this white supremacy (
Score: 4 , Insightful) by CrappySnackPlane ( 7852536 ) on Monday May 31,
2021 @04:14PM ( #61440460 )
Which planet did you go to school on?
Here on Earth, here's how "everyone learns calculus in 11th grade" works:
The entire class has to stop and wait for the kids who are genuinely overwhelmed - be it
because they're smart-but-poor-and-hungry or, you know, because they're just fucking
dumb , both types exist, it doesn't matter - to catch up, because the teacher's job
rests on whether 79% or 80% of their students score a passing grade on the statewide
achiev^H^H^H^H^H^H (whoops, can't have achievements, that's ableist) "performance" tests. The
teacher, being a rational creature who understands how to make sure their family's bread
remains buttered, spends the bulk of their time helping along little Jethro and Barbie.
The bright kids are left bored out of their minds, and the "solution" presented by these
absolute shitstains is to suggest the bright kids do after-school activities if they want to
actually learn. Like, that's great for the 1% who genuinely love math the way some kids
love music or acting or sports, but what about the 25% or so who are really gifted at math and
would like to do more with it, but aren't so passionate about it that they want to give up more
of their precious dwindling free time to pursue it? What about the 50% who aren't necessarily
great at math but could certainly learn a lot more if the class wasn't being stopped every two
minutes to re-re-remind little Goobclot that "x" was actually a number, not just a letter?
Look, I absolutely agree that it's bad to write kids off as dumb. But Harrison
Bergeron is not included in the "Utopian Literature of the 20th Century" curriculum for a
reason. There's a flipside, and none of these "one size fits all" proposals does anything to
convince me that the proponents have actually seriously considered the other side of the coin.
Reply to This Parent Share FlagRe:I can't believe this
white supremacy (
Score: 2 ) by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 ) on Monday May 31,
2021 @06:26PM ( #61440894 )
My local school district is removing all AP math courses because they believe a disparity in
race in the students represents racism, and/or they just don't want to have to look at the
situation. I know the precursors to this sort of racist policy when I see it, and documents
that espouse a trifecta of equity, inclusivity, and diversity are fully intended to pull crabs
back down into the boiling bucket. Re:final countdown (
Score: 2 ) by gweihir ( 88907
) on Monday May 31, 2021 @05:31PM ( #61440734 )
Next step is mandatory lobotomies for smarter kids or something like it. Because they
obviously violate the dumber ones by setting an example the dumber ones can never hope to
reach. See also "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut.
Reply to This Parent Share
Regarding, "skills shortage," I don't expect t businesses that respect their employees well
will have trouble hiring and retaining staff. The ones in trouble are those who bought into
the "end of employees" propaganda and laid off the people they already had:
The End of Employees Updated
Feb. 2, 2017 12:41 p.m. ET
Never before have American companies tried so hard to employ so few people. The
outsourcing wave that moved apparel-making jobs to China and call-center operations to
India is now just as likely to happen inside companies across the U.S. and in almost every
industry. Hiring an employee is a last resort and "very few jobs make it through that
obstacle course."
Companies with that attitude shouldn't expect easy hiring now. They were bad
companies to work for then, and probably still are. Productive employees now have options on
where to work. Bad employers are at the bottom of the totem pole and will only get the least
desirable people who have nowhere else to go.
I accept the reality except that FED said this inflation is "transitory."
The Fed description is accurate... it's just whether the transition is to
lower inflation or to runaway inflation.
Jim McCreary
The biggest single factor that will drive long-term inflation is the absence of downward
price pressure from new Chinese market entrants. Cutthroat pricing from China is the ONLY
reason the West has been able to get away with Money-Printing Gone Wild for the past 20 years
without triggering runaway inflation.
There are no new Chinese entrants because the Chinese are now all in in the world economy.
The existing Chinese competitors are seeing their costs go UP, not down, because they have
fully employed the Chinese population, and have to pay up in order to get and keep
workers.
So, without any more downward price pressure from China, this latest round of
Money-Printing Gone Wild is showing up as price inflation, and will continue to do so.
Batten down the hatches! Stagflation and then runaway inflation are coming!
Executives at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP have voiced worries that workers who stay remote
could wind up as second-class corporate citizens, falling behind in
promotions and pay , so the company plans to track rates of advancement for office-based and
remote staff in an effort to make sure nobody lags behind.
Ford Motor Co. is
pushing ahead with digital efforts to help bring office workers back to its Dearborn, Mich.,
corporate headquarters, while eyeing a future where many of them continue to work from home,
company officials say.
For now, the auto maker is aiming for a gradual return of some employees to the sprawling
campus beginning in July, with "significantly reduced capacity" to retain social distancing, a
spokeswoman said.
Boston Dynamics, a robotics company known for its four-legged robot "dog," this week
announced a new product, a computer-vision enabled mobile warehouse robot named "Stretch."
Developed in response to growing demand for automation in warehouses, the robot can reach up
to 10 feet inside of a truck to pick up and unload boxes up to 50 pounds each. The robot has a
mobile base that can maneuver in any direction and navigate obstacles and ramps, as well as a
robotic arm and a gripper. The company estimates that there are more than 500 billion boxes
annually that get shipped around the world, and many of those are currently moved manually.
"It's a pretty arduous job, so the idea with Stretch is that it does the manual labor part
of that job," said Robert Playter, chief executive of the Waltham, Mass.-based company.
The pandemic has accelerated [automation of] e-commerce and logistics operations even more
over the past year, he said.
... ... ...
... the robot was made to recognize boxes of different sizes, textures and colors. For
example, it can recognize both shrink-wrapped cases and cardboard boxes.
Eventually, Stretch could move through an aisle of a warehouse, picking up different
products and placing them on a pallet, Mr. Playter said.
Looks like this guys somewhat understands the problems with neoliberalism, but still is captured by neoliberal ideology.
Notable quotes:
"... That all seems awfully quaint today. Pensions disappeared for private-sector employees years ago. Most community banks were gobbled up by one of the mega-banks in the 1990s -- today five banks control 50 percent of the commercial banking industry, which itself mushroomed to the point where finance enjoys about 25 percent of all corporate profits. Union membership fell by 50 percent. ..."
"... Ninety-four percent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 percent; for Americans born in 1940 the same figure was 92 percent. ..."
"... Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s and early 1980s. The notion they espoused -- that a company exists only to maximize its share price -- became gospel in business schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick. ..."
"... Simultaneously, the major banks grew and evolved as Depression-era regulations separating consumer lending and investment banking were abolished. Financial deregulation started under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and culminated in the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 under Bill Clinton that really set the banks loose. The securities industry grew 500 percent as a share of GDP between 1980 and the 2000s while ordinary bank deposits shrank from 70 percent to 50 percent. Financial products multiplied as even Main Street companies were driven to pursue financial engineering to manage their affairs. GE, my dad's old company and once a beacon of manufacturing, became the fifth biggest financial institution in the country by 2007. ..."
The logic of the meritocracy is leading us to ruin, because we arc collectively primed to ignore the voices of the millions getting
pushed into economic distress by the grinding wheels of automation and innovation. We figure they're complaining or suffering because
they're losers.
We need to break free of this logic of the marketplace before it's too late.
[Neoliberalism] had decimated the economies and cultures of these regions and were set to do the same to many others.
In response, American lives and families are falling apart. Ram- pant financial stress is the new normal. We are in the third
or fourth inning of the greatest economic shift in the history of mankind, and no one seems to be talking about it or doing anything
in response.
The Great Displacement didn't arrive overnight. It has been building for decades as the economy and labor market changed in response
to improving technology, financialization, changing corporate norms, and globalization. In the 1970s, when my parents worked at GE
and Blue Cross Blue Shield in upstate New York, their companies provided generous pensions and expected them to stay for decades.
Community banks were boring businesses that lent money to local companies for a modest return. Over 20 percent of workers were unionized.
Some economic problems existed -- growth was uneven and infla- tion periodically high. But income inequality was low, jobs provided
benefits, and Main Street businesses were the drivers of the economy. There were only three television networks, and in my house
we watched them on a TV with an antenna that we fiddled with to make the picture clearer.
That all seems awfully quaint today. Pensions disappeared for private-sector employees years ago. Most community banks were
gobbled up by one of the mega-banks in the 1990s -- today five banks control 50 percent of the commercial banking industry, which
itself mushroomed to the point where finance enjoys about 25 percent of all corporate profits. Union membership fell by 50 percent.
Ninety-four percent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working
multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American
born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 percent; for Americans born in 1940 the same figure was 92 percent.
Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s
and early 1980s. The notion they espoused -- that a company exists only to maximize its share price -- became gospel in business
schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick.
Hostile takeovers, shareholder lawsuits, and later activist hedge funds served as prompts to ensure that managers were committed
to profitability at all costs. On the flip side, CF.Os were granted stock options for the first time that wedded their individual
gain to the company's share price. The ratio of CF.O to worker pay rose from 20 to 1 in 1965 to 271 to 1 in 2016. Benefits were streamlined
and reduced and the relationship between company and employee weakened to become more transactional.
Simultaneously, the major banks grew and evolved as Depression-era regulations separating consumer lending and investment
banking were abolished. Financial deregulation started under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and culminated in the Financial Services Modernization
Act of 1999 under Bill Clinton that really set the banks loose. The securities industry grew 500 percent as a share of GDP between
1980 and the 2000s while ordinary bank deposits shrank from 70 percent to 50 percent. Financial products multiplied as even Main
Street companies were driven to pursue financial engineering to manage their affairs. GE, my dad's old company and once a beacon
of manufacturing, became the fifth biggest financial institution in the country by 2007.
It's hard to be in the year 2018 and not hear about the endless studies alarming the general public about coming labor automation.
But what Yang provides in this book is two key things: automation has already been ravaging the country which has led to the great
political polarization of today, and second, an actual vision into what happens when people lose jobs, and it definitely is a
lightning strike of "oh crap"
I found this book relatively impressive and frightening. Yang, a former lawyer, entrepreneur, and non-profit leader, writes
showing with inarguable data that when companies automate work and use new software, communities die, drug use increases, suicide
increases, and crime skyrockets. The new jobs created go to big cities, the surviving talent leaves, and the remaining people
lose hope and descend into madness. (as a student of psychology, this is not surprising)
He starts by painting the picture of the average American and how fragile they are economically. He deconstructs the labor
predictions and how technology is going to ravage it. He discusses the future of work. He explains what has happened in technology
and why it's suddenly a huge threat. He shows what this means: economic inequality rises, the people have less power, the voice
of democracy is diminished, no one owns stocks, people get poorer etc. He shows that talent is leaving small towns, money is concentrating
to big cities faster. He shows what happens when those other cities die (bad things), and then how the people react when they
have no income (really bad things). He shows how retraining doesn't work and college is failing us. We don't invest in vocational
skills, and our youth is underemployed pushed into freelance work making minimal pay. He shows how no one trusts the institutions
anymore.
Then he discusses solutions with a focus on Universal Basic Income. I was a skeptic of the idea until I read this book. You
literally walk away with this burning desire to prevent a Mad Max esque civil war, and its hard to argue with him. We don't have
much time and our bloated micromanaged welfare programs cannot sustain.
The author is a very fuzzy way comes to the idea that neoliberalism is in essence a Trotskyism for the rich and that
neoliberals want to use strong state to enforce the type of markets they want from above. That included free movement of
capital goods and people across national borders. All this talk about "small government" is just a smoke screen for naive fools.
"... The second explanation was that neoliberal globalization made a small number of people very rich, and it was in the interest of those people to promote a self-serving ideology using their substantial means by funding think tanks and academic departments, lobbying congress, fighting what the Heritage Foundation calls "the war of ideas." Neoliberalism, then, was a restoration of class power after the odd, anomalous interval of the mid-century welfare state. ..."
"... Here one is free to choose but only within a limited range of options left after responding to the global forces of the market. ..."
"... Neoliberal globalism can be thought of in its own terms as a negative theology, contending that the world economy is sublime and ineffable with a small number of people having special insight and ability to craft institutions that will, as I put it, encase the sublime world economy. ..."
"... One of the big goals of my book is to show neoliberalism is one form of regulation among many rather than the big Other of regulation as such. ..."
"... I build here on the work of other historians and show how the demands in the United Nations by African, Asian, and Latin American nations for things like the Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, i.e. the right to nationalize foreign-owned companies, often dismissed as merely rhetorical, were actually existentially frightening to global businesspeople. ..."
"... They drafted neoliberal intellectuals to do things like craft agreements that gave foreign corporations more rights than domestic actors and tried to figure out how to lock in what I call the "human right of capital flight" into binding international codes. I show how we can see the development of the WTO as largely a response to the fear of a planned -- and equal -- planet that many saw in the aspirations of the decolonizing world. ..."
"... The neoliberal insight of the 1930s was that the market would not take care of itself: what Wilhelm Röpke called a market police was an ongoing need in a world where people, whether out of atavistic drives or admirable humanitarian motives, kept trying to make the earth a more equal and just place. ..."
"... The culmination of these processes by the 1990s is a world economy that is less like a laissez-faire marketplace and more like a fortress, as ever more of the world's resources and ideas are regulated through transnational legal instruments. ..."
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Harvard University Press (March 16, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0674979524
ISBN-13: 978-0674979529
From introduction
...The second explanation was that neoliberal globalization made a small number of people very rich, and it was in the interest of
those people to promote a self-serving ideology using their substantial means by funding think tanks and academic departments, lobbying
congress, fighting what the Heritage Foundation calls "the war of ideas." Neoliberalism, then, was a restoration of class power after
the odd, anomalous interval of the mid-century welfare state.
There is truth to both of these explanations. Both presuppose a kind of materialist explanation of history with which I have no
problem. In my book, though, I take another approach. What I found is that we could not understand the inner logic of something like
the WTO without considering the whole history of the twentieth century. What I also discovered is that some of the members of the
neoliberal movement from the 1930s onward, including Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, did not use either of the explanations
I just mentioned. They actually didn't say that economic growth excuses everything. One of the peculiar things about Hayek, in particular,
is that he didn't believe in using aggregates like GDP -- the very measurements that we need to even say what growth is.
What I found is that neoliberalism as a philosophy is less a doctrine of economics than a doctrine of ordering -- of creating
the institutions that provide for the reproduction of the totality [of financial elite control of the state]. At the core of the strain I describe is not the idea that we
can quantify, count, price, buy and sell every last aspect of human existence. Actually, here it gets quite mystical. The Austrian
and German School of neoliberals in particular believe in a kind of invisible world economy that cannot be captured in numbers
and figures but always escapes human comprehension.
After all, if you can see something, you can plan it. Because of the very limits to our knowledge, we have to default to ironclad
rules and not try to pursue something as radical as social justice, redistribution, or collective transformation. In a globalized
world, we must give ourselves over to the forces of the market, or the whole thing will stop working.
So this is quite a different version of neoliberal thought than the one we usually have, premised on the abstract of individual
liberty or the freedom to choose. Here one is free to choose but only within a limited range of options left after responding to
the global forces of the market.
One of the core arguments of my book is that we can only understand the internal coherence of neoliberalism if we see it as a
doctrine as concerned with the whole as the individual. Neoliberal globalism can be thought of in its own terms as a negative theology,
contending that the world economy is sublime and ineffable with a small number of people having special insight and ability to craft
institutions that will, as I put it, encase the sublime world economy.
To me, the metaphor of encasement makes much more sense than the usual idea of markets set free, liberated or unfettered. How
can it be that in an era of proliferating third party arbitration courts, international investment law, trade treaties and regulation
that we talk about "unfettered markets"? One of the big goals of my book is to show neoliberalism is one form of regulation among
many rather than the big Other of regulation as such.
What I explore in Globalists is how we can think of the WTO as the latest in a long series of institutional fixes proposed
for the problem of emergent nationalism and what neoliberals see as the confusion between sovereignty -- ruling a country -- and
ownership -- owning the property within it.
I build here on the work of other historians and show how the demands in the United Nations
by African, Asian, and Latin American nations for things like the Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, i.e. the right to
nationalize foreign-owned companies, often dismissed as merely rhetorical, were actually existentially frightening to global businesspeople.
They drafted neoliberal intellectuals to do things like craft agreements that gave foreign corporations more rights than domestic
actors and tried to figure out how to lock in what I call the "human right of capital flight" into binding international codes. I
show how we can see the development of the WTO as largely a response to the fear of a planned -- and equal -- planet that many saw
in the aspirations of the decolonizing world.
Perhaps the lasting image of globalization that the book leaves is that world capitalism has produced a doubled world -- a world
of imperium (the world of states) and a world of dominium (the world of property). The best way to understand neoliberal globalism
as a project is that it sees its task as the never-ending maintenance of this division. The neoliberal insight of the 1930s was that
the market would not take care of itself: what Wilhelm Röpke called a market police was an ongoing need in a world where people,
whether out of atavistic drives or admirable humanitarian motives, kept trying to make the earth a more equal and just place.
The culmination of these processes by the 1990s is a world economy that is less like a laissez-faire marketplace and more like
a fortress, as ever more of the world's resources and ideas are regulated through transnational legal instruments. The book acts
as a kind of field guide to these institutions and, in the process, hopefully recasts the 20th century that produced them.
This is a rather
interesting look at the political and economic ideas of a circle of important economists, including Hayek and von Mises, over
the course of the last century. He shows rather convincingly that conventional narratives concerning their idea are wrong. That
they didn't believe in a weak state, didn't believe in the laissez-faire capitalism or believe in the power of the market. That
they saw mass democracy as a threat to vested economic interests.
The core beliefs of these people was in a world where money, labor and products could flow across borders without any limit.
Their vision was to remove these subjects (tariffs, immigration and controls on the movement of money) from the control of the
democracy-based nation-state and instead vesting them in international organizations. International organizations which were by
their nature undemocratic and beyond the influence of democracy. That rather than rejecting government power, what they rejected
was national government power. They wanted weak national governments but at the same time strong undemocratic international organizations
which would gain the powers taken from the state.
The other thing that characterized many of these people was a rather general rejection of economics. While some of them are
(at least in theory) economists, they rejected the basic ideas of economic analysis and economic policy. The economy, to them,
was a mystical thing beyond any human understanding or ability to influence in a positive way. Their only real belief was in "bigness".
The larger the market for labor and goods, the more economically prosperous everyone would become. A unregulated "global" market
with specialization across borders and free migration of labor being the ultimate system.
The author shows how, over a period extending from the 1920s to the 1990s, these ideas evolved from marginal academic ideas
to being dominant ideas internationally. Ideas that are reflected today in the structure of the European Union, the WTO (World
Trade Organization) and the policies of most national governments. These ideas, which the author calls "neoliberalism", have today
become almost assumptions beyond challenge. And even more strangely, the dominating ideas of the political left in most of the
west.
The author makes the point, though in a weak way, that the "fathers" of neoliberalism saw themselves as "restoring" a lost
golden age. That golden age being (roughly) the age of the original industrial revolution (the second half of the 1800s). And
to the extent that they have been successful they have done that. But at the same time, they have brought back all the political
and economic questions of that era as well.
In reading it, I started to wonder about the differences between modern neoliberalism and the liberal political movement during
the industrial revolution. I really began to wonder about the actual motives of "reform" liberals in that era. Were they genuinely
interested in reforms during that era or were all the reforms just cynical politics designed to enhance business power at the
expense of other vested interests. Was, in particular, the liberal interest in political reform and franchise expansion a genuine
move toward political democracy or simply a temporary ploy to increase their political power. If one assumes that the true principles
of classic liberalism were always free trade, free migration of labor and removing the power to governments to impact business,
perhaps its collapse around the time of the first world war is easier to understand.
He also makes a good point about the EEC and the organizations that came before the EU. Those organizations were as much about
protecting trade between Europe and former European colonial possessions as they were anything to do with trade within Europe.
To me at least, the analysis of the author was rather original. In particular, he did an excellent job of showing how the ideas
of Hayek and von Mises have been distorted and misunderstood in the mainstream. He was able to show what their ideas were and
how they relate to contemporary problems of government and democracy.
But there are some strong negatives in the book. The author offers up a complete virtue signaling chapter to prove how the
neoliberals are racists. He brings up things, like the John Birch Society, that have nothing to do with the book. He unleashes
a whole lot of venom directed at American conservatives and republicans mostly set against a 1960s backdrop. He does all this
in a bad purpose: to claim that the Kennedy Administration was somehow a continuation of the new deal rather than a step toward
neoliberalism. His blindness and modern political partisanship extended backward into history does substantial damage to his argument
in the book. He also spends an inordinate amount of time on the political issues of South Africa which also adds nothing to the
argument of the book. His whole chapter on racism is an elaborate strawman all held together by Ropke. He also spends a large
amount of time grinding some sort of Ax with regard to the National Review and William F. Buckley.
He keeps resorting to the simple formula of finding something racist said or written by Ropke....and then inferring that anyone
who quoted or had anything to do with Ropke shared his ideas and was also a racist. The whole point of the exercise seems to be
to avoid any analysis of how the democratic party (and the political left) drifted over the decades from the politics of the New
Deal to neoliberal Clintonism.
Then after that, he diverts further off the path by spending many pages on the greatness of the "global south", the G77 and
the New International Economic Order (NIEO) promoted by the UN in the 1970s. And whatever many faults of neoliberalism, Quinn
Slobodian ends up standing for a worse set of ideas: International Price controls, economic "reparations", nationalization, international
trade subsidies and a five-year plan for the world (socialist style economic planning at a global level). In attaching himself
to these particular ideas, he kills his own book. The premise of the book and his argument was very strong at first. But by around
p. 220, its become a throwback political tract in favor of the garbage economic and political ideas of the so-called third world
circa 1974 complete with 70's style extensive quotations from "Senegalese jurists"
Once the political agenda comes out, he just can't help himself. He opens the conclusion to the book taking another cheap shot
for no clear reason at William F. Buckley. He spends alot of time on the Seattle anti-WTO protests from the 1990s. But he has
NOTHING to say about BIll Clinton or Tony Blair or EU expansion or Obama or even the 2008 economic crisis for that matter. Inexplicably
for a book written in 2018, the content of the book seems to end in the year 2000.
I'm giving it three stars for the first 150 pages which was decent work. The second half rates zero stars. Though it could
have been far better if he had written his history of neoliberalism in the context of the counter-narrative of Keynesian economics
and its decline. It would have been better yet if the author had the courage to talk about the transformation of the parties of
the left and their complicity in the rise of neoliberalism. The author also tends to waste lots of pages repeating himself or
worse telling you what he is going to say next. One would have expected a better standard of editing by the Harvard Press.
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Anybody interested in global trade, business, human rights or democracy today
should read this book.
The book follow the Austrians from the beginning in the Habsburgischer empire to the beginning rebellion against the WTO. However,
most importantly it follows the thinking and the thoughts behind the building of a global empire of capitalism with free trade,
capital and rights. All the way to the new "human right" to trade. It narrows down what neoliberal thought really consist of and
indirectly make a differentiation to the neoclassical economic tradition.
What I found most interesting is the turn from economics to law - and the conceptual distinctions between the genes, tradition,
reason, which are translated into a quest for a rational and reason based protection of dominium (the rule of property) against
the overreach of imperium (the rule of states/people). This distinction speaks directly to the issues that EU is currently facing.
"... From the 1980s to 2008, neoliberal politics and policies succeeded in expanding inequality around the world. The political climate Ayn Rand celebrated-the reign of brutal capitalism-intensified. Though Ayn Rand's popularity took off in the 1940s, her reputation took a dive during the 1960s and '70s. Then after her death in 1982, during the neoliberal administrations of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, her star rose once more. (See chapter 4 for a full discussion of the rise of neoliberalism.) ..."
"... During the global economic crisis of 2008 it seemed that the neoliberal order might collapse. It lived on, however, in zombie form as discredited political policies and financial practices were restored. ..."
"... We are in the midst of a major global, political, economic, social, and cultural transition - but we don't yet know which way we're headed. The incoherence of the Trump administration is symptomatic of the confusion as politicians and business elites jockey with the Breitbart alt-right forces while conservative evangelical Christians pull strings. The unifying threads are meanness and greed, and the spirit of the whole hodgepodge is Ayn Rand. ..."
"... The current Trump administration is stuffed to the gills with Rand acolytes. Trump himself identifies with Fountainhead character Howard Roark; former secretary of state Rex Tillerson listed Adas Shrugged as his favorite book in a Scouting magazine feature; his replacement Mike Pompeo has been inspired by Rand since his youth. Ayn Rand's influence is ascendant across broad swaths of our dominant political culture - including among public figures who see her as a key to the Zeitgeist, without having read a worth of her writing.'' ..."
"... Rand biographer Jennifer Burns asserts simply that Ayn Rand's fiction is "the gateway drug" to right-wing politics in the United States - although her influence extends well beyond the right wing ..."
"... The resulting Randian sense of life might be called "optimistic cruelty." Optimistic cruelty is the sense of life for the age of greed. ..."
"... The Fountainhead and especially Atlas Shrugged fabricate history and romanticize violence and domination in ways that reflect, reshape, and reproduce narratives of European superiority' and American virtue. ..."
"... It is not an accident that the novels' fans, though gender mixed, are overwhelmingly white Americans of the professional, managerial, creative, and business classes." ..."
"... Does the pervasive cruelty of today's ruling classes shock you? Or, at least give you pause from time to time? Are you surprised by the fact that our elected leaders seem to despise people who struggle, people whose lives are not cushioned and shaped by inherited wealth, people who must work hard at many jobs in order to scrape by? If these or any of a number of other questions about the social proclivities of our contemporary ruling class detain you for just two seconds, this is the book for you. ..."
"... As Duggan makes clear, Rand's influence is not just that she offered a programmatic for unregulated capitalism, but that she offered an emotional template for "optimistic cruelty" that has extended far beyond its libertarian confines. Mean Girl is a fun, worthwhile read! ..."
"... Her work circulated endlessly in those circles of the Goldwater-ite right. I have changed over many years, and my own life experiences have led me to reject the casual cruelty and vicious supremacist bent of Rand's beliefs. ..."
"... In fact, though her views are deeply-seated, Rand is, at heart, a confidence artist, appealing only to narrow self-interest at the expense of the well-being of whole societies. ..."
Mean Girls, which was based on interviews with high school girls conducted by Rosalind Wiseman for her 2002 book Queen Bees and
War/tubes, reflects the emotional atmosphere of the age of the Plastics (as the most popular girls at Actional North Shore High are
called), as well as the era of Wall Street's Gordon Gekko, whose motto is "Greed is Good."1 The culture of greed is the hallmark
of the neoliberal era, the period beginning in the 1970s when the protections of the U.S. and European welfare states, and the autonomy
of postcolonial states around the world, came under attack. Advocates of neoliberalism worked to reshape global capitalism by freeing
transnational corporations from restrictive forms of state regulation, stripping away government efforts to redistribute wealth and
provide public services, and emphasizing individual responsibility over social concern.
From the 1980s to 2008, neoliberal politics and policies succeeded in expanding inequality around the world. The political
climate Ayn Rand celebrated-the reign of brutal capitalism-intensified. Though Ayn Rand's popularity took off in the 1940s, her reputation
took a dive during the 1960s and '70s. Then after her death in 1982, during the neoliberal administrations of Ronald Reagan in the
United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, her star rose once more. (See chapter 4 for a full discussion of the rise
of neoliberalism.)
During the global economic crisis of 2008 it seemed that the neoliberal order might collapse. It lived on, however, in zombie
form as discredited political policies and financial practices were restored. But neoliberal capitalism has always been contested,
and competing and conflicting political ideas and organizations proliferated and intensified after 2008 as well.
Protest politics blossomed on the left with Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and opposition to the Dakota Access oil pipeline
at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in the United States, and with the Arab Spring, and other mobilizations around the world.
Anti-neoliberal electoral efforts, like the Bernie Sanders campaign for the U.S. presidency, generated excitement as well.
But protest and organizing also expanded on the political right, with reactionary populist, racial nationalist, and protofascist
gains in such countries as India, the Philippines, Russia, Hungary, and the United States rapidly proliferating. Between these far-right
formations on the one side and persistent zombie neoliberalism on the other, operating sometimes at odds and sometimes in cahoots,
the Season of Mean is truly upon us.
We are in the midst of a major global, political, economic, social, and cultural transition - but we don't yet know which
way we're headed. The incoherence of the Trump administration is symptomatic of the confusion as politicians and business elites
jockey with the Breitbart alt-right forces while conservative evangelical Christians pull strings. The unifying threads are meanness
and greed, and the spirit of the whole hodgepodge is Ayn Rand.
Rand's ideas are not the key to her influence. Her writing does support the corrosive capitalism at the heart of neoliberalism,
though few movers and shakers actually read any of her nonfiction. Her two blockbuster novels, 'The Fountainpen and Atlas Shrugged,
are at the heart of her incalculable impact. Many politicians and government officials going back decades have cited Rand as a formative
influence-particularly finance guru and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who was a member of Rand's inner circle,
and Ronald Reagan, the U.S. president most identified with the national embrace of neoliberal policies.
Major figures in business and finance are or have been Rand fans: Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Peter Thiel (Paypal), Steve Jobs (Apple),
John Mackey (Whole Foods), Mark Cuban (NBA), John Allison (BB&T Banking Corporation), Travis Kalanik (Uber), Jelf Bezos (Amazon),
ad infinitum.
There are also large clusters of enthusiasts for Rand's novels in the entertainment industry, from the 1940s to the present-from
Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, and Raquel Welch to Jerry Lewis, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Rob Lowe, Jim Carrey, Sandra Bullock,
Sharon Stone, Ashley Judd, Eva Mendes, and many more.
The current Trump administration is stuffed to the gills with Rand acolytes. Trump himself identifies with Fountainhead character
Howard Roark; former secretary of state Rex Tillerson listed Adas Shrugged as his favorite book in a Scouting magazine feature; his
replacement Mike Pompeo has been inspired by Rand since his youth. Ayn Rand's influence is ascendant across broad swaths of our dominant
political culture - including among public figures who see her as a key to the Zeitgeist, without having read a worth of her writing.''
But beyond the famous or powerful fans, the novels have had a wide popular impact as bestsellers since publication. Along
with Rand's nonfiction, they form the core texts for a political/ philosophical movement: Objectivism. There are several U.S.- based
Objectivist organizations and innumerable clubs, reading groups, and social circles. A 1991 survey by the Library of Congress and
the Book of the Month Club found that only the Bible had influenced readers more than Atlas Shrugged, while a 1998 Modern Library
poll listed The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as the two most revered novels in English.
Atlas Shrugged in particular skyrocketed in popularity in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. The U.S. Tea Party movement, founded
in 2009, featured numerous Ayn Rand-based signs and slogans, especially the opening line of Atlas Shrugged: "Who is John Galt?" Republican
pundit David Frum claimed that the Tea Party was reinventing the GOP as "the party of Ayn Rand." During 2009 as well, sales of Atlas
Shrugged tripled, and GQ_magazine called Rand the year's most influential author. A 2010 Zogby poll found that 29 percent of respondents
had read Atlas Shrugged, and half of those readers said it had affected their political and ethical thinking.
In 2018, a business school teacher writing in Forbes magazine recommended repeat readings: "Recent events - the bizarro circus
that is the 2016 election, the disintegration of Venezuela, and so on make me wonder if a lot of this could have been avoided bad
we taken Atlas Shrugged's message to heart. It is a book that is worth re-reading every few years."3
Rand biographer Jennifer Burns asserts simply that Ayn Rand's fiction is "the gateway drug" to right-wing politics in the
United States - although her influence extends well beyond the right wing.4
But how can the work of this one novelist (also an essayist, playwright, and philosopher), however influential, be a significant
source of insight into the rise of a culture of greed? In a word: sex. Ayn Rand made acquisitive capitalists sexy. She launched thousands
of teenage libidos into the world of reactionary politics on a wave of quivering excitement. This sexiness extends beyond romance
to infuse the creative aspirations, inventiveness, and determination of her heroes with erotic energy, embedded in what Rand called
her "sense of life." Analogous to what Raymond Williams has called a "structure of feeling," Rand's sense of life combines the libido-infused
desire for heroic individual achievement with contempt for social inferiors and indifference to their plight.5
Lauren Berlant has called the structure of feeling, or emotional situation, of those who struggle for a good life under neoliberal
conditions "cruel optimism"-the complex of feelings necessary to keep plugging away hopefully despite setbacks and losses.'' Rand's
contrasting sense of life applies to those whose fantasies of success and domination include no doubt or guilt. The feelings of aspiration
and glee that enliven Rand's novels combine with contempt for and indifference to others. The resulting Randian sense of life
might be called "optimistic cruelty." Optimistic cruelty is the sense of life for the age of greed.
Ayn Rand's optimistic cruelty appeals broadly and deeply through its circulation of familiar narratives: the story of "civilizational"
progress, die belief in American exceptionalism, and a commitment to capitalist freedom.
Her novels engage fantasies of European imperial domination conceived as technological and cultural advancement, rather than as
violent conquest. America is imagined as a clean slate for pure capitalist freedom, with no indigenous people, no slaves, no exploited
immigrants or workers in sight. The Fountainhead and especially Atlas Shrugged fabricate history and romanticize violence and
domination in ways that reflect, reshape, and reproduce narratives of European superiority' and American virtue.
Their logic also depends on a hierarchy of value based on radicalized beauty and physical capacity - perceived ugliness or disability'
are equated with pronounced worthlessness and incompetence.
Through the forms of romance and melodrama, Rand novels extrapolate the story of racial capitalism as a story of righteous passion
and noble virtue. They retell The Birth of a Ntation through the lens of industrial capitalism (see chapter 2). They solicit positive
identification with winners, with dominant historical forces. It is not an accident that the novels' fans, though gender mixed,
are overwhelmingly white Americans of the professional, managerial, creative, and business classes."
Ayn Rand is a singular influence on American political thought, and this book brilliantly unfolds how Rand gave voice to the
ethos that shapes contemporary conservatism. Duggan -- whose equally insightful earlier book Twilight of Equality offered an analysis
of neoliberalism and showed how it is both a distortion and continuation of classical liberalism -- here extends the analysis
of American market mania by showing how an anti-welfare state ethos took root as a "structure of feeling" in American culture,
elevating the individual over the collective and promoting a culture of inequality as itself a moral virtue.
Although reviled by the right-wing press (she should wear this as a badge of honor), Duggan is the most astute guide one could
hope for through this devastating history of our recent past, and the book helps explain how we ended up where we are, where far-right,
racist nationalism colludes (paradoxically) with libertarianism, an ideology of extreme individualism and (unlikely bed fellows,
one might have thought) Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.
This short, accessible book is essential reading for everyone who wants to understand the contemporary United States.
Does the pervasive cruelty of today's ruling classes shock you? Or, at least give you pause from time to time? Are you
surprised by the fact that our elected leaders seem to despise people who struggle, people whose lives are not cushioned and shaped
by inherited wealth, people who must work hard at many jobs in order to scrape by? If these or any of a number of other questions
about the social proclivities of our contemporary ruling class detain you for just two seconds, this is the book for you.
Writing with wit, rigor, and vigor, Lisa Duggan explains how Ayn Rand, the "mean girl," has captured the minds and snatched
the bodies of so very many, and has rendered them immune to feelings of shared humanity with those whose fortunes are not as rosy
as their own. An indispensable work, a short read that leaves a long memory.
Mean Girl offers not only a biographical account of Rand (including the fact that she modeled one of her key heroes on a serial
killer), but describes Rand's influence on neoliberal thinking more generally.
As Duggan makes clear, Rand's influence is not just that she offered a programmatic for unregulated capitalism, but that
she offered an emotional template for "optimistic cruelty" that has extended far beyond its libertarian confines. Mean Girl is
a fun, worthwhile read!
Sister, June 3, 2019
Superb poitical and cultural exploration of Rand's influence
Lisa Duggan's concise but substantive look at the political and cultural influence of Ayn Rand is stunning. I feel like I've
been waiting most of a lifetime for a book that is as wonderfully readable as it is insightful. Many who write about Rand reduce
her to a caricature hero or demon without taking her, and the history and choices that produced her seriously as a subject of
cultural inquiry. I am one of those people who first encountered Rand's books - novels, but also some nonfiction and her play,
"The Night of January 16th," in which audience members were selected as jurors – as a teenager.
Under the thrall of some right-wing locals, I was so drawn to Rand's larger-than-life themes, the crude polarization of "individualism"
and "conformity," the admonition to selfishness as a moral virtue, her reductive dismissal of the public good as "collectivism."
Her work circulated endlessly in those circles of the Goldwater-ite right. I have changed over many years, and my own life
experiences have led me to reject the casual cruelty and vicious supremacist bent of Rand's beliefs.
But over those many years, the coterie of Rand true believers has kept the faith and expanded. One of the things I value about
Duggan's compelling account is her willingness to take seriously the far reach of Rand's indifference to human suffering even
as she strips away the veneer that suggests Rand's beliefs were deep.
In fact, though her views are deeply-seated, Rand is, at heart, a confidence artist, appealing only to narrow self-interest
at the expense of the well-being of whole societies.
I learned that the hard way, but I learned it. Now I am recommending Duggan's wise book to others who seek to understand today's
cultural and political moment in the United States and the rise of an ethic of indifference to anybody but the already affluent.
Duggan is comfortable with complexity; most Randian champions or detractors are not.
"... No other book out there has the level of breadth on the history of US imperialism that this work provides. Even though it packs 400 pages of text (which might seem like a turnoff for non-academic readers), "How to Hide an Empire" is highly readable given Immerwhar's skills as a writer. Also, its length is part of what makes it awesome because it gives it the right amount of detail and scope. ..."
"... Alleging that US imperialism in its long evolution (which this book deciphers with poignancy) has had no bearing on the destinies of its once conquered populations is as fallacious as saying that the US is to blame for every single thing that happens in Native American communities, or in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, etc. Not everything that happens in these locations and among these populations is directly connected to US expansionism, but a great deal is. ..."
"... This is exactly the kind of book that drives the "My country, right or wrong" crowd crazy. Yes, slavery and genocide and ghastly scientific experiments existed before Europeans colonized the Americas, but it's also fair and accurate to say that Europeans made those forms of destruction into a bloody artform. Nobody did mass slaughter better. ..."
I'm a professor at the University of California San Diego and I'm assigning
this for a graduate class.
No other book out there has the level of breadth on the history of US imperialism that this work provides.
Even though it packs 400 pages of text (which might seem like a turnoff for non-academic readers), "How to Hide an Empire" is
highly readable given Immerwhar's skills as a writer. Also, its length is part of what makes it awesome because it gives it the
right amount of detail and scope.
I could not disagree more with the person who gave this book one star. Take it from me: I've taught hundreds of college students
who graduate among the best in their high school classes and they know close to nothing about the history of US settler colonialism,
overseas imperialism, or US interventionism around the world. If you give University of California college students a quiz on
where the US' overseas territories are, most who take it will fail (trust me, I've done it). And this is not their fault. Instead,
it's a product of the US education system that fails to give students a nuanced and geographically comprehensive understanding
of the oversized effect that their country has around our planet.
Alleging that US imperialism in its long evolution (which this book deciphers with poignancy) has had no bearing on the destinies
of its once conquered populations is as fallacious as saying that the US is to blame for every single thing that happens in Native
American communities, or in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, etc. Not everything that happens in these locations
and among these populations is directly connected to US expansionism, but a great deal is.
A case in point is Puerto Rico's current fiscal and economic crisis. The island's political class share part of the blame for
Puerto Rico's present rut. A lot of it is also due to unnatural (i.e. "natural" but human-exacerbated) disasters such as Hurricane
María. However, there is no denying that the evolution of Puerto Rico's territorial status has generated a host of adverse economic
conditions that US states (including an island state such as Hawaii) do not have to contend with. An association with the US has
undoubtedly raised the floor of material conditions in these places, but it has also imposed an unjust glass ceiling that most
people around the US either do not know about or continue to ignore.
To add to those unfair economic limitations, there are political injustices regarding the lack of representation in Congress,
and in the case of Am. Samoa, their lack of US citizenship. The fact that the populations in the overseas territories can't make
up their mind about what status they prefer is: a) understandable given the way they have been mistreated by the US government,
and b) irrelevant because what really matters is what Congress decides to do with the US' far-flung colonies, and there is no
indication that Congress wants to either fully annex them or let them go because neither would be convenient to the 50 states
and the political parties that run them. Instead, the status quo of modern colonial indeterminacy is what works best for the most
potent political and economic groups in the US mainland. Would
This book is about much more than that though. It's also a history of how and why the United States got to control so much
of what happens around the world without creating additional formal colonies like the "territories" that exist in this legal limbo.
Part of its goal is to show how precisely how US imperialism has been made to be more cost-effective and also more invisible.
Read Immerwhar's book, and don't listen to the apologists of US imperialism which is still an active force that contradicts
the US' professed values and that needs to be actively dismantled. Their attempts at discrediting this important reflect a denialism
of the US' imperial realities that has endured throughout the history that this book summarizes.
"How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States" is a great starting point for making the US public aware of
the US' contradictions as an "empire of liberty" (a phrase once used by Thomas Jefferson to describe the US as it expanded westward
beyond the original 13 colonies). It is also a necessary update to other books on this topic that are already out there, and it
is likely to hold the reader's attention more given its crafty narrative prose and structure
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This is exactly the
kind of book that drives the "My country, right or wrong" crowd crazy. Yes, slavery and genocide and ghastly scientific experiments
existed before Europeans colonized the Americas, but it's also fair and accurate to say that Europeans made those forms of destruction
into a bloody artform. Nobody did mass slaughter better.
The author of this compelling book reveals a history unknown to many
readers, and does so with first-hand accounts and deep historical analyses. You might ask why we can't put such things behind
us. The simple answer: we've never fully grappled with these events before in an honest and open way. This book does the nation
a service by peering behind the curtain and facing the sobering truth of how we came to be what we are.
This is a stunning book, not to be missed. If you finished Sapiens with the feeling your world view had
greatly enlarged, you're likely to have the same experience of your view of the US from reading this engaging work. And like Sapiens,
it's an entirely enjoyable read, full of delightful surprises, future dinner party gems.
The further you get into the book the more interesting and unexpected it becomes. You'll look at the US in ways you likely
never considered before. This is not a 'political' book with an ax to grind or a single-party agenda. It's refreshingly insightful,
beautifully written, fun to read.
This is a gift I'll give to many a good friend, I've just started with my wife. I rarely write
reviews and have never met the author (now my only regret). 3 people found this helpful
This book is an absolutely powerhouse, a must-read, and should be a part of every student's curriculum in
this God forsaken country.
Strictly speaking, this brilliant read is focused on America's relationship with Empire. But like with nearly everything America,
one cannot discuss it without discussing race and injustice.
If you read this book, you will learn a lot of new things about subjects that you thought you knew everything about. You will
have your eyes opened. You will be exposed to the dark underbelly of racism, corruption, greed and exploitation that undergird
American ambition.
I don't know exactly what else to say other than to say you MUST READ THIS BOOK. This isn't a partisan statement -- it's not
like Democrats are any better than Republicans in this book.
This is one of the best books I've ever read, and I am a voracious reader. The content is A+. It never gets boring. It never
gets tedious. It never lingers on narratives. It's extremely well written. It is, in short, perfect. And as such, 10/10.
I heard an interview of Daniel Immerwahr on NPR news / WDET radio regarding this book.
I'm am quite conservative
and only listen to NPR news when it doesn't lean too far to the left.
However, the interview piqued my interest. I am so glad I
purchased this ebook. What a phenomenal and informative read!!! WOW!! It's a "I never knew that" kind of read. Certainly not anything
I was taught in school. This is thoughtful, well written and an easy read. Highly recommend!!
This is a very short book, almost an essay -- 136 pages. It was published in October 2004, four years before financial crisis of
2008, which put the first nail in the coffin of neoliberalism. It addresses the cultural politics of neo-liberalism ("the
Great Deception")
Notable quotes:
"... By now, we've all heard about the shocking redistribution of wealth that's occurred during the last thirty years, and particularly during the last decade. But economic changes like this don't occur in a vacuum; they're always linked to politics. ..."
"... Ultimately, The Twilight of Equality? not only reveals how the highly successful rhetorical maneuvers of neoliberalism have functioned ..."
"... The titles of her four chapters--Downsizing Democracy, The Incredible Shrinking Public, Equality, Inc., Love AND Money--summarize her argument. ..."
"... Her target is neoliberalism, which she sees as a broadly controlling corporate agenda which seeks world domination, privatization of governmental decision-making, and marginalization of unions, low-income people, racial and sexual minorities while presenting to the public a benign and inclusive facade. ..."
"... Neo-liberalism seeks to upwardly distribute money, power, and status, she writes, while progressive movements seek to downwardly distribute money, power, and status. The unity of the downwardly distribution advocates should match the unity of the upwardly distribution advocates in order to be effective, she writes. ..."
"... "There is nothing stable or inevitable in the alliances supporting neoliberal agendas in the U.S. and globally," she writes. "The alliances linking neoliberal global economics, and conservative and right-wing domestic politics, and the culture wars are provisional--and fading...." ..."
"... For example, she discusses neoliberal attempts to be "multicultural," but points out that economic resources are constantly redistributed upward. Neoliberal politics, she argues, has only reinforced and increased the divide between economic and social political issues. ..."
"... Because neoliberal politicians wish to save neoliberalism by reforming it, she argues that proposing alternate visions and ideas have been blocked. ..."
By now, we've all heard about the shocking redistribution of wealth that's occurred during the last thirty years, and
particularly during the last decade. But economic changes like this don't occur in a vacuum; they're always linked to politics.
The Twilight of Equality? searches out these links through an analysis of the politics of the 1990s, the decade when
neoliberalism-free market economics-became gospel.
After a brilliant historical examination of how racial and gender inequities were woven into the very theoretical underpinnings
of the neoliberal model of the state, Duggan shows how these inequities play out today. In a series of political case studies,
Duggan reveals how neoliberal goals have been pursued, demonstrating that progressive arguments that separate identity politics and
economic policy, cultural politics and affairs of state, can only fail.
Ultimately, The Twilight of Equality? not only reveals how the highly successful rhetorical maneuvers of neoliberalism have
functioned but, more importantly, it shows a way to revitalize and unify progressive politics in the U.S. today.
Mona Cohen 5.0 out of 5 stars A Critique of Neoliberalism and the Divided Resistance to It July 3, 2006
Lisa Duggan is intensely interested in American politics, and has found political life in the United States to have been "such
a wild ride, offering moments of of dizzying hope along with long stretches of political depression." She is grateful for "many
ideas about political depression, and how to survive it," and she has written a excellent short book that helps make sense of
many widely divergent political trends.
Her book is well-summarized by its concluding paragraph, which I am breaking up into additional paragraphs for greater
clarity:
"Now at this moment of danger and opportunity, the progressive left is mobilizing against neoliberalism and possible new or
continuing wars.
"These mobilizations might become sites for factional struggles over the disciplining of troops, in the name of unity at a
time of crisis and necessity. But such efforts will fail; the troops will not be disciplined, and the disciplinarians will be
left to their bitterness.
"Or, we might find ways of think, speaking, writing and acting that are engaged and curious about "other people's" struggles
for social justice, that are respectfully affiliative and dialogic rather than pedagogical, that that look for the hopeful spots
to expand upon, and that revel in the pleasure of political life.
"For it is pleasure AND collective caretaking, love AND the egalitarian circulation of money--allied to clear and hard-headed
political analysis offered generously--that will create the space for a progressive politics that might both imagine and
create...something worth living for."
The titles of her four chapters--Downsizing Democracy, The Incredible Shrinking Public, Equality, Inc., Love AND
Money--summarize her argument.
She expected upon her high school graduation in 1972, she writes, that "active and expanding social movements seemed capable
of ameliorating conditions of injustice and inequality, poverty, war and imperialism....I had no idea I was not perched at a
great beginning, but rather at a denouement, as the possibilities for progressive social change encountered daunting historical
setbacks beginning in 1972...."
Her target is neoliberalism, which she sees as a broadly controlling corporate agenda which seeks world domination,
privatization of governmental decision-making, and marginalization of unions, low-income people, racial and sexual minorities
while presenting to the public a benign and inclusive facade.
Neo-liberalism seeks to upwardly distribute money, power, and status, she writes, while progressive movements seek to
downwardly distribute money, power, and status. The unity of the downwardly distribution advocates should match the unity of the
upwardly distribution advocates in order to be effective, she writes.
Her belief is that all groups threatened by the neoliberal paradigm should unite against it, but such unity is threatened by
endless differences of perspectives. By minutely analyzing many of the differences, and expanding understanding of diverse
perspectives, she tries to remove them as obstacles towards people and organizations working together to achieve both unique and
common aims.
This is good book for those interested in the history and current significance of numerous progressive ideological arguments.
It is a good book for organizers of umbrella organizations and elected officials who work with diverse social movements. By
articulating points of difference, the author depersonalizes them and aids in overcoming them.
Those who are interested in electoral strategies, however, will be disappointed. The interrelationship between neoliberalism
as a governing ideology and neoliberalism as a political strategy is not discussed here. It is my view that greater and more
focused and inclusive political organizing has the potential to win over a good number of the those who see support of
neoliberalism's policy initiatives as a base-broadening tactic more than as a sacred cause.
"There is nothing stable or inevitable in the alliances supporting neoliberal agendas in the U.S. and globally," she
writes. "The alliances linking neoliberal global economics, and conservative and right-wing domestic politics, and the culture
wars are provisional--and fading...."
Reading this book adds to one's understanding of labels, and political and intellectual distinctions. It has too much jargon
for my taste, but not so much as to be impenetrable. It is an excellent summarization and synthesis of the goals, ideologies, and
histories of numerous social movements, both famous and obscure.
Duggan
articulately connects social and economic issues to each other, arguing that neoliberal
politics have divided the two when in actuality, they cannot be separated from one another.
In the introduction, Duggan argues that politics have become neoliberal - while politics
operate under the guise of promoting social change or social stability, in reality, she argues,
politicians have failed to make the connection between economic and social/cultural issues. She
uses historical background to prove the claim that economic and social issues can be separated
from each other is false.
For example, she discusses neoliberal attempts to be "multicultural," but points out that
economic resources are constantly redistributed upward. Neoliberal politics, she argues, has
only reinforced and increased the divide between economic and social political issues.
After the introduction, Duggan focuses on a specific topic in each chapter: downsizing
democracy, the incredible shrinking public, equality, and love and money. In the first chapter
(downsizing democracy), she argues that through violent imperial assertion in the Middle East,
budget cuts in social services, and disillusionments in political divides, "capitalists could
actually bring down capitalism" (p. 2).
Because neoliberal politicians wish to save neoliberalism by reforming it, she argues that
proposing alternate visions and ideas have been blocked. Duggan provides historical background
that help the reader connect early nineteenth century U.S. legislation (regarding voting rights
and slavery) to perpetuated institutional prejudices.
Lifetime real earnings of the median male worker declined by 10% from those who entered the
US labor market in 1967 to those in 1983, or roughly a loss of $136,000.
The study shows the United States shows a "wage stagnation of average earnings and a rise in
income inequality since the 1970s." The charts are based on US Social Security Administration
(SSA) records over 57 years.
The charts are more than a bit confusing unless one carefully dives into the details.
The lead chart is titled " Median Lifetime Earnings " but shows instead annualized real
(inflation adjusted) annual wages, not lifetime or real lifetime earnings.
Lifetime
Definition
Lifetime earnings means earnings between the age of 25 and 55 inclusive.
Annualized lifetime earnings as depicted in the chart is the sum of real annual labor
earnings from ages 25 to 55, divided by 31.
When nominal earnings are deflated by the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) deflator,
the annualized value of median lifetime wage/salary earnings for male workers declined by
$4,400 per year from the 1967 cohort to the 1983 cohort, or $136,400 over the 31-year working
period.
The lifetime earnings of the median male worker declined by 10 percent from the 1967 cohort
to the 1983 cohort. Further, more than three-quarters of the distribution of men experienced no
rise in their lifetime earnings across these cohorts.
Cohort Definition
As used in the article, cohort means all of those who turned 25, 35. 45, etc. in a
particular year.
Median initial earnings fell from $33,300 for the 1967 cohort to $29,000 for the 1983
cohort (PCE adjusted in 2013 dollars).
The analogous figures at age 55 were $55,900 for the former cohort and $54,100 for the
latter, a decline of $1,800, showing no sign of catch-up over the life cycle.
Median initial earnings for men was only $24,400 in 2011, virtually the same level as in
1957.
Cohorts of female workers have seen robust and steady gains, on the order of 22% to 33%
for the median female worker. However, because these gains started from a very low level of
median lifetime earnings for the 1957 cohort, they were not large enough at the aggregate
level to offset the losses by men.
Using the CPI rather than the PCE to convert nominal earnings to 2013 dollars lowers
lifetime earnings growth for both men and women.
Inflation Adjustments
The two most commonly used price indexes are the personal consumption expenditure (PCE)
deflator from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the consumer price index (CPI) from
the Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS). The (older) CPI and the (newer) PCE differ in several
ways that are by now well understood.
The PCE is generally accepted to be the superior index for measuring the overall price
level and its evolution over the business cycle. It is thus the standard choice in aggregate
(macro) economic analyses. However, for more micro work, such as the analyses in this paper,
the CPI has some advantages. In particular, the CPI aims to capture the price level faced by
the typical household for its out-of-pocket expenses and is thus based on a detailed survey
of U.S. household expenditures, whereas the PCE is based on business surveys and also
includes purchases made by others on behalf of households. Consequently, relative to the PCE,
the CPI places a lower weight on health care prices (since a large fraction of total
expenditures is paid by Medicare/Medicaid and insurance companies) and a much higher weight
on housing and transportation.
In our empirical analysis, we choose the PCE as our baseline measure for deflating nominal
earnings because it implies a lower cumulative inflation over this period than the CPI . We
report all values in 2013 dollars.
Lifetime Earnings for Men and Women
From the 1957 to the 1983 cohort, annualized mean lifetime earnings for men rose by
around $10,000, from $42,200 to $52,200. This rise corresponds to a cumulative increase of
23.7%, or an average increase of 0.82% between two consecutive cohorts.
However, the bulk of these gains -- 21.9% of the total 23.7% -- accrued to only the
first 10 or so cohorts. From the 1967 to the 1983 cohort, mean lifetime earnings increased
by only 1.5% cumulatively.
Median lifetime earnings for men has barely changed from the 1957 cohort to the 1983
cohort, increasing by only about $250 -- or less than 1%.
Across almost the entire distribution of males, there have been either trivial, or even
negative, gains in lifetime earnings.
Women, on the other hand, have seen increases in lifetime earnings throughout the entire
distribution. Median lifetime earnings increased nearly monotonically from $14,100 for the
1957 cohort to $22,300 for the 1983 cohort.
This steady increase in lifetime earnings for women has been broad-based, with all parts
of the distribution experiencing consistent lifetime earnings growth across cohorts.
Median lifetime earnings for women grew at an average rate of 1.8% per cohort for the 27
cohorts from 1957 to 1983, with almost the exact same annualized growth rates for the 10
cohorts from 1957 to 1967 and the 16 cohorts from 1967 to 1983.
Looking at the population as a whole, we find that the trends for men and women combine
in sometimes offsetting ways.
Closing the Gender Gap
The chart looks severely dated but cohort means the year in which someone turned 25.
Figure 3 plots the ratio of the mean lifetime earnings of females to that of males
In 1960, median inflation adjusted wages for women aged 25 were less than 40% of males. But
fewer women than men were working and fewer women than men were college educated.
After 1965, the gap started to close quickly (showing an almost linear trend), and by the
1983 cohort (working women who turned 25 in 1983), the lifetime earnings of women reached more
than 60% of their male counterparts.
To the extent real median wages have risen in aggregate, it is because of the headway made
by women relative to men.
Decline of Men vs Women
The mean lifetime income for men rose until 1972. The median topped out a bit earlier in
1967 albeit by an arguably meaningless 0.13 percentage points.
Those who turned 25 in 1983 were 55 in 2014. Thus the study misses the last 7
years.
Even Worse Than It Looks
The charts and findings are even worse than they look.
The PCE measure of inflation is understated relative to the CPI.
Both are severely understated since 1999 relative to housing. Housing-adjusted real wages
have been hammered in aggregate, and even more so for men.
The Fed with tremendous help from Congress seeks to destroy the dollar. They have succeeded.
Yet the Fed rails against income inequality.
The Fed, Congress, and Progressive need to look in the mirror to see who is to blame for
falling real wages.
" It costs only a few cents for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to produce a $100
bill, but other countries had to pony up $100 of actual goods in order to obtain one ,"
accurately quipped American economist Barry Eichengreen .
In addition to trade distortions inaccurately blamed on NAFTA, real wages is another data
series that goes back to Nixon closing the gold window in 1971.
"The true equation is 'democracy' = government by world financiers."
– J.R.R. Tolkien
"Welcome to an Orwellian Brave New World!
Orwell's (1984) words were prescient. Huxley (Brave New World) was a school teacher of
Orwell's at Eton College. They both attended elite symposiums in the 1920s and 30s where all
of this was discussed in complete seriousness sort of like early versions of Bilderberger
meetings. So the accuracy of their books was no accident they actually KNEW what was being
planned. Huxley just emphasized the more SOCIALIST elements while Orwell emphasized the more
FASCIST elements they were both right, because both aspects were always part of the plan.
It's obvious that the Rulers always intended to use both approaches as part of their CONTROL
structure.
Looking at their personal lives and backgrounds, it appears that Orwell was trying to warn
us. Huxley was much more of a British upper crust blue blood. He seemed to be in agreement
with what the Rulers were planning, and along with his brother Julian he was actually helping
them. They both knew what was coming.
Were they used as textbooks by the Rulers? It's just that the general public aren't as
worried about controlling the masses as the Rulers' are."
"Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence -- those are the three pillars of
Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you'd collapse."
– Aldous Huxley
Ouch, Huxley chops at the roots. This quote is profound. If you were to connect dots what
do you see?
"She's done as a member of leadership. I don't understand what she's doing," one former
House GOP lawmaker told The Hill of Cheney's ongoing attacks on former President Trump. " It's
like political self-immolation. You can't cancel Trump from the Republican Party; all she's
done is cancel herself. "
Cheney has repeatedly attacked Trump for 'inciting' the Jan. 6 'insurrection' despite
telling supporters to protest peacefully and then go home following the breach of the
Capitol.
GOP leaders hope that purging Cheney from the leadership ranks will move Republicans
beyond their civil war over Trump" one that's raged publicly since the Jan. 6 attack on the
Capitol" and allow the party to unite behind a midterm campaign message that President Biden
and the Democrats are too liberal for the country. - The
Hill
"There are still a few members that are talking about things that happened in the past, not
really focused on what we need to do to move forward and win the majority back next year,"
according to Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the minority whip. "We're going to have to be unified
if we defeat the socialist agenda you're seeing in Washington."
A victory by Stefanik would mark a symbolic shift back towards Trump by leading Republicans
- as the former president remains highly engaged this election cycle and has threatened to
politically obliterate any remaining GOP opposition.
"By ousting her, what we're saying is: We are repudiating your repudiation of the Trump
policies and the Trump agenda and her attacks on the president," according to Rep. Andy Biggs
(R-AZ), adding " President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. And when she's out
there attacking him, she's attacking the leader of the Republican Party ."
Cheney has already survived one challenge to her leadership post, in February, after she
infuriated conservatives by voting to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol rampage on Jan.
6. With the backing of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), she easily kept
her seat as conference chair, 145 to 61 by secret ballot.
With McCarthy and Scalise fed up with Cheney and now backing Stefanik, the 36-year-old New
Yorker is expected to prevail in Wednesday's contest" a would-be victory for leaders who have
failed to unite the conference behind a post-Trump strategy in the early months of the Biden
administration. - The
Hill
... ... ...
Cheney isn't the only House Republican facing backlash for taking on Trump. Earlier in the
week, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), one of seven Republican senators who voted this year to
convict Trump, was booed and called a traitor at the Utah GOP state convention, where he
narrowly beat back an effort to censure him.
On Friday, the Ohio Republican Party Central Committee voted to censure Rep. Anthony
Gonzalez (R-Ohio), Cheney and the eight other House Republicans who backed Trump's
impeachment in January. The Ohio GOP also formally called for Gonzalez's resignation.
... ... ...
Catullus 51 minutes ago
I don't care if Trump runs again just as long as these gross establishment Republicans
are thrown out on their asses
JoeyChernenko PREMIUM 39 minutes ago (Edited)
Romney is a real traitorous worm. Did you hear him say Biden is a good man with good
intentions when the Utah crowd was booing his worthless hide? And we need to make sure the
Bush dynasty remains out of power.
Anath 51 minutes ago remove link
the cheney family is pure evil. that is all.
chinese.sniffles 52 minutes ago
Why Would Wyoming choose Chenney, after all that evil that **** brought upon America. If
there was no ****, Obama would never get elected.
chunga 47 minutes ago remove link
Cynics suspect primaries are also rigged.
Basecamp3 PREMIUM 50 minutes ago
Comstock is a traitor that never read the Navarro Report which goes into detail of
how the election was stolen. Also, ousting Cheney has zero risk. She is stupid, weak, and
her own constituents hate her.
overbet 50 minutes ago
which has caused some GOP leaders to fear alienating female Republican voters,
particularly educated suburbanites who will be key votes in the 2022 elections.
The female republicans I know are smarter than that. All of them
Grave Dancer 22 38 minutes ago remove link
Liz's sociopath dad **** got hundreds of thousands killed based on a total fraud lie of
a war. And Liz has a problem with Trump because he tweets some unfiltered stuff once in a
while? Freaking kidding me? ay_arrow
GhostOLaz 37 minutes ago
Don't blame Liz, she has a legacy of treason to protect, Daddy removed the only secular
anti Communist govt in the middle East which protected Christains and religious
minorities...
gaaasp 20 minutes ago (Edited)
Women could wear pants and not be burkahed up in Syria and Libya and Iraq before
Bush/Clinton/Obama/Trump sent troops.
chunga 49 minutes ago
I don't want to give up on the process but the GOP has a lot of work to do.
nmewn 39 minutes ago
The thing about "us" is, when we find them we jettison them. Cantor was another one. She
voted to impeach an outgoing President who's trial she knew would be held AFTER he was out
of office and again just an average American citizen holding no federal office at all.
She is either incompetent, stupid (or both) or a cancer the GOP can live with excised
from the body.
Make_Mine_A_Double 40 minutes ago
Peggy Noonan really came out the closet in this weekend's WSJ with editorial of Liz
Chaney against the House of Cowards.
They are 2 of the same. We've had these demsheviks in the ranks for decades. Noonan
takes it in the anoose at dem cocktail parties and is Team Mascot for the RINOs.
Tucker finally exposed that filth Luntz. McCathry is actually living with him in one of
his apartments - I assume it's not platonic in nature.
This is why Trump could never even the bottom of the swamp....g.d. RINOs need to purged
with the extreme prejudice.
the Mysterians 40 minutes ago
War pig.
in deditionem acceptos 48 minutes ago
Liz will survive the vote. Too much graff from the MIC to get her out. McCarthey could
of got her out in Feb if he wanted. Wonder what honey pot he's dipping into?
A Girl In Flyover Country 43 minutes ago
She won't survive the Wyoming voters, though.
Cogito_ergosum 52 minutes ago (Edited)
She is protecting her dad who was part of the inside gang that carried out the...
demolition of the twin towers on 911...
Flying Monkees 37 minutes ago (Edited)
BS. The tribe's fingerprints were all over 9/11 as documented in extensive detail by
Christopher Bollyn.
JoeyChernenko PREMIUM 53 minutes ago
Don't any of these evil families ever just fade into oblivion? Bush, Cheney, Clinton,
Obama, etc.
beavertails 50 minutes ago
Extending and pretending there are choices when there aren't any. The MIC got this. The
"Prez" is just show to sell ads and steal, I mean raise fiat from the gullible.
I can understand the frustrations and rage of certain folks.
If you're a worker on an oil rig, a truck driver, a policeman, or some such jobs, there's
bound to be moments when you're angry as hell. So, even though such people say crazy things
once a while, I can understand where they're coming from. They need to blow off steam.
But the professor class? These lowlife parasites sit on their asses and talk shi*. They
produce nothing and make a living by spreading nonsense. And yet, they act like they are
soooooooooo angry with the way of the world. If they really care about the world, why hide in
their academic enclaves?
Academia needs a cultural revolution, a real kind, not the bogus 'woke' kind made up of
teachers' pets.
(Bloomberg) -- Senator Elizabeth Warren ripped the Federal Reserve for its oversight of
Credit Suisse Group AG in the run-up to Archegos Capital Management's implosion, arguing the
regulator badly blundered when it freed the bank from heightened monitoring.
Warren pointed out at a Tuesday Senate hearing that the Fed knew Credit Suisse had problems
estimating its potential trading losses because the agency had flagged the Swiss bank over that
issue in its 2019 stress tests. She questioned why Credit Suisse, under the watch of Fed Vice
Chairman for Supervision Randal Quarles, was among foreign banks released last year from
oversight by the Large Institution Supervision Coordinating Committee, which keeps tabs on
lenders that pose the greatest risk to the U.S. financial system.
"So you now agree that you made the wrong decision to weaken supervision?" the Massachusetts
Democrat asked Quarles, who was testifying before the Senate Banking Committee.
"We did not weaken supervision," he responded, saying the shrinking U.S. footprint of Credit
Suisse and other foreign banks prompted the Fed's decision. Quarles further argued that the
billions of dollars in losses that Credit Suisse suffered in relation to Archegos -- trader
Bill Hwang's family office -- weren't a result of faulty Fed oversight.
"The losses you are referring to didn't occur in the United States," he said.
Warren scoffed at the idea that missteps involving overseas lenders don't lead to U.S.
consequences. She reminded Quarles his term as vice chairman ends in five months, and said,
"our financial system will be safer when you are gone."
She does a good job of historical summary and providing options for effecting change that
go beyond my one note drum of ending the global private finance jackboot. She quotes lots of
folks and it is a good read. My only problem with lots of solutions is that they leave the
inherently flawed structure intact....private finance....
I posit to start with making finance a public utility and the rest will flow from that
structural change.
@ Posted by: psychohistorian | May 20 2021 0:32 utc | 52
From the article you linked:
The sort of capitalism on which the United States was originally built has been called
mom-and-pop capitalism. Families owned their own farms and small shops and competed with
each other on a more or less level playing field. It was a form of capitalism that broke
free of the feudalistic model and reflected the groundbreaking values set forth in the
Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights: that all men are created equal and are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including the rights to free
speech, a free press, to worship and assemble; and the right not to be deprived of life,
liberty or property without due process.
That is a very distorted, romanticized view of colonial and pre-War of Secession
America.
During colonial times, immigrants mostly arrived as de facto serfs in the northern
colonies, while the south had the plantation system we all know about.
This "mom-and-pop capitalism" of the "small farms and small shops" were actually feudalism
with extra steps: remember they were essentially concessions of the Crown to a privateer.
This privateer made pre-arranged contracts with people in the UK, on diverse levels,
depending on how much you paid him: the richer already arrived on American soil with his
piece of land guaranteed, and was essentially your "small farm" owner. There was no
"religious persecution", or "land of opportunity": it was all accorded in London before he
even set sail.
However, those were the minority: the majority were vagrants and convicts who were sent to
the colonies against their will; once they arrived, they had to work for one of those farm
owners. The contracts varied according to the colony, but they were invariably draconian;
they were very long and prohibited from leaving the farm/piece of land. It was servitude in
the strict feudal sense of the word, and it relied heavily on child labor (many convicts in
16th-17th Century UK were children).
So, what Ellen Brown calls "Mom-and-Pop Capitalism" was essentially feudalism with extra
steps. Just to give you a glimpse from Nancy Isenberg's "White Trash":
The colonists were a mixed lot. On the bottom of the heap were men and women of the poor
and criminal classes. Among these unheroic transplants were roguish highwaymen, mean
vagrants, Irish rebels, known whores, and an assortment of convicts shipped to the colonies
for grand larceny or other property crimes, as a reprieve of sorts, to escape the gallows.
Not much better were those who filled the ranks of indentured servants, who ranged in class
position from lowly street urchins to former artisans burdened with overwhelming debts.
They had taken a chance in the colonies, having been impressed into service and then
choosing exile over possible incarceration within the walls of an overcrowded,
disease-ridden English prison. Labor shortages led some ship captains and agents to round
up children from the streets of London and other towns to sell to planters across the ocean
-- this was known as "spiriting." Young children were shipped off for petty crimes. One
such case is that of Elizabeth "Little Bess" Armstrong, sent to Virginia for stealing two
spoons. Large numbers of poor adults and fatherless boys gave up their freedom, selling
themselves into indentured servitude, whereby their passage was paid in return for
contracting to anywhere from four to nine years of labor. Their contracts might be sold,
and often were, upon their arrival. Unable to marry or choose another master, they could be
punished or whipped at will. Owing to the harsh working conditions they had to endure, one
critic compared their lot to "Egyptian bondage."
Discharged soldiers, also of the lower classes, were shipped off to the colonies. For a
variety of reasons, single men and women, and families of the lower gentry, and those of
artisan or yeoman classes joined the mass migratory swarm. Some left their homes to evade
debts that might well have landed them in prison; others (a fair number coming from Germany
and France) viewed the colonies as an asylum from persecution for their religious faith;
just as often, resettlement was their escape from economic restrictions imposed upon their
trades. Still others ventured to America to leave tarnished reputations and economic
failures behind.
Each owner adapted the situation to their taste and the immediate necessity. Some concrete
examples:
Pennsylvania's class structure had some unusual quirks. At the top were the proprietors,
members of William Penn's family, who owned vast tracts of land and collected quitrents.
Next came the wealthy Quaker landowners and merchants, bound together by family and
religious ties. In the eighteenth century, the Society of Friends disowned any member who
married outside the sect, which inflicted real economic hardship by depriving the expelled
of important commercial resources, loans, and land sales.
For Carolina:
Class structure preoccupied Locke the constitutionalist. He endowed the nobility of the New
World with such unusual titles as landgraves and caciques. The first of these was derived
from the German word for prince; the latter was Spanish for an American Indian chieftain.
Both described a hereditary peerage separate from the English system, and an imperial
shadow elite whose power rested in colonial estates or through commercial trade. A court of
heraldry was added to this strange brew: in overseeing marriages and maintaining pedigree,
it provided further evidence of the intention to fix (and police) class identity.
Pretentious institutions such as these hardly suited the swampy backwater of Carolina, but
in the desire to impose order on an unsettled land, every detail mattered -- down to
assigning overblown names to ambitious men in the most rustic outpost of the British
Empire.6
Yet even the faux nobility was not as strange as another feature of the Locke-endorsed
Constitutions. That dubious honor belongs to the nobility and manor lord's unique servant
class, ranked above slaves but below freemen. These were the "Leet-men," who were
encouraged to marry and have children but were tied to the land and to their lord. They
could be leased and hired out to others, but they could not leave their lord's service.
Theirs, too, was a hereditary station: "All the children of Leet-men shall be Leet-men, so
to all generations," the Constitutions stated. The heirs of estates inherited not just
land, buildings, and belongings, but the hapless Leet-men as well.
More than some anachronistic remnant of the feudal age, Leet-men represented Locke's
awkward solution to rural poverty. Locke did not call them villains, though they possessed
many of the attributes of serfs. He instead chose the word "Leet-men," which in England at
this time meant something very different: unemployed men entitled to poor relief. Locke,
like many successful Britons, felt contempt for the vagrant poor in England. He disparaged
them for their "idle and loose way of breeding up," and their lack of morality and
industry. There were poor families already in Carolina, as Locke knew, who stood in the way
of the colony's growth and collective wealth. In other words, Locke's Leet-men would not be
charity cases, pitied or despised, but a permanent and potentially productive peasant class
-- yet definitely an underclass.
As a curiosity: here's how the original American lords regarded the average Russian:
A Massachusetts orator put it simply: "I am a freeman, and the son of a freeman, born and
reared on free soil." Poor southern whites were born in slave states, reared on unfree
soil, and, according to a growing number of public commentators, they suffered from a
degenerate pedigree. They did not act like freemen. In Helper's view, their ignorance
and docility had made them worse than Russian serfs , when they compliantly voted the
"slaveocrats" into office time and again.
That's the beloved Russian Empire those "evil Bolsheviks" destroyed, according to the
widows of the Tsar and Orthodox fanatics that infest today's Russian Federation. But of
course, serfs had it good in the Empire; it was all about those French-speaking aristocrats
in those beautiful halls from Tolstoy's fairy tales.
More Hacks, More Baseless Accusations Against Russia
In January police in various countries took down the Emotet bot-network that was at that
time the basic platform for some 25% of all cybercrimes.
Based on hearsay Wikipedia and other had falsely attributed Emotet to Russian actors.
The real people behind it were actually
Ukrainians :
The operating center of Emotet was found in the Ukraine. Today the Ukrainian national police
took control of it during a raid (video). The police found dozens of
computers, some hundred hard drives, about 50 kilogram of gold bars (current price
~$60,000/kg) and large amounts of money in multiple currencies.
Now the U.S. is accusing Russia of somehow having part in another cybercrime :
President Joe Biden said Monday that a Russia-based group was behind the ransomware attack
that forced the shutdown of the largest oil pipeline in the eastern United States.
The FBI identified the group behind the hack of Colonial Pipeline as DarkSide, a shadowy
operation that surfaced last year and attempts to lock up corporate computer systems and
force companies to pay to unfreeze them.
"So far there is no evidence ... from our intelligence people that Russia is involved,
although there is evidence that actors, ransomware is in Russia," Biden told reporters.
"They have some responsibility to deal with this," he said.
Three days after being forced to halt operations, Colonial said Monday it was moving
toward a partial reopening of its 5,500 miles (8,850 kilometers) of pipeline" the largest
fuel network between Texas and New York.
Biden however is badly informed. There is no evidence that DarkSide has anything to do with
Russia. It is, like Emotet, a commercial
'ransomware-as-a-service' criminal entity that wants to make money and does not care about
geopolitics.
Yes, a version of the DarkNet software does exclude itself from running on system with
specific
language settings :
The DarkSide malware is even built to conduct language checks on targets and to shut down if
it detects Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Armenian, Georgian, Kazakh, Turkmen, Romanian, and
other languages ...
That is a quite long list of east European languages and Russian is only one of it. Why the
authors of DarkNet do not want their software to run on machines with those language settings
is unknown. But why would a Russian actor protect machines with Ukrainian or Romanian language
settings? Both countries are hostile towards Russia. To claim that this somehow points to
Russian actors is therefore baseless.
The Kremlin has once again pointed out the importance of cooperation between Moscow and
Washington in tackling cyberthreats amid a cyber-attack on Colonial Pipeline, a US company.
"Russia has nothing to do with these hacker attacks, nor with the previous hacker attacks,"
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Preskov assured reporters on Tuesday.
"We categorically reject any accusation against us, and we can only regret that the US is
refusing to cooperate with us in any way to counter cyber-threats. We believe that such
cooperation - both international and bilateral - could indeed contribute to the common
struggle against this scourge [known as] cyber-crime," Peskov said.
The U.S. seems notoriously bad at attributing computer hacks. It claims that the recent
SolarWinds attack which intruded several government branches was also done by Russia. But that
attack
required deep insider knowledge and access to SolarWinds' computers
and processes :
The recently discovered deep intrusion into U.S. companies and government networks used a
manipulated version of the SolarWinds Orion network management software. The Washington borg
immediately attributed the hack to Russia. Then President Trump attributed it to China. But
none of those claims were backed up by facts or known evidence.
The hack was extremely complex, well managed and resourced, and likely required insider
knowledge. To this IT professional it 'felt' neither Russian nor Chinese. It is far more
likely, as Whitney Webb finds, that
Israel was behind it .
Indeed - the programmers of an Israeli company, recently bought up by SolarWinds, had all
the necessary access for such a hack. However the U.S. sanctioned Russia over the SolarWinds
hack without providing any evidence of its involvement.
If the U.S. continues to blame Russia without any evidence for each and every hack there may
come a time when Russia stops caring and really starts to hack into or destroy important U.S.
systems. The U.S. should fear that day.
Posted by b on May 11, 2021 at 17:31 UTC |
Permalink
Thanks b. I don't think Russia is going to escalate destructive attacks any time soon.
There's no upside.
They might even be reluctant to reveal their capabilities in the Ukraine.
For the moment, mockery is the best remedy while they up their game.
@ b who ended with
"
If the U.S. continues to blame Russia without any evidence for each and every hack there may
come a time when Russia stops caring and really starts to hack into or destroy important U.S.
systems.
"
How can you write such assertions that vary from the approach that both Russia and China
are taking?....strong defense but no offense.
Now if empire tried to hack into a Russian or Chinese system/network then appropriate
takedowns of malicious systems/networks would seem logical....and I expect they know
how...but will not do it on the basis of another avenue of empire lies and deceit.
You should have titled the post "Killing Two Birds With One Stone".
This pipeline is huge, running from Texas through the Southeast and all the way up to New
England. It's condition is beyond awful with multiple leaks along the route some of which
lose more than a million gallons per month and much more than can be determined since some of
the gasoline / jet fuel went into the aquifers. These faults have been well known for decades
and although some of the areas are heavily populated no remediation was done. The local
outcry recently caught the attention of the press when kids reported a gasoline smell along
the pipeline route to the police. The locals demanded the pipeline be closed for repairs and
sought answers from state officials and Federal authorities as to why this situation was
allowed. To blame the Russians for the closure of the pipeline which results in a surge in
prices and limited availability of gas for the summer is an absolute stroke of genius.
https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/ncdeq-colonial-pipeline-spill-huntersville/275-70e16fb6-c945-4634-b933-3975d0573f2e
It is odd that certain elements of the us intelligence community, along with negative
factions within the us political establishment, continue to absolutely refuse to enter into
verifiable and mutually binding international agreements on cyber security with exactly the
nation states that they accuse (without evidence) of malicious activity in the same sphere,
while at the same time operating in this field in an openly declared hostile manner under the
secrecy deemed necessary for 'national security'.
Over the last decade or so, Sci-Hub, often referred to as "The Pirate Bay of Science,"
has been giving free access to a huge database of scientific papers that would otherwise be
locked behind a paywall.
Unsurprisingly, the website has been the target of multiple lawsuits, as well as an
investigation from the United States Department of Justice. The site's Twitter account was
also
recently suspended under Twitter's counterfeit policy, and its founder, Alexandra
Elbakyan, reported that the FBI
gained access to her Apple accounts .
Now, Redditors from a subreddit called DataHoarder, which is aimed at archiving
knowledge in the digital space, have come together to try to save the numerous papers
available on the website. In a
post on May 13 , the moderators of r/DataHoarder, stated that "it's time we sent Elsevier
and the USDOJ a clearer message about the fate of Sci-Hub and open science.
We are the library, we do not get silenced, we do not shut down our computers, and we
are many." This will be no easy task. Sci-Hub is home to over 85 million papers, totaling a
staggering 77TB of data . The group of Redditors is currently recruiting for its archiving
efforts and its stated goal is to have approximately 8,500 individuals torrenting the papers
in order to download the entire library. Once that task is complete, the Redditors aim to
release all of the downloaded data via a new "uncensorable" open-source website.
"... "Consider hiring me to do your assignment," reads a bid from one auction site. "I work fast, pay close attention to the instructions, and deliver a plagiarism-free paper." ..."
"... ... For the final exam, Mr. Johnson, a course coordinator, said he used a computer program that generated a unique set of questions for each student. Those questions quickly showed up on a for-profit homework website that helped him to identify who posted them. ..."
"... About 200 students were caught cheating -- one-fourth of the class. Overall, cases of academic dishonesty more than doubled in the 2019-20 academic year at NC State, with the biggest uptick as students made the transition to online learning, according to the school. ..."
"... Surprised that the use of apps like Photomath and mathway weren't mentioned. Students can just take a photo of a math problem, specify the directions and copy the steps. ..."
"... I've taugh at the high school and college level. I recently taught engineering at a NC high school. Within a couple months of Zoom teaching, I realized that cheating was rampant. I had numerous blatant examples of straight copy-and-paste cheating. ..."
"... The colleges have been cheating students for decades selling worthless programs and false information to students at exorbitant rates. So who is surprised that the students learned to cheat themselves. ..."
"... What the article needs to cover is the enormous amount of cheating done on SATs, GREs, LSATs, etc. to get into prestigious universities -- especially by prospective students who'll be here on an F1 visa. ..."
"... Such cheating is legendary among some cultures but the PC crowd won't want to hear about that, will they. We need their electronics and their widgets and such best not to rock that boat. P ..."
A year of
remote learning has spurred an eruption of cheating among students, from grade school to college. With many students isolated
at home over the past year""and with a mass of online services at their disposal""academic dishonesty has never been so easy.
Websites that allow students to submit questions for expert answers have gained millions of new users over the past year. A newer
breed of site allows students to put up their own classwork for auction.
"Consider hiring me to do your assignment," reads a bid from one auction site. "I work fast, pay close attention to the instructions,
and deliver a plagiarism-free paper."
... For the final exam, Mr. Johnson, a course coordinator, said he used a computer program that generated a unique set of questions
for each student. Those questions quickly showed up on a for-profit homework website that helped him to identify who posted them.
About 200 students were caught cheating""one-fourth of the class. Overall, cases of academic dishonesty more than doubled in the
2019-20 academic year at NC State, with the biggest uptick as students made the transition to online learning, according to the school.
Texas A&M University had a 50% increase in cheating allegations in the fall from a year earlier, with one incident involving 193
students self-reporting academic misconduct to receive lighter punishment after faculty members caught on, a university official
said. The University of Pennsylvania saw cheating case investigations grow 71% in the 2019-20 academic year, school data shows.
Dozens of cadets at the
U.S. Military Academy at West Point were caught cheating on an online calculus exam last year, sharing answers with each other
from home. The school said in April it was ending a policy that protected cadets who admitted honor code violations from being kicked
out.
... ... ...
In February, auction website homeworkforyou.com featured one student post looking for someone willing to do weekly school assignments,
exams and a project for a business class at York College in Queens, N.Y., over a two-month span. The winning bidder would also need
to pose as the student and respond to classmates in a group assignment. The student specified that an "A" was the desired outcome,
and that the "willing to pay" fee was $465.
By the next day, 29 bids had come in. The average was $479.41.
... Other popular websites that students use to get help""by submitting a question for an expert to quickly answer, or by searching
a database of previous answers""include Chegg and Brainly,
which said they have seen a big increase in users during the pandemic.
Mr. Piwnik said world-wide users grew to 350 million monthly in 2020, from about 200 million in 2019. The basic service is free,
while a $24 annual subscription is ad-free and gives access to premium features.
Chegg, a publicly held company based in Santa Clara, Calif., prides itself on a willingness to help institutions determine the
identities of those who cheat. It allows educators to report copyright information found on the site. The company saw total net revenue
of $644.3 million in 2020, a 57% increase year over year. Subscribers hit a record 6.6 million, up 67%.
A year of
remote learning has spurred an eruption of cheating among students, from grade school to college. With many students isolated
at home over the past year and with a mass of online services at their disposal academic dishonesty has never been so easy.
Websites that allow students to submit questions for expert answers have gained millions of new users over the past year. A newer
breed of site allows students to put up their own classwork for auction.
"Consider hiring me to do your assignment," reads a bid from one auction site. "I work fast, pay close attention to the instructions,
and deliver a plagiarism-free paper."
... For the final exam, Mr. Johnson, a course coordinator, said he used a computer program that generated a unique set of questions
for each student. Those questions quickly showed up on a for-profit homework website that helped him to identify who posted them.
About 200 students were caught cheating -- one-fourth of the class. Overall, cases of academic dishonesty more than doubled in the
2019-20 academic year at NC State, with the biggest uptick as students made the transition to online learning, according to the school.
Texas A&M University had a 50% increase in cheating allegations in the fall from a year earlier, with one incident involving 193
students self-reporting academic misconduct to receive lighter punishment after faculty members caught on, a university official
said. The University of Pennsylvania saw cheating case investigations grow 71% in the 2019-20 academic year, school data shows.
Dozens of cadets at the
U.S. Military Academy at West Point were caught cheating on an online calculus exam last year, sharing answers with each other
from home. The school said in April it was ending a policy that protected cadets who admitted honor code violations from being kicked
out.
... ... ...
In February, auction website homeworkforyou.com featured one student post looking for someone willing to do weekly school assignments,
exams and a project for a business class at York College in Queens, N.Y., over a two-month span. The winning bidder would also need
to pose as the student and respond to classmates in a group assignment. The student specified that an "A" was the desired outcome,
and that the "willing to pay" fee was $465.
By the next day, 29 bids had come in. The average was $479.41.
... Other popular websites that students use to get help "by submitting a question for an expert to quickly answer, or by searching
a database of previous answers" include Chegg and Brainly,
which said they have seen a big increase in users during the pandemic.
Mr. Piwnik said world-wide users grew to 350 million monthly in 2020, from about 200 million in 2019. The basic service is free,
while a $24 annual subscription is ad-free and gives access to premium features.
Chegg, a publicly held company based in Santa Clara, Calif., prides itself on a willingness to help institutions determine the
identities of those who cheat. It allows educators to report copyright information found on the site. The company saw total net revenue
of $644.3 million in 2020, a 57% increase year over year. Subscribers hit a record 6.6 million, up 67%.
Colleges administrators and professors ban speakers with opinions that differ from their narratives, pull books they don't like
and can claim to be 'racist', and hire based solely on ethnic background.
But. the are SHOCKED when student cheat the system.
S 18 minutes ago
Surprised that the use of apps like Photomath and mathway weren't mentioned. Students can just take a photo of a math
problem, specify the directions and copy the steps.
Unfortunately for the students, the apps will solve problems in peculiar ways that stand out to the teacher. I've never had
so many students cheat of quizzes or tests. With most of them fully virtual even still, or home often because of hybrid, it's
almost impossible to get fairly produced student work. E
SUBSCRIBER 40 minutes ago
Lazy, lazy test makers. Write new questions (and please check them through a simple search first to make sure the answer
isn't readily available), timed testing, and assume the test takers all have full access to the internet. Stop assuming the
test taking conditions haven't changed. They have.
SUBSCRIBER 44 minutes ago
Back in the 1980's when I went to College there was a big uproar over Cliff Notes. Students copying word for word... But it
was known you could buy test questions, hire note takers for class, buy essays. The Frat boys had a well developed system! J
SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago (Edited)
The cheating isn't limited to students.
Look at how our Congressional representatives behave in office!
Look at how career bureaucrats behave!
is it any wonder that cheating is so rampant? honesty and integrity are for suckers.
why worry about your conscience? there is no Deity, there is no higher moral law. All ethics are relative. As long as I get
ahead, what's the big deal?
There's no afterlife anyway, so what do I have to worry about? G
SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
Maybe they're studying to be our future national-level political leaders. G
SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
Call me old-fashioned, naive or worse but I always saw homework or studying for an exam as the mental counterpart to
physical exercise.
Sure, you can cheat.
But you cheat yourself in the long term when you don't develop the intellectual "muscles" that you need to compete and
succeed in adult life.
And you or your parents paid good money to get that degree and you bypassed four or more years of earning potential by
attending school.
Sounds like a pretty poor tradeoff to me. B
SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago (Edited)
I've taugh at the high school and college level. I recently taught engineering at a NC high school. Within a couple
months of Zoom teaching, I realized that cheating was rampant. I had numerous blatant examples of straight copy-and-paste
cheating.
I confronted each student and most of them either played dumb, or denied it. I separately showed them each the website and
documents they stole from and told them this was their one and only freebie. A few parents confronted me but after showing
them the evidence they either dropped it or confronted their own child. A few parents thanked me for holding their kid
accountable, but most just complained or dropped it altogether.
After a couple more months of it continuing, and not getting enough support from the administrators, I quit, without yet
having secured a new job. I'll say this, it's worse than you think, and your child likely does it too, or knows of those who
do. It's become acceptable to them bc of pressure to get into college. M
SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
It is not new. Twenty-five years ago, my wife, a ranked academic, was given a paper supposedly written by one of her
students. She recognized it because she typed it after I wrote it ten years before.
When she confronted the student he admitted to buying it from a paper mill. Apparently the prof I wrote it for sold
his "collection" on retirement. Sadly, even then, the student got little more than a slap on the wrist once outed.
SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
The colleges have been cheating students for decades selling worthless programs and false information to students at
exorbitant rates. So who is surprised that the students learned to cheat themselves. M
SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
This is just a manifestation of the bankruptcy of our education system. Let's face it, for most students from
kindergarteners to PhD post grads, it is not about gaining knowledge, learning how to think or even mastering skills. It is
about checking blocks to build a resume. What does a diploma really mean? A checked block.
The system has known and participated in this for decades. What does it really matter how that block got checked?
SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
What the article needs to cover is the enormous amount of cheating done on SATs, GREs, LSATs, etc. to get into
prestigious universities -- especially by prospective students who'll be here on an F1 visa.
Such cheating is legendary among some cultures but the PC crowd won't want to hear about that, will they. We need
their electronics and their widgets and such best not to rock that boat. P
SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
I'm a lecturer at a Canadian university and am quite troubled by the use of textbook publisher's test banks in exam prep.
Students easily find the keys on line. Some students have stopped attending class. They know what will be on the exam. Of
course they learn nothing. Admin, faculty and students love the easy inflated grades. Academic wheels turn but there is no
learning. It's not a student problem, it's a bone lazy faculty problem. I write my own exams but many refuse. E
SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
Wonderful. Just what I want. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, urban planners, nurses, mechanics, dentists, and
other professionals who need to cheat to graduate.
SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
Hey you forgot another sizable group that will provide US with 'professionals' of questionable quality the AA crowd
that gets placed into universities based upon what?
"... The Global Financial Syndicate will use all kind of distractions to mask the MONETARY power and divide the populace to continue its control & dominance through monetary imperialism. The world is a playground for "evil spirits." ..."
One need to understand the STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENT correctly, clearly, and comprehensively
to live & light our world. What is your strategic construct of the national and
international control system?
The Global Financial Syndicate will use all kind of distractions to mask the MONETARY
power and divide the populace to continue its control & dominance through monetary
imperialism. The world is a playground for "evil spirits."
How does the Financial Empire increase its control & POWER over a region? It likes
turning each region into its suzerainty and an Animal Farm (Top-Down Control Structure -
Democracy/Republic/...) internally by controlling its money supply through the
central-private banking system.
Global Financial Empire's strategy:
– Capture LANDS
– Constitutionalize to control the suzerainty & LIVES
– Create LOANS through private creation of money by the private banking system
(Credit/Debt) & give preferential access-terms to kleptocrats (Kleptocrats/Finance --
> Business/Media -- > Politicians/Bureaucrats -- > people)
– Conserve control & power through Consumerism - lifestyles (Labor &
Leisure)
Monetary Power = Lands x Lives x Loans. The key CONTROL elements of the Financial Empire
within a suzerainty are:
– credit/debt - LOANS
– consumerism/desires - LIFESTYLE
– circuses/distractions. - LOST & trivial
When it comes to the international realm it seeks following freedoms:
– freedom of capital movement,
– freedom of trade,
– freedom to provide services, particularly financial
– freedom for warfare
The Global Financial Syndicate controls, finances and corrupts policies such as those in
the U$A administration by its financing the substitution of national leaders with employees
of the Financial Syndicate, such as Biden, Draghi, Yellen, Juncker, Macron,... Globalization
is meant to establish the global financial syndicate's rule everywhere, hierarchically from
top to bottom, in contrast to the democratic right of citizens to self-determination and the
responsibility of governments towards their citizens.
Who wants to make us all, whether we be nations or individuals, slaves to debt?
After Russiagate the credibility of CIA is below zero. So this looks like a part of
propaganda compaign against China.
"Yet somehow Tony Fauci didn't know this Can we really believe that? No, of course, we
can't," Carlson continued, adding "right around the time those Chinese researchers became the
world's first COVID patients, the government of Thailand contacted the CDC and Tony Fauci's
office to say its intelligence service had picked up 'biological anomalies' around the lab in
Wuhan. In other words, there had been a leak."
ay_arrow
AUS-AUD 8 hours ago (Edited)
If fauci funded the wuhan lab then the US funded the wuhan lab.
popeye 6 hours ago
There has been no new credible information released in the past two months pertaining to
the origin of SARS-Cov-2. US Intelligence is not a credible source (lying & deception
are the tradecraft of espionage). All I see is media narrative spin based on conjecture
that you can guarantee has political origins.
Yet Americans, who complain incessantly about the dishonesty of their media, credulously
swallow the narrative fed to them without analysis or critique. Stupid. You think you are
independent rebels, when you are in reality manipulated sheep, and oh so easily
manipulated.
Lets be clear - ZH is now a part of the narrative machine.
SurfingUSA 4 hours ago (Edited)
Can't make inferences????
The Wuhan lab is just the fall guy here.
The virus,
the lab (or Army games) release,
the election impact ...
ALL either Made in the (((USA))) or close to it.
Justin Timberbieber 8 hours ago
Yep, just the CCP. No western involvement whatsoever.
E5 8 hours ago
Until you trace the scientists back to UNC. Then you see that the actual virus they
accelerated came from the US.
Heimdall - Torwart von Assguard 6 hours ago
AND Canada
Ted K. 6 hours ago
The Winnipeg lab of the fully infiltrated Canada is indeed a piece of the puzzle.
Herdee 5 hours ago
And Ft. Detrick
RedNemesis 6 hours ago (Edited)
Okay. They accelerated and released a virus obtained from the US. So is the US
responsible for a country turning yellow cake uranium mined in Nevada into a nuclear
weapon?
truth or go home 5 hours ago
Yes, if the US gives them the recipe and then pays them to develop it.
And if the US did that to get around a law that makes it illegal to do makes it even
worse - which is exactly what happened.
SteveNYC 7 hours ago
I'm going with the "populism" route. Stopping populist governments in their tracks has
always proven reason enough for panic and overkill from TPTB:
- USA
- Brazil
- India
<< Primary targets.
Heimdall - Torwart von Assguard 6 hours ago
Poland
Hungary
Venezuela
Brazil
popeye 6 hours ago
Most Americans have never left their country, many have never left their state, and few
seem to have an education. You can't expect them to know much about anything outside the
US. Basically a flat earth mentality - "the world consists only of what I can see".
junction 8 hours ago
The only certainty is that all the major facts are lies.
Jolt 5 hours ago
You're on the right track, "junction", but be aware that the virus is just an ordinary
flu/corona virus that isn't deadly for the vast majority of humans. The real culprit, the
biggest tool for creating the worldwide "emergency" is the PCR test, which is 100%
fraudulent. This is by design, thanks to the pharmaceuticals.
williambanzai7 PREMIUM 8 hours ago remove link
No Tucker, if you just want to blame the whole thing on China you are missing the
punchline: Fauci
tion PREMIUM 8 hours ago (Edited) remove link
It's all an assortment of narratives and partial truths. Tucker points the finger at
China without mentioning how Fauci was funding Gain of Function work at the Wuhan lab. Here
is just one example of people from that lab using an HIV splice to increase
transmissibility of a pathogen to humans.
In this study, we investigated the receptor usage of the SL-CoV S by combining a human
immunodeficiency virus-based pseudovirus system with cell lines expressing the ACE2
molecules of human, civet, or horseshoe bat. In addition to full-length S of SL-CoV and
SARS-CoV, a series of S chimeras was constructed by inserting different sequences of the
SARS-CoV S into the SL-CoV S backbone. Several important observations were made from this
study. First, the SL-CoV S was unable to use any of the three ACE2 molecules as its
receptor. Second, the SARS-CoV S failed to enter cells expressing the bat ACE2. Third,
the chimeric S covering the previously defined receptor-binding domain gained its ability
to enter cells via human ACE2, albeit with different efficiencies for different
constructs. Fourth, a minimal insert region (amino acids 310 to 518) was found to be
sufficient to convert the SL-CoV S from non-ACE2 binding to human ACE2 binding ,
indicating that the SL-CoV S is largely compatible with SARS-CoV S protein both in
structure and in function.
Journal of Virology, February 2008
And by the way let's not pretend that dear Donald aka President Kushner's FIL didn't
also know about Fauci's questionable involvement with unethical gain of function research
at this lab before appointing him and the PEPFAR mafia to head the Covid taskforce, putting
the foxes in charge of guarding the hen house so to speak.
TheAlmightyCorndawg 8 hours ago
Which is precisely why Tucker is Operation Mockingbird.
Billy the Poet 7 hours ago (Edited)
Then show me solid evidence that what you say is true. You do have film of Tucker
working with the CIA, right?
2+2 ≠ 5 8 hours ago remove link
Huh?
Tucker has NEVER "supported the election hoax".
In fact, Tucker is one of the very few on MSM to continually call for proper voting
audits of the 2020 election, and he repeatedly highlights the obvious fraud that took
place.
ay_arrow
GoodyGumdrops 8 hours ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Election fraud has been happening in the US
for decades.
The only thing new this time around is they decided to mock the American people openly,
so that they can never claim ignorance again about the corruption.
The plandemic is the real worldwide atrocity being played out right now before our
eyes.
asteroids 8 hours ago
The heads of the NIH and the CDC have been caught lying. Therefore both agencies have NO
credibility and have lost the trust of the people. ...
Flying Monkees 8 hours ago
Imagine being a total POS like Fauci who would destroy the freedom and liberties of his
fellow Americans just so he can line his own pockets...
Strange news of the fatherland... knowing what is going on in Germany right now is helpful
to understanding the strange goings on in the USAi and its dreams of eternal empire. It ain't
clear sailing yet for NS2!
If your country is part of an international empire, the domestic politics of the country
that rules yours are your domestic politics too. Whoever speaks of the Europe of the EU
must therefore also speak of Germany. Currently it is widely believed that after the German
federal elections of 24 September this year, Europe will enter a post-Merkel era. The truth
is not so simple.
In October 2018, following two devastating defeats in state elections in Hesse and
Bavaria, Angela Merkel resigned as president of her party, the CDU, and announced that she
would not seek re-election as Chancellor in 2021. She would, however, serve out her fourth
term, to which she had been officially appointed only seven months earlier.
Putting together a coalition government had taken no less than six months following the
September 2017 federal election, in which the CDU and its Bavarian sidekick, the CSU, had
scored the worst result in their history, at 32.9 percent (2013: 41.5 percent). (Merkel's
record as party leader is nothing short of dismal, having lost votes each time she ran. How
she could nevertheless remain Chancellor for 16 years will have to be explained elsewhere.)
In the subsequent contest for the CDU presidency, the party's general secretary, Annegret
Kramp-Karrenbauer, appointed by Merkel only in February 2018, narrowly prevailed over two
competitors.
After little more than a year, however, when Merkel publicly dressed her down for a lack
of leadership, Kramp-Karrenbauer resigned and declared that she would not run for
Chancellor in 2021 either. A few months later, when von der Leyen went to Brussels,
Kramp-Karrenbauer got Merkel to appoint her minister of defense. The next contest for the
party presidency, the second in Merkel's fourth term, had to take place under Corona
restrictions; it took a long time and was won in January 2021 by Armin Laschet, Prime
Minister of the largest federal state, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). To prevent the
comeback of an old foe of hers, Friedrich Merz, Merkel allegedly supported Laschet behind
the scenes.
While Laschet – a less-than-charismatic Christian-Democratic middle-of-the-roader
and lifelong Merkel loyalist – considered the party presidency to be a ticket to the
CDU/CSU candidacy for Chancellor, it took three months for this to be settled. As CDU/CSU
politics go, the joint candidate is picked by the two party presidents when they feel the
time has come, under four eyes; no formal procedure provided.
Thus Laschet needed the agreement of Markus Söder, Prime Minister of Bavaria, who
didn't keep it a secret that he believed himself the far better choice. In the background,
again, there was Merkel, in the unprecedented position of a sitting Chancellor watching the
presidents of her two parties pick her would-be successor in something like a semi-public
cock-fight. After some dramatic toing-and-froing, Laschet prevailed, once more supported by
Merkel, apparently in exchange for his state's backing for the federal government imposing
a 'hard' Covid-19 lockdown on the entire country...
...There will also be differences on the Eastern flank of the EU, where Baerbock,
following the United States, will support Ukrainian accession to NATO and the EU, and
finance EU extension in the West Balkans. That she will also cancel North Stream 2 will
be a point of contention in a Baerbock/Scholz government.
Laschet will be more inclined towards France and seek some accommodation with Russia, on
trade as well as security; he will also hesitate to be too strongly identified with the US
on Eastern Europe and Ukraine. But then, he will be reminded by his Foreign Minister,
Baerbock, as well as his own party that Germany's national security depends on the American
nuclear umbrella, which the French cannot and in any case will not replace. (my
emphasis)
Doyle Lonnegan to Johnny "Hooker" Kelly in the movie The Sting: "Your boss is quite the
card player Mr. Kelly. How does he do it?"
Kelly to Lonnegan: "He cheats."
philipat 2 days ago
It's appropriate that the entirely useless ex-PM Cameron got taken by this guy and tried
to use his influence to access free money for him from The Treasury as an "advisor"..He
didn't get any.
The Fed never had control, just s bunch of shysters running a long term hybrid ponzi
scheme.
Lordflin 54 minutes ago (Edited)
The Fed is losing control...
I suppose that is true... as the function has been to drain the people's wealth into the
coffers of the few...
The Real Satoshi 29 minutes ago remove link
Sad that Greg Hunter got kicked off youtube.
gregga777 12 minutes ago (Edited)
He is in great company, though. Anyone who offends the Marxist narratives (Politically
Correct, Multicultural, Affirmative Action, Diversity, Feminist, LGBTQQ, etc.) gets kicked
off YouTube.
pmc 36 minutes ago (Edited) remove link
...As Kissinger said "The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little
longer."
Trump represented a FACTION
of the establishment. Which one? He did their bidding and in the process alienated other
factions. The other factions worked together to get him replaced. There are factions within
neocons, neoliberals and establishment. It is a nuanced and complex structure, not
monolithic. It is misleading to state, "he publicly broke away from the American oligarchy's
class interests".
Trump's biggest MISTAKE was that he didn't build a good sounding board of advisors. He
surrounded himself with his family members and believed his orders will be implemented like a
corporate president. Jared Kushner is a Bilderberg. So Trump was connected to the global
syndicate and part of the swamp.
The unipolar order ended in 2014/15 and the multipolar order is establishing. The U$A or
NATO can't launch a foreign war like they did in Libya. Russia and China have warned the
Financial Empire and defined the redlines. This is the reason behind Trump not launching a
new major foreign war. Will Biden launch a new war? However, Trump did launch hybrid wars in
Venezuela, Bolivia, Belarus,... Trump didn't break from FOREIGN adventures.
During Trump's term:
– How many bombs were dropped?
– How much new DEBT was created?
– How much did the money supply increase by?
– What happened to the trade deficit?
Im a nurse and im not allowed to give medical advice or I'll lose my license only a doctor
can give advice so bill gates needs to be put in prison send this to him
Gates And Epstein Traded Advice On Bill's 'Toxic' Marriage, Jeff's Pedo Image Rehab
During Secretive "Men's Club" Gatherings BY TYLER DURDEN MONDAY, MAY 17, 2021 - 03:11
PM
A former Jeffrey Epstein insider claims that Bill Gates was a regular at the notorious
pedophile's $77 million Manhattan townhouse, where Epstein held "men's club" - type gatherings
for his closest pals (documented by his home's alleged network of spy cameras, we're sure).
For Gates, "Going to Jeffrey's was a respite from his marriage. It was a way of getting away
from Melinda " according to one of two insiders , who came forward to the
Daily Beast to break what we're guessing is the first rule of elite pedo-lair club.
According to the report, Gates and Epstein traded advice over their respective problems,
while Gates " met a rotating cast of bold-faced names and discussed worldly issues in between
rounds of jokes and gossip -- a "men's club" atmosphere that irritated Melinda."
Gates used the gatherings at
Epstein's $77 million New York townhouse as an escape from what he told Epstein was a
"toxic" marriage, a topic both men found humorous , a person who attended the meetings told
The Daily Beast.
The billionaire met Epstein dozens of times starting in 2011 and continuing through to
2014 mostly at the financier's Manhattan home -- a substantially higher number than has been
previously reported. Their conversations took place years before Bill
and Melinda Gates announced this month that they were splitting up .
Gates, in turn, encouraged Epstein to rehabilitate his image in the media following his
2008 guilty plea for soliciting a minor for prostitution , and discussed Epstein becoming
involved with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. -Daily Beast
According to one of the insiders, Epstein and Gates "were very close."
A spokesperson for Gates (fleet of attorneys) told the Beast "Your characterization of his
meetings with Epstein and others about philanthropy is inaccurate, including who participated.
Similarly, any claim that Gates spoke of his marriage or Melinda in a disparaging manner is
false ."
"Bill never received or solicited personal advice of any kind from Epstein -- on marriage or
anything else. Bill never complained about Melinda or his marriage to Epstein," the rep
continued.
According to the Beast , "
Melinda Gates was furious over Bill's relationship with Epstein, and was put off by the
creepy financier upon meeting him in September 2013, after the couple accepted an award at a
New York City hotel. Melinda's anger, people familiar with the matter said, eventually led to
the demise of Bill and Epstein's friendship."
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal just reported that Melinda began consulting divorce
attorneys in October, 2019 - right around the time it was revealed that Bill and Epstein were
pals . What's more, Microsoft board members wanted Bill gone in late 2019 after an internal
investigation revealed that Gates had an
inappropriate sexual relationship with a female Microsoft employee. play_arrow
ItsAllBollocks 1 hour ago (Edited)
Funny how the media never reports the obvious. Bill's divorce has nothing to do with
marital breakdown and everything to do with protecting his assets. Looks like old Bill just
might get thrown under the bus like they did with his pal Epstein. They're going to need a
scapegoat when the excreta starts to splatter and who's better than Bill? I just hope he
takes Schwab, Fauci and all the rest of them with him...
As for Epstein, try typing 'Epstein's victims' into google images and A/ find a victim who
isn't loving every minute of it, B/ find a victim under the age of 16, C/ explain why anyone
would go to all the trouble and risk coercing someone to do what damn near all women will do
willingly and D/ as you know the media lies, why you believe every word of it...
truth or go home 42 minutes ago
Do you actually believe there will be a trial for "crimes against humanity" under the
current system?
That's dumber than believing covid vaxx is "safe".
AlGorerythm 6 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Epstein was hired by a former OSS guy to teach high school teens STEM classes... although
he was technically not a teacher at all.
That OSS guy was the father of Dr. Trump's Attorney General who is also a washington swamp
creature - Bill Barr
Michael Musashi 4 hours ago
This is all that matters. This stupid relationship with Epstein is a distraction. Gates
and Fauchi knew what was going on in Wuhan, and this is what matters. Dump all this gossipy
women's crap!
RiverRoad 3 hours ago
As soon as Covid was declared a Pandemic, Gates announced that he was resigning ALL of his
positions at Microsoft to dedicate his time to Covid. What a timely COVER Covid provided him
for his simultaneous FORCED EXIT from Microsoft.
Sprumford 7 hours ago (Edited)
Epstein ran one big blackmail operation IMO.
HungryPorkChop 6 hours ago
That Epstein pedo island seemed to be nothing but a way to entrap and blackmail wealthy
individuals. That's the main reason they need to release the manifesto is a lot of these
people "obviously" still hold high positions and are probably compromised.
TonTon 6 hours ago
He went from Chief Global Philanthropist to Blue Screen of Death in less time than it
takes to fake a Jeffrey Epstein suicide.
TheySayIAmOkay 7 hours ago
So, Melinda was bothered by Bill going to bang 15 year olds from Ukraine over at Epstein's
place? But not bothered enough to ever say anything...
GreatCaesar'sGhost 7 hours ago
Who knows what threats she faced? Not everyone has it in them to be a hero. At least she's
getting out now.
scoop2020 7 hours ago remove link
Imagine how those conversations went? Hey Jeff, my marriage sucks. No worries Bill...
Give Me Some Truth 7 hours ago (Edited)
Maybe someone should ask prosecutors with the Department of Justice why they haven't
questioned a single "John" in the decades-long sex trafficking operation run by Epstein and
Ghislaine Maxwell.
Give Me Some Truth 7 hours ago
If the FBI really "investigated" the Epstein sex trafficking operation ... it would also
have to investigate - and expose - the FBI, which clearly knew all about it for probably
decades.
Give Me Some Truth 6 hours ago (Edited) remove link
"Leave Epstein alone. He's intelligence." This (alleged) comment was made to a U.S.
prosecutor working for the U.S. Department of Justice. Has this charge really been
investigated? Who passed along this order and why?
Also, much has been written about the photo of Virginia Giuffre with Prince Andrew, taken
at Ghislaine Maxwell's London townhouse. Some have speculated the photo is a fake. Well,
Virginia Giuffre gave the original photo to ... FBI agents in 2011.
Would she have given them the photo if it was really a fake? What did the FBI agents do
with the photo? Don't you think they confirmed it was a legit photo? And what was this girl
from the wrong side of the tracks in Palm Bech Florida doing meeting a Prince in London? Why
did Epstein and Maxwell fly her to London in the first place? So they could let a teenage
stranger do some sightseeing?
McGantic 7 hours ago (Edited)
Man, did Gates piss someone off or what?
Larry Dallas 7 hours ago
Best sentence is the last one:
"Come to think of it, maybe someone should ask Larry Summers if he was ever in Epstein's
"men's club" at the pedo lair."
StackShinyStuff 5 hours ago
These people are sick.
Paleocrat 6 hours ago
Notice all the media badmouthing of Gates who was just a nerdy hero a few weeks ago. This
isn't accidental. He's being set up to take a fall. COVID?
Microsoft Corp.'s directors started a probe into Bill Gates's alleged involvement with a
female employee that was deemed inappropriate and decided that the co-founder had to step down
from the board last year, Dow Jones reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The software giant had received a concern in 2019 that that Gates had tried to have an
"intimate" relationship with an employee in 2000, Dow Jones cited a Microsoft spokesman as
saying. The board reviewed the matter with the help of an outside law firm, the spokesman
added.
Board members handling the matter hired the law firm to conduct the investigation after
receiving a letter from a Microsoft engineer who said she had a sexual relationship with Gates
for years, Dow Jones said. Gates left before the probe was completed, it reported.
A spokeswoman for billionaire was cited as saying that Gates's decision to leave the board
wasn't related to an affair almost two decades ago that ended amicably. The departure from
Microsoft's board had to do with his interest in spending more time on his philanthropy.
No doubt the US/UK deep state, now more than ever, are busy trying to sow conflict and
division in Eurasia, to divide-and-rule Mackinder's "World Island" and hence the world.
Paul alleged that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had used a middle-man to funnel
money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via EcoHealth Alliance - which worked with the lab on
bat coronavirus projects.
Paul specifically referenced so-called "gain-of-function" research which in this case has
been focused on how to make animal viruses more transmissible to humans - specifically bat
coronaviruses .
"Government scientists like yourself who favor gain of function research," Paul
began...
...only to have Fauci interject "I don't favor gain of function research in China," adding
"You are saying things that are not correct."
Paul pushed back - continuing:
"[Those who favor gain of function] say that COVID-19 mutations were random and not
designed by man."
"I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done," Fauci shot back, adding
that he's in favor of further investigation, but that the NIH had nothing to do with the
origins of COVID-19.
"We have not funded gain of function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of
Virology," he added.
"No matter how many times you say it, it didn't happen."
More from Sen. Paul via Twitter:
Senator Rand Paul @RandPaul ·
May 11, 2021 Dr Fauci dissembled or tried to hide his long time support for
'gain-of-function' research which creates super-viruses that jump from animals to humans.
ohm 4 hours ago (Edited) remove link
You can't sit on your thumbs and run year long investigations and background checks
while thousands are dying .
But that's just the point, thousands were not dying . Instead of seeking out opposing
viewpoints, he relied on the bogus Ferguson model that predicted 2 million deaths presented
by Fauci and Birx. Plenty of qualified opposing voices were out there - John Ionnides of
Stanford for instance. Trump needs to own up to his mistakes and vow not to repeat them.
nodhannum 3 hours ago
How many renminbi do they pay you comrade...as in be "han" or be gone. I've been to a
number of seminars given by Fauci back in his HIV days but he is a lying sob now. It's
getting hard for the fellow to cover hisw *** now even with the Maserati marxists in power
here.
"We are not prepared for a pandemic," Biden tweeted on Oct. 25, 2019, saying the country
needs leadership that "mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our
shores."
this_circus_is_no_fun 4 hours ago
At first Fauxi denied the allegation. Then, after Paul cornered him with facts, Fauxi said
something like "this is why we did that". So, he admitted that he did what he was denying
just a few seconds before . He is literally incapable of telling the truth. I guess he's not
called Fauxi for nothing.
adonisdemilo 5 hours ago
Fauci has known from day one what's going on and going wrong. He's up to his neck in it
and taking a good look at his body language under questions from Rand Paul, HE'S CONTINUING
TO LIE.
chinese.sniffles 5 hours ago
Dr. Fauci:
Have you or your team send or granted permission for work projects to Wuhan or China?
What were those projects?
Why did you send them?
Why did you not do these projects in the USA?
Were any of these projects illegal in the USA?
etc. simple line of questioning, let him perjure himself.
thezone 5 hours ago
Fauci (the politician) knew to not write a check out to the lab directly. It was great to
hear Dr Paul bring up EcoHealth. A shell company to facilitate.
surfer4444 5 hours ago
Exactly, blame it on the sub contractor....an old game and the elite are using it well
radical-extremist 5 hours ago remove link
Fauci knows full well the story in the Democrat State News media will be about how he was
ATTACKED by Rand Paul, and not about him lying under oath about funding the Wuhan Lab.
chiquita 5 hours ago
This information has been out for a while if you follow War Room, Steve Hilton, and some
other sources. Peter Navarro has been hammering at Fauci relentlessly for the last few months
and now the MSM is going after Navarro, trying to discredit him. Gee, I wonder why when it
looks like the truth about Fauci is falling apart.
What a mess_man 4 hours ago (Edited)
Tucker blew this wide open last night. Of course lots of us here knew all this many months
ago. Fauci is lying through his teeth here, and both he and Daszak are deep in the Chicom's
pockets. As Tucker said, in a functioning world there would be a criminal investigation.
Instead Biden and Co. kiss his *ss and make him our foremost authority on Covid and vaccines.
Clown world for sure.
Meatballs 3 hours ago (Edited)
Actually, Saagar beat Tucker to the punch. Either way, the unraveling has begun.
Don't let the bioweapon profiteer, Daszak, off the hook.
Both greedy psychopaths should hang for their crimes against humanity.
Furthermore, we have no business sharing infectious disease technology with China, even if
they could run a lab properly.
Itinerant 4 hours ago
This story is about 14 months old, though not for the MSM.
Actual documentation of the grants from the NIH via the Eco Alliance have been circulating
in the public domain for all that time. In it they exactly describe the gain-of-function
research that is being outsourced to China, the viruses involved, the methods, the type of
experiments, and the aims of the research ... exactly and technically.
There is no room for caveats, or 'allege' or interpretation or anything like that.
The evidence is rock hard and crystal clear.
toady 4 hours ago
Yet there are no prosecutions.
dogbert8 5 hours ago remove link
Finally, the unmasking (pun intended) of Fauci has started.
bsdetector 5 hours ago
Just listened to the questions and answers. Fauci qualifies his answers with information
that was not sought in the questions. His answers change the character of his denials... "we
did not fund GOF research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
OK Dr. Fauci, please identify the viruses that you did fund for GOF research at the
Institute.
Jack Mayorhaufer 5 hours ago
master gaslighters once they reach certain status and paygrade on the Hill
novictim 2 hours ago remove link
"I don't know how many times I can say it? We did not fund gain of function research to be
done in the Wuhan Institute of Virology ...(under his breath) because we funded Eco Health
Alliance/Peter Daszak which granted the research funding to do gain of function research in
the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
CleeTorres 2 hours ago
A simple internet search shows Fauci is lying about funding for this research. But he
knows the media won't do their jobs.
Onthebeach6 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Let me assist Dr Fauci with the truth.
Why US outsourced bat virus research to Wuhan
Dr Christina Lin
April 2020
"A U.S. NIH-funded $3.7 million project was approved by Trump's Covid-19 advisor Dr.
Anthony Fauci in 2015, after the Obama White House imposed a ban on 'monster-germ' research.
In October 2014, the federal government declared a moratorium on gain-of-function research to
weaponize viruses related to influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe
acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). As a result, the research was outsourced to China's Wuhan
Institute of Virology, which is currently at the center of scrutiny for the Covid-19
pandemic."
Fauci looks very nervous . Perhaps why he has been so adamant about constantly moving the
goalposts? If you were guilty of something wouldn't you keep changing the focus and appear to
be very helpful and concerned?
Max21c 3 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Which people in & around the National Security Council, CIA, and Pentagon are involved
in this attempt to gain access, penetrate and spy on the PLA Biological Weapons/Warfare
programs via funding mechanisms route? Which people had contact with this institute and
programs and what if anything did the spy games produce?
When are they in Washington going to establish civilian rule over the US military and CIA
and National Security Council?
When are they going to knock off these silly spy games and spy world operations off and
stop this nonsense which produces zero positive results?
What did the gangsters on the Intelligence/Spy Committees in Congress know? What did the
gangsters atop the Pentagon, CIA, National Security Council know?
Which Washingtonian assholes are going to go to prison for this boomerang disaster?
How many other groups similar to "EcoHealth Alliance" operate as part of the US/UK
intelligence "community" and what other stupid stuff are the idiots mixed up in?
TheRapture 3 hours ago remove link
There is a great deal of evidence (NIH, State Dept grants to offshore USA bioweapons
research, Bat Lady was the protege of Dr. Ralph Baric at UNC who has been doing coronavirus
bioweapon research for more then twenty years, initial and simultaneous infections in Wuhan
at different locations suggesting an intentional release, etc., etc., etc.) And of course,
Trump had motive, opportunity and means to stage a false flag to destroy China's economy and
damage China's political relations with other countries.
It is likely the USA, no doubt using a CIA proxy, released SARS-CoV-2 in simultaneously in
multiple locations in Wuhan. The evidence is substantial. But most Americans can't bring
themselves to stare down that particular rabbit hole.
WorkingClassMan 3 hours ago
I'd rather an honest CCP commie ruling the roost than those traitors anyway.
"If I had but one bullet and were faced by both an enemy and a traitor, I would let the
traitor have it."
― Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, For My Legionaries
sarret PREMIUM 3 hours ago
Fauci is such a liar, pulling school kid mentality out of a hat to answer serious
questions. Likely in his mind he knows it all to be true but since the correct name is
中国科学院武汉病毒研究所
then unless you say that name, or the exact name of the exact subsidiary that was funding or
was being funded, then it is not correct and therefore he can answer the question incorrectly
without calling himself a liar internally and without saying what the error was in the
question that led him to be able to this.
In all respects he just disregards the spirit of the question when he knows full well that
he is in the wrong, but denies it every single time based on some concocted fabrication in
his mind that the question is not precise enough to nail him to the cross.
Completely disingenuous, can't trust a word he says.
Fish Gone Bad 4 hours ago
Lawyer speak:
We have not funded gain of function research on this virus
They funded all kinds of gain of function on all kinds of permutations of the virus, just
not THIS virus.
radical-extremist 5 hours ago remove link
Fauci is also responsible for the deaths of hundreds of men in San Francisco by covering
up Bath Houses as the origin of the spread of AIDS...for Mayor Diane Feinstein's political
career. No one dares talk about this today.
the Mysterians 5 hours ago
"I did not have sex with that woman!"
Flying Monkees 5 hours ago (Edited)
What could possibly be the reason for gain-of-function research if not bio-warfare?
These evil, irresponsible, arrogant a-holes need to pay.
Posa 5 hours ago
The Eco-Alliance grant from Fauci's NIAID states
We will use S [ie the Spike Protein that makes the SC-2 virus highly infectious] protein
sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and
analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S
protein sequences predict spillover potential.
That has been interpreted as a commitment to Gain of Function research on the Spike
Protein which is the key to turning SARS into a virulently transmissible pathogen.
surfer4444 5 hours ago remove link
Exactly...im just baffled how this PoS can blatantly lie to a Senate committee and get
away with it...there is zero accountability in our government...end times
Posa 5 hours ago
Fauci can lie because his audience is a convention of lazy, cowardly , illiterate dunces.
If Rand Paul were serious he would have had the damn grant in front of him and read the same
quotes as I provided in this post. PAul would have held these hearings last year when his
Party controlled the Senate.
Posa 4 hours ago
NOTE: This post was censored by The Hill. Typical free speech in America.
George Bayou 5 hours ago
"11 labs in the US create these super-viruses in the US and one of them collaborated with
Wuhan Virology Inst -- Fauci has supported NIH funds for all these labs!"
Why is this a-hole still working?
notfeelinthebern 4 hours ago (Edited)
Yap, yap,. yap. Another dog and pony show and the show is painfully old. They parade
personage after personage before congress and ask lots of questions. The swamp rats in the
hot seat lie by omission and with sleight of hand answers and when done with the act walk
away with smug faces....The show must go on.
George Bayou 5 hours ago
Here's an interesting article on Dr. Baric and what he was doing, mutating virus using
serial passaging so that the virus are able to infect a completely different species:
Take, for instance, this paper from 1995:
"High Recombination and Mutation Rates in Mouse Hepatitis Viruses Suggest That
Coronaviruses May Be Potentially Important Emerging Viruses." It was written by Dr. Ralph
Baric and his bench scientist, Boyd Yount, at the University of North Carolina. Baric, a
gravelly voiced former swim champion, described in this early paper how his lab was able to
train a coronavirus, MHV, which causes hepatitis in mice, to jump species, so that it could
reliably infect BHK (baby-hamster kidney) cell cultures. They did it using serial
passaging: repeatedly dosing a mixed solution of mouse cells and hamster cells with
mouse-hepatitis virus, while each time decreasing the number of mouse cells and upping the
concentration of hamster cells. At first, predictably, the mouse-hepatitis virus couldn't
do much with the hamster cells, which were left almost free of infection, floating in their
world of fetal-calf serum. But by the end of the experiment, after dozens of passages
through cell cultures, the virus had mutated: It had mastered the trick of parasitizing an
unfamiliar rodent. A scourge of mice was transformed into a scourge of hamsters. And there
was more: "It is clear that MHV can rapidly alter its species specificity and infect rats
and primates," Baric said. "The resulting virus variants are associated with demyelinating
diseases in these alternative species." (A demyelinating disease is a disease that damages
nerve sheaths.) With steady prodding from laboratory science, along with some rhetorical
exaggeration, a lowly mouse ailment was morphed into an emergent threat that might
potentially cause nerve damage in primates.
GeneKelly 5 hours ago remove link
"We have not funded gain of function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of
Virology,"
Sociopaths can lie without registering on a detector by simply defining terms differently
in their cerebral cortex and then answering -- from their perspective truthfully -- "no"
because the question doesn't match their internal definition.
So Fauci wasn't funding "gain of function". He was actually funding "increasing the
virulence of pathogens" or "enhancing the pathogens' ability to infect different
species".
Rand and others will have to ask the question a hundred ways to force Fauci to spill the
beans.
DeeDeeTwo 1 hour ago remove link
Tucker finally called Fauci a "criminal" at least twice and said, "In any functioning
society Fauci would be investigated."
Txjac 5 hours ago
Fauci also owns the patents on the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines
Everybody All American 5 hours ago remove link
How is it that only one Congressman dare questions Dr. Fauci? One tough questioner. These
cowards all need to hang for the crimes they are allowing. If they think we are just going to
sit back and watch this man for much longer lead us they are sadly mistaken.
Downhill from here 5 hours ago
Being an MD, Paul has some credibility on the topic. At least educationally and by
training, Fauci and Paul are peers.. More than likely other R's are letting him take
point.
replaceme 5 hours ago (Edited)
I forgot, that's the same dr daszak that sent the letter to the lancet saying that covid
didn't come from Wuhan, and that he had no reason to falsely say this. THAT Dr daszak. Got
it.
"We [NIH/Fauci] did not fund gain of function research to be done in Wuhan." What the
weasel didn't say is that the NIH did in deed fund Dr Baric who was working in collaboration
with Wuhan with gain of function experiments on the SARS virus. Baric worked with Ft Dettrick
and Univ NC researchers who in turn were collaborating with Canada and Wuhan.
Fauci can parse words but he's a traitor and ought to be held responsible along with all
others involved with this.
scraping_by 5 hours ago (Edited) remove link
One amendment to the story --
Carlson was quoting a story by Nicholas Wade, former science editor to the NYT. Published
in Medium. So it's not just a talking head repeating newsroom copy, as in CNN.
zorrosgato 14 minutes ago remove link
Fauci is part of a flawed system and don't be fooled in believing he is part of any
solution. His endorsing of impractical mask mandates along with mandatory vaccinations of the
population, using unproven genetically engineered drugs is proof enough.
"... As the world has become more complex, people have relied more and more on stereotypes and simplifications to help them interpret and filter events around them. Propaganda manipulates this desire for simplicity – handing people easy answers rather than winning them over with rational arguments. Society then rallies around these stereotypes and squashes dissents with 'herd mentality', an irrational set of psychological behaviors where individuals are swept along with a group, overriding their own rational assessments ..."
Below is a repeat of a Glenn Diesen quote from karlof1 comment # 57
" "As the world has become more complex, people have relied more and more on stereotypes and
simplifications to help them interpret and filter events around them. Propaganda manipulates
this desire for simplicity – handing people easy answers rather than winning them over
with rational arguments. Society then rallies around these stereotypes and squashes dissents
with 'herd mentality', an irrational set of psychological behaviors where individuals are
swept along with a group, overriding their own rational assessments." "
Think about the vaccine situation and what just happened to the medical profession in the
West....they got railroaded into agreeing that there was not an off the shelf "ivermectin" to
the virus and guaranteed future income to Big Pharma is more important.
Hey docs!!! Do no harm! Your complicity in this war crime against humanity is noted. What
are the responsible and humanistic actions to take now and why does the public not see
evidence that you are organizing to do them?
Until the reality of the CIA--to undermine peaceful relations and promote wars required
for Military Keynesianism--is taught in grade school, it will always find recruits. As with
the FBI, government sponsored propaganda was and remains required to manufacture the reasons
for their existence. Nations that promote an equitable polity have no need for a secret
police force, but do need some force to counter attempts from the outside to foment
destabilization. For example, today's Russia is freer than at any previous time in its
history as only extremist ideologies are banned while Communism--still deemed extremist by
the West--is relegated to a normal ideology with status as a normative political party.
Indeed, I'd argue that Russia remains the only genuine Liberal Western nation, which is a
reality Russophobes are unable to accept or even contemplate. The same also applies to the
concept of Communism thanks to the unwillingness to even attempt to understand Marx. And as
Western thought gets subsumed by Wokeness, the ideological divide between Neoliberal nations
and all others will continue to grow.
"... The CPI is calculated by analyzing the price of a "basket of goods." The makeup of that basket has a big impact on the final CPI number. According to WolfStreet , 10.9% of the CPI is based on durable goods (computers, automobiles, appliances, etc.). Nondurable goods (primarily food and energy) make up 26.6% of CPI. Services account for the remaining 62.5% of the basket. This includes rent, healthcare, cellphone service etc.) ..."
"... The things the government includes and excludes from the basket can make a profound difference in that final CPI number. Back in 1998, the government significantly revised the CPI metrics. Even the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) admitted the changes were "sweeping." ..."
"... In 1998, the BLS followed the recommendations of the Boskin Commission. It was appointed by the Senate in 1995. Initially called the "Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index," its job was to study possible bias in the computation of the CPI. Unsurprisingly, it determined that the index overstated inflation " by about 1.1% per year in 1996 and about 1.3% prior to 1996. The 1998 changes to CPI were meant to address this "issue." ..."
"... As Peter pointed out, there is a lot of geometric weighting, substitution and hedonics built into the calculation. The government can basically create an index that outputs whatever it wants. ..."
"... Peter said there is a bit of irony in government officials and central bankers constantly complaining about "not enough inflation." ..."
"... They're the ones that are cooking the books to pretend that inflation is lower than it really is. Because what they're really trying to do is get the go-ahead to produce more inflation, which is printing money." ..."
"... And there are other things that hide inflation. For instance, shrinking packaging so there is less product sold at the same price, or substituting lower quality ingredients, or requiring consumers to assemble items themselves. ..."
"... They find different ways to lower the quality and not increase the price, and I'm sure that the government is not picking up on any of that. If the quality improves, yeah, yeah, they calculate that. But they probably ignore all the circumstances where the quality is diminished." ..."
"... The bottom line is we can't trust CPI to tell us the truth about inflation. ..."
And we're seeing rising prices all over the place, from the grocery store to the gas station. Even
the government numbers flash
warning signs . But as Peter Schiff explains in this clip from an interview with Jay Martin, it's probably even worse than we
realize because the government cooks the numbers when it calculates CPI.
The monthly rises in CPI
through the first quarter show an upward trend. The CPI in January was up 0.3%. It was up 0.4% in February. And now it's up 0.6%
in March. That totals a 1.013% increase in Q1 alone. The question is does this really reflect the truth about inflation? Peter doesn't
think it does.
The government always makes changes to their methods of measuring things, whether it's GDP, or inflation, or unemployment.
And they always tweak the numbers to produce a better result as a report card. "
Imagine if students in a school had the ability to change the metrics by which they were graded or the methodology the teacher
used to calculate their grades.
Would it surprise anybody that all of a sudden they started getting more As and Bs and fewer Cs and Ds? The government always
wants to make the good stuff better, like economic growth, and the bad stuff better, like unemployment or inflation. So, they
want to find ways to make those numbers little and the good numbers big."
The CPI is calculated by analyzing
the price of a "basket of goods." The makeup of that basket has a big impact on the final CPI number. According to WolfStreet , 10.9%
of the CPI is based on durable goods (computers, automobiles, appliances, etc.). Nondurable goods (primarily food and energy) make
up 26.6% of CPI. Services account for the remaining 62.5% of the basket. This includes rent, healthcare, cellphone service etc.)
The things the government includes and excludes from the basket can make a profound difference in that final CPI number. Back in 1998, the government significantly revised the CPI metrics. Even
the Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS) admitted the changes were "sweeping."
According to the BLS, periodic changes to the CPI calculation are necessary because "consumers change their preferences or new
products and services emerge. During these occasions, the Bureau reexamines the CPI item structure, which is the classification scheme
of the CPI market basket. The item structure is a central feature of the CPI program and many CPI processes depend on it."
In 1998, the BLS followed the recommendations of the Boskin Commission. It was appointed by the Senate in 1995. Initially called
the "Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index," its job was to study possible bias in the computation of the CPI. Unsurprisingly,
it determined that the index overstated inflation " by about 1.1% per year in 1996 and about 1.3% prior to 1996. The 1998 changes
to CPI were meant to address this "issue."
As Peter pointed out, there is a lot of geometric weighting, substitution and hedonics built into the calculation. The government
can basically create an index that outputs whatever it wants.
I think this period of "˜Oh wow! We have low inflation!' It's not a coincidence that it followed this major revision into how
we calculate it."
Peter said there is a bit of irony in government officials and central bankers constantly complaining about "not enough inflation."
They're the ones that are cooking the books to pretend that inflation is lower than it really is. Because what they're really
trying to do is get the go-ahead to produce more inflation, which is printing money."
Peter said the CPI will never reveal the true extent of rising prices.
And there are other things that hide inflation. For instance, shrinking packaging so there is less product sold at the same price,
or substituting lower quality ingredients, or requiring consumers to assemble items themselves.
They find different ways to lower the quality and not increase the price, and I'm sure that the government is not picking up
on any of that. If the quality improves, yeah, yeah, they calculate that. But they probably ignore all the circumstances where
the quality is diminished."
The bottom line is we can't trust CPI to tell us the truth about inflation.
If anyone in the Congressional committees that oversee the Fed had an operating brain cell, they should flay the Fed for its indefensible
posture of ignorance and powerlessness. I have to confess to being too annoyed to read the underlying document, its semi-annual report
on financial stability and am so instead relying on what I take to be a fair-minded recap in the Financial Times,
Fed warns of hidden leverage lurking in
financial system .
What I find most disturbing is the rank dishonesty of the Fed, in what looks to be deliberate mischaracterization of the Archegos
implosion, made worse by the central bank’s “And how can you expect us to know what’s going on?†anticipatory blame avoidance.
To put this another way, the Fed is trying to pre-sell a “whocoulddanode?†defense when that sort of guilty faced, foot-shuffling
act is unacceptable after the Fed was caught out being way behind the curve in the runup to the global financial crisis.
Archegos was not a systematic event. Not even close. One hedge fund with so few investors that it ran on a “friends and familyâ€
basis (tarted up as “family officeâ€) blew up. It did not bring down any other players. It did briefly roil markets in the stocks
Archegos held. Banks collectively lost a
bout $10 billion . By comparison, Paribas paid $8.9 billion in economic sanctions fines to the Department of Justice in 2014,
which in current dollar terms is $10.0 billion. No one suggested the Paribas fine was systemic or even a health-threatening blow.
The troubling issue was how did this one hedge fund get to be so leveraged? Here is where the Fed misdirects Congress and the
general public:
The US Federal Reserve has warned that existing measures of hedge fund leverage “may not be capturing important risksâ€,
pointing to the collapse of Archegos Capital as an example of hidden vulnerabilities in the global financial system….
Hwang’s high-wire act was hard to monitor because family offices face limited disclosure requirements and because he used
derivatives known as equity total return swaps. These instruments enabled Archegos to profit from rises in individual stocks with
payments equal to only a fraction of the size of the underlying positions.
First, the hand-wringing about Archegos being a hedge fund able to do sneaky things in dark alleys is all wet. Do you seriously
think regulators have all that much visibility into the much bigger (but also known to be tightly run) Citadel? How about the personal
portfolios of very large investors? And what about multinational corporations that run their Treasury operations as profit centers,
or Apple, which runs an internal hedge fund out of Nevada?
In other words, if the Fed thinks the problem is particular player, “hedge funds†is far too narrow a frame. “Leveraged financial
speculators†is closer to the mark.
And they are secretive about their holdings. Any large trader will spread his business among multiple execution firms because
the firms can and will trade against him if they know his positions.
Second, the problem is not the opaqueness of the hedge fund’s activity, even though if you read the Financial Times’ account,
you would think that that is the the Fed’s big worry. It’s the ability to achieve high levels of leverage. And that’s the fault
of the regulatory regime.
In passing, in the section excerpted above, the report mentions total return swaps. A short definition from Wikipedia:
Hedge funds use Total Return Swaps to obtain leverage on the Reference Assets: they can receive the return of the asset, typically
from a bank (which has a funding cost advantage), without having to put out the cash to buy the Asset. They usually post a smaller
amount of collateral upfront, thus obtaining leverage.
Due to the hour and the state of Google, I can’t find data on the size of the total return swap market, but at the time Archegos
blow, it was under $300 billion, which means too small to wreck the financial system (well, unless perhaps they blew up Deutsche
Bank).
Perhaps more important, regulators had decided they didn’t like them but from what I can infer, have also been slow to shut
down the market. That’s a mistake since it’s clear the purpose of total returns swaps is pure speculation, and any additional
price discovery benefit is too marginal to allow the use of so much leverage.
More generally, the Fed and financial regulators seem unwilling to do two essential things. The first is to say “no†to certain
activities. Andrew Haldane, in a paper I have mentioned repeatedly, explained that the only answer to the level of societal harm
posed by financial crises is prohibition, as in not allowing certain activities. From his seminal speech, The $100 Billion Question,
cited
in a 2010 post :
More support comes from Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England, who in
a March 2010 paper compared the banking industry to the auto
industry, in that they both produced pollutants: for cars, exhaust fumes; for bank, systemic risk. While economists were claiming
that the losses to the US government on various rescues would be $100 billion (ahem, must have left out Freddie and Fannie in
that tally), it ignores the broader costs (unemployment, business failures, reduced government services, particularly at the state
and municipal level). His calculation of the world wide costs:
….these losses are multiples of the static costs, lying anywhere between one and five times annual GDP. Put in money terms,
that is an output loss equivalent to between $60 trillion and $200 trillion for the world economy and between £1.8 trillion
and £7.4 trillion for the UK. As Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman observed, to call these numbers “astronomicalâ€
would be to do astronomy a disservice: there are only hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy. “Economical†might be
a better description.
It is clear that banks would not have deep enough pockets to foot this bill. Assuming that a crisis occurs every 20 years,
the systemic levy needed to recoup these crisis costs would be in excess of $1.5 trillion per year. The total market capitalisation
of the largest global banks is currently only around $1.2 trillion. Fully internalising the output costs of financial crises
would risk putting banks on the same trajectory as the dinosaurs, with the levy playing the role of the meteorite.
Yves here. So a banking industry that creates global crises is negative value added from a societal standpoint. It is purely
extractive. Even though we have described its activities as looting (as in paying themselves so much that they bankrupt the
business), the wider consequences are vastly worse than in textbook looting.
Back to the current post. The original sin of the Fed, at least with respect to crises in the modern era, is the decision by Alan
Greenspan to do nothing about derivatives. I recall in the mid 1900s gasping out loud when I read that he intended to take a “let
a thousand flowers bloom†approach. By then, I had had one of the top derivatives firms as a client and had an appreciation as to
how dangerous they could be.
There is a role for derivatives in highly liquid markets for hedging. Banks generally have the underlying volumes of cash transactions
to manage FX futures and options on an OTC basis. But all things being equal, it’s preferable to have a central exchange (more
stable market structure) or else highly distributed position-taking. Anything in the middle is more prone to meltdowns.
But an even bigger issue is aside from well-established categories of pretty simple derivatives, there’s no justification for
allowing financial intermediaries to offer much in the way of OTC derivatives. The overwhelming uses of high margin OTC derivatives
are for accounting gimmickry, tax avoidance, or achieving high levels of leverage on the cheap (which means having the bank or lender
as bagholder). None of these are positive from a societal standpoint.
So all of the Fed’s mealy-mouthing about hidden leverage is utter rubbish. Yes, asset valuations are strained due to super cheap
money and too much speculative froth. But as we saw in the collapse of the monster dot-com bubble, the mere collapse of speculative
bubbles, even really big ones, does not do systemic damage (although they can set off recessions as the speculators lick their wounds
and the folks with bezzle-based revenues take hits). What does systemic damage is high levels of leverage, particularly leverage
on leverage, which was what turned the housing crash from an S&L crisis x 1.5X level event to a global financial crisis.
For the Fed at this juncture to profess to be so stupid about the fundamental problem as cover for their unwillingness to take
on Big Finance is depressing, although in another way, not exactly surprising.
The problem with Archegos was that (i) it was not registered as Private Fund and hence did not have to report data to the SEC
and (ii) rules around TRS have not been finalized. For example, it is unclear to me if TRS have to be reported to swap repositories
(supervised by CFTC/SEC) or not at the current juncture. If TRSs were to be reported then a supervisor could have seen that by
analyzing the data.
While I appreciate your point, a Form ADV is filed only annually and a Form PF, quarterly. The Form ADV deadline for filing
the Dec 31 report is March 31. Forms PF are due within 60 days of the quarter end. Then the SEC has to compile the data.
This is too far in arrears to be useful in identifying regulatory risks.
It would also not capture a risk the SEC might legitimately be concerned about, which is size of position relative to typical
trading volumes. That is what brought down LTCM and later Amaranth Capital. LTCM took a monster position in of all things interest
rate swaps, a classic “short volâ€. But then the swap spreads widened and some traders figured out there was a whale in trouble
and sold into the short, increasing LTCM’s distress.
The SEC is in the liquid markets business. I doubt it has any basis for judging liquidity risk in OTC markets. So even if it
had the info on an LTCM-type situation, it would be very unlikely to recognize it, even assuming it was timely (60 days in arrears
might as well be a year stale from a trading risk perspective).
“But an even bigger issue is aside from well-established categories of pretty simple derivatives, there’s no justification
for allowing financial intermediaries to offer much in the way of OTC derivatives. The overwhelming uses of high margin OTC derivatives
are for accounting gimmickry, tax avoidance, or achieving high levels of leverage on the cheap (which means having the bank or
lender as bagholder). None of these are positive from a societal standpoint.â€
TRS is for regulatory arbitrage or leverage. Margins on TRS are tiny. Its a loss leader of a product, designed to keep you
in the frame for higher value deals. It does have the advantage that you might see when “a whale†is exiting a big position,
but clearly thats not foolproof, eh CS?
We are witnessing the slow moral bankruptcy of the nation.
I have no doubt that the Fed corruption of money will be identified as the main culprit by future historians.
How did the Fed manage to become such a powerful monster in our society?
If they can impeach a President in one week, they could impeach the entire FOMC before lunch (i.e., pass a veto-proof law to
abolish it or redefine so-called mandate)
But, why would they? They are all multi-millionaires and direct beneficiaries of the monetary policy.
How do banks really work?
Our knowledge of banking 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
Nearly all today’s policymakers think banks are financial intermediaries.
The financial system looks a lot safer than it is when you think banks are financial intermediaries.
Credit Suisse pumped loads of money into Archegos, but they couldn’t get it back again and the loss crystallised.
Banks can pump out a lot of loans in the good times as the money comes out of nothing.
When the bad times come, the losses crystallise in the system.
Why did the US financial system to collapse in 1929?
If someone can’t repay a loan, they need to repossess that asset and sell it to recoup that money. If they use bank loans to
inflate asset prices they get into a world of trouble when those asset prices collapse.
As the real estate and stock market collapsed the banks became insolvent as their assets didn’t cover their liabilities.
They could no longer repossess and sell those assets to cover the outstanding loans and they do need to get most of the money
they lend out back again to balance their books.
The banks become insolvent and collapsed, along with the US economy.
When banks have been lending to inflate asset prices the financial system is in a precarious state and can easily collapse.
What was the ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices that collapsed in Japan in 1991?
Japanese real estate.
They avoided a Great Depression by saving the banks.
They killed growth for the next 30 years by leaving the debt in place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk
What was the ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices that collapsed in 2008? “It’s nearly $14 trillion pyramid of super leveraged toxic assets was built on the back of $1.4 trillion of US sub-prime
loans, and dispersed throughout the world†All the Presidents Bankers, Nomi Prins.
They avoided a Great Depression by saving the banks.
They left Western economies struggling by leaving the debt in place, just like Japan.
It’s not as bad as Japan as we didn’t let asset prices crash in the West, but it is this problem has made our economies so
sluggish since 2008.
“The Great Crash 1929†John Kenneth Galbraith “By early 1929, loans from these non-banking sources were approximately equal to those from the banks. Later they became
much greater. The Federal Reserve Authorities took it for granted that they had no influence over these fundsâ€
He’s talking about “shadow bankingâ€.
They couldn’t control the lending from shadow banks in the 1920s either.
Japan ventured into shadow banking in the 1980s.
Jusen were nonbank institutions formed in the 1970s by consortia of banks to make household mortgages since banks had mortgage
limitations. The shadow banks were just an intermediary put in place to get around regulations.
This is how shadow banks pose a threat to the financial system.
They are just intermediaries put in place to get around regulations.
The banks need to get the money they loan out back again, and whether they use shadow banks as an intermediary or not, doesn’t
make a lot of difference.
The dangers are the same.
I just remembered something else from “The Great Crash 1929†John Kenneth Galbraith
They thought leverage was great before 1929; they saw what happened when it worked in reverse after 1929.
Leverage acts like a multiplier.
It multiplies profits on the way up.
It multiplies losses on the way down.
“ Our knowledge of banking has been going backwards since 1856.â€
Well, yeah, or is it being driven in reverse gear? Just asking.
I mean Ricardo, Mills, Marx, Minsky, Keynes and many others all seem to understand banking in particular, and economics in
general, very well, but they have gone into the memory hole alone with large portions of Adam Smith’s mangled, Bowdlerized,
expurgated work.
Taking introductory courses in economics is like studying fantasy. Not because of the lies as such as all the blasted omissions
that have been created since the early twentieth century.
Yves, pieces like this are one of the reasons I come to NC daily. I want to post a longer response on this subject of deliberate
opacity as I have been mulling this over for nearly 20 years â€" since Enron’s SPE abuse and then Lehman’s Repo 105 fraud.
But for now I’ll content myself with a big thank you and a hearty vote for more of your stringent analysis and (a)stringent
prose. I hope your health issues permit your writing and tormenting the Davos/FIRE set of neoliberal Vandals who’ve destroyed
our stability while enriching themselves as never before.
Hear hear. I agree heartily with P, above. Enron comes to mind regularly these days. Seems like we’ve seen this untethered
derivatives movie before, too, and it’s a horror show. Yves, I feel like a dufus when it comes to global and national economics,
but I certainly learn it here. (Which why I love this site.)
Thank you.
Borrowing short to lend long is inherently risky and government should in no way privilege or bear that risk.
Yet government does so since we have only a SINGLE payment system (besides mere physical currency, coins and paper CB or Treasury
Notes) that must work through private banks or not at all. So the banks hold the economy hostage.
We could fix that by providing an ADDITIONAL, inherently risk-free payment system via debit accounts for all at the Central
Bank (or Treasury) and by abolishing all other privileges, explicit and implicit, for private depository institutions.
Then whether the banks were “prudent†or not would be irrelevant to the general welfare.
The alternative to genuine reform is merely to kick-the-can down the road a bit further via regulation and/or even more privileges
for private banks to make them more stable â€" as if systematic injustice should or even can be truly stable.
“The Fed and financial regulators seem unwilling to do two essential things. The first is to say “no†to certain activities.â€
paragraphs go on to support this point.
I need to apologize for my lack of reading comprehension but I’m not understanding what the second thing (that the regulators
are unwilling to do) is?
Is it about the OTC derivatives or tamping down on leverage in general?
New markets for debt must be found. And if that means fraud (or too much risk) so be it. Usually, the Federal Reserve waits
for the muppets to show up en masse before taking the punch bowl away. Problem is, the muppets have been gun shy since they got
burned back in the Global financial crisis. So what’s a poor Federal Reserve to do but to keep the party going?
By the way, that’s why I think there’s all the gnashing of teeth over the risk of inflation. It’s not because the talking
heads are worried about the consequences to main street. It’s because they’re worried it will bring the party to an end after
all the muppets start becoming playahs again.
I remember when my mom used to bring me to the Walmart super center when I was a kid,
around 1990. They were exploding in popularity. The cheap goods were a blessing for our
growing family. But we all know how the goods got so cheap.
The 1990s for Walmart was the equivalent of the 2010’s for Amazon. The
low wage job model worked for them then and continues to work for them now.
And in the 1990s, Reich was running around being Labor Secretary, of all things.
There’s some simple solutions to this, like strengthening collective
bargaining, but that’s nowhere in sight.
Employers will pay the lowest possible wage until they absolutely need to.
He quit after the first term and wrote a book about how frustrated he was by
Clinton’s refusal to address widening income disparity and labor
issues.
Totally agree with your point about labor markets. But, Just because he
wasn’t successful doesn’t mean he
didn’t try. Correct me if I’m wrong (I often am) but I
don’t think he’s the villain. Seems to have been trying
to do good in whatever way he can and is also very open about the corruption and greed that
makes change so difficult.
Not only is this not true, the evidence shows that bubbles are called in advance. In 1999,
the Wall Street Journal had 286 articles on bubbles. Here are a few of the titles,
"When the Bubble Bursts..."
"The Bubble Won't Burst"
"Bursting Mr. Geenspan's Bubble"
"Fed `Bubble' Policy: Watch, Don't Pop'"
"Fed Governor Meyer Counters Suggestions Of a Market Bubble"
Dogecoin is now valued at more than Ford.
Economics?
Lunacy is more like it.
This is just more proof that the dollars are becoming more worthless.
Whistling past the graveyard.
...retail investors have been net buyers of stocks for 10 straight weeks, hedge funds have
been sellers, client data from BofA Global Research showed, with the four-week average of net
sales of equities by hedge funds hitting their highest levels since the firm began tracking the
data in 2008.
This is starting to look really like staging of "Brave new world..." Today's society is
closer to Huxley's "Brave New World" than to Orwell's "1984". But there are clear elements of
both. If you will, the worst of both worlds has come true today.
In 1949, sometime after the publication of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four , Aldous
Huxley, the author of Brave New World (1931), who was then living in California, wrote to
Orwell. Huxley had briefly taught French to Orwell as a student in high school at Eton.
Huxley generally praises Orwell's novel, which to many seemed very similar to Brave New
World in its dystopian view of a possible future. Huxley politely voices his opinion that his
own version of what might come to pass would be truer than Orwell's. Huxley observed that the
philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is sadism, whereas his own version is
more likely, that controlling an ignorant and unsuspecting public would be less arduous, less
wasteful by other means. Huxley's masses are seduced by a mind-numbing drug, Orwell's with
sadism and fear.
The most powerful quote In Huxley's letter to Orwell is this:
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant
conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs
and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting
people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.
Aldous Huxley.
Could Huxley have more prescient? What do we see around us?
Masses of people dependent upon drugs, legal and illegal. The majority of advertisements
that air on television seem to be for prescription drugs, some of them miraculous but most of
them unnecessary. Then comes COVID, a quite possibly weaponized virus from the
Fauci-funded-with-taxpayer-dollars lab in Wuhan, China. The powers that be tragically deferred
to the malevolent Fauci who had long been hoping for just such an opportunity. Suddenly, there
was an opportunity to test the mRNA vaccines that had been in the works for nearly twenty
years. They could be authorized as an emergency measure but were still highly experimental.
These jabs are not really vaccines at all, but a form of gene therapy . There
are potential
disastrous consequences down the road. Government experiments on the public are
nothing new .
Since there have been no actual, long-term trials, no one who contributed to this massive
drug experiment knows what the long-term consequences might be. There have been countless
adverse injuries and deaths already for which the government-funded vaccine producers will
suffer no liability. With each passing day, new side-effects have begun to appear: blood clots,
seizures, heart failure.
As new adverse reactions become known despite the censorship employed by most media outlets,
the more the Biden administration is pushing the vaccine, urging private corporations to make
it mandatory for all employees. Colleges are making them mandatory for all students returning
to campus.
The leftmedia are advocating the "shunning" of the unvaccinated. The self-appointed
virtue-signaling Democrats are furious at anyone and everyone who declines the jab. Why? If
they are protected, why do they care? That is the question. Same goes for the ridiculous mask
requirements . They protect no one but for those in operating rooms with their insides
exposed, yet even the vaccinated are supposed to wear them!
Months ago, herd immunity was near. Now Fauci and the CDC say it will never be achieved? Now
the Pfizer shot will necessitate yearly booster shots. Pfizer
expects to make $21B this year from its COVID vaccine! Anyone who thinks this isn't about
money is a fool. It is all about money, which is why Fauci, Gates, et al. were so determined to
convince the public that HCQ and ivermectin, both of which are effective, prophylactically and
as treatment, were not only useless, but dangerous. Both of those drugs are tried, true, and
inexpensive. Many of those thousands of N.Y. nursing home fatalities might have been prevented
with the use of one or both of those drugs. Those deaths are on the hands of Cuomo and his
like-minded tyrants drunk on power.
Months ago, Fauci, et al. agreed that children were at little or no risk of getting COVID,
of transmitting it, least of all dying from it. Now Fauci is demanding that all teens be
vaccinated by the end of the year! Why? They are no more in danger of contracting it now than
they were a year ago. Why are parents around this country not standing up to prevent their kids
from being guinea pigs in this monstrous medical experiment? And now they are " experimenting
" on infants. Needless to say, some have died. There is no reason on Earth for teens, children,
and infants to be vaccinated. Not one.
Huxley also wrote this:
"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they
will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be
able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' -- this is the height
of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats ."
Perhaps this explains the left's hysterical impulse to force these untested shots on those
of us who have made the decision to go without it. If they've decided that it is the thing to
do, then all of us must submit to their whims. If we decide otherwise, it gives them the
righteous right to smear all of us whom they already deplore.
As C.J. Hopkins has
written , the left means to criminalize dissent. Those of us who are vaccine-resistant are
soon to be outcasts, deprived of jobs and entry into everyday businesses. This kind of
discrimination should remind everyone of ...oh, Germany three quarters of a century ago. Huxley
also wrote, "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other
sets of people are human." That is precisely what the left is up to, what BLM is planning, what
Critical Race Theory is all about.
Tal Zaks, Moderna's chief medical officer, said these new vaccines are "hacking the
software of life." Vaccine-promoters claim he never said this, but he did. Bill Gates called
the vaccines " an operating
system " to the horror of those promoting it, a Kinsley gaffe. Whether it is or isn't
hardly matters at this point, but these statements by those behind the vaccines are a clue to
what they have in mind.
There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love
their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears , so to speak, producing a kind of
painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their
liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.
This is exactly what the left is working so hard to effect: a pharmacologically compromised
population happy to be taken care of by a massive state machine. And while millions of people
around the world have surrendered to the vaccine and mask hysteria, millions more, about 1.3
billion, want no part of this government vaccine mania.
In his letter to Orwell, Huxley ended with the quote cited above and again here because it
is so profound:
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant
conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs
and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting
people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.
Huxley nailed the left more than seventy years ago, perhaps because leftists have never
changed throughout the ages. 61,497 173
Fat Beaver 14 hours ago (Edited)
If i am to be treated as an outcast or an undesirable because i refuse the vax, i will
immediately become someone that has zero reverence for the law, and i can only imagine 10's
of millions will be right there with me.
strych10 14 hours ago
Welcome to the club.
We have coffee in the corner and occasional meetings at various bars.
Dr. Chihuahua-González 13 hours ago
I'm a doctor, you could contact me anytime and receive your injection.
Fat Beaver 13 hours ago (Edited)
I've gotta feeling the normie world you think you live in is about to change drastically
for the worse...
sparky139 PREMIUM 10 hours ago
You mean you'll sign papers that you injected us *wink *wink? And toss it away?
bothneither 2 hours ago
Oh geez how uncommon, another useless doctor with no Scruples who sold out to big Pharma.
Please have my Gates sponsored secret sauce.
Unknown 6 hours ago (Edited)
Both Huxley and Orwell are wrong. Neoliberalism (the use of once office for personal
gains) is by far the most powerful force that subjugates the inept population. Neoliberalism
demolished the mighty USSR, now destroying the USA, and will do the same to China. And this
poison dribbles from the top to bottom creating self-centered population that is unable to
unite, much less resist.
Deathrips 15 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Tylers.
You gonna cover Tucker Carlsons show earlier today on FOX news about vaxxx deaths? almost 4k
reported so far this year.
Is the population of india up in arms or is the MSM?
Nelbev 10 hours ago
Facebook just flagged/censored it, must sign into see vid, Tuck also failed to mention
mRNA and adenovirus vaxes were experimental and not FDA approved nor gone through stage III
trials. Beside deaths, have blood clot issues. Good he mentioned how naturally immune if get
covid and recovered, better than vaccine, but not covered for bogus passports. Me personally,
I would rather catch covid and get natural immunity than be vaccinated with an untested
experimental vaccine.
Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown; Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr.
Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr. Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff;
Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits;
Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr. Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard
Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;
Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown; Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr.
Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr. Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff;
Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits;
Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr. Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard
Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;
His making of the gamma and delta workforce was quite prescient. We are seeing it play out
now, we all know gammas and delta. There was a really good ABC tv movie made in 1980 Brave
New World. Excellent show, it shows the Alphas and names them Rothchild and so on. Shows what
these people specifically want to do to the world. I wonder if the ruling psychopaths
actually wait for science fiction authors to plan the future and then follow their
script.
Mineshaft Gap 10 hours ago
If Huxley were starting out today no major publisher would touch him.
They'd tell him Brave New World doesn't have a diverse enough of cast. Even the mostly
likable totalitarian guy named Mustapha turns out to be white! A white Mustapha. It's soooo
triggering. Also, what's wrong with a little electronic fun and drug taking, anyway? Lighten
up , Aldous.
Meanwhile his portrait of shrieking medieval Catholic nuns who think they're possessed in
The Devils of Loudun might remind the leftist editors too uncomfortably of their own recent
bleating performances at "White Fragility" struggle sessions.
Sound of the Suburbs 12 hours ago (Edited) remove link
They do try and just fool the masses.
If that doesn't work, they stick the boot in.
In the beginning ........
Mankind first started to produce a surplus with early agriculture.
It wasn't long before the elites learnt how to read the skies, the sun and the stars, to
predict the coming seasons to the amazed masses and collect tribute.
They soon made the most of the opportunity and removed themselves from any hard work to
concentrate on "spiritual matters", i.e. any hocus-pocus they could come up with to elevate
them from the masses, e.g. rituals, fertility rights, offering to the gods . etc and to turn
the initially small tributes, into extracting all the surplus created by the hard work of the
rest.
The elites became the representatives of the gods and they were responsible for the bounty
of the earth and the harvests.
As long as all the surplus was handed over, all would be well.
The class structure emerges.
Upper class – Do as little as they can get away with and get most of the rewards
Middle class – Administrative/managerial class who have enough to live a comfortable
life
Working class – Do the work, and live a basic subsistence existence where they get
enough to stay alive and breed
Their techniques have got more sophisticated over time, but this is the underlying
idea.
They have achieved an inversion, and got most of the rewards going to those that don't
really do anything.
As soon as anyone started thinking about this seriously, the upper class would be in
trouble.
The last thing they needed was "The Enlightenment" as people would start thinking about
this seriously.
Any serious attempt to study the capitalist system always reveals the same inconvenient
truth.
Many at the top don't create any wealth.
That's the problem.
Confusing making money and creating wealth is the solution.
The classical economists identified the constructive "earned" income and the parasitic
"unearned" income .
Most of the people at the top lived off the parasitic "unearned" income and they now had a
big problem. This problem was solved with neoclassical economics.
Neoclassical economics is a pseudo economics, which is more about hiding the inconvenient
truths discovered by the classical economists than telling you how the economy works.
Things had already gone horribly wrong by the 1930s.
In the 1920s, the economy had been booming, the stock market had been soaring and nearly
everyone had been making lots of money.
In the 1930s, they were wondering what the hell had just happened as everything had
appeared to be going so well in the 1920s and then it all just fell apart.
They needed a better measure to see what was really going on in the economy and came up
with GDP.
In the 1930s, they pondered over where all that wealth had gone to in 1929 and realised
inflating asset prices doesn't create real wealth, they came up with the GDP measure to track
real wealth creation in the economy.
The transfer of existing assets, like stocks and real estate, doesn't create real wealth
and therefore does not add to GDP.
The real wealth creation in the economy is measured by GDP.
Real wealth creation involves real work, producing new goods and services in the
economy.
The rentiers are exposed again.
What they need to do is get neoclassical economics back again.
They wrap it in a new ideology, neoliberalism, so no one will notice the return of their
special economics.
@animalogic
respasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us ." is the translation presented in the
Revised Standard Version of the Bible. What is lost in translation is the fact that Jesus
came "to preach the gospel to the poor to preach the acceptable Year of the Lord": He came,
that is, to proclaim a Jubilee Year, a restoration of deror for debtors: He came to institute
a Clean Slate Amnesty (which is what Hebrew דְּרוֹר
connotes in this context).
It is quite possible to have balanced civilizations that lasts for thousands of years;
however it is impossible in the West, since the west is based on faulty assumptions about
reality.
I keep happening on these mentions of manufacturing jobs succumbing to automation, and I
can't think of where these people are getting their information.
I work in manufacturing. Production manufacturing, in fact, involving hundreds, thousands,
tens of thousands of parts produced per week. Automation has come a long way, but it also
hasn't. A layman might marvel at the technologies while taking a tour of the factory, but
upon closer inspection, the returns are greatly diminished in the last two decades. Advances
have afforded greater precision, cheaper technologies, but the only reason China is a giant
of manufacturing is because labor is cheap. They automate less than Western factories, not
more, because humans cost next to nothing, but machines are expensive.
Neoliberals policies for minority students in education can be called “the soft bigotry
of low expectations.”
Racists want discrimination based on race; wokesters want discrimination based on race too.
One in the name of bigotry, one in the name of “tolerance.” Does the motive really
matter if the outcome is the same?
Notable quotes:
"... the ONS dataset is A09, Labour Market status by ethnic group, is testament to white folks ingenuity to overcome such discrimination ..."
My uncle did admissions at Cambridge and he actively discriminated against Public School
boys, despite being one himself. He was actually involved in hiring that black woman to be
the Master at Christ's College.
Similarly at Citi it was very obvious any remotely competent black was promoted way beyond
there competency, although that was largely limited to back and middle office roles.
Still the ONS dataset is A09, Labour Market status by ethnic group, is
testament to white folks ingenuity to overcome such discrimination and the free market
at work.
"... Hiring is a lot more complex and constrained, than this writeup suggests. In stacks of resumes that I used to review, I found almost all applicants exaggerate or lie. ..."
"... Employers (or the ones the future worker will work directly "" like local manager) are in the majority of cases DO NOT hire directly. ..."
"... There is either a staffing firm/ recruitment firm between, often also a different websites (for job seekers) which only redirects towards those. ..."
"... The problem with the HR/ recruitment firms/ jobseeker websites themselves. They dictate who will work somewhere. ..."
"... It's a new world of fraud, total fraud. Biden is an absurd fraud. They are all frauds, because actual accomplishments, real work, are so very much more difficult than lies. ..."
"... There's nothing new under the sun. It's always been fraud, flimflam and bamboozle. Somebody once said, you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. But, then again, he could have just been fooling around. ..."
Hiring is a lot more complex and constrained, than this writeup suggests. In stacks of resumes that I used to review, I found almost all applicants exaggerate or lie. That was very problematic,
because once you hire a person, it's hard to get rid of them, even with "at-will" employment.
There is a major problem with the article/ whole employment process:
Employers (or the ones the future worker will work directly "" like local manager) are in the majority of cases DO NOT
hire directly.(Respect for the ones, who do.)
There is either a staffing firm/ recruitment firm between, often also a different websites (for job seekers) which only
redirects towards those.
Also many company have a HR department, etc... The problem with the HR/ recruitment firms/ jobseeker websites themselves.
They dictate who will work somewhere.
Wish to be workers should meet directly with the ones they supposed to work for.
To see whether racial discrimination exists, researchers send the same CV to employers with the same level of qualifications
but different names attached, to see if the foreign-sounding names lead to a greater degree of rejection. They often find that
to be the case.
Given that British blacks most often bear British sounding names and that foreign whites too bear foreign sounding names, I
don't see how the difference in treatment can be put down to racial bias. Moreover, I don't see anything wrong in giving precedence
to compatriots over foreigners. It is the opposite that is unsound.
As a French national with a foreign sounding name, I never expected to be given precedence over native French candidates and
always counted solely on my competence to get a position. If the world we live in were still normal, that would be the normal
attitude because in a normal world people are allowed to prefer their kin vs folks they don't know from Adam. It is the opposite
that isn't normal.
Discard national preference and you get foreign tribes' nepotism.
researchers send the same CV to employers with the same level of qualifications but different names attached, to see if
the foreign-sounding names lead to a greater degree of rejection. They often find that to be the case.
Because it's a lose-lose to hire a Tyrone or Abdul. Even if they're the most qualified, they're "high-maintenance," arriving
with extra-legal protections and considerations. Down the road they can always hide behind the specter of racism if their performance
is found lacking.
It's a new world of fraud, total fraud. Biden is an absurd fraud. They are all frauds, because actual accomplishments,
real work, are so very much more difficult than lies.
Indians are fantastic fraudsters. Africans are fraud specialists. Many Asians are not so much CV fraudsters as they are test
cheaters.
Agreed as they do it in Swiss. They prefer to employ their folk, if find a suitable person and wait up to 6 months before consider
an outlander. Only then ready to employ someone else.
BUT: Will not employ a dullard just because they share a citizenship/ ancestors. About 20% are foreigners among the employed,
in Geneva probably most of the employed.
And this is strictly the opposite what is common in many place (and self-appointed "nationalists" demand): No matter how incompetent
but employ the dullard native, while send home the competent/ hardworking.
Against meritism/ competition and bad for business.
There are plenty of dishonest Europeans, but honesty as a high value seems Western. Subcons caught in a lie will grin and do
a head waggle something between a nod and a shake. Blacks will insist the lie is true. East Asians will lie until you demonstrate
they cannot get away with it. Latin Americans only lie when they speak.
There's nothing new under the sun. It's always been fraud, flimflam and bamboozle. Somebody once said, you can fool all
of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. But, then again,
he could have just been fooling around.
Bullying is an epidemic. It is rampant, widespread, pervasive and the effects can be
catastrophic. It occurs in our communities, in our schools – and sadly – even in
our homes. Bullying statistics are staggering, scary and merit serious consideration and
immediate action. Consider the following:
Facts and Statistics
90% of students in grades 4-8 report having been harassed or bullied.
28% of students in grades 6-12 experience bullying. 2
20% of students in grades 9-12 experience bullying. (stopbullying.gov)
In grades 6-12, 9% of students have experienced cyberbulling. 2
Over 160,000 kids refuse to go to school each day for fear of being bullied. (Nation
Education Association)
70.6% of students report having witnessed bullying in their school–and over 71% say
bullying is a problem.
Over 10% of students who dropout of school do so due to being bullied repeatedly.
Each month 282,000 students are physically assaulted in some way in secondary schools
throughout the United States–and the number is growing.
Statistics suggest that revenge [due to bullying] is the number one motivator for school
shootings in the U.S.
86% of students surveyed said, "other kids picking on them, making fun of them or
bullying them" is the number one reason that teenagers turn to lethal violence at
school.
Nearly 75% of school shootings have been linked to harassment and bullying.
87% of students surveyed report that bullying is the primary motivator of school
shootings.
64% of students who are bullied do not report it. (Petrosina, Guckenburg, Devoe and
Hanson 2010)
2 National Center for Education Statistics and Bureau of Justice
Statistics
Types of Bullying
When most people think about bullying they envision some kind of physical intimidation.
However, bullying can take on many forms which are just as emotionally and psychologically
damaging as physical intimidation and harassment. There are four general forms of bullying.
These include:
Physical – Physical bullying involves aggressive physical intimidation and is
often characterized by repeated tripping, pushing, hitting, kicking, blocking, or touching
in some other inappropriate way. Even though it's the most obvious form of bullying, it
isn't the most prominent.
Physical bullying is damaging and can be emotionally and psychologically devastating.
When a child fears for their safety, they're not able to focus on life and function
normally. Notwithstanding the trauma that physical bullying causes, most children don't
report it to a teacher or to their parents. Signs of physical bullying may include
unexplained scratches, bruises, and cuts, or unexplainable headaches or stomach aches.
However, the psychological effects of physical bullying may be even more pronounced than
the physical scars. Children who are withdrawn, struggle to focus, or become anti-social
may also be the recipients of physical bullying–even if there aren't any other
outward signs.
If you think your child or student is being bullied physically, talk to them in a casual
manner about what's going on before school, during class, during lunch or recess, and on
the way home from school. Ask them if anyone has been, or is being, mean to them. Keep your
emotions in check, and stay calm and caring in your tone, or your child may shut off and
not tell you what's happening. If you find that physical bullying is occurring, contact the
appropriate school officials, or law enforcement officers – there are anti-bullying
laws at the local, state and federal levels. Do not confront the bully, or the bully's
parents, on your own.
Verbal – Verbal bullying involves putting down others and bullying them using
cruel, demeaning words. Verbal bullying includes name calling, making racist, sexist or
homophobic remarks or jokes, insulting, slurs, sexually suggestive comments, or abusive
language of any kinds. Verbal bullying is one of the most common forms of bullying.
So how do you know when a child is being verbally bullied? They may become moody,
withdrawn, and/or have a change in their appetite. They may be straight forward and tell
you that somebody said something that hurt their feelings, or ask you if something someone
said about them is true.
Verbal bullying can be difficult to address. The best way to deal with verbal bullying
is to build childrens' self confidence. Confident kids are less susceptible to verbal
bullying than those who already struggle with poor self esteem and self image. Students
should be taught in the classroom to treat everyone with respect and that there is never an
excuse for saying something mean or disrespectful to someone else.
Social – Social bullying is a common form of bullying among children and
students. It involves exclusion from groups, spreading malicious rumors and stories about
others, and generally alienating people from social acceptance and interaction. Next to
verbal bullying, social bullying is one of the most common forms of bullying.
Social bullying can be one of the hardest forms of bullying to identify and address
– but it's just as damaging as other forms of bullying, and the effects can last a
long time. Children being bullied socially may experience mood changes, become withdrawn,
and start spending more time alone. Social bullying is more common among girls than
boys.
The best way to identify social bullying is to stay close to your kids and maintain an
open line of communication. Talk to them nightly about how their day went and how things
are going in school. Focus on building their self esteem and get them involved in
extracurricular activities outside of school such as team sports, music, art and other
activities where they develop friendships and interact with others.
Cyberbullying – Cyberbullying is the least common type of bullying, but it can
be just as damaging as other forms of bullying. It includes any type of bullying that
occurs via the Internet or through electronic mediums. The most common types of
cyberbullying include:
Text message bullying
Picture/video clip bullying via mobile phone cameras
Email message bullying
Bullying through instant messaging
Chat-room bullying
Bullying via websites
Children who are being cyberbullied typically spend more time online or texting. They
often frequent social media sites such as facebook, twitter, etc. If a child or student
seems upset, sad or anxious after being online, especially if they're visiting social media
websites, it may be a sign they're being cyberbullied. Kids and students who are
cyberbullied exhibit many of the same characteristics as kids being bullied physically,
verbally or socially. They may become withdrawn, anxious, distant, or want to stay home
from school.
Cyberbullying can occur 24/7, so the best way to combat cyberbullying is to monitor
Internet usage and limit time spent on social media websites. Children need to know that if
they encounter cyberbullying they shouldn't respond, engage, or forward it. Instead, they
need to inform their parents or a teacher so the communication can be printed out and taken
to the proper authorities. When cyberbullying includes threats of violence or sexually
explicit content, law enforcement should be involved.
Where Does Bullying Occur?
The majority of bullying occurs at school, outside on school grounds during recess or after
school, and on the school bus – or anywhere else students interact unsupervised. Bullying
may also occur at home between siblings or in the community where kids congregate.
Cyberbullying takes place online and via digital communication devices.
* Bradshaw, C.P. (2007). Bullying and peer victimization at school: Perceptual differences
between students and school staff. 36(3), 361-382.
Anti-bullying Laws and Policies
Currently, there aren't any Federal anti-bullying laws. However, state and local lawmakers
have taken steps to prevent bullying and protect the physical, emotional and psychological well
being of children. To date, 49 states have passed anti-bullying legislation. When bullying
moves into the category of harassment, it then becomes a violation of Federal law. Criminal
code as it relates to bullying by minors varies from state to state. The map below shows the
states that have established anti-bullying laws, anti-bullying policies, and both anti-bullying
laws and policies.
Probably $25 an hour or $50K a year is more realistic. Part time jobs are even better to hem to avoid money crunch and at the
same time continue to look for an IT job. Might be a viable option for younger healthy IT specialists. CDL course from a
reputable truck driving school is around $3500 and they
provide you a truck for the DMV exam, but you can try self-study and might pass written exam from a second try as there is nothing
complex in the test, saving half of those money.
Notable quotes:
"... What's happening, he said, is that drivers are looking at the fact that they can make $70,000 'and stay home a little more.' ..."
"... To put the numbers in perspective, Todd Amen, the president of ATBS, which prepares taxes for mostly independent owner-operators, said in a recent interview with the FreightWaves Drilling Deep podcast that the average tax return his company prepared for drivers' 2020 pay was $67,500. He also said his company prepared numerous 2020 returns with pay in excess of $100,000. ..."
David Parker is the CEO of Covenant Logistics and he was blunt with analysts who follow the
company on its earnings call Tuesday.
'How do we get enough drivers? ' he said in response to a question from Stephens analyst Jack Atkins. 'I don't know.'
Parker then gave an overview of the situation facing Covenant, and by extension other
companies, in trying to recruit drivers. One problem: With rates so high, companies are
encountering the fact that a driver doesn't need to work a full schedule to
pull in a decent salary.
'We're finding out that just to get a driver, let's say the numbers are $85,000 (per year) ,' Parker said,
according to a transcript of the earnings call supplied by SeekingAlpha. '
But a lot of these drivers are happy at $70,000. Now they're not coming to
work for me, unless it's in the ($80,000s), because they're happy making $70,000.'
What's happening, he said, is that drivers are looking at the fact that they can make $70,000 'and stay home a little
more.'
The result is a tightening of capacity. Parker said utilization in the first quarter at Covenant was three or four percentage
points less than it would have as a result of that development. ' It's an interesting dynamic that none of
us have calculated,' he said.
To put the numbers in perspective, Todd Amen, the president of ATBS, which prepares taxes
for mostly independent owner-operators, said in a
recent interview with the FreightWaves Drilling Deep podcast that the average tax return
his company prepared for drivers' 2020 pay was $67,500. He also said his
company prepared numerous 2020 returns with pay in excess of $100,000.
Parker was firm that this was not a situation likely to change soon. 'There's nothing out there that tells me that drivers are
going to readily be available over the medium [term in] one to two years,' he said. 'And that's where I'm at.'
Paul Bunn, the company's COO and senior executive vice president, echoed
what other executives have said recently:
Additional stimulus benefits are making the situation tighter. He said that while offering some hope that as the benefits roll
off, 'that might help a bit.'
But what the government giveth the government can sometimes taketh away. Bunn expressed another familiar sentiment in the
industry today, that an infrastructure bill adding to demand for workers would create more difficulty to put drivers behind the
wheel. Construction, Bunn said, is 'a monster competitor of our industry' and if the bill is approved, 'that's going to be a big
pull.'
Labor is going to be a 'capacity constraint' through the
economy, Bunn said, while conceding that trucking is not unique in that. And because of that
labor squeeze, capacity in many fields is going to be limited. ' The OEMs,
the manufacturers are limited capacity ,' Bunn said. 'They're not ramping up in a major, major way because of labor, because of
commodity pricing, because of the costs.'
All that means is that capacity growth is going to be
'reasonable,' Bunn said. 'It's not going to be crazy, people growing fleets [by] significant amounts.'
'It's all you can do just to hold serve, '
he added.
Leftists reacted with fury after Fox News host Tucker Carlson said people who wear masks
outside should be mocked and that parents who made their kids wear them were engaging in "child
abuse."
Carlson noted that masks were "purely a sign of political obedience like Kim Il-Sung pins in
Pyongyang" and that the only people who voluntarily wear masks outside are "zealots and
neurotics."
He then asserted that the tables should be turned on Biden voters who have been harassing
conservatives for almost a year for not wearing a mask in public.
"The rest of us should be snorting at them first, they're the aggressors – it's our
job to brush them back and restore the society we were born in," said Carlson.
"So the next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not
hesitate. Ask politely but firmly, ' Would you please take off your mask? Science shows there
is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable, " he added.
"We should do that and we should keep doing it until wearing a mask outside is roughly as
socially accepted as lighting a Marlboro on an elevator."
The Fox News host went on to call mask wearing "repulsive" while asserting that forcing
children to wear masks outside should be illegal.
"Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from
your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart. Call the police immediately. Contact
Child Protective Services. Keep calling until someone arrives," Carlson said.
"What you're looking at is abuse, it's child abuse, and you are morally obligated to attempt
to prevent it," he added.
As expected, Carlson immediately began trending on Twitter, with hysterical leftists
hyperventilating over Tucker once again challenging their cult. Many called for the Fox News
host to be fired while others ludicrously described him as a "national security threat."
As we
highlighted yesterday , even Dr. Fauci now admits that the risk of vaccinated people
spreading COVID outside is "minuscule," and yet some health professionals are pushing for the
mask mandates to be made permanent.
The transmission of COVID-19 outdoors is almost non-existent, making mask mandates merely a
political tool of population control.
In a recent open letter to the German government and state premiers, five leading members of
the Association for Aerosol Research (GAeF) wrote, "The transmission of SARS-CoV-2 viruses
takes place indoors almost without exception. Transmission outdoors is extremely rare and never
leads to cluster infections as can be observed indoors."
Why the us government did not fund this type of mask for all is telling what the overall
strategy is.
Controlling you, your neighbor, and others that think for themselves.
Its not about the virus
Robert Neville 7 hours ago
Actually, M95 masks filter out 95% of particles over 4 microns in diameter in perfect
conditions. In the real world it is much less effective than that. Viruses are generally less
than one micron in size so they are ineffective for most viruses. Also, the masks are so hard
to breath through that some version have an exhale valve so they do nothing to protect others
if you are infected. Most masks don't protect your eyes. The only thing that works is a space
suit that is decontaminated before you remove it. The rest is virtue siganling.
Properly fitted n95's do protect against virus and the science proves it.
Dickweed Wang 10 hours ago (Edited)
This is an excerpt from the "Stanford Study" from November 2020 (that's been making the
rounds in the alternative media and conservative media space recently) about the uselessness
of masks in preventing "the virus":
A meta -analysis among health care workers found that compared to no masks, surgical
mask and N95 respirators were not effective against transmission of viral infections or
influenza-like illness based on six RCTs [28] . Using
separate analysis of 23 observational studies, this meta -analysis found no protective
effect of medical mask or N95 respirators against SARS virus [28] . A recent
systematic review of 39 studies including 33,867 participants in community settings
(self-report illness), found no difference between N95 respirators versus surgical masks
and surgical mask versus no masks in the risk for developing influenza or influenza-like
illness, suggesting their ineffectiveness of blocking viral transmissions in community
settings [29] .
It's predictable that the usual suspects have come out of the woodwork to "fact check" and
disparage the entire paper (do an internet search for 'Stanford Mask Paper' and you'll see
what I'm talking about). Their main criticism is 'that wasn't published by Stanford', while
they totally ignore the claims made in the paper. When you look at the people and
organizations doing the fact checking it really shows that the entire mask issue is a
political/control ploy. Here's the link to the entire paper if anyone is interested:
From comments: " Tucker is right on this one. If you wear a mask outside you truly are a
moron. You may as well add goggles and a butt plug." ... "Don't forget about those solo drivers
with masks on!", "Maskers are stupid scared virtue signalers"
As an anti-mask militant for quite a while now I've been going out of my way to ask people
with masks on outdoors why they're wearing one (I've really tried to be polite but it's
getting increasingly hard to do that). In literally hundreds of instances I haven't gotten a
straight answer yet. It's stunning that people are so gullible but it shows what the power of
propaganda really is. 99% of that is coming from teevee, which truly rots your brain.
Capt Tripps 10 hours ago remove link
They are signaling the submission to a tyrannical state. That submission makes us all less
free.
safelyG 10 hours ago
mister tucker is wrongeddy wrong wrong.
we must all wear multiple masks. indoors. outdoors. at work. at play. while we sleep.
while we bathe. while we eat. while we sing praises unto the most high.
and we must remain 8 feet apart, one from the other. at all times.
and report our whereabouts and our contacts and our body temperature. to the
authorities.
get your vacines!
lovingly,
bill n melinda
radical-extremist 10 hours ago
When Tucker Carlson says to tell people to take off their masks and call CPS on parents
who mask their children he's trolling the Left. And because the Left has no sense of humor or
irony or hypocrisy...they're of course OUTRAGED, which was his point.
Realism 10 hours ago remove link
I like it best when hiking outside, in 75 degree weather with a nice breeze, you see
people put up their mask as they walk by
Pure comedy, it's hard to understand the stupidity if you think you'll get any disease
much less Covid walking by someone
And importantly, would you really be hiking if you had Covid LOL
aztrader 10 hours ago
Mask wears see it as a badge of honor because they "care" about other people. In reality,
it's a badge of Stupidity and ignorance.
Prince Velveeta 10 hours ago (Edited) remove link
California is an open-air mental ward. I was just out there and the collective idiocy is
astounding. People jogging with masks on , exaggerating their breathing as they pass you in
some competitive virtue signaling event. I witnessed some idiot jogging up the hill past my
family member's house, with a bandana on his face, being sucked into his mouth as he's
gasping for air.....
I said: Okay, I get it, if you lend them the money, then they can pay. This is like a
Ponzi scheme: you lend the investors enough to pay the interest and keep current. That
was my introduction to how the balance of payments worked between the United States and the
third world and how political the whole credit problem was.
Free markets are only free for parasites and usurers to run their schemes. Lolbertarianism
is an ideology of our (((friends))), and I think its adherents are dupes. I no longer think
they are well meaning dupes either, they have a personality defect, where they lack
empathy.
Back in the good old days, when things were more innocent and simple, the psychopathic
Central Intelligence Agency had to covertly infiltrate the news media to manipulate the
information Americans were consuming about their nation and the world. Nowadays, there is no
meaningful separation between the news media and the CIA at all.
Analysis: US
blinks first on Russia-Ukraine tensions
Journalist Glenn Greenwald just highlighted an interesting point about the reporting by The
New York Times on the so-called
“Bountygate†story the outlet broke in June of last year
about the Russian government trying to pay Taliban-linked fighters to attack US soldiers in
Afghanistan.
“One of the NYT reporters who originally broke the Russia bounty story
(originally attributed to unnamed ‘intelligence
officials’) say today that it was a CIA claim,†Greenwald
tweeted .
“So media outlets - again - repeated CIA stories with no questioning:
congrats to all.â€
Indeed, NYT’s original
story made no mention of CIA involvement in the narrative, citing only
“officials,†yet this latest article speaks as though it had
been informing its readers of the story’s roots in the
lying, torturing , drug-running , warmongering Central
Intelligence Agency from the very beginning. The author even writes “The New
York Times
first reported last summer the existence of the C.I.A.’s
assessment,†with the hyperlink leading to the initial article which made no
mention of the CIA. It wasn’t until later that The New York Times began reporting that the CIA
was looking into the Russian bounties allegations at all.
The Daily Beast , which has itself uncritically published many articles
promoting the CIA “Bountygate†narrative, reports the
following:
It was a blockbuster
story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great
Game†in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central
Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry
from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the
White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.
But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had
“low to moderate†confidence in the story after all.
Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the
story is, at best, unproven â€" and possibly untrue.
So the mass media aggressively promoted a CIA narrative that none of them ever saw proof of,
because there was no proof, because it was an entirely unfounded claim from the very beginning.
They quite literally ran a CIA press release and disguised it as a news story.
In totalitarian dictatorships, the government spy agency tells the news media what stories
to run, and the news media unquestioningly publish it. In free democracies, the government spy
agency says “Hoo buddy, have I got a scoop for you!†and the
news media unquestioningly publish it.
In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “ The CIA and the Media
†reporting that the CIA had
covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had
over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as
Operation Mockingbird . It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media is meant to
report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the
agendas of spooks and warmongers.
Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too
propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New
York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news
pundits . The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor ,
and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence
agencies per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets
now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper,
Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha
Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash,
Susan Hennessey, Ned Price and Rick Francona, as are known
CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are
CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like
Tucker Carlson.
This isn’t Operation Mockingbird. It’s so much worse.
Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something to the media. What we are seeing now is the
CIA openly acting as the media. Any separation between the CIA and the news media, indeed even
any pretence of separation, has been dropped.
This is bad. This is very, very bad. Democracy has no meaningful existence if
people’s votes aren’t being cast with a clear
understanding of what’s happening in their nation and their world, and if
their understanding is being shaped to suit the agendas of the very government
they’re meant to be influencing with their votes, what you have is the most
powerful military and economic force in the history of civilization with no accountability to
the electorate whatsoever. It’s just an immense globe-spanning power
structure, doing whatever it wants to whoever it wants. A totalitarian dictatorship in
disguise.
And the CIA is the very worst institution that could possibly be spearheading the movements
of that dictatorship. A little research into the many, many horrific
things the CIA has done over the years will quickly show you that this is true; hell, just
a glance at what the CIA was up to with the
Phoenix Program in Vietnam will.
There’s a common delusion in our society that depraved government
agencies who are known to have done evil things in the past have simply stopped doing evil
things for some reason. This belief is backed by zero evidence, and is contradicted by
mountains of evidence to the contrary. It’s believed because it is
comfortable, and for literally no other reason.
The CIA should not exist at all, let alone control the news media, much less the movements
of the US empire. May we one day know a humanity that is entirely free from the rule of
psychopaths, from our total planetary behavior as a collective, all the way down to the
thoughts we think in our own heads.
May we extract their horrible fingers from every aspect of our being.
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Archegos is a Greek word denoting leadership. The place where the eponymous family office
led UBS, and a growing roll call of investment banks, was into a morass.
"... In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. ..."
"... The parallel in the stock market is the hunt for the greater fool . Sure, GameStop shares bear no relation to the reality of the company, but I can make money from buying an overpriced stock if I can find someone willing to pay even more because they 'like the stock.' ..."
"... The concern for investors: How much of the market's gain is thanks to this pure speculation, and how much to the justifiable gains of the improving economy and low rates? If too much comes from speculation, the danger is that we run out of greater fools and prices quickly drop back. ..."
In Minsky's second stage, borrowers plan only to repay the interest, and
refinance when the main debt is due to be repaid; much company debt works like this. It is
taken out with a plan to roll it over indefinitely. Interest rates matter a lot: If they go
down when the company needs to refinance, it will pay less.
The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate
debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future
earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might
be hit no matter how earnings pan out.
A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the
first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money.
Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on
March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings
12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the
10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell
further as stocks rebounded.
In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the
hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime
example.
The parallel in the stock market is the
hunt for the greater fool . Sure, GameStop shares
bear no relation to the reality of the company, but I can make money from buying an overpriced stock if I can find someone
willing to pay even more because they 'like the stock.'
Wild bets became obvious this year, as newcomers armed with stimulus, or 'stimmy,' checks
drove up the price of many tiny stocks, penny shares and those popular on Reddit discussion
boards.
The concern for investors: How much of the market's gain is thanks to
this pure speculation, and how much to the justifiable gains of the improving economy and low
rates? If too much comes from speculation, the danger is that we run out of greater fools
and prices quickly drop back.
Warren Buffett on Saturday said RobinHood and other trading apps were contributing to the
"casino aspect" of the stock market, which has grown more prevalent over the past year to
year-and-a-half. In response to a question about the trading apps at Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s
annual meeting, Buffett said that while there was nothing illegal or immoral about short-term,
speculative trading activity, "I don't think you build a society around people doing it."
Vice Chairman Charlie Munger expressed stronger misgivings, calling it "just godawful that
something like that would draw investment from civilized men and decent citizens; it's deeply
wrong. We don't want to make our money selling things that are bad for people."
My uncle did admissions at Cambridge and he actively discriminated against Public School
boys, despite being one himself. He was actually involved in hiring that black woman to be the
Master at Christ's College. Similarly at Citi it was very obvious any remotely competent black
was promoted way beyond there competency, although that was largely limited to back and middle
office roles.
Still the ONS dataset is A09, Labour Market status by ethnic group, is testament to
white folks ingenuity to overcome such discrimination and the free market at work.
In fall 2011 the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that higher education
enrollment was slightly more than 20.5 million students. By fall 2019 that figure had dropped
to about 18.2 million, a decline of slightly over 11%. During those eight years the number of
18- to 24-year-olds remained roughly constant.
We have long had a social consensus that it's worth four years of our children's lives and
very large sums of their parents' money to see their knowledge, mental capacity, and career
prospects greatly expanded by going to college. Attitudes and habits formed by this consensus
were bound to lag behind the reality of academia as it now is. Yet the NSCRC numbers show that
already about 1 in 9 have mustered the courage and independence of thought to face reality and
stop wasting time and money.
This illicit conversion of a vital social institution to an alien use deprives all Americans
of the benefits of a properly functioning system of higher education. It also means that a
destructive and long since discredited political ideology is now using colleges and
universities to gain a degree of influence over society that it could never have achieved at
the ballot box. That's election interference on a scale not remotely matched by anything that
was alleged in the 2020 election.
When academia's astonishing message to society is, "We'll take your money, but we'll do with
it what we want, not what you want," the response ought to be simple: "No you won't." The
question is, can the millions of people who make up that wonderful abstraction called "society"
act in a way that is sufficiently concerted and organized to deliver the message effectively?
Many have already made a good start. But the rest need to join if we are ever again to have
college campuses that aren't as academically incompetent as they are politically
malevolent.
Mr. Ellis is a professor emeritus of German literature at the University of California,
Santa Cruz and author of "The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It happened, the Damage It
Does, and What Can Be Done."
SUBSCRIBER 2 hours ago Borrowing money to gamble on the stock market is not
a very smart thing to do in my opinion. Like thumb_up 7 Reply reply Share link Report flag
R
“Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these
people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in
the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between
them.†â€" Thomas Jefferson
The trial was pointless .
We knew the outcome . We knew
the threat. Convict Derek Chauvin of murder, or cities will burn . Jurors
surely knew they would be doxxed if they didn’t vote to convict; one
potential juror was
dismissed after he dared mention this fear.
There is a debate to be had about police conduct. I’m not going to back
the blue unconditionally after Charlottesville
, Ashli Babbit , and
the ruthless
manhunt for January 6 rioters. Derek Chauvin would have carried out the same orders against
us. However, what Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd isn’t even close to
what happened to white
man Daniel Shaver , gunned down in a hotel hallway by a police officer who was later
acquitted and was paid for his mental suffering . This is about race, not police. I expect police will crack
down further on law-abiding
whites while ignoring black crime .
The howls for Derek Chauvin’s head were primal. I
haven’t heard such cries of triumph since O.J. Simpson was
acquitted .
Of course, Derek Chauvin was hardly a champion of white identity . In 2018, the
Twin Cities Pioneer Press gave a fawning profile to his then-wife, Hmong
refugee Kellie Chauvin. She called her husband a “gentlemanâ€
and “just a softie.†Less than two years later, just three days
after George
Floyd’s death , she divorced him. Her lawyer
told journalists about her “utmost sympathy†for
Floyd’s family.
What’s so striking about the Derek Chauvin case is that it could have
happened anywhere. Every police officer (or white person who lives in a black neighborhood)
knows about the sob stories, the wailing, the lying, and the sudden switch from threats to
begging and back again when blacks face cops. Floyd himself had
tried this soft-shoe routine when he was arrested in 2019. Derek Chauvin and his three
colleagues had probably seen far worse.
Whether a routine arrest like this becomes a cause depends on countless factors. If
the teenager Darnella Frazier had not
taken a video , nothing would have happened. Even with body cam footage, I suspect there
would have been no case. Without a simple image to rouse the simple masses, no one would have
cared.
The sanctification of George Floyd makes this even more surreal. The #MeToo movement took
down powerful men who had made inappropriate jokes or crude gestures decades ago, but a
criminal who spent his last moments on earth trying to rip-off shopkeepers and lying to police
has become a holy
figure , complete with literal claims of miracles. George Floyd’s life
and death were practically a caricature of what the crudest
“racist†would conjure out of a hateful imagination. A white man
with his record would have been treated exactly the
same , but because Floyd was black, journalists made him a saint. Most people let
others
build their reality . Post-white America has a new faith .
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, author of The Bible of Unspeakable Truths and The Joy
of Hate , said that even if Derek Chauvin wasn’t guilty of all charges,
he
thought the verdict was a good thing. “I want a verdict that keeps this
country from going up in flames,†he explained. That’s the
bravery of American conservatives for you. While the country didn’t
“go up in flames,†there were some troubling signs last night
that worse is to come.
The guilty verdict didn’t calm the streets. It didn’t
even calm the politicians. The President of the United States
said that “this can be a moment of significant change.â€
Kamala Harris , whose
parents are immigrants,
intones that this won’t “heal the pain that existed
for generations.†Barack and Michelle Obama
want “true justice,†which requires “that
we come to terms with the fact that Black Americans are treated differently, every
day.†(I don’t think they mean affirmative action.) Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez said the verdict
wasn’t justice and doesn’t want people to think the
system works. Empty-headed celebrities
demand that more be done.
Rep. Tlaib represents Detroit ,
where the already-ruined city saw a huge
increase in homicides and shootings in 2020, just another part of what was undoubtedly the
largest
single-year increase in the murder rate in American history. Almost all the added victims
were black. “The community†doesn’t seem to
care, so there’s no reason politicians should.
Let’s hear no wailing about “black lives.â€
The main victims of the crime wave are black, with victims including
children , partygoers , and funeral guests
. Voters who elect
progressive prosecutors don’t seem to care any more than the
“community†does. Do they prefer bloodshed to good police
work?
Vox
tells us BLM has led to a reduction in “police homicides†in
areas where there were protests. Of course, at least some of these homicides would have
been justified use of force. Yet the very same research Vox cites says that between 2014 and
2019, there were “somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 more homicides than
would have been expected [absent protests]†in those places. Even if we accept the
unhinged premise that police suddenly stopped gunning down blacks for no reasons, the result of
BLM was thousands of dead blacks â€" and nice houses for the
movement’s co-founder .
Still, it’s not about blacks. It’s about us. Rudyard
Kipling, a poet who wouldn’t get far in our affirmative
action world , wrote :
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: â€"
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet
you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.â€
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
We paid the Dane-geld. We’ve shamefully paid it to people with far less
nobility and courage than the Vikings. The Minnesota protester screaming that riots worked is
right. They worked because they had media backing. If others ran the press, the Cannon
Hinnant case alone could have changed everything. Instead, most whites
haven’t heard of it, nor about the others of
our race butchered every
year .
Our loss of identity leaves us vulnerable to moral blackmail. Whites seem to be in a
permanent state of shellshock. White conservatives want to be left alone, with Tucker Carlson
saying
that what the nation needs “more than anything†is
“a moment to catch our national breath.†Really? Conservatives
know something is wrong, but don’t dare recognize the real problem.
Republicans who collaborate with this rotten system have
shut down even halting steps towards white
identity .
Meanwhile, over the last decade, white liberals have radically changed their views on race
and actively discriminate against
whites . It’s more correct to say that new views were
inserted into their brains through hysterical media coverage of police shootings. Those who
call themselves “very liberal†are hopelessly deluded. A
majority think that
police gun down over 1,000 unarmed black men a year â€" almost 100 times the actual
number.
https://www.bitchute.com/embed/5Bf07CnmFidD/
Statistics can’t compete with sob-stories, and stories give people
meaning. I believe many Americans get their moral purpose for life from them.
There are also specific benefits in keeping the system going. Activists and politicians
build careers. Blacks get a chance of hitting the “
ghetto lottery †(assumed they aren’t killed) and becoming
heroes. It’s a strong incentive to turn a petty scam into an epic showdown.
Journalists who want to lead a social revolution or just get clicks (or both) fall right in
line.
Even as this is written, there is a case in Columbus, Ohio that could be our next George
Floyd-style passion play. Officers arrived at a chaotic brawl and shot a black girl. Body cam
footage shows the girl trying to stab someone before she was shot. Nonetheless, the image the
Associated Press
uses for the story is a Black Lives Matter protest. It looks like yet another case of a
degenerate “community†causing chaos, attracting the police, and
causing a racial confrontation.
The police are going to lie. I’m so thankful that someone from the
family was actually on the scene,†[Aunt] Bryant said . . . .
“The police are going to lie. The police are going to cover up for
themselves. They don’t care. At this point, I feel like
they’re just out to kill Black people. They’re not here
to protect and serve. That isn’t happening. That’s been
over a long time ago. They’re not here to protect and serve.
They’re here to kill Black folks.
Like many other whites, I’m exhausted. Unlike Tucker Carlson , I don’t
think we need a chance to catch our breath or pursue change more slowly. We need radical
change.
Every confrontation between a white officer and a non-white criminal is a potential
riot . The process is corrupt
because judges, jurors, and politicians know that the mob has a veto over the verdict. The rule
of law is dead.
The answer is separation . Without it, this will never
stop.
https://www.bitchute.com/embed/2vb9uMyWhLuW/
The strange reality is that there is almost no difference now between being a notorious
white advocate or any white guy. Derek Chauvin went, in just one day, from a heartwarming
“softie†who married a Hmong refugee to the embodiment of white
supremacy. A few days ago, it was a
soldier who stopped a black guy from accosting women. He had to be chased from his home.
Tomorrow it could be you.
You could try to stop a crime. You could fight back against an assault. Maybe you just look
at someone the wrong way. Maybe you do nothing at all. But if you
donated $10 to a cause the media don’t like â€" or even if
you didn’t â€" you could be the mark for the next great hate
hoax.
I write this reluctantly. Many of us become white advocates kicking and screaming, afraid to
see the truth. We all get here through experience
, usually painful.
However, no matter how far you run, how earnestly you plead, what you say, or even whom you
marry, you will always be white to those with power. That means many despise you. At some
point, you must decide to stand or kneel, and a society that kneels before the memory of a
George Floyd is not one worth serving or saving.
Whites created this country. They sustain it. Without whites, there is no America. America
is an extension of Western Civilization, white civilization, on this continent. Whites
pay to support
people who hate, curse, and sometimes kill us. We gain nothing. They owe everything. What they
have, we gave them, through weakness, folly, and good
intensions .
We deserve reparations for trillions wasted in a 60-year effort to babysit a population that
pays us back with violence and hatred. Most importantly, we deserve liberation from this
albatross that prevents any kind of real national life. Almost any price would be worth paying
if we could be sovereign and free, something our ancestors took for granted.
All the quasi-theological abstractions about “privilege†and
“critical theory†melt away before one immutable truth: They
need us; we don’t need them. Until we have the will to say so, all of us
â€" including you â€" are just one “viralâ€
incident away from ruin.
Don’t know who Gregory Hood is but I do know after reading all of his
essays, that he is the most erudite writer on race issues. I find him fair and balanced
basically sticking to the relevant issue of what ever he is writing about.
“Almost any price would be worth paying if we could be sovereign and
free…â€
This essay is superb…but worryingly, only as far as it goes. What,
very specifically, is the separation plan, and what is the price that might have to be paid
and IS worth paying, and what is the price that is NOT worth paying? The action-plan cannot
be safely specified, because we have already come too far for one to safely specify it.
Already. And worse is to come.
Besides individual ramifications, there is this. In Trump vs. Hawaii, Justice Roberts
declined to overrule Korematsu (the Japanese-internment case). He wrote that Korematsu had
been “overruled by history.†Group internment remains the law
of the land.
And yes, I am too cowardly to speak-out. Again. I was an undergraduate at an elite
University exactly when (late 60s) and where this all started. I (and my friends, and
like-minded faculty members and administrators) were all too cowardly to speak out, and take
action, then. Too much to lose. I apologize to the younger generations.
American Renaissance is a joke. No mention of the (((real problem))) at all. Until we can
discuss and point to the (((instigators))) of our present day horror, we will achieve
nothing. The funny and ironic thing about all of this is, (((they))) will suffer as much as
any White at the hands of the Frankenstein’s monster they created. I guess
Whites can take some small comfort in those just desserts.
The U.S. had a good run while it lasted. My plan is to move on. Whites really should
consider leaving. Problem is when we establish a new area they will just come to move in on
us all over again.
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, author of The Bible of Unspeakable Truths and The Joy of
Hate, said that even if Derek Chauvin wasn’t guilty of all charges, he
thought the verdict was a good thing. “I want a verdict that keeps this
country from going up in flames,†he explained. That’s the
bravery of American conservatives for you.
This is how greed-driven “Jews†(Gutfeld is a partially
Hebrew, greed-driven Globalist and stooge for Conservatism Inc) have destroyed the neoconned
American right, and ultimately the nation. Having no soul or backbone, brushing it all under
the carpet in deference to the Golden Calf markets, Satanic Hebrews like Gutfeld will appease
the irrational mob all day long, and then just prior to collapse, invoke their
“Jewish†heritage and flee to Israel.
This us why they are known as Judenrats , and have always been.
And “liberal†Judenrats are even worse, but had
trouble penetrating the GOP until the ((neocons)) came along and sold it on easy-money
wars.
Anything for a buck, no matter how Satanic. Morality never enters into the equation.
They’re only destroying animal goyim nations, after all.
Whites don’t need blacks, browns or Jewish parasites.
The day we refuse to be intimidated and believe the lies is the day we get our countries
back.
Demand that Congress exercise their constitutional power over money creation.
National strike.
Something.
We need to turn this cancer around rather than waiting for the ship to hit the iceberg. That
will be the financial collapse lurking. It is the perfect opportunity for radical reform
including constitutional admendments. It will be a blessing in disguise: angry masses looking
for soneone to blame. Tptb will try to throw US to the angry masses but we throw them.
@steinbergfeldwitzcohen
y intractable endemic racial frictions in the USA are being systematically nurtured and
nourished by malign agents embedded in the American governmental and media frameworks.
The behaviour and loyalties of your Senator Maxine Waters makes this abundantly clear,
beyond any ambiguity or doubt.
So there is a cancer, for sure, eating away at the American Republic.
To extend the analogy, the danger with any cancer is permitting it to get past the point
of no return, after which the host cannot possibly recover and is inevitably consumed.
So you better find a cure soon, preferably something holistic which feeds the healthy
constituents and promotes healing at the same time as extinguishing the poisonous
infections.
Otherwise Team America may suffer a tragic and permanent demise.
Don’t forget that Jews own the media and the politicians. The culture
of vicitmhood, cancel culture, “wokeness,†race-baiting and
multi-racialism all either originate in the Jewish community or are strongly supported by
Jews. Jews brought down white, Christian Russia in 1917 and they are in the process of doing
that here. Jews hate us Christian whites and that fact is reflected in their media.
“All the quasi-theological abstractions about
“privilege†and “critical
theory†melt away before one immutable truth: They need us; we
don’t need them. Until we have the will to say so, all of
us…â€
Us who? White liberals don’t want you & don’t
need you & never will accept you, let alone agree any hare-brained scheme to
‘separate’ or have a racial homeland. And
they’re using Blacks to tell you that.
And until we have the will to say so, nothing will result from DOA dreams about a separate
state for “usâ€. A separate quasi-theological state abstraction
based on race will melt away in immutable reality as quickly as the communist belief in a
dictatorship of the proletariat abstraction. You have to make it here; there is no
“us†anymore. Get ready for 2022 or civil war as you will, but
there’s no escape to la-la land.
In the 1960 census, Minnesota was 98.8% white. In 1973, Time magazine ran an article on
the “Good Life in Minnesota.†It really was. We led the nation
in education. In 1960, there were 1,400 violent crimes in the State. Now, it is 13,000 to
14,000. What happened? We had mass migration from Chicago. Our Minnesota socialists offered
generous welfare benefits that attracted Chicago’s blacks and resettled
many refugees from failed countries, like Somalia, to the State. The State went from low
crime, highly educated, to much crime, much disorder, and a feeling we now live in a 3rd
world country. Today, we have armed soldiers with machine guns on the corners of the streets
in Minneapolis. You’d think the woke monsters that censure our news and
who form the Chauvin jury would awake from their idiocy, but instead, they censure the facts,
portray cops as the bad guys, portray drug abusing criminal degenerates like George Floyd as
saints.
It looks like blacks are now untouchable. This can only cause them to increase their
savage ways.
Realistically, wouldn’t it be better if every white person that wanted
to be armed could do so, and do so without a gov’t permission slip? The
reason we can’t pack a piece is because the gov’t says
the police will protect us. I know that’s a lie, do you?
Get rid of street cops like Chauvin because they are the ones that
aren’t there to protect us and end up in Floyd type situations. We should
be demanding our Constitutional rights to carry a weapon if we want to AND have the laws
changed so if we take out some POS there’s nothing to worry about.
Just think if a shop keepers in Portland put a shotgun round through their window through
the same hole made by the brick some antifa or blm POS threw. All the rioting and destruction
would have been cut off in seconds as these miscreants scatter. That’s the
only way to handle the low life trash that currently has immunity via a justice system that
is broken.
Eliminate street cops. Demand our Constitutional rights. Tell the gov’t
to change the laws that allow for deadly force when attacked by some miscreant.
No, Whites cannot police them, just like we cannot educate them. That’s
why the only acceptable solution is to expel them from White countries. Any other course of
action will mean the end of civilization because their presence is incompatible with
civilized life. Fuck them all and their cuckservative fans.
The U.S. isn't driven by manufacturing like it once was. Services, which accounted for about
40% of GDP in the 1950s, now account for about 60% of it. Many of the effects of the
Covid-crisis were also unique, such as the way it hammered services like travel and restaurant
spending while touching manufacturing far more lightly.
That makes it easy to spin plausible stories where things go well or poorly. For example,
the work-from-home revolution the crisis helped spark might help businesses run more
efficiently, boosting productivity, raising potential GDP and allowing the economy to run
faster over the long run without overheating. Or,
the thicket of supply-chain problems the crisis caused , and difficulties scaling up
services to meet demand, could cause a more serious bout of inflation than most economists
expect. Other uncertainties abound, including how successful President Biden will be getting
his remaining spending and tax plans passed.
The current financial world has been reduced to a one-legged bar-stool in a bar where
drinks are on the house. There is no scenario where this does not end well no matter how
euphoric we are in the moment.
Even those with half a brain can twig that JP Morgan are a bunch of crooks. Simply Google
"JP Morgan fines".
Those who are market savvy should Google "JP Morgan fines".
Surely in literally everly market segment the CEO, Jamie Dimond, would be banged up in
prison?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
nsurf9 21 hours ago (Edited)
You think this guy understands that, even with more than 50% of the, country in plandemic
lock-down, shutter/closed and/or bankrupt for a solid year, the "markets" have literally
doubled.
This just means that JPM like the other whores have taken their short positions and will
now do everything in their power to ensure that they cash out.
Corporations, especially those headquartered in Georgia, have come out against the
legislation signed by Governor Kemp. Republicans describe the bill as one that addresses
election integrity while Democrats call it a voter suppression law – "Jim Crow 2.0".
Coca-Cola and Delta were among
the first to make a point to virtue-signal after the governor signed the bill, only to be
exposed as taking part in the process and giving input into the legislation. Both were fine
with the law until the governor signed it and grievance activists did their thing. Coke soon
discovered that not all of its consumers think that companies should be making policy –
that 's the job of lawmakers- and now it is trying to clean up the mess it made for itself.
Churches have increasingly played a part in American politics and this is an escalation of
that trend. Evangelical churches have shown support for conservative and Republican candidates
while black churches get out the vote for Democrats. This threat of bringing a large-scale
boycott over state legislation is a hostile action against the corporation. It's political
theatre. Groups like Black Voters Matter, the New Georgia Project Action Fund (Stacey Abrams),
and the Georgia NAACP are pressuring companies to publicly voice their opposition and the
religious leaders are doing the bidding of these politically active groups.
When SB 241 and HB 531 were working through the legislative process, the groups put pressure
on Republican lawmakers and the governor to abandon the voting reform legislation. They also
demanded that donations to any lawmakers supporting the legislation be stopped. The Georgia
Chamber of Commerce tried to remain bipartisan while still voicing support for voting rights
but then caved and expressed "concern and opposition" to some provisions . At the time,
several large Georgia companies were targeted by activists, including Aflac, Coca-Cola,
Delta Airlines, Home Depot, Southern Company and UPS.
The Georgia Chamber of Commerce previously reiterated the importance of voting rights
without voicing opposition against any specific legislation. In a new statement to CNBC, the
Georgia Chamber said it has "expressed concern and opposition to provisions found in both HB
531 and SB 241 that restrict or diminish voter access" and "continues to engage in a
bipartisan manner with leaders of the General Assembly on bills that would impact voting
rights in our state."
Office Depot came out at the time and supported the Chamber's statement. The Election
Integrity Act of 2021, originally known as Georgia Senate Bill 202, is a Georgia law
overhauling elections in the state that was signed into effect by the governor and we know what
happened. Office Depot has not delivered for the activists as they demand so now the company
faces boycott drama. The
religious leaders are taking up where the activist groups left off.
African Methodist Episcopal Bishop Reginald Jackson said the company has remained "silent
and indifferent" to his efforts to rally opposition to the new state law pushed by
Republicans, as well as to similar efforts elsewhere.
" We just don't think we ought to let their indifference stand ," Jackson said.
The leader of all his denomination's churches in Georgia, Jackson had a meeting last week
with other Georgia-based executives to urge them to oppose the voting law, but said he's had
no contact with Home Depot, despite repeated efforts to reach the company.
Faith leaders at first were hesitant to jump into the boycott game. Now the political
atmosphere has changed and they are being vocal. Jackson focused on pressuring Coca-Cola first.
After that company went along to get along, before it realized its error, Jackson moved his
focus onto other companies.
"We believe that corporations have a corporate responsibility to their customers, who are
Black, white and brown, on the issue of voting ," Jackson said. "It doesn't make any sense at
all to keep giving dollars and buying products from people that do not support you."
He said faith leaders may call for boycotts of other companies in the future.
So, here we are with Home Depot in the spotlight. There are
four specific demands leveled at Home Depot in order to avoid further action from the
activists.
Rev. Lee May, the lead pastor of Transforming Faith Church, said the coalition is "fluid
in this boycott" but has four specifics requests of Home Depot: To speak out publicly and
specifically against SB 202; to speak out against any other restrictive voting provisions
under consideration in other states; to support federal legislation that expands voter access
and "also restricts the ability to suppress the vote;" and to support any efforts, including
investing in litigation, to stop SB 202 and other bills like it.
" Home Depot, we're calling on you. I'm speaking to you right now. We're ready to have a
conversation with you. You haven't been ready up to now, but our arms are wide open. We are
people of faith. People of grace, and we're ready to have this conversation, but we're very
clear those four things that we want to see accomplished ," May said.
The Rev. Timothy McDonald III, senior pastor of the First Iconium Baptist Church, warned
this was just the beginning.
"It's up to you whether or not, Home Depot, this boycott escalates to phase two, phase
three, phase four," McDonald said. "We're not on your property -- today. We're not blocking
your driveways -- today. We're not inside your store protesting -- today. This is just phase
one."
That sounds a lot like incitement, doesn't it? Governor Kemp is speaking out, he has had
enough. He held
a press conference to deliver his comments.
"First, the left came for baseball, and now they are coming for Georgia jobs," Kemp said,
referring to MLB's decision to move this year's All-Star Game from Atlanta over the new laws.
"This boycott of Home Depot – one of Georgia's largest employers – puts partisan
politics ahead of people's paychecks."
"The Georgians hardest hit by this destructive decision are the hourly workers just trying
to make ends meet during a global pandemic. I stand with Home Depot, and I stand with nearly
30,000 Georgians who work at the 90 Home Depot stores and 15 distribution centers across the
Peach State. I will not apologize for supporting both Georgia jobs and election integrity,"
he added.
"This insanity needs to stop. The people that are pushing this, that are profiting off of
it, like Stacey Abrams and others, are now trying to have it both ways," Kemp said. "There is
a political agenda here, and it all leads back to Washington, D.C."
The governor is right. The activists are in it to federalize elections, not to look out for
Georgians, who will lose jobs over these partisan actions. The law signed by Kemp increases
voting rights, it doesn't limit them .
With politics leaning ever more left on university campuses, I hope Dr Ladapo doesn't lose
his job at UCLA for writing a cogent and concise opinion piece.
RICHARD SANDOR SUBSCRIBER 3 hours ago
Brian : Yes, an expensive university in my largely Democrat-controlled state state has a
student group which wants to ' censor ' the university president for not being focused enough
on ' diversity, inclusiveness and equity . ' Hope the parents realize the high price they are
paying for this left wing indoctrination. mrs
The politician most responsible for pitting ordinary men and women
against each other, ruining marriage among ordinary people, then
accusing someone else of "having no soul" is ironic.
It's the Orwellian narrative: "We have enemies overseas." Enemies
that aren't real enemies because we really don't actually want to
start a war with them but we need to put on a show to keep the
people distracted from looking at who are the real enemies inside
their own country.
The ADL, always attuned to any indication that their subjects are getting restless, is
insisting that Tucker Carlson be fired. What brought on their ire was Tucker's use of the word
'replacement' in the context of a discussion of Joe Biden's Open Border policy. Mentioning
replacement in the context of immigration is pretty much in the same category as doubting that
all races have the same potentialities or the official holocaust narrative. Be prepared for
hatred. Tucker, as quoted in The Hill :
"I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally
hysterical if you use the term 'replacement,' if you suggest that the Democratic Party is
trying to replace the current electorate," Carlson said. "But they become hysterical because
that's what's happening actually. Let's just say it. That's true.
Of course it's true, and what's being replaced is the traditional White population of the
country. But Tucker couldn't say that without even more outrage. So he made it all about the
current electorate, which is certainly not just White people.
"I mean, everyone's making a racial issue out of it. Oh, the, you know, white replacement?
No, no, this is a voting rights question," Carlson added later, saying changes to the
population "dilute the political power" of current registered voters.
This is disingenuous but I suppose it's what you have to say to keep your job in the
mainstream media -- and even that might not be enough. Carlson's statement is consistent with
his repeated assertions of color-blindness, and he's careful to restrict his comments to
illegal immigration. His argument is completely color-blind: "every time they import a new
voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter" -- an argument that would apply to any
American citizen no matter what their race. "How dare you think I care particularly about White
voters!" But isn't it obvious that such an argument would also apply to legal immigration?
Of course the ADL immediately labeled his comments as "white supremacy":
Not clear how replacement theory is "anti-Semitic," but I suppose that Greenblatt considers
anything he dislikes as anti-Semitism. After quoting Greenblatt's tweet, The Hill noted that "the ADL head explained that the "Great Replacement" theory
"is a white supremacist tenet that the white race is in danger by a rising tide of non-whites,"
linking to a Daily Beast article saying the whole idea was a "racist lie." But how much of a
"racist lie" is it when the White population is steadily dwindling, probably to around 60
percent, and the left wants to dramatically increase the rate at which it is dwindling?
Greenblatt also
emailed Fox News, writing "Carlson's full-on embrace of the white supremacist replacement
theory on yesterday's show and his repeated allusions to racist themes in past segments are a
bridge too far. Given his long record of race-baiting, we believe it is time for Carlson to
go." This assertion that Carlson is making a "full-on embrace of white supremacist replacement
theory" is a bald-faced lie, but obvious lies seem to be more and more common in high places
these days -- witness
Biden's lie about the new Georgia voting laws as "Jim Crow on steroids." A full-on embrace
of "white supremacist replacement theory" would at least reference a specific concern for White
people losing political clout. Instead, Carlson religiously repeats his mainstream
conservative, color-blind mantras firmly rooted in individualist ideology ("every time they
import a new voter "). Officially, he could care less about White people as White people. One
wonders if Fox would stand by their most popular talking head if he did come out and just say
it. I am pretty sure he believes it.
Officially, Carlson's heart is bleeding for all those Black, Brown, and Asian citizen-voters
whose political clout is being diluted. But of course, that would be wildly inaccurate,
particularly in the age of identity politics where non-Whites are strongly encouraged to
identify with their racial group and do all they can to advance its interests. The collective
power of non-Whites is being increased by immigration and everyone knows it, and White
political power is decreasing in an age when hatred of Whites is becoming increasingly obvious
-- at a time when Critical Race Theory is dominating the educational establishment and
corporate board rooms. CRT is a theory that essentially says it's fine for non-Whites to hate
Whites while at the same time encouraging White guilt about the supposed sins of their
ancestors. One can only imagine the horrors that await a politically powerless White
minority.
And it's not just White political power that is waning. There is clearly a program to
replace Whites as part of the American elite.
Given the voting behavior of non-Whites, it doesn't make much sense to say that America's
non-White voters are being replaced when they are being "replaced" by more non-White voters,
although I suppose one could make the argument that the traditional American Black population
will have less political clout given that the preponderance of immigrants are from Latin
America and Asia. But in any case, they ain't
White , and the ADL and the Democrats are quite well aware that all non-White groups
strongly skew Democrat. In general, the Democrats are in favor of increased legal immigration,
amnesty for illegals, and non-enforcement at the border, all of which are on the table with
Biden in the White House and a Democrat Congress. Putting these ideas into law along with
allowing no-ID voting would give Democrats more or less immediate and permanent hegemony given
that Texas and Florida are the largest destinations of immigrants -- as noted in my comments on
the January 6 "insurrection,"
The Left Will Now Enact Permanent Hegemony. " Their strategy also includes packing
the Supreme Court , in case some of their laws are challenged; Biden is already laying the
groundwork by establishing a commission packed with a
super-majority of liberals .
Biden's immigration plan calls for an increase in "diversity" visas to 80,000 from 55,000
and has an emphasis on family unification -- a code word for chain migration and a bedrock of
Jewish attitudes on immigration since the 1920s and continuing up to the 1965 immigration law (
here, p. 283) and
beyond. What this means is that one lucky visa recipient from, say, Africa, could bring in his
immediate (likely large) family and when they became citizens, they could bring in their
brothers and sisters outside the quota limit, who could in turn bring in their spouses and
children, etc. All these new people would be able to immigrate outside the quota system for
legal immigrants. And all could become citizens.
Tucker Carlson Is a Mass Murdering Terrorist!
Comment on the left has explicitly compared Carlson's mild comments to the manifesto of the
Christchurch and El Paso murderers.
I found the above clip from The Daily Show on Max Boot's
Twitter feed . Boot, former neocon (i.e., a liberal-leftie masquerading as a conservative
active in promoting U.S. fealty to Israel and moving the GOP to the left on social issues). And
now, because of obsessive Trump hate, now is firmly and explicitly ensconced on the left at
The Washington Post. Boot
wrote that Carlson "the top-rated host on Fox "News" Channel, has been attracting attention
for a while with his vile rhetoric against immigrants. Yet now he's reached a new low."
As the left-leaning Media Matters for America
has chronicled , Carlson has a long history of ugly statements. He has called Iraqis "
semiliterate primitive monkeys " and said that Afghanistan is "never going to be a
civilized country because the people aren't civilized." He has complained that an influx of
poor immigrants "
makes our own country poor and dirtier and more divided ." He has repeatedly described
immigration as an "
invasion ," and called the urgent threat posed by white supremacists a "
hoax " and "a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power."
And that new low is that Tucker said something a mass murderer had said, implying, I guess,
that if Hitler said the sky is blue, it would be extremely racist for anyone else to say
it.
The Guardian
noted in 2019 that there were already disturbing parallels between Carlson's rhetoric and
that of white supremacist killers in El Paso, Tex., and Christchurch, New Zealand. For
example, in one of his books, Carlson wrote: "When confronted or pressed for details,
[proponents of diversity] retreat into a familiar platitude, which they repeat like a zen
koan: diversity is our strength. But is diversity our strength? The less we have in common,
the stronger we are? Is that true of families? Is that true in neighborhoods or businesses?
Of course not."
And here is what the fiend who killed 51 people at two Christchurch mosques said in his
manifesto: "Why is diversity said to be our greatest strength? Does anyone even ask why? It
is spoken like a mantra and repeated ad infinitum . But no one ever seems to give a reason
why. What gives a nation strength? And how does diversity increase that strength?"
On Thursday night, Carlson moved even closer to white supremacist ideology by
explicitly endorsing the Great Replacement theory, which holds that shadowy elites are
orchestrating a plot to replace native-born White people with immigrants of color. The New
Zealand shooter's
manifesto was literally headlined "The Great Replacement," and the neo-Nazis who marched
in Charlottesville chanted "Jews will not replace us."
In a
previous article I noted that Tucker Carlson's comments on 'replacement' in the context of
immigration had unleashed a torrent of hatred from the ADL and the liberal media. When the ADL
goes after public figures, the usual response is groveling apology in a typically futile effort
to prevent getting ostracized or fired. After all, the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt had tweeted
that Carlson's comments were "anti-Semitic, racist, and toxic." Accusations of racism -- and
especially anti-Semitism -- are pretty much a death sentence for anyone so accused.
So I was gratified that Carlson didn't back down. Indeed, he doubled down, with a 20-minute
opening monologue elaborating on exactly why the Democrat Party is completely wedded to
importing a new electorate and has been doing so for decades. He also mentioned that Whites
(and Blacks) are being replaced as voters, that the entire project is immoral, and he called
out the hypocrisy of the ADL. As he notes, it's not about compassion as usually advertised, but
about power. And everyone with any brains knows it.
To date, Carlson's monologue is the most powerful and most explicit statement in the
mainstream media that Whites -- as Whites -- have an interest in immigration. Indeed, a vital
interest. In making his argument, he discussed states like California and Virginia that have
become reliably Democrat because of immigration, and he mentions Vermont that is now blue
because of disenchanted New Yorkers who brought their politics with them when they moved there.
He says the same thing is happening to Montana and Idaho as yoga instructors, Google
vice-presidents, and assorted rich White folks leave California for greener pastures. It will
happen to your state. And the result will be permanent hegemony of the left because
the imported electorate are reliable clients of the Democrat Party. 'Client' is the right word
(from the Latin for 'dependent') because these people come to the U.S. for better pay and all
the free stuff -- medical care, welfare if they have children, and the promise of eventual
citizenship and the right to bring in their relatives. This description applies at least to the
Mexicans, Central Americans, and Africans who have flooded our shores (that IQ thing again).
They remain toward the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder and dependent on the government.
Hence reliably Democrat. California went from being the envy of the world to having poverty
levels on par with Mississippi. Without explicitly mentioning Whites, he notes that the middle
class is leaving in droves, resulting in the cost of a U-Haul being five times higher for
people leaving the state as for entering. He portrays the middle class as one of the victim
groups of the Great Replacement as America is transformed into a society with a hostile,
ultra-wealthy elite who are politically supported by a dependent mass of Democrat voters.
Tucker also doubled down on his voter-replacement logic, but this time he was explicit about
White people's vote being replaced, noting that Whites went from 90 percent of Californians to
30 percent since 1960, which means that how White people vote matters much less than it used
to. It's shocking to hear someone in the mainstream media claim that Whites and their vital
interests are victims of the immigration tsunami. One can easily imagine a situation where,
even if White Californians woke up (far too many are still drinking the Kool-Aid), they
couldn't win a statewide election. And that's the whole point. Permanent hegemony.
But because the interests of Whites are definitely not supposed to be paramount, he
emphasized that Blacks in California have also been losing political clout rapidly, with very
large declines in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. In my previous article, I noted
that the voter replacement argument doesn't apply so much to Blacks because the people
replacing them have pretty much the same politics. But I stand corrected. Identity politics has
changed everything. Black Californian politicos like Maxine Waters, Willy Brown, and Kamala
Harris may well become a thing of the past. Harris was replaced by Alex Padilla, a Latino,
after being elevated to the vice-presidency, a result that was not
warmly greeted by the Black political establishment.
California progressives had pushed [Gov. Gavin] Newsom to appoint Representative Barbara
Lee [who is Black] or another like-minded Democrat. Mr. Newsom was also under pressure to
appoint a Black woman to take the place of Ms. Harris, the only Black woman in the Senate.
Representative Karen Bass and Ms. Lee were at the top of that list. The Congressional
Hispanic Caucus strongly backed Mr. Padilla. The L.G.B.T.Q. community and Equality California
lobbied for Robert Garcia, the mayor of Long Beach. Black Women United, a co-founder of Black
Lives Matter, and a range of Black elected officials pushed for Ms. Bass or Ms.
Lee.
As Blacks become less of a demographic force, they will also become less of a political
force. There will be less official sympathy for Black issues like BLM, reparations, dealing
with criminals, and centering on Black grievance in the educational system.
Tucker also did some dog-whistling on Jewish involvement by mentioning Michelle Goldberg's
NYTimes op-ed, "
We can replace them, " which celebrates replacing the White electorate by doing a screen
shot of Goldberg's statement: "The potential is there; Georgia is less than 53 percent
non-Hispanic White." He didn't mention Goldberg's ethnicity, but anyone who knows anything
about the media knows she is a strongly identified Jew writing for a Jewish-owned publication
that is the crown jewel of the elite liberal-left media. As Tucker noted, Goldberg is "a
New York Times columnist, not some QAnon blogger."
The left pretends that demographic replacement is an obsession on the right, but in fact,
it's an obsession on the left. "It's the central idea of the modern Democratic Party." So true.
And so refreshing to hear it in the mainstream media.
As always, the left pretends that their plan to replace the White population is a moral
imperative. In 2019 then-Senator Harris condemned Trump's plan to deport illegals on the basis
that Trump was trying to "remake the demographics of the country"; she tweeted that such
actions are "deeply reprehensible and an affront to our values." Of course, the left would
never think of remaking the demographics of the country!
What's immoral -- and obviously so -- is the left's scheme to remake the electorate in
opposition to the legitimate interests of the traditional White majority. Tucker confronted the
issue head-on, turning the tables on the leftist moralizers by framing their actions as
"cheating." This is an important message for Whites to hear. What is happening to the White
population of America is profoundly immoral. It's an important message because we Whites are
uniquely prone to framing our actions in moral terms. As often discussed here, a major weakness
of uniquely individualist culture characteristic of the West is that individualists are highly
prone to forming moral communities rather than
kinship-based communities typical of the rest of the world. It's a very exploitable weakness,
and our hostile elites have taken full advantage by defining the legitimate interests of Whites
as immoral, as Greenblatt and Harris do. Moral communities are fine as long as they serve the
community's interests, and in the long history of the West, they have indeed been a strength.
But the problem now is that the people who define the moral communities of
the West since World War are the hostile elite who have shaped academic and media culture,
i.e., strongly identified Jews and Jewish-owned mainstream media like the New York
Times. So now a substantial proportion of Whites think it's a moral imperative to replace
the White population. No other culture anywhere at any time has ever felt a moral imperative to
replace its founding population.
However, the best part about Tucker's monologue was that he confronted the ADL directly by
highlighting their lack of principle. Confronting any powerful Jewish organization is virtually
unheard of in American media and political culture where groveling, apologies, and firing are
the norm. And he chose a particularly glaring weakness in Jewish rationalizations of the
adversarial culture they have championed in the U.S.: Jewish hypocrisy in claiming the moral
high ground in America by insisting that any opposition to immigration is racist and hence
immoral, while legitimizing Israel's ethnocentric immigration policy because it threatens the
legitimate interests of its Jewish population. In fact, these activist Jews are consummate
ethnic nationalists -- exactly what they condemn in White Americans. White Americans deserve
just what the ADL and the rest of the activist Jewish community want for Jews, a safe homeland
that remains theirs.
Granted, Carlson didn't mention that the ADL was leading the charge against him, but anyone
paying the least bit of attention to this episode knows damn well that the ADL is leading the
campaign against him. Carlson quoted from the ADL website:
With historically high birth rates among Palestinians, and a possible influx of
Palestinian refugees and their descendants now living around the world, Jews would quickly be
a minority in a bi-national state, thus ending any semblance of equal representation and
protections. In this situation, the Jewish population would be politically -- and potentially
physically -- vulnerable. It is unreasonable and unrealistic to expect the Jewish population
to expect the state of Israel to voluntarily subvert its own sovereign existence and national
identity and become a vulnerable minority in what was once its own territory.
This is another recurrent theme on TOO -- that the traditional White majority will
become a hated and oppressed minority ( 58 articles )
because of the immigration of non-Whites in a culture dominated by an elite with a long history
of hatred toward the White majority of the U.S. We already see a multitude of examples of
hatred toward Whites emanating from the elite media, liberal-left politicians, and just
ordinary non-Whites (like this one from James
Edwards on Twitter), and hate crimes against Whites are ignored or quickly buried. Why would
anyone think this will stop if and when Whites become a minority? It will increase. But the ADL
thinks that Jews, who have been and continue to
be the leading force enacting a multicultural United States, beginning with their
influence in passing the
1965 immigration law , should retain sovereignty in Israel because ceding sovereignty would
be dangerous for Jews. This is massively hypocritical, as Tucker implies, and he invited
Greenblatt on his show to explain why the same principles that he champions for Israel should
not exist in the United States. I rather doubt that will happen.
In fact, Greenblatt repeated his attacks on Carlson in a letter to
Fox News , demanding that he be fired while never mentioning that Carlson had broached the
hypocrisy of the ADL. Pretty clearly he wants to avoid the issue like the plague. Fox News CEO
Lachlan Murdoch responded with a typical mainstream media mantra: "Fox Corporation shares your
values and abhors anti-semitism, white supremacy and racism of any kind." But he rejected the
argument that Carlson had endorsed "anti-semitism, white supremacy and racism," retreating to
Carlson's original voting rights argument. Always a safe move to refuse to avoid issues that
vitally affect White America by presenting them in non-racial terms.
In his letter to Murdoch, Greenblatt claimed that Carlson "did not accidentally echo these
talking points; he knowingly escalated this well-worn racist rhetoric. At a time of intense
polarization, this kind of rhetoric galvanizes extremists and lights the fire of violence."
Intense polarization indeed. That's what happens when there is a powerful attempt to
dispossess the founding population of the country. Ultimately the polarization is a result of
Jewish activism which has been a necessary condition for the immigration and multiculturalism
that is tearing the country apart.
Greenblatt thinks that Tucker's message will galvanize "extremists." Let's hope that it does
indeed galvanize the White population. In any case, it's important for Carlson to not let this
issue drop. It was courageous of him to broach the issue, but it needs to be repeated, just as
the messages of the left on race and multiculturalism are continually repeated on TV, movies,
print media, and throughout the educational system.
Individualists are less naturally ethnocentric, and the left has created a culture that
encourages Whites to inhibit expressions of ethnocentrism while encouraging non-Whites to be
ethnocentric. Because the media is dominated by the left and because even the conservative
media is terrified of appearing to advocate White interests, explicit messages that would
encourage Whites to become angry and fearful about their future as a minority are rare [and
when they occur, they are subjected to vicious attacks, as has happened to Carlson]. Indeed,
the media rarely, if ever, mentions that Whites are well on their way to becoming a minority.
And this for good reason: Whites in the United States and in Canada who are given explicit
demographic projections of a time when Whites are no longer a majority tend to feel angry and
fearful. They are also more likely to identify as Whites and have sympathy for other Whites.
[1]
In other words, while I have emphasized the ability of the higher brain centers to inhibit
ethnocentrism, explicit messages indicating that one's racial group is threatened are able to
trigger ethnocentrism. This is especially important because many Whites live far from the
areas of their countries undergoing the demographic shifts. Their day-to-day life of living
in an essentially White environment hasn't changed while the population centers of New York,
California, Toronto, and Vancouver have changed beyond all recognition from what they were 50
years ago. An obvious inference to be made is that pro-White activists should appeal to
Whites' higher brain centers with explicit messages emphasizing these transformations.
White replacement is our most powerful message. Let's hope Tucker continues to repeat it. We
certainly will.
Note
[1] H. Robert Outten, Michael T. Schmitt, and Daniel A. Miller, "Feeling threatened about
the future: Whites' emotional reactions to anticipated ethnic demographic changes,"
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 38 (2011): 14–25.
Go Tucker Go.There is a lot of room to advance on this front. It shouldn't take much more
to expose the complete hypocrisy of their argument,but what has being right got to do with
it? We're talking about trillions upon trillions of "wealth,"not, "debt" and the self
absorbed,egotistical materialists will do everything under the sun to continue ignoring
reality,i.e.humanity.Money is "the GOD"and nobody should get in the way of "the PROPHET$"
that assumed divine authority after the black book was written.Gold, diamonds,private
jets,yachts,islands and lots of "faithful followers" to do all the work. They will
assassinate anything that threatens "THIS"religion,good luck.
Tuck has the moral high ground ..not only are we being replaced ..but Greenblatt's buddies
GLOAT openly about our replacement ..that doesn't really seem like being a light unto the
nations.
For a long time, Tucker has been more than just a political talk show host. He's become a
Man on a Mission; even more so since Biden's enablers stole what was left of our "democracy,"
and fixed November's election. Will Fox fire him due to growing Corporate and Jewish
pressure, or will the Murdoch's continue to have the guts to back him?
No one can know for sure. But Tucker, to a large extent, has Fox News over a barrel. He's
even recently expanded his reach, with his newest show on the subscription based Fox Nation,
where he is able to do long form interviews without commercial interruption. The Murdoch's
must be keenly aware that, if they fire their number one ratings star, they've just flushed
their consistently most watched cable news network down the toilet.
There's another huge issue, never mentioned on TV except with derision, that I'd love to
see Tucker address one day soon: SECESSION! It's the only way forward.
I think ol' Tucker may have bit off more than he can chew on this one. He touched the 3rd
rail pretty strongly on live TV and Big Jew doesn't like that whatsoever. Given that Israel
is supported by both right leaning Neocons and the more liberal Jonathan Greenblatts of the
world his days may truly be numbered now.
Tucker does a good job of poking holes in idiotic liberalism. However, I think it is
interesting that almost no one mentions the elephant in the room, which is that whites went
from a fertility rate of 3.7 to 1.7 in the space of 60 years. Americans in general started
murdering their babies, and swallowed all the jewish lies and "isms" hook, line and sinker.
That is why you have lost your country. The brown tide is a symptom of the problem, not the
cause. The problem is a nation given over to greed, foolishness, and perversion.
Since she first appeared as a talk show host on MSNBC during Obama's first presidential
campaign, Rachel Maddow has been bragging about how Democrats were going to ascend to a
permanent majority in the Congress and permanently control the presidency by virtue of
unhindered "minority" migration into this country. The concept had been floated before by
numerous analysts and even termed the "Reconquista" which Hispanic spokespersons
enthusiastically embraced as the rightful recovery of their stolen patrimony from the
Gringos.
I distinctly recall Maddow gloating about this anticipated outcome night after night while
she demeaned the incipient shrinkage of a "rump Republican Party" to complete irrelevance
when this desired scenario came to pass. She spoke excitedly about recruiting not only the
tidal wave of Hispanic migrants into the Democratic fold to cohabit with the long loyal
blacks, but also assumed that every foreigner, including all Orientals, East Indians, Middle
Easterners and Black Africans should naturally ally with the liberal Dem philosophies:
literally every immigrant but White Europeans (the "Eurotrash") would be a part of the coming
new Democratic Golden Age.
Nobody on the left ever thought of calling her and her bigoted ideas to be "racist," and
she is never called out for being "racist" when she spouts her totally hysterical
over-the-top Russophobia (or is "Russophrenia" a more correct descriptor?). Why doesn't the
ADL pick a bone with her while they are attacking Tucker Carlson who has always been much
less excitable and far more logical that Maddow even when she is sober and not fixing mixed
drinks on air.
A newly formed "America First Caucus" in Congress, supported by a
few far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives, is looking to recruit new
members with an old set of arguments.
These white nationalist tropes found a receptive audience in the American people.
Its platform, now circulating in Washington, is little more than a retread of the white
nationalist screeds of the 1910s and 1920s.
"America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for
uniquely Anglo-Saxon traditions," asserts the section on immigration. "History has shown that
societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse
into a country."
A century ago, these same sorts of arguments about the "Anglo-Saxon" character of the United
States and the threat that "foreign" elements would bring to its politics and culture were
quite widespread.
... ... ...
The popular panic over immigration and the pseudo-scientific justifications for nativism and
racism came together in the push for the National Origins Act of 1924, a quota-based measure
that drastically reduced immigration from southeastern Europe and banned all Asians from
immigrating entirely.
Kevin M. Kruse is a professor of history at Princeton University. A specialist in modern
American political, social and urban/suburban history, he is the author and editor of several
books, including "White Flight" (2005), "One Nation Under God" (2015) and "Fault Lines: A
History of the United States since 1974" (2019). He grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and earned
his bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his master's and
doctoral degrees from Cornell University.
"British private schools create a class culture of a kind unknown in the rest of Europe.
The extreme case is the boarding prep schools, which separate children from their parents at
the age of eight in order to shape them into members of a detached elite. In his book The
Making of Them the psychotherapist Nick Duffell shows how these artificial orphans survive
the loss of their families by dissociating themselves from their feelings of love(14).
Survival involves "an extreme hardening of normal human softness, a severe cutting off from
emotions and sensitivity."(15) Unable to attach themselves to people (intimate relationships
with other children are discouraged by a morbid fear of homosexuality), they are encouraged
instead to invest their natural loyalties in the institution.
This made them extremely effective colonial servants: if their commander ordered it, they
could organise a massacre without a moment's hesitation (witness the detachment of the
officers who oversaw the suppression of the Mau Mau, quoted in Caroline Elkins's book,
Britain's Gulag(16)). It also meant that the lower orders at home could be put down without
the least concern for the results. For many years, Britain has been governed by damaged
people.
I went through this system myself, and I know I will spend the rest of my life fighting
its effects. But one of the useful skills it has given me is an ability to recognise it in
others. I can spot another early boarder at 200 metres: you can see and smell the damage
dripping from them like sweat. The Conservative cabinets were stuffed with them: even in John
Major's "classless" government, 16 of the 20 male members of the 1993 cabinet had been to
public school; 12 of them had boarded(17). Privately-educated people dominate politics, the
civil service, the judiciary, the armed forces, the City, the media, the arts, academia, the
most prestigious professions, even, as we have seen, the Charity Commission. They recognise
each other, fear the unshaped people of the state system, and, often without being aware that
they are doing it, pass on their privileges to people like themselves.
The system is protected by silence. Because private schools have been so effective in
moulding a child's character, an attack on the school becomes an attack on all those who have
passed through it. Its most abject victims become its fiercest defenders. How many times have
I heard emotionally-stunted people proclaim "it never did me any harm"? In the Telegraph last
year, Michael Henderson boasted of the delightful eccentricity of his boarding school. "Bad
work got you an 'order mark'. One foolish fellow, Brown by name, was given a double order
mark for taking too much custard at lunch. How can you not warm to a teacher who awards such
punishment? Petty snobbery abounded," he continued, "but only wets are put off by a bit of
snobbery. So long as you pulled your socks up, and didn't let the side down, you wouldn't be
for the high jump. Which is as it should be."(18) A ruling class in a persistent state of
repression is a very dangerous thing."
The Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH) has both empirical and theoretical aspects that
challenge the classic precepts of Smith and Walras, who implied that the economy can be best
understood by assuming that it is constantly an equilibrium-seeking and sustaining system. The
theoretical argument of the FIH emerges from the characterization of the economy as a
capitalist economy with extensive capital assets and a sophisticated financial system.
In spite of the complexity of financial relations, the key determinant of system behavior
remains the level of profits: the FIH incorporates a view in which aggregate demand determines
profits. Hence, aggregate profits equal aggregate investment plus the government deficit. The
FIH, therefore, considers the impact of debt on system behavior and also includes the manner in
which debt is validated.
Minsky identifies hedge, speculative, and Ponzi finance as distinct income-debt relations
for economic units. He asserts that if hedge financing dominates, then the economy may well be
an equilibrium-seeking and containing system: conversely, the greater the weight of speculative
and Ponzi finance, the greater the likelihood that the economy is a "deviation-amplifying"
system. Thus, the FIH suggests that over periods of prolonged prosperity, capitalist economies
tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance (stable) to a structure that
increasingly emphasizes speculative and Ponzi finance (unstable). The FIH is a model of a
capitalist economy that does not rely on exogenous shocks to generate business cycles of
varying severity: business cycles of history are compounded out of (i) the internal dynamics of
capitalist economies, and (ii) the system of interventions and regulations that are designed to
keep the economy operating within reasonable bounds.
"... much like the dot-com period, there is a broad subset of stocks (mostly in technology) that have become completely untethered, particularly since the summer of 2020, from business fundamentals like earnings and even sales -- driven higher only by euphoric market participants extrapolating from a past extraordinary trajectory of prices. ..."
"... A lot of today's US stock market has become what I call a "pure price-chasing bubble." Examination of the history of comparable pure price-chasing bubbles shows there has been a set of key causal factors that contributed to these rare (I have found nine in total) market events; the presence of most of these factors has usually been necessary for markets to reach the requisite escape velocity. ..."
"... To fuel the bubble further, there was a rapid expansion of bank money beginning three years before the market peak -- but the expansion of credit was even greater, owing to an explosion of margin credit (with implied annuaized interest rates sometimes reaching 100 percent) through an informal system utilizing postdated checks ..."
"... The US market certainly exhibits an exceptional record of price appreciation, with the S&P 500 having risen by almost 500 percent over more than a decade. In contrast to most other bubbles, however, it is notable that US economic growth over this period has been relatively anemic. ..."
"... Due to a sustained high rate of corporate equity purchases financed with debt, this overarching expansion of credit has also made its way into the last decade's bull market and steepened its price trajectory. ..."
"... The role of message boards and chat rooms -- with their millions of participants, all in instant real-time contact -- has created crowd dynamics in speculative stock market favorites at a pace without parallel in other pure price-chasing bubbles. ..."
"... a peak will be reached, a decline will follow, and the psychological dynamics in play on the way up will go into reverse and will accelerate the fall. ..."
"... Moreover, in the context of a grossly underestimated mass of corporate debt, history tells us the consequences of the bursting of the US stock market bubble should be another financial crisis and another recession ..."
According to Frank Veneroso, a broad subset of today's US stock market has become what he
calls a "pure price-chasing bubble." Examination of the history of comparable pure
price-chasing bubbles shows there has been a set of key causal factors that contributed to
these rare market events.
The most extreme such case was an over-the-counter market in Kuwait called the "Souk
al-Manakh." This exemplar of a pure price-chasing phenomenon may shed light -- albeit
unflattering -- on the current US equity market, Veneroso contends.
We should stop seeing capitalism as this unmovable, eternal and indestructible
system ...
Yes, in fact USA has adjusted capitalism as needed/wanted with socialism (the "welfare
state") and neoliberalism (crony-capitalism).
= ... capitalism and the USA are historically specific phenomena, and they will - 100%
certainty - collapse and disappear eventually.
Still, a collapse can take many forms and affect the world's people in different ways. We
can't just expect that capitalism will die of natural causes and the world will inevitably be
a better place for it. We are right to be wary of the worst outcomes.
= ... you just need to last longer than your political enemy. The fact that USA outlived
the USSR gave it almost 17 years of incontestable supremacy ...
You make "outlasting" seem like a random thing. USSR didn't just lose the roll of the
dice.
= No one takes neoliberalism seriously anymore, even among the high echelons of the
economics priesthood.
Examples?
= It is in this world that the Ukraine chose to align with the American Empire. To put it
simply, it chose the wrong side at the wrong time: it chose the West in an era that's
shifting to the East.
But their "choice" wasn't a free and knowledgeable one, was it? The West was pushing for
that change for 10 years and Nuland bragged of spending $5 billion to achieve it.
And the "choice" was for the entirety of Ukraine to move into the West. Ukraine
suffers greatly from not having Crimea and Donbas. For example, the West had planned gas
fracking in eastern Ukraine (by Burisma). That, of course, never happened.
= The euphoria of the fall of socialism masked the degeneration of capitalism that was
started at the same time and it particularly impacted the Warsaw Pact (Comecon) and the
Western ex-USSR nations.
Ukraine was already an oligarchic nightmare when Maidan happened.
= Nazism is not a system, it is just crazy liberalism, and I hope the white supremacists
and traditionalists in the West take note of that - if they don't want to be
crushed.
Nazism lives on in the form of the combination of: neoliberalism, neoconservativism, and
neocolonialism (aka Zionism). And those who adhere to these ideologies don't seem to have any
concern about being crushed. AFAICT the beatings will continue until morale improves
.
It's hard to track neoliberalism because the neoliberals don't consider themselves
"neoliberal": they're just "normal" or simply "liberal". They are the Hadean ideology par
excellence, the ideology that disguise itself as a-ideological, the invisible ideology.
But we can infer the death of neoliberalism as codified in the Washington Consensus list
from 2008 onward by the set of policies enforced in the USA, the UK, Japan and other
developed European countries (where neoliberalism are expected to be hegemonic), and here I'm
specifically asking you to focus on the so-called "austerity" (which is a more regressive
form of neoliberalism, but is not technically neoliberalism) and the rise of MMT through
money printing or, in the case of Japan, more T-bond issuance, in a complete disregard to
national (sovereign) debt after the pandemic (and, in the USA's case, even before that). Also
pay attention to the list of Economy "Nobel" (Riksbank) Prize winners post-2008 - none of
them being neoliberals in the academic sense of the word, nor having a neoliberal past
(apparently).
The only place left where neoliberalism is still alive and well, albeit weakened, is in
Latin America and the so-called "emerging economies" (Turkey, South Africa and Russia). But
those are not the dominant part of the world in the capitalist sense, it would be akin to the
Roman Empire surviving only as a remnant in pieces of Hispania or Gallia.
I wrote a post on the above-mentioned subject but I deleted it. I will not discuss the
demonisation of White heterosexual Males in all its forms for fear of cancellation. I will
instead leave you with my conclusions – which are consistent with The Walrus Law;
Governments achieve the reverse of their stated objectives.
Conclusion 1. No white male corporate manager is going to risk their career by engaging in
any of the following actions:
– Mentoring female subordinates.
– Taking one on one meetings with any female.
– Participating in any but the most innocuous social functions with female subordinates
and certainly not where alcohol is present.
– In fact avoiding any one on one situation with a female.
– It also stands to reason that women will not be employed or promoted if sufficient
excuse can be found. There wasn't a glass ceiling. There is now.
Why? Because a female subordinate can now permanently end a males career in a microsecond by
the act of alleging any impropriety thanks to #metoo. No proof is required.
Conclusion 2. The British/ European/ American class system is coming back with a vengeance.
Young men and their parents will confine their search for partners and social interactions, to
females of the same social strata, values, financial resources and background as their own.
This is not a guarantee of marital harmony, It does however decrease the likelihood of a male
being accused of relationship and career destroying improprieties twenty years after the
alleged event. You can forget marrying 'for love' outside your social class.
Conclusion 3. Male behaviour in the upper and middle classes is indeed going to change. We
will witness the return of the Chaperone for males. We will witness the end of many mixed sex
parties and entertainments because of the ever present threat of denouncement. Expect single
sex private schools to flourish. Co -education is an invitation for a young males career to be
finished before it even starts – all it takes these days is an allegation made perhaps
years and years after the alleged "event". The first a young male will know about it is when he
is arrested and handcuffed.
Conclusion 4. The nature of families is going to change. We are going to see the return of
stereotyped roles. Case in point? As a Grandfather I have decided I will have nothing more to
do with the informal upbringing of grand daughters – there is too much risk that if they
go off the rails in puberty or get involved in drugs, mental illness, etc. they will
conveniently blame sexual abuse by a relative as the cause. That means I will never allow
myself to be alone with them or be responsible for them ever and the rest of the family know
it. Period. The personal risk is just too great
I have examples to back up each conclusion but I will not share them with you.
I have not addressed the American race and firearm based issues but I would expect that
changes to firearm laws and characterisation of various behaviors as "extremist' will also have
the same opposite effect from what Government intended.
Indeed. I suspect that if I were of dating age (and single) today I would go on to die
celibate. A minority of women have made engaging with the entire gender entirely too
dangerous.
Reply
We are an adaptive bunch; witness how successful Prohibition was, or the alleged 'War on
Drugs'. Look at how Trumps border wall was rapidly shot to hell with a few acetylene
torches and some hinges – making really nice gates for the coyotes to run people
through.
It's interesting that there is no actual, physical way that the number of guns out here
'in the wild' is even known, much less can be seized. Guns can be seized by the
ATF/FBI/etc. making a huge raid on a single family and killing them all as examples –
but once that card is played, the ante will be upped and things will not be as easy for
them. The gun grabbers are literally about 200 years too late, as the gun cow is long out
of the barn.
The Covidian Cult is waning finally – in spite of the push by the globalist CDC,
WHO, Big Pharma, MSM and many others. It's hard to push fear of dying when there is nothing
to base it on any longer.
So now we are back to Ukraine, where Biden is both well known and well connected. Russia
will swat anything approaching her borders, and may swat hard. I would not be surprised to
see our puny couple of ships in their sea crippled electronically, again. But Russia
doesn't want what NATO and Biden are serving for dinner.
It's the same old SSDD of world ending disasters to keep everyone afraid of everyone
else while the big wheels in government are sending contracts out to their family members
and their various foundations using money leveraged against our grandkids.
57 genders; women cannot be approached without opening yourself to legal actions and yet
they are all in the military and government positions in far larger percentages than people
realize. Our local school principal was recently accused of "inappropriate conduct" with a
female teacher who is so obese she requires an electric scooter to move her bulk about.
Having actually seen this female, it was obvious to me, as a man with normal appetites,
that approaching her would have resulted in disgorgement of the previous meal and not
engorgement of anything.
It's human nature that when you forbid something unilaterally, it becomes more
attractive to many, just for the sake of flouting convention. Perhaps that is what the
morbidly obese teacher is striving for?
We are entering the Land of Unintended Consequences, and there is no way but
through.
Yves here. Tom Engelhardt tries to get his arms around US weapons sales and use. The figures
are depressing, particularly in comparison to those of our nominal peers. And the intensity of
our fixation with killing has only grown only over time. Just look at TV. In its early, tamer
days, frontier shows like The Rifleman and Gunsmoke gave weapons top billing. Now in our
post-Vietnam, post Archie Bunker of greater realism, police shows have gory gunplay as their
prime offering, with big side portions of blowing things up and car chases/crashes. We even
have a prime time show, The Blacklist, where the lead is assured to shoot at least one person
every episode. Better to look at the fictionalized version, where we know no actors were hurt,
than clips of the real thing from the Middle East, which are oddly absent from news shows.
By the time you read this piece, it will already be out of date. The reason's simple enough.
No matter what mayhem I describe, with so much all-American weaponry in this world of ours,
there's no way to keep up. Often, despite the headlines that go with mass killings here,
there's almost no way even to know.
On this planet of ours, America is the emperor of weaponry, even if in ways we normally tend
not to put together. There's really no question about it. The all-American powers-that-be and
the arms makers that go with them dream up, produce, and sell weaponry, domestically and
internationally, in an unmatched fashion. You'll undoubtedly be shocked, shocked to learn that
the
top five arms makers on the planet -- Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon,
and General Dynamics -- are
all located in the United States.
Put another way, we're a killer nation, a mass-murder machine, slaughter central. And as
we've known since the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, there
could be far worse to come. After all, in the overheated dreams of both those weapons makers
and Pentagon planners, slaughter-to-be has long been imagined on a planetary scale, right down
to the latest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) being created by Northrop Grumman at
the cost of at least $100 billion. Each of those future arms of ultimate destruction is slated
to be " the
length of a bowling lane " and the nuclear charge that it carries will be at least 20 times
more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That missile will someday be capable
of traveling 6,000 miles and killing hundreds of thousands of people each. (And the Air Force
is planning to order 600 of them.)
By the end of this decade, that new ICBM is slated to join an unequaled American nuclear
arsenal of -- at this moment -- 3,800 warheads . And
with that in mind, let's back up a moment.
Have Gun -- Will Travel
Before we head abroad or think more about weaponry fit to destroy the planet (or at least
human life on it), let's just start right here at home. After all, we live in a country whose
citizens are armed to their all-too-labile fingertips with more guns of every advanced sort
than might once have been imaginable. The figures are stunning. Even before the pandemic hit
and gun purchases soared to record
levels -- about
23 million of them (a 64% increase over 2019 sales) -- American civilians were reported to
possess
almost 400 million firearms. That adds up to about 40% of all such weaponry in the hands of
civilians globally, or more than the
next 25 countries combined.
And if that doesn't stagger you, note that the versions of those weapons in public hands are
becoming ever more militarized and powerful, ever more AR-15 semi-automatic rifles, not .22s.
And keep in mind as well that, over the years, the death toll from those weapons in this
country has grown staggeringly large. As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof
wrote
recently , "More Americans have died from guns just since 1975, including suicides, murders
and accidents (more than 1.5 million), than in all the wars in United States history, dating
back to the Revolutionary War (about 1.4 million)."
In my childhood, one of my favorite TV programs was called Have Gun -- Will Travel
. Its central character was a highly romanticized armed mercenary in the Old West and its
theme song -- still
lodged in my head (where so much else is unlodging these days) -- began:
"Have gun will travel is the card of a man.
A knight without armor in a savage land.
His fast gun for hire heeds the calling wind.
A soldier of fortune is the man called Paladin."
Staggering numbers of Americans are now ever grimmer versions of Paladin. Thanks to a
largely unregulated gun industry , they're armed like no other citizenry on the planet, not
even -- in a distant second place
-- the civilians of Yemen, a country torn by endless war. That TV show's title could now be
slapped on our whole culture, whether we're talking about our modern-day Paladins traveling to
a set of Atlanta spas ; a
chain grocery store
in Boulder, Colorado; a real-estate office
in Orange, California; a convenience
store near Baltimore; or a home
in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
Remember how the National Rifle Association has always defended
the right of Americans to own weapons at least in part by citing this country's hunting
tradition? Well, these days, startling numbers of Americans, armed to the teeth, have joined
that hunting crew. Their game of choice isn't deer or even wolves and
grizzly bears , but that ultimate prey, other human beings -- and all too often themselves.
(In 2020, not only did a record
nearly 20,000 Americans die from gun violence, but another 24,000 used guns to commit
suicide.)
As the rate of Covid-19 vaccination began to rise to remarkable levels in this country and
ever more public places reopened, the first mass public killings (defined as four or more
deaths in a public place) of the pandemic period -- in Atlanta and Boulder -- hit the news
big-time. The thought, however, that the American urge to use weapons in a murderous fashion
had in any way lessened or been laid to rest, even briefly, thanks to Covid-19, proved a
fantasy of the first order.
At a time when so many public places like schools were closed or their use limited indeed,
if you took as your measuring point not mass public killings but mass shootings (defined as
four or more people wounded or killed), the pandemic year of 2020 proved to be a record 12
months of armed chaos. In fact, such mass shootings actually surged by 47%. As USA
Today
recounted , "In 2020, the United States reported 611 mass shooting events that resulted in
513 deaths and 2,543 injuries. In 2019, there were 417 mass shootings with 465 deaths and 1,707
injured." In addition, in that same year, according
to projections based on FBI data, there were 4,000 to 5,000 more gun murders than usual,
mainly in inner-city communities of color.
In the first 73 days of
Joe Biden's presidency, there were five mass shootings and more than 10,000 gun-violence
deaths. In the Covid-19 era, this has been the model the world's "most exceptional" nation (as
American politicians of both parties used to love to call this country) has set for the rest of
the planet. Put another way, so far in 2020 and 2021, there have been two pandemics in America,
Covid-19 and guns.
And though the weaponization of our citizenry and the carnage that's gone with it certainly
gets attention -- President Biden only recently called it "an
international embarrassment" -- here's the strange thing: when reporting on such a binge of
killings and the weapons industry that stokes it, few here think to include the deaths and
other injuries for which the American military has been responsible via its "forever wars" of
this century outside our own borders. Nor do they consider the massive U.S. weapons deliveries
and sales to other countries that often enough lead to the same. In other words, a full picture
of all-American carnage has -- to use an apt phrase -- remained missing in action.
Cornering the Arms Market
In fact, internationally, things are hardly less mind-boggling when it comes to this country
and weaponry. As with its armed citizenry, when it comes to arming other countries, Washington
is without peer. It's the weapons dealer of choice across much of the world. Yes, the U.S. gun
industry that makes all those rifles for this country also sells plenty of them abroad and, in
the Trump years, such sales were only made easier to complete (as was the selling of U.S.
unmanned aerial drones to "less stable governments"). When it comes to semi-automatic weapons
like the AR-15 or even grenades and flamethrowers, this country's arms makers no longer
even need State Department licenses, just far easier-to-get Commerce Department ones, to
complete such sales, even to particularly abusive nations. As a
result , to take one example, semi-automatic pistol exports abroad rose 148% in 2020.
But what I'm particularly thinking about here are the big-ticket items that those five
leading weapons makers of the military-industrial complex eternally produce. On the subject of
the sale of jet fighters like the F-16
and
F-35 , tanks and other armored vehicles, submarines (as well as anti-submarine weaponry),
and devastating bombs and
missiles , among other things, we leave our "near-peer" competitors as well as our
weapons-making allies in the dust. Washington is the
largest supplier to 20 of the 40 major arms importers on the planet.
When it comes to delivering the weapons of war, the U.S. leads all its competitors in a
historic fashion, especially in the war-torn and devastated Middle East. There, between 2015
and 2019, it gobbled up
nearly half of the arms market. Unsurprisingly, Saudi Arabia was its largest customer,
which, of course, only further stoked the brutal civil war in Yemen, where U.S. weapons are
responsible for the deaths of thousands of
civilians
. As Pentagon expert William Hartung wrote
of those years, U.S. arms deliveries to the region added up to "nearly three times the arms
Russia supplied to MENA [the Middle East and North Africa], five times what France contributed,
10 times what the United Kingdom exported, and 16 times China's contribution." (And often
enough, as
in Iraq and Yemen , some of
those weapons end up falling into the hands of those the U.S. opposes.)
In fact, in 2020, this country's arms sales abroad
rose a further 2.8% to $178 billion. The U.S. now supplies no fewer than 96 countries with weaponry and controls
37% of the global arms market (with, for example, Lockheed Martin alone
taking in $47.2 billion in such sales in 2018, followed by the four other giant U.S.
weapons makers and, in sixth place, the British defense firm BAE).
This remains the definition of mayhem-to-come, the international version of that spike in
domestic arms sales and the killings that went with it. After all, in these years, deaths due
to American arms in countries like Afghanistan and Yemen have grown strikingly. And to take
just one more example, arms, ammunition, and equipment sold to or given to
the brutal regime of Rodrigo Duterte for the Philippine military and constabulary have
typically led to deaths (especially in its "war on drugs") that no one's counting up.
And yet, even combined with the dead here at home, all of this weapons-based slaughter
hardly adds up to a full record when it comes to the U.S. as a global mass-killing machine.
Far, Far from Home
After all, this country has a historic 800 or so military bases around the
world and
nearly 200,000 military personnel stationed abroad (
about 60,000 in the Middle East alone). It has a drone-assassination program that extends
from Afghanistan across the Greater Middle East to Africa, a series of "forever wars" and
associated conflicts fought over that same expanse, and a Navy with major aircraft carrier task
forces patrolling the high seas. In other words, in this century, it's been responsible for
largely uncounted but remarkable numbers of dead and wounded human beings. Or put another way,
it's been a mass-shooting machine abroad.
Unlike in the United States, however, there's little way to offer figures on those dead. To
take one example, Brown University's invaluable Costs of War Project has estimated that, from
the beginning of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to late 2019, 801,000
people , perhaps 40% of them civilians, were killed in Washington's war on terror in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. Of course, not all of those by any means
were killed by the U.S. military. In fact, some were even American soldiers and contractors.
Still, the figures are obviously sizeable. (To take but one very focused example, from December
2001 to December 2013 at TomDispatch , I was counting up
civilian wedding parties taken down by U.S. air power in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen. I came
up with eight well-documented ones with a death toll of nearly 300, including brides, grooms,
musicians, and revelers.)
Similarly, last December, Neta Crawford of the Costs of War Project
released a report on the rising number of Afghan civilians who had died from U.S. air
strikes in the Trump years. She found that in 2019, for instance, "airstrikes killed 700
civilians -- more civilians than in any other year since the beginning of the war." Overall,
the documented civilian dead from American air strikes in the war years is in the many
thousands, the wounded higher yet. (And, of course, those figures don't include the dead from
Afghan air strikes with U.S.-supplied aircraft.) And mind you, that's just civilians mistaken
for Taliban or other enemy forces.
Similarly, thousands
more civilians were killed by American air strikes across the rest of the Greater Middle
East and northern Africa. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which followed U.S. drone
strikes for years, estimated that, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, by 2019 such
attacks had
killed "between 8,500 and 12,000 people, including as many as 1,700 civilians -- 400 of
whom were children."
And that, of course, is just to begin to count the dead in America's conflicts of this era.
Or thought of another way, in this century, the U.S. military has been a kind of global
Paladin. Its motto could obviously be "have gun, will travel" and its forces and those allied
to it (and often supplied with American arms) have certainly killed staggering numbers of
people in conflicts that have devastated communities across a significant part of the planet,
while displacing an estimated 37 million people .
Now, return to those Americans gunned down in this country and think of all of this as a
single weaponized, well-woven fabric, a single American gun culture that spans the globe, as
well as a three-part killing machine of the first order. Much as mass shootings and public
killings can sometimes dominate the news here, a full sense of the damage done by the
weaponization of our culture seldom comes into focus. When it does, the United States looks
like slaughter central.
Or as that song from Have Gun -- Will Travel ended:
Paladin, Paladin,
Where do you roam?
Paladin, Paladin,
Far, far from home.
Far, far from home -- and close, close to home -- indeed.
The US is a failed experiment. It was always based in nihilism. What we are seeing is like
the rise in human sacrifices of the Mayans as their world was being eclipsed by the Spanish.
Ironically, "thoughts and prayers" are offered up at these sacrifices too. Did the Mayans
realize it was futile?
As more and more Americans realize that it is over and that the American dream is bunkum,
expect to see more carnage.
That figure of 400 Million guns in the USA is undoubtedly low, The late Kevin RC O'Brien
looked at production reports for various manufacturers and came up with the figure of 300
Million sold in the USA this century alone.
Sales of rifles aren't broken out by rifle type or model, but the best guess is that there
are somewhere between 10-15 Million AR 15 style rifles owned by us Citizens if you take into
account home made versions such as those made from 80% recievers or laminated wood.
The last reporting period was 2019 and a total of a little less than 400 murders were
committed by people using rifles of any kind, you ere 4 x as likely to be beaten to death
with fists and feet than killed by someone using any kind of rifle.
Want to reduce violent crime?
Reduce poverty, inequality and lack of opportunity, when the majority of the populace has a
stake in society they act like it, when they don't you get what we have.
TBH the article is a mess, and reading it is rather like being accosted by a stranger in a
bar with a strong personal agenda (" and another thing.")
But (as a non-Murkin) I just wanted to make the point that we're into American Exceptionalism
again, in this case of the negative rather than the positive kind. You get the feeling that
the author's knowledge of the outside world is pretty much limited to what's on CNN, and that
perhaps he doesn't actually know that the US isn't the only nuclear power in the world. And
so on.
How do you put an article like this into context?
Well, for a start, you wouldn't make comparisons with Yemen unless you had been to Yemen,
would you? There are lots of guns in Yemen (virtually the entire adult male population is
armed) but these are in addition to the massive holdings of the military. And we're talking
serious stuff here: AK47s are 7.62mm automatic weapons, and there are millions of them. It
was not uncommon for males you passed in the street to be carrying these weapons, and once
outside the cities (as in Afghanistan) they were everywhere. Shooting incidents were common,
the more so since, after midday, a lot of the male population was blasted out of its skull on
Khat, which is an amphetamine-like substance derived from chewing a local plant. There were
occasional clashes when security forces from different tribes opened fire on each other. Oh,
and many tribesmen in the city carry long bladed knives, and fatal stabbings in the street
are very common. All that's in peacetime, of course.
Second, as in the Yemeni example above, the vast majority of all the deaths in wars since
1989 have been from the use of Soviet, Russian and Chinese weaponry, often dating back to the
1970s. The wars in the DRC from about 1996-2000, involving seven nations and known as
"Africa's World War" killed anything between two and five million people, depending on how
you calculate the figures, and were almost exclusively fought with Soviet and Chinese
supplied weaponry. During the Cold War, the Soviets and Chinese flooded Africa with millions
of AK47s, Makarov automatic pistols, landmines, and 12.7 and 14.5mm heavy machine-guns. As
any African specialist will tell you, these were the real weapons of mass destruction,
because, unlike the F35, they actually work. Together with Soviet-era tanks and APCs, they
were also the principal weapons used in the fighting in Syria and Libya, and in Yemen before
(and mostly since) the Saudi-led intervention. Oh, and those photos you've seen of the
Myanmar military firing on the people? They use mostly weapons supplied by China.
This is not whataboutism. Two wrongs don't make a right. But I wish that, just
occasionally, writers from the US would take the trouble to do a bit of research about the
rest of the world. Perhaps it's true that there is a link between the sale of F35s to Japan
and gun violence among black youths in the inner cities, but that has to be argued, not just
assumed. I don't know how you measure these things, but I seriously doubt that the US is
somehow a uniquely psychopathically violent country. The author needs to get out more.
I assume the authors point is that there is an inherent violence to US culture, and it is
exporting it. There may well be some truth in this, but you can well look at plenty of other
places in the world where there is a cultural worship of violence (or there was at times
past) and it infected other nations. Japan and Germany as obvious examples. But on the
optimistic side of things, both those countries at least partially cured their addition to
worshiping militarism, although to be fair, the USAF had a major say in that.
The one thing that is often missing from this sort of analysis, is they way other
countries use the US's (and others) addition to militarism as a means of exerting control. An
obvious example is the Middle East, where the vast military expenditures are as much a means
of purchasing influence in Washington (and London and Paris and Moscow) as it is a way of
building up their respective militaries.
I think that may well be his point, or the point he's trying to make. I think it's true,
at least to some extent, but it's hardly a unique case, and there are plenty of other
societies in the world where you feel (correctly) much more threatened by violence than I
ever have in the US.
@David
Mr. Engelhardt is a US writer who understandably focuses on current US issues. He lays out
his point at the start: the U.S is "a mass-murder machine". He illustrates it by pointing out
how the US supplies weapons around the world, promoting, funding, and facilitating violence,
and itself slaughters people, directly and through proxies, by the millions. He also outlines
the remarkable violence prevalent in the U.S. These facts are undeniable.
With respect to context, of course the U.S. is not now, nor has it been in the past, the
source of ALL evil in the world. However It has been the source of a very large part of it in
the past century. From a practical point of view, what would be the point of Mr. Engelhardt
focusing on Russian and Chinese actions in, say, the 1980s, when his own country is engaging
in "mass murder" right now? It leads nowhere except to distract from current slaughter that
he may be able to help slow down.
The US as "a uniquely psychopathically violent country": the author does not actually say
that. Nonetheless the US is certainly a very violent country compared to other developed
countries and for that matter past imperialist countries. Collectively Britain, France,
Belgium, etc., etc., massacred millions, even tens of millions, of people in their empires
but to my knowledge were not especially violent at home. Germany was an exception to this.
The fact it slaughtered white people at home is what made its actions unacceptable to the
majority of the elites of most European countries.
The link between US violence abroad and at home: Chris Hedges has written about this. I
suggest you read what he has to say.
It is absurd to pretend that Russia or China is anything like as great a danger to peace
as the United States is. Forty four years ago Martin Luther King observed, ""As I have walked
among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails
and rifles would not solve their problems But they asked, and rightly so, 'what about
Vietnam?' They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its
problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I
could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without
having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own
government."
The US was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world then; it is an even greater
purveyor of violence today.
The only criticism I would make of the article is the disparagement of Palladin. Though
his business card read, 'Have Gun, Will Travel', in almost every episode the protagonist was
able to resolve the situation without killing anyone. The episodes are very entertaining, as
was his sidekick, Kim Chan (Kam Tong), who went by the extremely un-woke nickname of Hey
Boy.
I am always amazed at the hypocrisy of US politicians complaining of violence in the US
while ignoring or even approving of violence committed by the US outside the US borders.
I also support censoring violence in entertainment media.
Censoring anything, including displays of violence, would require state force, which is
based on the use of guns and other weapons -- another 'war to end war', I suppose.
According to the Violence Policy Center (about which I know nothing but will provisionally
trust), motor vehicle deaths still outnumber gun deaths, although guns are closing the gap.
[1] As I have been hit by private cars far more often than I have been shot at -- I ride
around on a bicycle as basic transportation, so the ratio is about 10:0 -- I'd like to
suggest that the proper metaphor for mortal violence in the US is the automobile, rather than
the gun. However, urban liberals like to focus on their political rivals, and gun fans tend
to be suburban or rural, so guns rather than vehicles are the choice of symbol. Yet again,
tribalism permeates every discussion, indeed, it seems, almost every thought.
I have just finished reading a couple of weighty tomes with similar themes: Dark Money by Jane
Mayer is about how some nominally right-wing libertarian sociopaths, (i.e. the Kochs and their
coterie) seek to control American politics through various 'charitable' think tanks and stealth
infiltration of top ranked universities; and
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, which is about how some nominally
left-wing(ish) libertarian whiz kid sociopaths seek to control the whole world through social
media.
My main take away is that libertarian ideology is just shorthand for narcissistic
entitlement and psychopathic greed.
The Jewish Anti-defamation league is after Tucker Carlson. That's as bad as it gets. They
have more money than God.
Anti-Defamation League chief Jonathan Greenblatt "Tucker must go"...."white supremacist
tenet that the white race is in danger by a rising tide of non-whites" that is "anti-Semitic,
racist and toxic."
My simple solution is to turn the vacant malls into giant marijuana growing operations,and
huge meth labs,and use the revenue from the meth and weed sales to balance the Federal
budget..As an additional plus,you put the Mexican drug cartels out of business,which can't be
a bad thing,either
FurnitureFireSale 26 minutes ago
The smile on the side of the Prime trucks looks like a big wang (Bezos's?) saying "F-U,
take THIS!" to all the small businesses. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
Puppyteethofdeath 14 minutes ago
Turn them into homeless shelters.
744,000 Americans filed for 1st time unemployment last week.
Every week the numbers are the same.
no cents at all 5 minutes ago
Yet mall property owners and their ilk have equity prices in the stratosphere. Same with
cruise lines. A mystery. (Although doesn't take scooby doo to understand why)
Judge James C. Ho is absolutely correct to imply it is profoundly offensive to be offered
opportunity based on race rather than merit ("
Notable & Quotable: Judges ," March 27).
When I was approaching graduation and beginning my job search, a friend of the family, who
was Jewish himself, approached me with an opportunity. His accounting firm, one of the "Big
Eight" firms, had inquired if he knew any young Jewish accountants it could hire because it
didn't have any Jews working in the firm. The family friend told me this was a wonderful
opportunity and that I would be made partner and become prosperous. He was shocked when I
responded no, and asked why. I told him if I accepted this offer, I would never know if I was
successful because I was Jewish or because I was talented and skilled.
That makes Jamie brilliant. play_arrow 5 play_arrow 1
zorrosgato 10 hours ago
"flush with savings"
HA!
Yen Cross 10 hours ago
Jack, ****, Dimon? Which one was it Z/H Google moderator?
I donate at Christmas.
Basil 20 minutes ago
whats gone wrong is the cancer of progressiveism. wokeism, social justice nonsense.
Gadbous 29 minutes ago
Don't you want to just slap these people?
MuleRider 18 minutes ago
You misspelled decapitate.
GrandTheftOtto 2 hours ago
"It was a year in which each of usfaced difficult personal challenges"
boundless hypocrisy...
Mr. Rude Dog 2 hours ago remove link
" Americans know that something has gone terribly wrong, and they blame this country's
leadership: the elite, the powerful, the decision makers - in government, in business and in
civic society," he wrote.
"This is completely appropriate, for who else should take the blame?"
Lets see if he projects the problem back on the citizens...Let's see what happens.
"But populism is not policy, and we cannot let it drive another round of poor planning
and bad leadership that will simply make our country's situation worse."
I knew the so called elites could not take the blame... You know populism always makes bad
decisions with the economy, our monetary system, our infrastructure and just managing our tax
money in general...Yes I knew Jamie could not take the blame..LOL.!!!!
QE4MeASAP 2 hours ago
So Dimon is giving the state of the union instead of Biden?
Budnacho 2 hours ago
Jamie Dimon....Friend of the Little Guy....
Tomsawyer2112 PREMIUM 11 hours ago
He doesn't believe a word of what he just said. But he knows that if he wants his bank to
continue to be an extension of the government and curry favor then he needs to tow the line.
I am sure he also has his eye on a future role as Fed Lead or US Treasurer but might be tough
since he's not a diversity candidate.
oknow 2 hours ago
Someone turn off his mike, dont need your sorry *** confession
Just confiscate his wealth and make him do 9 to 5 jobs for the rest of his life.
ChromeRobot 9 hours ago remove link
This guy is a rarity in the banking industry. He's a billionaire. Running a bank I was
often told in my early years in finance was foolproof. Everybody needs money and they have
it. Hard to fk up. Somehow this "titan" has gamed it to do really well doing something
incredibly easy. Positioning yourself to be a SIFI helps too! Too big to fail has it's
perks.
a drink before the war 10 hours ago
What Jamie is really saying without saying it is " I get paid in stock options however
since the pandemic JPM and other banks haven't been allowed to do stock buy back but come
June we get back to the NORMAL and with the FED printing money and giving it to us we going
to talk this stock WAY up no matter what because I got almost two years of stock options I
gotta get paid for!"
lay_arrow 2
archipusz 10 hours ago
If you want to get to the top, you must speak the party line narrative.
The truth is something different altogether.
Eddie Haskell 10 hours ago
If you want to be a state-approved oligarch you've gotta suck the right dickie. Good
job.
Detective Miller 38 minutes ago
"Jaimie Tells Bagholders To 'Buy Buy Buy!!!'"
Onthebeach6 38 minutes ago
The US is addicted to helicoptor money.
The world looks fine to an addict until the supply is cut off.
sbin 41 minutes ago
Off shore industry
Steal pension funds
Laundering drug money
Regulatory capture.
Jimmy going to lock himself in jail and forfeit his assets?
34k of jerkoff.
Nuk Soo Kow 2 hours ago
How magnanimous of Jamie to blame elitists and civic "leaders" for the structural problems
in America. It was the banksters that pushed NAFTA and helped China engineer it's currency
against the dollar, which led to massive outflows of productive capital. It was the banksters
via the use of financial legerdemain who engineered the collapse in 2008 (not to mention
every other banking panic and collapse prior to). It's high time to throw out this den of
vipers once and for all.
Nature_Boy_Wooooo 2 hours ago
He lost me at.....
We need more cheap immigrant labor...... housing is unaffordable for many.
No **** moron!......you suppressed our wages and increased demand for housing.
PT 10 hours ago remove link
I always consult the fox when I want to know about the state of the hen house.
QuiteShocking 10 hours ago
Economic boom?? Is really just trying to get back to where we were previously before the
pandemic hit with things opening back up etc... More people have been working from home so
different spending patterns are developing.. but could change... Supply chain chaos makes it
seem like shortages and inflation etc... It may only last through 2023?? but with Dems in
charge this is not a given with their anti business slant??
same2u 11 hours ago
UBI for the rich= stock market...
Hope Copy 3 hours ago (Edited)
Jamie knows that the core of Crypto is at the CIA and that the pseudo Republic has far to
much Fascist politics at the core .. There has been a competitive failure at most all levels
of the government in recent times with a 'winner take all' at the cost of keeping competitive
practices alive (not to mention kickbacks).. Of course China is laughing even though they
have a history of cutting corners (and outright fraud) in every economic sector.
Mario Landavoz 20 minutes ago
Banker. That's all ya need to know.
Just a Little Froth in the Market 40 minutes ago
But the CEO was very candid about China...
"China's leaders believe America is in decline... The Chinese see an America that is
losing ground in technology, infrastructure and education – a nation torn and
crippled . . . and a country unable to coordinate government policies (fiscal, monetary,
industrial, regulatory) in any coherent way to accomplish national goals
This is correct.
Joe A 55 minutes ago
He is just mocking and taking a piss at everybody. That America is such a mess is because
of people like him with his scorched earth robber baron rogue capitalism. But there is a way
to redeem yourselves. Just make all your assets available to the American people. And oh,
blow your own brain out.
Abi Normal 3 hours ago remove link
What else is he supposed to say? As long as things don't go bad for Jamie it's cool.
OrazioGentile 3 hours ago
The Banksters, after years of mismanagement, borderline fraud, and endless bailouts now
see that investments in unicorn startups, selling mindless BS to each other, and the quick
buck lead to a burned out husk called America?!? Now?!? Let all of them live in the great
paradise called the Cayman Islands that they helped build and see how far they get selling
"capital instruments" to each other. The last 20 years have taught most Americans that hard
work is meaningless to get ahead IMHO.
Over the months there have been letters to the editor regarding academia,
"Academic Freedom Long Ago Withered Away" (Letters, March 5) being a case in point. I find
it interesting that for the most part they are written by professors emeriti or retired
academics, not active ones with a job to lose. This is very telling in and of itself.
If we are to believe authorities the USA. added 916K jobs in March, and the official
unemployment rate is at 6% (note the word official; the current official U6 unemployment rate as
of March 2021 is 10.70%; so the real number is probably much higher than 10%)
Fudging data became as prominent as it was in the USSR. The neoliberal empire can't afford objective stats.
Notable quotes:
"... monthly data is collected over a brief timeframe - just a few days - and that the calculations are seasonally adjusted. ..."
"... Yes, at least half the sheep population think they are real. It's insane how dumb people are today. ..."
I spent the last 2 weeks digging into the numbers - especially timing of the surveys and
data collection. I get the fact that weekly claims don't reflect new hires. I also realize
that monthly data is collected over a brief timeframe - just a few days - and that the
calculations are seasonally adjusted.
But let's be reasonable - how is it possible to have 700K - 800K initial jobless claims
every week and create nearly a million new jobs? Does anyone really believe any of these numbers?
Globalistsaretrash
Yes, at least half the sheep population think they are real. It's insane how dumb people
are today.
Apparently it was "You pissed on my rug!". I guess if they update that book and article,
they'll include Trump characterizing Justin as "weak and dishonest" - which I would say,
based on his 7 years as PM, is blunt but accurate.
I think you're right that any US concessions are just a reprieve. That
non-agreement-capable thing. Freeland and Justin don't care, they're looking forward to
getting rich after leaving office, like the Clintons, Obama, etc. as a reward for their
service to plutocracy.
William Gruff @19, Hoarsewhisperer @16, agreed. That, it seems to me is the root of the
problem. Our politicians are for sale to the highest bidders. It's no longer democracy, but
full-fledged plutocracy with a veneer of "democracy" that's visibly cracked and flaking off
to anyone but the willfully blind.
solo @38, good point. Saudi Arabia also sided with China on Xinjiang:
Importantly, the Crown Prince said Saudi Arabia 'firmly supports China's legitimate
position on the issues related to Xinjiang and Hong Kong, opposes interfering in China's
internal affairs under any pretext, and rejects the attempt by certain parties to sow
dissension between China and the Islamic world.'
Plainly put, Saudi Arabia has undercut the current US campaign against China regarding
Xinjiang. It is a snub to the Biden administration.
"What Washington and its allies are doing is trampling over international law and kicking
it to the curb. Their conduct is that of rogue states who perceive themselves to be above the
law, entitled to act in whatever way they please with no accountability.
"Ironically, and sickeningly, the Americans, Europeans, Canadians, Australians and other
partners, talk loftily about respecting "values' and 'rules-based international order'. They
are the ones who are trashing any semblance of order. It is these NATO powers that have
launched numerous criminal wars of aggression without any mandate from the UN Security
Council. They have carried out covert regime-change operations which have unleashed mayhem
and terrorism. They impose unilateral sanctions on nations suffering from NATO's intrigues,
such as Syria and Venezuela. They run assassination programs and torture-renditions to black
sites around the world. Their troops kill Afghan civilians in cold blood after kicking down
their doors in the middle of the night. The United States rips up nuclear arms control
treaties with Russia, while sailing warships into Chinese territory."
So, under the tenets of International Law, both Russia and China have the right to
counter-attack and have. But the initial law breaking by the Outlaws must be stopped, and it
appears they must be forced to do so. And since two of the Outlaws sit on the UNSC, using
that organizations Article 7 powers won't do the job as the Veto will be invoked. IMO, the
only alternative is to turn to the UNGA and ask it to override the deadlocked UNSC and
warrant the arrest of the Outlaws by all UN member states wherever they may be.
I hope barflies take the time to read the editorial as it ends with an excellent news item
that's more than apt for our times.
Meanwhile Biden's son Hunter, the "smartest guy" his father knows, has his feet firmly in
his mouth in excerpts from an interview this Sunday about his 💻 that was full of
underage porn & business dealings involving his father when VPOTUS.
Today's
Martyanov Blog is really good and incorporates some of Hudson's views, this being most
prescient:
"But behind all of that is a systemic and irresolvable crisis of financial predatory
capitalism, which goes under different monikers, but remains the same, as Michael Hudson
astutely put it--the parasite finally ate the host. In this case, the neocon insanity in the
US is merely a private symptom of a larger ailment."
The earlier longer excerpt he includes is also worth experiencing--it was from the latest
discussion with Escobar. I suggest reading it.
'The world will never be the same:' Coursera CEO on learning post pandemic
Reggie Wade
·
Writer
Fri, April 2, 2021, 12:43 PM
More content below
More content below
^IXIC
+1.76%
COUR
+1.73%
The online learning platform
Coursera
(
COUR
)
saw a big pop following its Nasdaq (
^IXIC
)
debut this week. Coursera revenue was up 60% last year, and CEO Jeff Maggioncalda predicts online learning is here to stay even
after the pandemic eventually winds down.
"The world needs more access to high-quality learning. ... There will be a new normal that emerges. We don't know what that will
look like either in terms of how we work remotely versus in an office and how we will learn online and also on campus. But it's
pretty clear that the world will never be the same again and that online learning will be a big part of it," he told Yahoo
Finance Live.
"So we really think about the long term, all the structural reasons why people will need to learn continuously through their
lives to learn new skills as the world goes more digital," he said.
Dec 27, 2019 Mountain View / CA / USA - Coursera headquarters in Silicon Valley; Coursera is an American online learning
platform that offers massive open online courses, specializations, and degrees
One area that Coursera is looking to expand is its degree and certification programs. Maggioncalda tells Yahoo Finance that the
company can use technology to shake up traditional degree offerings.
"What we've seen for centuries is that college degrees are the most meaningful, recognized learning credential that there is, and
the credential type hasn't really innovated that much over the last period of history. We think with technology, the ability to
create not only degrees but other types of credentials," he said.
"It will be a portfolio of credentials. We believe that will serve lifelong learning needs in a world where people need to keep
learning, even as they're working," he added.
The rules at issue in the case, initially adopted between 1964 and 1975, had been meant "to
promote competition, localism and viewpoint diversity by ensuring that a small number of
entities do not dominate a particular media market," Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for the
court. But the rules, he added, were a relic of a different era -- "an early-cable and
pre-internet age when media sources were more limited." "By the 1990s, however, the market for
news and entertainment had changed dramatically," Justice Kavanaugh wrote. "Technological
advances led to a massive increase in alternative media options, such as cable television and
the internet. Those technological advances challenged the traditional dominance of daily print
newspapers, local radio stations and local television stations."
The case, Federal Communications Commission v. Prometheus Radio Project, No. 19-1231,
concerned three rules. One barred a single entity from owning a radio or television station and
a daily print newspaper in the same market, the second limited the number of radio and
television stations an entity can own in a single market, and the third restricted the number
of local television stations an entity could own in the same market.
In 2017, the commission concluded that the three rules no longer served their original
purposes of promoting competition and the like. The vote was 3 to 2 along party lines, with the
commission's Republican members in the majority.
They were not deciding if media consolidation was OK. They were deciding if the FCC had the
regulatory authority to make such a change. The court decided, unanimously, that they did.
If they had decided otherwise, it would open up any such regulatory changes to lawsuits
against the change. This includes further tightening media ownership rules, or changing rules
on pollution, or regulations on corporate governance.
Is they have should have gone for the throat and said FCC, SEC, FTC, FEC, etc. rule-making
is unconstitutional per se because all legislative and pseudo-legislative activity must be
enacted explicitly by only the Congress.
It would have utterly horrified and enraged progressives and big corporation-loving
republicans, but it would have been considered a judicial Gettysburg for the forces of populism
on both sides because it would have gutted the power of the administrative state to render the
people's assembly a vestigial organ.
...history shows that one messy unwind can easily spread. The U.S. Office of Financial
Research finds that the ten largest hedge funds were leveraged
far more heavily than the next 40 largest funds, as of June. And many family offices may
not be counted in these statistics at all, which mostly rely on disclosure forms they are able
to avoid.
There are some obvious responses for regulators, such as mandating disclosure of the
total return swaps that allowed Archegos to build big positions out of the public eye. But
there are no easy answers to the wider challenge of overseeing leverage within the broadest
financial complex when debt is almost free.
The system has held up under the latest strain, but this isn't a victory. Archegos means one
who leads the way. Regulators must do what they can to ensure as few as possible follow.
Swiss rival Credit Suisse expects a hit in the billions of dollars from Archegos, people
with knowledge of the matter have said, while Nomura Holdings Inc. has signaled it may lose as
much as $2 billion. Analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimate the Archegos blowup may cause
as much as $10 billion of combined losses for banks.
David Herro, chief investment officer of Harris Associates -- one of Credit Suisse's biggest
shareholders -- said on Bloomberg Television on Wednesday that the Archegos incident was a
"wake-up call" for Credit Suisse and should lead to sweeping changes to its culture and
oversight practices.
Shares of Credit Suisse tumbled 21% this week on concern over the size of its potential
Archegos hit. Deutsche Bank is down 2.9%.
Casino capitalism is the fertile ground for the most sleazy types of speculators. The stock
market has become a giant slot machine financed by 401K lemmings. The marks here are 401K
investors.
Excessive leverage is a immanent feature of the pre-collapse stage of Minsky cycle. So those
who argue that we are close to another crash get some additional confirmation due to this event.
The Masters of the Universe rediscovered the hidden areas of huge risk, and like in 2008 are
afraid but can't and do not want to anything.
TBTF such as Goldman and Morgan aid the most sleazy types as they bring outsized profits for
them. So this a catch 22 as Goldman and other TBFT controls SEC not the other way around.
It would be prudent to view banksters as a special type of mafia and treat accordingly and
prohibit for them serving in government. But this is impossible under neoliberal as financial
oligarchy has all political power.
The question is: Is there another fund that's larger, that's more leveraged with the same
characteristics that could prove to be a more systemic event? That's the major concern right
now." Wall Street's hottest trades such as pure-tech plays and high-flying tech/media like the
ones bet on by Hwang -- could be unwound. The Hwang blowup wakes up investors to the realization
that many parts of the market are overvalued and it's time to sell -- and quickly as yields are
going up. For the the FAANGS, the Tesla's out there -- the fundamentals don't support the stock.
So it would be logical to a large correction.
Notable quotes:
"... The idea that one firm can quietly amass outsized positions through the use of derivatives could set off another wave of criticism directed against loosely regulated firms that have the power to destabilize markets. ..."
Much of the leverage used by Hwang's Archegos Capital Management was provided by banks
including Nomura Holdings Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG through swaps and so-called
contracts-for-difference, according to people with direct knowledge of the deals. It means
Archegos may never actually have owned most of the underlying securities -- if any at all.
While investors who own a stake of more than 5% in a U.S.-listed company usually have to
disclose their holdings and subsequent transactions, that's not the case with positions built
through the type of derivatives apparently used by Archegos. The products, which are transacted
off exchanges, allow managers like Hwang to amass exposure to publicly-traded companies without
having to declare it.
The swift unwinding of Archegos has reverberated across the globe, after banks such as
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley forced Hwang's firm to sell billions of dollars in
investments accumulated through highly leveraged bets. The selloff roiled stocks from Baidu
Inc. to ViacomCBS Inc., and prompted Nomura and Credit Suisse to disclose that they face
potentially significant losses on their exposure.
One reason for the widening fallout is the borrowed funds that investors use to magnify
their bets: a margin call occurs when the market goes against a large, leveraged position,
forcing the hedge fund to deposit more cash or securities with its broker to cover any losses.
Archegos was probably required to deposit only a small percentage of the total value of
trades.
The chain of events set off by this massive unwinding is yet another reminder of the role
that hedge funds play in the global capital markets. A hedge fund short squeeze during a
Reddit-fueled frenzy for Gamestop Corp. and other shares earlier this year spurred a $6 billion
loss for Gabe Plotkin's Melvin Capital and sparked scrutiny from U.S. regulators and
politicians.
The idea that one firm can quietly amass outsized positions through the use of
derivatives could set off another wave of criticism directed against loosely regulated firms
that have the power to destabilize markets.
Bob 2 days ago This is another major reminder that the stock market is not as rational as we
want to believe. A small group of very large, leveraged funds can have far more impact on the
market than dozens or hundreds of well thought out and researched programs. Sigh. Take your
lumps and move on. Hasso 2 days ago 2008 - Hwang's Tiger Asia suffered losses from the
Volkswagen short, 2012 - Hwang's Tiger Asia paid $44M to settle insider trading charges, banned
2014- Hong Kong fined him $5.3M & banned him for four years. 2021 - And here we are
again.
Tyrone 2 days ago Gee, Credit Suisse involved in sleezy investments. Again. I'm shocked, just
shocked!
Manohar 2 days ago Banks haven't learnt anything yet...you know why? Because its other people's
money and the no one gets prosecuted when they are caught with hand in the cookie jar.
killer klown 2 days ago it's a sign that the market and it's regulators have learned
nothing.........to even pretend that a penny difference in assumed earnings versus actual
earnings using the GAAP accounting (which itself says it's not exact but generally accepted
accounting principles)moves a stock is in itself a joke, this situation of a BIG BLACK BOX
calls for the complete dismantle of the derivatives market which was created to lay off risk.
Bill Hawng should be FLAT Broke his possesions seized, The board of Credit Suisse and Nomura et
all should be unemployed as of 8:31 this morning. But they won't and it's only going to happen
again and again.
Amvet 2 days ago Market manipulators have a free rein in the USA. Are politicians also
involved? Reply 16 3 George 2 days ago Just amazing how some of the world's most sleazy
characters have access to cosmic sums of money and remain under the radar and legal(???). Then
nothing seems to happen except that loads of other folk get burned while they move on to the
next bright idea. Reply 13 1 Rick 2 days ago So clearly limiting those who can purchase these
to exclude amateur players has not been successful. Recklessness is not limited to amateurs.
Mr. H. 2 days ago In 2008 high finance was playing very high risk games with clients money at
the undefined edge between legal and illegal. A bunch of firms went away along with many
billions of dollars because a bunch of players were playing CYA. They came up with the term
"too big to fail" when they were picking winners and losers. "too big to fail" is is fetid
bovine excrement. The SEC, that is the administrative government, was not doing its job! There
were many questions about government employee competence to do those jobs. The government
should have let the market place pick the winners and losers, then the government should have
prosecuted everyone who failed to perform their fiduciary duty and set a major precedent about
high risk play with other people's money; keep it legal or go to jail and lose your shirt. That
is what should happen this time too! Noone 2 days ago Almost like something that is so
dangerous and risky to both the market AND the "investor" that retail traders ARE BANNED from
doing it should.. idk.. BE ILLEGAL FOR EVERYONE? Useless SEC. Do your job right.
Philip 2 days ago Ironic that Hedge Funds are the most unhedged game going.... Dan 1 day ago
The managers of these HFs lack morality, they steal from other companies because they believe
in their twisted little minds if they set up a system whereby they can trade in dark pools with
illegal naked shorting, counterfeit shares and stock manipulation under the radar -- it makes
the crime okay. All of this criminality is been done with the aid of supplementary leverage
ratio (SLR) If they can manage to bankrupt the company they short with Government SLR they end
up paying no tax and pocket the money GME/AMC and more for example.. Bingo the most audacious
robbery attempt in the history of the state. Oh boys did they fail, wow what a spectacular
failure. Now they have to deleverage destabilizing the entire market. Do these HF managers rank
their values differently to the moral code we all live by? Obviously they do! There's no doubt
they'll get lots of time to think about their behaviour when they're in the slammer. Each case
will have to be evaluated on its own merit at some stage of course. On the face of it, all
indications points to a tradeoff that benefits themselves at the disadvantaging of other. Sad
for them! I rest my case!
Jodes 1 day ago The spikes in shares like ROKU, BIDU, SHOP and many more have huge parabolic
spikes at the top accounting for the disfunctional market as we were seeing it at the top. They
had huge buy orders to artificially spike the prices keep them up and then experts come in
after and raise price targets and put a BUY rating on the stock. Then get retail to buy in and
then drop them like a rock. Greedy and dispicibale. All probably done for a huge bonus. While
retail suffers for their greed.
Vince 2 days ago More than 100 Trillion (with a T) are moving around the world in Derivatives
each and every day., some say closer to 200 Trillion! You figure it our when THAT bubble
bursts! Reply 2 1 SniffMopWho 2 days ago Interesting how these guys make millions and billions,
just by pressing keys on a keyboard.
... 2 days ago More sleaze trying to bring down the market by making risky bets with swaps and
derivatives, yet the regulators are caught asleep again. Just more proof of incompetence by
Biden and his hired idiots at the SEC.
TL;DR- Citadel and friends have shorted the treasury bond market to oblivion using the
repo market. Citadel owns a company called Palafox Trading and uses them to EXCLUSIVELY short
& trade treasury securities. Palafox manages one fund for Citadel - the Citadel Global
Fixed Income Master Fund LTD. Total assets over $123 BILLION and 80% are owned by offshore
investors in the Cayman Islands. Their reverse repo agreements are ENTIRELY rehypothecated
and they CANNOT pay off their own repo agreements until someone pays them, first. The ENTIRE
global financial economy is modeled after a fractional reserve system that is beginning to
experience THE MOTHER OF ALL MARGIN CALLS.
THIS is why the DTC and FICC are requiring an increase in SLR deposits. The madness has
officially come full circle.
tnorth 4 hours ago
another month of completely rigged 'markets'
mtl4 4 hours ago remove link
Music is still playing, make sure you have a chair when it stops
this_circus_is_no_fun 1 hour ago remove link
Consider these two points:
Treasuries are claimed to be backed by the "full faith and credit of the United
States".
In Q1, Treasuries suffer their biggest loss in 40 years.
y_arrow
Kreditanstalt 1 hour ago (Edited)
I've always wondered why seemingly contradictory and uncorrelated assets and asset classes
alternately "soar" and "plunge" on different days, usually in random conjunction with
others...
It seems so counterintuitively...MECHANICAL...or theory-driven, rather than rational
"investing".
A little known hedge fund that blew up last week has sent shockwaves through the world of investment banking.
Shares in Credit Suisse (
CSGN.SW
)
and Nomura (
8604.T
)
sunk over 10% on Monday after both warned they faced potentially billions in losses linked to hedge fund Archegos Capital.
Banks that worked with Archegos and lent it money to buy shares were scrambling to offload Archegos' investments after a handful
of risky bets made by the hedge fund went bad. The rush to exit these positions hit public shares prices, leaving banks with huge
losses.
Hedge funds typically borrow money from banks to invest, a process known as margin trading. This allows funds to leverage up the
cash they hold and increase their positions -- potentially earning far greater returns if their bets come good. However, it also
means hedge funds can theoretically lose more money than they hold in client funds.
If trades made on margin turn sour, banks will ask a client to put up more money as collateral to limit potential losses. This
process is known as a margin call.
Archegos faced margin calls on its positions last week but failed to provide extra cash. As a result, banks began selling off
stocks held on the hedge fund's behalf -- a fire sale known in the City as liquidating positions. The business press reported on
Friday that Goldman Sachs (
GS
)
and Morgan Stanley (
MS
)
were selling huge chunks of shares in businesses including ViacomCBS (
VIAC
),
Discovery (
DISCA
)
and Chinese stocks Baidu (
BIDU
)
and Tencent Music (
TME
).
The block sales are estimated to be worth around $20bn (£14.5bn),
according
to the Financial Times
.
Shares in Credit Suisse sunk after it warned of 'significant losses' linked to the blow up at Archegos Capital. Photo:
Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images
A little known hedge fund that blew up last week has sent shockwaves through the world of investment banking.
Shares in Credit Suisse (
CSGN.SW
)
and Nomura (
8604.T
)
sunk over 10% on Monday after both warned they faced potentially billions in losses linked to hedge fund Archegos Capital.
Banks that worked with Archegos and lent it money to buy shares were scrambling to offload Archegos' investments after a
handful of risky bets made by the hedge fund went bad. The rush to exit these positions hit public shares prices, leaving
banks with huge losses.
Hedge funds typically borrow money from banks to invest, a process known as margin trading. This allows funds to leverage up
the cash they hold and increase their positions -- potentially earning far greater returns if their bets come good. However, it
also means hedge funds can theoretically lose more money than they hold in client funds.
If trades made on margin turn sour, banks will ask a client to put up more money as collateral to limit potential losses. This
process is known as a margin call.
Archegos faced margin calls on its positions last week but failed to provide extra cash. As a result, banks began selling off
stocks held on the hedge fund's behalf -- a fire sale known in the City as liquidating positions. The business press reported
on Friday that Goldman Sachs (
GS
)
and Morgan Stanley (
MS
)
were selling huge chunks of shares in businesses including ViacomCBS (
VIAC
),
Discovery (
DISCA
)
and Chinese stocks Baidu (
BIDU
)
and Tencent Music (
TME
).
The block sales are estimated to be worth around $20bn (£14.5bn),
according
to the Financial Times
.
"Things started going wrong for Archegos when shares of companies such as Viacom started to slide mid-last week," said Michael
Brown, a senior market analyst at Caxton Business. "It was at that point that margins were called, and couldn't be provided,
hence the block sales seen Friday."
A fire sale can have a negative impact on stock prices and shares in both ViacomCBS and Discovery sunk 27% on Friday. Banks
therefore risked making less back from the sales than they lent to clients to fund the investments.
Credit Suisse on Monday warned it was facing "highly significant" losses linked to Archegos that could be "material to our
first quarter results".
The Swiss lender didn't name Archegos but said: "A significant US-based hedge fund defaulted on margin calls made last week by
Credit Suisse and certain other banks."
Credit Suisse said it was "in the process" of selling shares held by Archegos. The bank said it was "premature" to estimate
how much it would likely lose from the crisis.
"We intend to provide an update on this matter in due course," Credit Suisse said.
Shares sunk 13.4% in Zurich.
"One would assume that, judging by the size of positions sold, the 'game is up' for Archegos," Brown said.
He said it was "unlikely" that Archegos would pose a systemic risk to the financial system. Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at
Markets.com, said the hedge fund "appears to have been too concentrated in a number of risky stocks."
A hedge fund blow up is relatively unusual and Archegos' undoing has raised concerns that other funds could find themselves in
similar positions.
"Block equity-trades stemming from margin-calls on Archegos will have sent the market's spidey senses a tingle," said Bill Blain,
a senior strategist at Shard Capital. "Who is next?"
Alex Harvey, a portfolio manager at Momentum, said: "We tend to find out after the event that other funds get caught up as
sometimes hedge funds may be crowded into similar trades."
"When we look at this and think about the GameStop saga and the decline in Tesla as two examples -- what we're seeing are more and
more pockets of very unusual trading activity in some stocks," he said. "You worry that this sort of frothy trading activity in
turn creates pockets of distress among investors and banks that leads to larger unwinds and losses for financials."
What are the facts that indicate that "China wants to dominate the entire world"? There is
little or no evidence of that. Just repeating this pabulum on and on doesn't make it true. It
just makes hoi polloi think it is true.
There is no specific speech or document that clearly states that China wants to dominate
the entire world. It is an inference from many things pieced together, some of which are:
1. China's behavior after it was admitted to WTO. When it happened in 1999, the
expectation was that they would open up their market to global firms. Instead, what happened
was rampant technology theft and currency manipulation. They manipulated their industrial
policy to deny foreign firms a level playing field that Chinese companies were given in other
countries.
2. The Belt and Road projects. These are basically debt traps for poorer countries in
Asia, Africa and Europe in the name of infrastructure development. They give soft loans to
these countries for economically unviable infra projects, and when they fail, the Chinese
take ownership. Kinda like loan sharks loaning money to gamblers.
3. They have started grabbing territory from all neighbours using salami tactics, showing
some old "maps" that was never agreed and claiming they own the area. (Google "Nine-dash
line").
Add to this the planting of spies using Confucius institutes, secretly paying many
academic researchers to steal technology (Example: Charles Lieber from Harvard), paying
newspapers to carry China Daily propaganda supplements (WaPo, NYT, LA Ttimes, The Boston
Globe, WSJ just for starters), the Houston embassy spying, They have done this stuff not just
to USA but most major countries in the world.
Now of course we can ask, "But where did they say they want to rule the world?". Well,
Hitler didn't either. In 1938, he solemnly swore to Neville Chamberlain, the British PM that
he had no intention of conquering another country. We all know what happened after that.
Naivete is dangerous in these situations. If a country acquires enough power, it will start
having imperial ambitions. It's human nature. Germany under Bismarck in 1880s tried to stay
away from conquering other countries as long as possible, but they couldn't resist the
temptation. Now none of this means China will try to dominate the world at any cost. If
others resist strongly enough, they will back off. But that's something we have to do, and
get others to do.
1. So China copied the way in which the US industrialized in the eighteenth and nineteenth
century. Following the Washington Consensus script has a history of leading to dependency
– Ha-Joon Chang has written some very good papers and books on the basic hypocrisy of
the West in this area. In the eighteenth century Britain protected its infant textile
industry against the Indian one with very high tariffs. They also stole woollen technology
from the Dutch.
2. This is Western propaganda, perhaps reflecting the IMF/World Bank efforts of yore upon
China. The "debt trap" BRI myth has been pretty much debunked among academic researchers, but
that doesn't fit the Western anti-China discourse.
3. Grabbing territory from all their neighbours? What territory? Compare the nine-dash line
mirrors to the declared hegemony of the US over the Caribbean and Central American nations
– backed up by repeated invasions and destabilizations (Haiti, Panama, Nicaragua,
Guatemala, Cuba etc.). Take a look at the US history of grabbing lands (the Philippines,
Puerto Rico, half of Mexico, Hawaii), China is exceedingly tame compared to US history, as
well as the US recent aggressions such as the illegal invasion of Iraq and destabilization of
Syria.
The MSM that you quote are the purveyors of fake news with no actual backing apart from
intelligence community briefings, the "stenographers of the intelligence community" as one
commentator put it. This is the classic propaganda designed to rile up the population to
support action against a new "enemy", very 1984.
1. Oh I know they are China is copying USA's policy in 18th and 19th century. That is what
is concerning. That is a successful playbook to gain a lot of economic power very quickly. Of
course the USA pointing fingers is hypocrisy. But that does not make this any less of a
threat.
2. Debunked by "academic researchers"? Care to share some sources? Multiple countries like
Malaysia, Kenya, Myanmar, Sierra Leone and Bangladesh have either cancelled projects or
trying to renegotiate them. The reason is because the projects are nothing but jobs and
demand creation programs for Chinese workers and companies. Contracts are awarded at inflated
rates to Chinese contractors without competitive bidding. Then they bring in workers and
equipment wholesale from mainland china. Some projects are economically viable, others are
just white elephants, like the highway in montenegro or a port/airport in Sri Lanka in the
middle of the jungle.
3. I am not denying what USA has done to other countries. China is just starting, so what
they do looks tame. Give them a little time.
I fully agree that the MSM are purveyors of fake news. I was referring to how they all
have taken Chinese money to print stuff favourable to them, and even articles entirely
written by Chinese foreign ministry. Now of course, they might change tack and start beating
the war drums if TPTB wants them to. That confirms my opinion that most MSM are just
mouthpieces for hire with no moral principles.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/dec/07/china-plan-for-global-media-dominance-propaganda-xi-jinping
Please note, I am not defending all the terrible things America has done. Pointing out
that China is a threat need not come attached with any moral judgement on America.
Also, the proper response to China IMO should be more in economic policy than military
saber-rattling. Tariffs are just a start. Why are we not building more manufacturing in USA?
Sure, wages are high and prices will shoot up. But do we really need to import 15bn worth of
sneakers (that's about 200 mn pairs a year)? Let us make shoes in America that may cost twice
as mush, but three times more durable. Same with cellphones. Decrapifying products will go a
long way in making american manufacturing viable. But that requires great sacrifice by the
consumers. Shopping or goodies has been turned into a dopamine-drip. Investing class and
business are just as addicted to high profit margins & ROIs. Cut the dependence on China,
and watch them scramble to fix their internal issues like falling wages and unemployment. The
pity is we have lost the will as a nation to make such sacrifices.
I am not sure the will does not exist. I think the will might be suppressed and
thwarted.
We would need a Protectionist Party to explain everything you have touched on and run
candidates on that basis and on that program to see whether the diffuse and muffled will
might be uncovered and re-aggregated and recovered and weaponised for domestic political
re-conquest of government and hence of political economic policy.
I envision a delicious scenario-vision in which the Protectionist Party finally wins all
three branches and the Protectionist Party President makes a speech and at the end of that
speech, AND IN MANDARIN to to make sure the prime perpetrator of export aggression hears the
message and gets the point, the following phrase . . . . in MANDARIN, remember . . .
Hmmnm "If a country acquires enough power it will start having imperial ambitions?" I
agree completely with your statement. The rest seem pretty much what I have been reading in
the Washington Post and New York Times lately. I am not sure about their objectivity. One
thing is certain and that is that war talk very easily can slip into war. Having served in
the military for over 30 years and deployed many times the best advice I ever got was from
that political analyst Mike Tyson, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."
War talk with China and Russia and Iran and trying to cripple economies with sanctions never
has and never will work but we can always try to educate a new young generation of
politicians like Joe.
Nah. But I know we need a military to defend ourselves, especially if something that
happens on the other end of the world would make the supermarket shelves go empty in a jiffy.
I think we need to reduce external economic dependence and then cut the military to a
fraction of it's current size, just enough to patrol the borders and coasts.
The bulk of the "rampant technology theft" was their insistence on building the
requirement for specified technology transfers into the agreements that let companies set up
shop there. They had watched neocolonialist behavior long enough not to want to be locked
permanently into a subservient position. This part was of course not theft at all. For the
rest of it, yeah, industrial espionage is a thing. But one notes that the firms generally
stayed there.
Currency manipulation is only bad when the other guys do it. We have periodically
deliberately weakened the dollar to try to address balance of trade issues, and in the
aftermath of the '08 recession everybody was doing competitive devaluation, trying to
accomplish by that means what they would have tried tariffs for in an earlier era.
I haven't seen a decent scholarly piece that concurs with the propaganda about belt and
road loans as sinister debt traps.
Territorial disputes aside, most of those neighbors have China as a major trading partner,
and none of the disputes have gone hot. The neighbors are also not entirely lacking in power.
Russia and India are nuclear powers, and if Japan chose to field a more formidable military
it could easily do so.
One of the hardest and most disturbing lessons we've learned from the Nixon China gambit
was that capitalism doesn't necessarily lead to democracy. Nor is a democratic society a
prerequisite for capitalism to flourish.
That came much after the Nixon thaw with China, after the fall of Soviet Union. Francis
Fukuyama solemnly proclaiming "End of History" and all that. The turning point was China
being let into WTO in 1999. Clinton, Bush II and Obama swallowed that "capitalism leads to
democracy" idea hook, line and sinker.
Technology theft, spun any way, is still technology theft. Sure, Industrial espionage is
"a thing" that everyone does. So is currency manipulation. Since we feel guilty that USA
gained global power by doing all these, we should let others do it too, just to even the
scales? Foreign policy mixed with moral feelings is a recipe for disaster.
The one good thing about bringing back neoclassical economics.
We know what led to Wall Street Crash in 1929. The same mistakes have been repeated
globally.
At 25.30 mins you can see the super imposed private debt-to-GDP ratios.
The financial crisis appears to come out of a clear blue sky when you use an economics
that doesn't consider debt, like neoclassical economics, as it did in 1929.
1929 – US
1991 – Japan
2008 – US, UK and Euro-zone
The PBoC saw the Chinese Minsky Moment coming and you can too by looking at the chart
above. The Chinese were lucky; it was very late in the day. Everyone has made the same
mistake; only the Chinese worked out what the problem was.
The Chinese don't seem too worried about the competition.
Putin and Xi are jealous of Wall Street.
No matter how hard they try, they have never been able to inflict the same level of damage to
the West, Wall Street managed in 2008.
The Chinese know what to look out for to spot a financial crisis coming. They look for the
problems brewing in private debt and inflated asset prices.
This nice Chinese chap tried to warn the Americans the US stock markets was at 1929 levels at
Davos 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WOs6S0VrlA
We know what a correction from 1929 levels looks like.
We have seen it before.
"They've done it again, I can't believe my luck. US stock markets are at 1929 levels,
this isn't going to end well" president Xi
Xi has probably rung Putin up to tell him the good news.
I bet they had a right old laugh.
Luckily for the Chinese, the Americans have no idea what they are doing.
The Chinese have been making all the classic mistakes of neoclassical economics, but have
been learning from them to ensure they don't make the same mistakes again.
We haven't been doing this in the West.
At the end of the 1920s, the US was a ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices.
The use of neoclassical economics, and the belief in free markets, made them think that
inflated asset prices represented real wealth.
1929 – Wakey, wakey time
The use of neoclassical economics, and the belief in free markets, made them think that
inflated asset prices represented real wealth, but it didn't.
It didn't then, and it doesn't now.
What was the ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices that collapsed in 2008? "It's nearly $14 trillion pyramid of super leveraged toxic assets was built on the back of
$1.4 trillion of US sub-prime loans, and dispersed throughout the world" All the
Presidents Bankers, Nomi Prins.
It wasn't real wealth, just a ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices.
Real estate – the wealth is there and then it's gone.
1990s – UK, US (S&L), Canada (Toronto), Scandinavia, Japan, Philippines,
Thailand
2000s – Iceland, Dubai, US (2008), Vietnam
2010s – Ireland, Spain, Greece, India
It wasn't real wealth, just a ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices.
It's been the same since Tulip Mania.
You can inflate asset prices, keeping them inflated is the hard bit.
Oh yeah, we had a system like that where all the wealth stayed at the top. We called it
Feudalism. The Americans are progressing in the reverse direction.
Perhaps certain counter-Feudalist towns, cities, communities, etc. should study up on how
certain Free Towns and Free Republics survived in Europe during the Feudalist Period. And try
to set themselves up as the Free Towns, Free Cities, Free Republics in the midst of a future
Feudalist America.
Thank you, RMO, you summarized US-Russian relations from 1991 to the start of the Putin
era much better than me. We really missed an opportunity to integrate the Russians into the
US-EU alliance (such as it was), especially with regard to NATO.
Bush Jr. compounded this failure by mistaking Putin for an ally in the war against terror,
thinking that our concerns in the middle east paralleled Putin's affairs in Chechen. They
could have, but didn't. Putin was a more strategic thinker.
My sense is that Putin played a waiting game for much of the first two decades of this
century...
"... How convinced should anyone be when dismissing the message of metrics like these? To be sure, both the market and economy are in uncharted waters. It's possible -- perhaps likely -- that old standards don't apply when something as random as a virus is behind the stress. At the same time, many a portfolio has been squandered through complacency. Market veterans always warn of fortunes lost by investors who became seduced by talk of new rules and paradigms. ..."
"... At 35, the CAPE is at its highest since the early 2000s. ..."
"... Another indicator raising eyebrows is called Tobin's Q. The ratio -- which was developed in 1969 by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin -- compares market value to the adjusted net worth of companies. It's showing a reading just shy of a peak reached in 2000. T ..."
"... the signal sent by the "Buffett Indicator," a ratio of the total market capitalization of U.S. stocks divided by gross domestic product. ..."
"... Still, it's hard to ignore the risks to underlying assumptions. While rock-bottom rates underpin many of the arguments, this year has shown that the Fed still is willing to let longer-term interest rates run higher. And betting on huge upside earnings surprises is risky too -- it's rare to see a 16% beat historically. Before last year, earnings had exceeded estimates by an average 3% a quarter since 2015. ..."
"... "This happens in every bubble," said Bill Callahan, an investment strategist at Schroders. "It's: 'Don't think about the traditional value metrics, we have a new one.' It's: 'Imagine if everyone did XYZ, how big this company could be.'" ..."
"... To Scott Knapp, chief market strategist of CUNA Mutual Group, abandoning standard valuation measures because the environment has changed places investors in "pretty sketchy territory." Talk of watershed moments rendering traditional metric irrelevant as a signal, he says. "That's usually an indication we're trying to justify something," he said. ..."
Shiller P/E. Tobin's Q. Buffett Indicator. Ignore them all?
It's 'usually an indication we're trying to justify something'
Everywhere you look, there's a valuation lens that makes stocks look frothy. Also everywhere you look is someone
saying don't worry about it.
The so-called
Buffett
Indicator
. Tobin's Q. The S&P 500's forward P/E. These and others show the market at stretched levels, sometimes
extremely so. Yet many market-watchers argue they can be ignored, because this time really is different. The
rationale? Everything from Federal Reserve largesse to vaccines promising a quick recovery.
How convinced should anyone be when dismissing the message of metrics like these? To be sure, both the market and
economy are in uncharted waters. It's possible -- perhaps likely -- that old standards don't apply when something as
random as a virus is behind the stress. At the same time, many a portfolio has been squandered through complacency.
Market veterans always warn of fortunes lost by investors who became seduced by talk of new rules and paradigms.
"Every time markets hit new highs, every time markets get frothy, there are always some talking heads that argue:
'It's different,'" said Don Calcagni, chief investment officer of Mercer
Advisors
.
"We just know from centuries of market history that that can't happen in perpetuity. It's just the delusion of
crowds, people get excited. We want to believe."
Source: Robert Shiller's website
Robert Shiller is no apologist. The Yale University professor is famous in investing circles for unpopular valuation
warnings that came true during the dot-com and housing bubbles. One tool on which he based the calls is his
cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio that includes the last 10 years of earnings.
While it's flashing warnings again, not even Shiller is sure he buys it. At 35, the CAPE is at its highest since the
early 2000s. If that period of exuberance is excluded, it clocks in at its highest-ever reading. Yet in a recent
post
,
Shiller wrote that "with interest rates low and likely to stay there, equities will continue to look attractive,
particularly when compared to bonds."
Another indicator raising eyebrows is called Tobin's Q. The ratio -- which was
developed
in
1969 by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin -- compares market value to the adjusted net worth of companies.
It's showing a reading just shy of a peak reached in 2000. To Ned Davis, it's a valuation chart worth being wary
about. Still, while the indicator is roughly 40% above its long-term trend, "there may be an upward bias on the ratio
from technological change in the economy," wrote the Wall Street veteran who founded his namesake firm.
Persuasive arguments also exist for discounting the signal sent by the "Buffett Indicator," a ratio of the total
market capitalization of U.S. stocks divided by gross domestic product. While it recently reached its highest-ever
reading above its long-term trend, the methodology fails to take into consideration that companies are more
profitable than they've ever been, according to Jeff Schulze, investment strategist at ClearBridge Investments.
"It's looked extended really for the past decade, yet you've had one of the best bull markets in U.S. history," he
said. "That's going to continue to be a metric that does not adequately capture the market's potential."
At Goldman Sachs Group Inc., strategists argue that however high P/Es are, the absence of significant leverage
outside the private sector or a late-cycle economic boom points to low risk of an imminent bubble burst. While people
are shoveling money into stocks at rates that have signaled exuberance in the past, risk appetite is rebounding after
a prolonged period of aversion, according to the strategists, who also cite low interest rates.
"Today is a very different situation -- I don't think we've got a broad bubble," Peter Oppenheimer, chief global
equity strategist at the firm, said in a recent interview on Bloomberg Television. "Given the level of real rates,
where they are, it's still likely to be broadly supportive for equities versus bonds."
Another rationale employed to dismiss certain valuation metrics is the earnings cycle. Corporate America is just
emerging from a recession, with profits forecast to stage a strong comeback. The strong outlook for profits is why
many investors are giving similarly stretched valuations the benefit of the doubt. Trading at 32 times reported
earnings, the S&P 500 looks quite expensive, but with income forecast to jump 24% to $173 a share this year, the
multiple drops to about 23.
The valuation case becomes more favorable should business leaders continue to blow past expectations. For instance,
if this year's earnings come in at 16% above analyst estimates, as they did for the previous quarter, that'd imply a
price-earnings ratio of less than 20. While that exceeds the five-year average of 18, Ed Yardeni is not troubled by
what he calls "the New Abnormal."
"Valuation multiples are likely to remain elevated around current elevated levels because fiscal and monetary
policies continue to flood the financial markets with so much free money," said the founder of Yardeni Research Inc.
He predicts the S&P 500 will finish the year at 4,300, about an 8% gain from current levels.
Still, it's hard to ignore the risks to underlying assumptions. While rock-bottom rates underpin many of the arguments, this year
has shown that the Fed still is willing to let longer-term interest rates run higher. And betting on huge upside earnings
surprises is risky too -- it's rare to see a 16% beat historically. Before last year, earnings had exceeded estimates by an
average 3% a quarter since 2015.
"This happens in every bubble," said Bill Callahan, an investment strategist at Schroders. "It's: 'Don't think about the
traditional value metrics, we have a new one.' It's: 'Imagine if everyone did XYZ, how big this company could be.'"
Returns of 2%
Valuations are never useful market-timing tools because expensive stocks can get more expensive, as was the case during the
Internet bubble. Yet viewed through a long-term lens, valuations do matter. That is, the more over-valued the market is, the
lower the future returns. According to a study by Bank of America strategists led by Savita Subramanian, things like
price-earnings ratios could explain 80% of the S&P 500's returns during the subsequent 10 years. The current valuation framework
implies an increase of just 2% a year over the next decade, their model shows.
To Scott Knapp, chief market strategist of CUNA Mutual Group, abandoning standard valuation measures because the environment has
changed places investors in "pretty sketchy territory." Talk of watershed moments rendering traditional metric irrelevant as a
signal, he says.
"That's usually an indication we're trying to justify something," he said.
"In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to
live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it.
So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to
themselves."
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929
"Foolishness is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against
evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within
itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense
of unease.
In conversation with them, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person,
but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of them. They are under a
spell, blinded, misused, and abused in their very being."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prisoner for God: Letters and Papers from Prison
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated
communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no
longer exists."
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
"When we trade the effort of doubt and debate for the ease of blind faith, we become
gullible and exposed, passive and irresponsible observers of our own lives. Worse still, we
leave ourselves wide open to those who profit by influencing our behavior, our thinking, and
our choices. At that moment, our agency in our own lives is in jeopardy."
Margaret Heffernan
Today was a general wash and rinse in the markets.
Wax on, wax off.
If you look at the charts you will see the deep plunges in the early trading hours in stocks
and the metals, especially silver.
Simply put, it is called running the stops.
This is not 'the government' doing this.
These are the monstrous financial entities that we have allowed lax regulation and years of
propagandizing to create, in the biggest Banks and hedge funds.
Most will run back to the familiar sources of their ideological addiction, the so-called
'news sites' that thrive on the internet and alternative radio funded by the oligarchs.
If you are one of those who cannot wait to run back to your familiar ideological watering
hole to relieve the tension of thought, you might just be one of the willfully blind and
lost.
Truth is more palatable to the sick at heart when it has been twisted out of shape.
The good news perhaps is that a cleaning out like this often proceeds a resumption of a move
higher.
First they kick off the riff raff. Oh, certainly that does not include you, but those
others, right?
Or not. It is not easy to think like a criminal when you are not privy to the same jealously
guarded information and perverse perspective on life.
On the lighter side I have experienced no side effects from the first dose of the
Coronavirus vaccine which I had the other day.
Let's see if the second shot has the same results.
The whole experience reminded me of 'Sabin Oral Sunday' back in 1960. I don't recall any
anti-vaxxer or ideologically driven whack-a-doodlism back then, but I was too young to
care. And polio shots were no fun. But it beat doing time in an iron lung.
How many people are really out of work? The answer is surprisingly difficult to ascertain.
For reasons that are likely ideological at least in part, official unemployment figures greatly
under-report the true number of people lacking necessary full-time work.
That the "reserve army of labor" is quite large goes a long way toward explaining the
persistence of stagnant wages in an era of increasing productivity.
How large? Across North America, Europe and Australia, the real unemployment rate is
approximately double the "official" unemployment rate.
The "official" unemployment rate in the United States, for example, was 5.5 percent for
February 2015. That is the figure that is widely reported. But the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics keeps track of various other unemployment rates, the most pertinent being its "U-6"
figure. The U-6 unemployment rate includes all who are counted as unemployed in the "official"
rate, plus discouraged workers, the total of those employed part time but not able to secure
full-time work and all persons marginally attached to the labor force (those who wish to work
but have given up). The actual U.S. unemployment rate for February 2015, therefore, is 11 percent .
Canada makes it much more difficult to know its
real unemployment rate. The official Canadian
unemployment rate for February was 6.8 percent, a slight increase from January that
Statistics Canada attributes to "more people search[ing] for work." The official measurement in
Canada, as in the U.S., European Union and Australia, mirrors the official standard for
measuring employment defined by the International Labour Organization -- those not working at
all and who are "actively looking for work." (The ILO is an agency of the United Nations.)
Statistics Canada's closest measure toward counting full unemployment is its R8 statistic,
but the R8 counts people in part-time work, including those wanting full-time work, as
"full-time equivalents," thus underestimating the number of under-employed by hundreds of
thousands,
according to an analysis by The Globe and Mail . There are further hundreds of
thousands not counted because they do not meet the criteria for "looking for work." Thus
The Globe and Mail analysis estimates Canada's real unemployment rate for 2012 was
14.2 percent rather than the official 7.2 percent. Thus Canada's true current unemployment rate
today is likely about 14 percent.
Everywhere you look, more are out of work
The gap is nearly as large in Europe as in North America. The official European Union
unemployment rate was 9.8
percent in January 2015 . The European Union's Eurostat service requires some digging to
find out the actual unemployment rate, requiring adding up different parameters. Under-employed
workers and discouraged workers comprise four percent of the E.U. workforce each, and if we add
the one percent of those seeking work but not immediately available, that pushes the
actual unemployment rate to about 19 percent.
The same pattern holds for Australia. The Australia Bureau of Statistics revealed that its
measure of "extended labour force under-utilisation" -- this includes "discouraged" jobseekers,
the "underemployed" and those who want to start work within a month, but cannot begin
immediately -- was
13.1 percent in August 2012 (the latest for which I can find), in contrast to the
"official," and far more widely reported, unemployment rate of five percent at the time.
Concomitant with these sobering statistics is the length of time people are out of work. In
the European Union, for example, the long-term unemployment rate -- defined as the number of
people out of work for at least 12 months --
doubled from 2008 to 2013 . The number of U.S. workers unemployed for six months or longer
more than tripled from
2007 to 2013.
Thanks to the specter of chronic high unemployment, and capitalists' ability to transfer
jobs overseas as "free trade" rules become more draconian, it comes as little surprise that the
share of gross domestic income going to wages has declined steadily. In the U.S., the share has
declined from 51.5 percent in 1970 to about 42 percent. But even that decline likely
understates the amount of compensation going to working people because almost all gains in
recent decades has gone to the top one percent.
The increased ability of capital to move at will around the world has done much to
exacerbate these trends. The desire of capitalists to depress wages to buoy profitability is a
driving force behind their push for governments to adopt "free trade" deals that accelerate the
movement of production to low-wage, regulation-free countries. On a global basis, those with
steady employment are actually a minority of the world's workers.
Using International Labour Organization figures as a starting point, professors John Bellamy
Foster and Robert McChesney calculate that the "global reserve army of labor" -- workers who
are underemployed, unemployed or "vulnerably employed" (including informal workers) -- totals
2.4 billion. In contrast, the world's wage workers total 1.4 billion -- far less! Writing in
their book The Endless
Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to
China , they write:
"It is the existence of a reserve army that in its maximum extent is more than 70 percent
larger than the active labor army that serves to restrain wages globally, and particularly in
poorer countries. Indeed, most of this reserve army is located in the underdeveloped
countries of the world, though its growth can be seen today in the rich countries as well."
[page 145]
The earliest countries that adopted capitalism could "export" their "excess" population
though mass emigration. From 1820 to 1915, Professors Foster and McChesney write, more than 50
million people left Europe for the "new world." But there are no longer such places for
developing countries to send the people for whom capitalism at home can not supply employment.
Not even a seven percent growth rate for 50 years across the entire global South could absorb
more than a third of the peasantry leaving the countryside for cities, they write. Such a
sustained growth rate is extremely unlikely.
As with the growing environmental crisis, these mounting economic problems are functions of
the need for ceaseless growth. Once again, infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet,
especially one that is approaching its limits. Worse, to keep the system functioning at all,
the planned
obsolescence of consumer products necessary to continually stimulate household spending
accelerates the exploitation of natural resources at unsustainable rates and all this
unnecessary consumption produces pollution increasingly stressing the environment.
Humanity is currently consuming the equivalent of one and a
half earths , according to the non-profit group Global Footprint Network. A separate report
by WWF–World Wide Fund For Nature in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London
and Global Footprint Network, calculates that the Middle East/Central Asia, Asia-Pacific, North
America and European Union regions are each consuming about double their
regional biocapacity.
We have only one Earth. And that one Earth is in the grips of a system that takes at a pace
that, unless reversed, will leave it a wrecked hulk while throwing ever more people into
poverty and immiseration. That this can go on indefinitely is the biggest fantasy.
"Underfunded" is a euphemism for "have students with low test scores." E.g., "Washington
D.C.'s underfunded schools."
D.C. spent around $30,115 per pupil in 2016-17, while in 2017-18, nearby Arlington County
was expected to spend $19,340, the City of Falls Church to spend $18,219; the City of
Alexandria, $17,099; Montgomery County, $16,030; Fairfax County, $14,767; Prince George's
County, $13,816; Loudoun County, $13,688; City of Manassas, $12,846; City of Manassas Park,
$11,242; and Prince William County, $11,222.
In 2015, you wrote extensively about your concerns over neoliberalism in academia, calling
it the worst threat to education. You wrote: "In order to offset the lack of public funding,
administrators have raised tuition with students becoming the primary consumers and
debt-holders. Institutions have entered into research partnerships with industry shifting the
pursuit of truth to the pursuit of profits." To accelerate this "molting," they have "
hired a larger and larger number of short-term, part-time adjuncts ."
This has created large armies of transient and disposable workers who "are in no position to
challenge the university's practices or agitate for "democratic rather than monetary
goals."
Yes, neoliberalism is hegemonic. It affects all minority communities...
"Underfunded" is a euphemism for "have students with low test scores." E.g., "Washington
D.C.'s underfunded schools." Presumably, it means "underfunded relative to some theoretical
amount of money, such as a gajillion dollars, that would be sufficient to raise these
students' test scores to average."
My dad was a school administrator in one of the top county public school systems in the
country. A politically deep-blue part of the country. He retired in the early '80's. I
remember him telling me once after he retired that his school(s) would get constant demands
from the school board to raise black (not many Hispanics then) test scores. He said the
school(s) focused all kinds of resources on black students which yielded no appreciable
results. He then said, "You know how we raised black test scores to the level demanded? We
fudged the numbers."
Justin Anderson
Sat, March 27, 2021, 8:15 AM
Study: The typical investment adviser can't beat the S&P 500
If you work with an investment adviser, you've probably had a moment or two when you've lamented how much you're paying in
fees.
And it's normal and healthy to regularly ask yourself -- and your adviser -- what you're supposed to be getting in return for
those fees.
If your adviser answers that they're paid to "beat the market," it may be time to seriously re-evaluate the relationship.
Because you might do better just using
one
of today's popular investing apps
and putting your money into an S&P 500 index fund.
The fact is, most people who are paid to deliver higher returns than the stock market as a whole can't do it. Data from the
S&P Dow Jones Indices shows 60% of large-cap equity fund managers underperformed the S&P 500 in 2020.
It was the 11th straight year the majority of fund managers lost to the market.
There are plenty of good reasons to pay an adviser or certified financial planner to
help
handle your investments
, but beating the S&P 500 isn't one of them. The data says it probably won't happen.
What financial pros are up against
Andrey_Popov / Shutterstock
The S&P 500 has delivered inflation-adjusted returns of about 7% per year, on average, for the past 40 years.
So to beat the market, a financial adviser would need to design a portfolio that gets better returns than that.
Is it possible in a given year? Sure it is -- plenty of investors and mutual fund managers do it.
But is it possible to predict who will do it? And does the possibility justify the fees charged by the most prestigious fund
managers, many of which operate on a "two and 20" model (2% of the portfolio's value plus 20% of profits)?
Buffett's famous bet
Laurent Gillieron/EPA/Shutterstock
Warren Buffett, who's justifiably famous for his
sage
money advice
, has frequently argued that, for most people, a simple market-pegged portfolio is a smarter investment
strategy than trying to pick winning stocks.
In January 2008, Buffett put this belief to the test: He bet a prominent hedge fund manager a million dollars that an S&P
index fund would deliver better returns over 10 years than a fancy and expensive hedge fund portfolio consisting of actively
selected stocks.
Buffett made this bet
before
the stock market collapsed during the financial crisis of that same year. But it didn't
matter -- by 2015, the hedge fund manager had waved the white flag and admitted he'd lost.
Buffett's index fund had made 7.1% per year; the hedge fund had made 2.2%. It wasn't even close.
Absurd NFT PRices Expose a Global Financial House of Cards
BY SKWEALTHACADEMY
FRIDAY, MAR 26, 2021 - 5:59
The
insanity of absurd NFT prices reveals the fraud of the global currency system. The pricing for assets worldwide has gone
insane at a time when the vast majority of the world's population became poorer, not wealthier, over the past 12 months due
to the global economic lockdowns. As an example, there was an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer the other day of
a
cassette tape of hip hop icon Nas's Illmatic album selling for $13,999
. Not a CD, but a cassette tape. A rectangular
piece of cardboard, known as an NBA trading card, for star
Luka
Doncic's rookie trading card, recently auctioned for $4.6M.
Luka Doncic is not a star that played in 1925, and for this
reason, his rookie card is worth so much. Luka Doncic entered the NBA in the 2018-19 season, less than three years ago.
Nostalgic or collector items are simply selling for insane price because, in my opinion, wealthy people have captured so
much of the world's wealth through a global currency system designed and engineered to produce this end result, that they
have no better use for their money than to pay $14,000 for a music item that the vast majority of people do not even have
the necessary hardware to actually play and to pay more than $4.5M for a piece of cardboard. Anyone that truly understands
the difference between a sound and an unsound monetary system realizes that the likelihood, under a sound monetary system,
of people paying exorbitant prices for the types of assets and NFTs described above would be a fraction of the probability
at which they are occurring today.
Banksy, a
UK-based street artist infamous for mocking the very wealthy people that pay millions for his artwork, even titling a piece
"Morons" which depicted an art auction with a framed picture of the words "I can't believe you morons actually buy this
shit". Instead of being offended by the artist's mockery, someone paid nearly 44,000 pounds for it and it recently sold
for nearly 10 times the original purchase price when the piece was destroyed and the act of destruction was turned into an
NFT. By the way Banksy also sold a very simple drawing of a girl with a red balloon that was mounted inside a frame in
which he had hidden a shredder. After it sold for $1.4M, Banksy remotely activated the hidden shredder and shredded his
artwork into thin strips as perhaps "revenge" against the idiocy of narcissistic, wealthy art collectors that can't find
any better use of their money than purchasing stencil created art for which no rational person would ever pay $1.4M. To
demonstrate the idiocy of the art world, Sotheby's immediately coined the shredding of the art piece as "the first work in
history ever created during a live auction", which art collectors worldwide seemed to accept, and thereby increased the
value of the destroyed piece of art to perhaps as high as double the original auction price at the current time and
avoiding a more rational valuation for the art piece to near zero.
I once read
a book called the $12M Stuffed Shark, in which the author revealed that US hedge fund manager Steve Cohen paid $12M to an
artist to kill a shark and put it in a vat of plexiglass sealed formaldehyde that he could display in the foyer of his
house and basically concluded, after a careful introspection into the art world, that pieces of art like pyramids built
from tiny Godiva chocolates and stainless-steel colored balloon animals
($58M
or more)
would be priced at whatever price dealers could convince the dumbest rich person it was worth. Certainly this
conclusion seemed to be supported when someone purchased an
"art
installation" of a banana taped to the wall with duct tape at a Miami Beach art gallery for $120,000 at the end of 2019
.
When people conclude that the best use for $5M or $58M is to buy a piece of cardboard or a steel balloon animal during a
period in which Rome is burning (i.e. exploding homelessness numbers in Los Angeles nearing 70,000 as evidenced
here
and
here
),
either this is a sign of the fraud of the monetary system, the decline of civilization, or both. If you have ever lived in
Los Angeles, as I have, and watch the video referenced in the second link, you will find it astonishing that massive
homeless encampments have sprung up throughout Los Angeles in areas that prior to recent years, had no homelessness.
(depending on the social media platform you may be watching this on, the soaring prices for which art that I consider to be
the lowest form of art that many do not even consider as art is selling for such absurd prices, including NFTs that I will
soon discuss, is certainly reflective of the rapid decline of civilization.
This rapid
decline of civilization is also reflected in the fact that giant titans of the tech world and social media platforms
continue to promote and push the most morally reprehensible content to the top positions of success on their platforms.
When popular YouTube Logan Paul visited the "suicide forest" in Japan and found a dead body hanging from the tree, he
filmed it and mocked the dead person and YouTube quickly promoted his video as one of their top trending videos on their
entire platform for 24 hours, until Logan Paul, not YouTube executives, deleted the video due to the outrage it provoked.
Another popular YouTuber, David Dobrik, has had many of his reprehensible videos monetize bullying and belittling of
others, often promoted on YouTube among the top trending videos. Recently Dobrik came under fire for allegedly monetizing a
video of an actual rape on his channel, and he was roundly mocked when his initial apology consisted of trying to blame the
rape victim, who was allegedly underage and too drunk to consent to sex. In his "apology", Dobrik stated he always gains
consent for his videos, but sometimes people he victimizes consent at first but then change their minds later, and that is
why it appears in many of his videos that he is monetizing morally reprehensible behavior. In any event, YouTube executives
allegedly allowed such morally and cowardly behavior to be monetized to massive sums of income for such YouTubers and seem
to be more focused on demonetizing anyone that challenges a narrative, true or false, forwarded by the oligarchs.
And as
ludicrous as are the prices paid for some of the assets I've mentioned above, the level of insanity paid for NFTs, in my
opinion, are at an even exponentially higher level. For those of you that may not know what are NFTs, Non-Fungible Tokens
are unique blockchain-based digital assets that represent an increasing number of commodities, from art and real estate to
collectibles like sports trading cards. One platform, Original Protocol, recently auctioned off the world's first NFT music
album by American DJ 3LAU. Collectively, the artist's fanbase
paid
out more than $11 million
for 33 NFTs contained on 3LAU's album Ultraviolet. In this case, since musicians are
routinely ripped off by giant record labels and often have such suffocating, unfair contracts that make it near impossible
to earn any significant income from album releases, the digitization of music in the form of NFTs that allow musicians to
control their income is a wonderful aspect of the new digital economy of NFTs.
The
Non-Fungibility of NFTs and Most Cryptocurrencies Disqualify Them for Use in Financial Derivative Currency Swaps
NFTs sell
digital representations of items, including some that used to be represented in the physical world, like trading cards and
pieces of art. As is the case in the fine art world, an NFT's price is the highest price you can convince someone to pay
for it, a pool of clients that often overlaps with the over indulgent, narcissistic people that comprise the bidders for
modern art pieces that sell for millions of dollars. Perhaps the most amazing quality of NFTs is that they actually have a
more meaningful value than any cryptocurrency not backed by any type of hard asset. For example, bitcoin is a digital
asset, but one would be hard pressed to describe its intrinsic value. One cannot say its fungibility is its price because
its price is denominated in fiat currencies with intrinsic values of near zero. Furthermore, for those that constantly and
very wrongly argue that non hard-asset backed cryptocurrencies are sound money, if bankers truly believed that bitcoin even
remotely qualified as sound money, they would have zero problem offering currency swap derivative contracts between any
fiat currency and bitcoin.
Yet, there
is not a single corporation in the entire world that has a currency swap that hedges their corporate cash treasury holdings
with bitcoin. You can never have any type of financial contract without unlimited risk if it is denominated in bitcoin in
which both parties realistically have no idea of the price range of that currency for the maturity of that contract. No
rational party will lock themselves into a contract in which a currency presents unlimited risk to them. The simple
understanding of why there are no derivative currency swaps or hedging contracts denominated in bitcoin should easily
explain to any rational person the very reason why BTC is not considered as sound money by a single banker in the entire
world. On the contrary, even as volatile in price as gold and silver may be, gold and silver mining companies routinely
hedge their inventory risk and their revenue risk of yet-to-be-mined gold and silver ounces by establishing open positions
of gold and silver futures contracts years into the future.
You can't
argue that BTC's intrinsic value is the block of the blockchain that records the transaction, because whether that block is
used to record an NFT, BTC, or ownership of real estate, a photo or song, the price represented by that block could
possibly vary from just a few dollars to several million dollars. So the blockchain has no intrinsic value either. However,
with NFTs, its value, is more uniquely determinable than the block upon which a bitcoin transaction is stored that records
the price of bitcoin, because that value is simply the highest price willing to be paid by all available bidders at any
given time. If there are no available bidders willing to bid on a particular NFT for weeks or perhaps months on end, then
one can assume the price of that NFT, even if the last paid price was $100,000, is likely zero. But even if there is one
available bidder for that NFT at a price of $1,000,000 then the market price of that NFT is $1M. Though one may state that
the bidding mechanism is much more controlled in BTC markets and that BTC could never be priced at zero or $1M per BTC in
such a cavalier manner that mimics the pricing of NFTs, the similarities between the pricing mechanisms based upon lack of
fungibility should not be ignored when considering the inherent risk imbedded in the price of BTC in its near $60,000 per
coin current price. You will either understand this risk and behave accordingly, or ignore this risk and likely expose
yourself to strong downside risk in the future at some point that should be expected but will remain unexpected to those
that cannot, or will not, accept this existing risk.
The five
biggest whales that own BTC in order from top to bottom,
are
believed to be as follows:
(1) The collective of institutions/people called Satoshi Nakamoto; (2) The FBI; (3) The
Winklevoss Twins; (4) Micree Zhan; and (5) Jihan Wu. Other notable owners among the top 10 BTC whales are Huobi, Tim Draper
and the North Korean State. In 2017, Bloomberg reported that only 1,000 people owned 40% of all BTC in the entire world.
Given that in the past two years, it has been reported that the top whales had been cornering the BTC market and increasing
their market share, it would not be surprising if they had increased their market share to 50% or perhaps even higher by
2021. In any event, this translates into 0.00012658% of the world's population likely controlling majority ownership of
BTC. I don't know of any world in which such a statistic does not translate into enormous risk.
Unanswered
Questions
But
fungibility is what reveals why cryptocurrencies like BTC and NFTs cannot ever qualify as sound money. For those that don't
understand why sound money needs to be a fungible asset, take gold for example. Fungibility essentially means that money
should never vary in its qualitative properties but only its quantitative properties. All gold has electroconductivity
properties no matter its form. Electroconductivity is an intrinsic quality of gold. Because all purified four nine gold has
the same density, the same volume will always be measured by the exact same weight in grams, again another fungible quality
of gold. However, depending on how paper gold futures markets are being manipulated and the date, that same gram of gold
will vary wildly in fiat currency price. Fiat currency price, thus can never be the quantitative property used to value
gold. Weight is the constant that should be used for gold's value when it is to be used as sound money, because this
quantitative property is always unwavering, always constant no matter if one is using gold as money in Moscow, Capetown,
Montevideo, Santiago, Montreal, Phoenix, Miami, Mogadishu, Kiev, Paris, Heidelberg, Reykjavik, Chiangmai, or Seoul.
What
quantitative property of bitcoin that is consistent and always the same across all uses? This is a question without an
answer. For this same reason, NFTs could never serve as sound money either. No matter the latest fiat currency price paid
for a Banksy "Morons" drawing set on fire, how can one determine the exchange rate for this NFT and an NFT representing a
Mark Cuban tweet. Should the Banksy NFT be priced 10 million times higher than a Mark Cuban tweet NFT? Is an NBA TopShot
NFT worth 1/1000 the price of a Banksy burning piece of art NFT? And even though NFTs have more uniqueness than say, a
satoshi of BTC, because price assigned to that uniqueness is entirely subjective, the uniqueness leaves it no more fit to
use as sound money than a cryptocurrency that has no backing of a hard asset. Miami-based art collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile
proved the absurd pricing mechanism for NFT when he recently sold an NFT that he acquired for $66,666 in October,
a
10-second computer-generated video clip of a slogan-covered giant Donald Trump created by digital artist Beeple
, for
mor than 100 times his original cost at $6.6M.
The last
point of irony in the BTC is the solution to the unsound global fiat currency system narrative is that many HODLers of BTC
are well aware of the oligarch's use of their power consolidation strategy of (1) Create a crisis; (2) Present the solution
to the artificially created crisis; and (3) Implement the solution to consolidate power, yet will never give any type of
consideration to the possibility of how perfectly the creation of BTC, in response to the 2008 global financial crisis,
fits this exact historical narrative that oligarchs have repeatedly implemented, instead choosing to believe that BTC is
the special unique exception to this oft-deployed strategy.
This
despite, three US employees of the Central Bank, Galina Hale, Marianna Kudlyak, and Patrick Shultz, and one US university
professor, Arvind Krishnamurthy, admitting that the premise I presented to my social media followers in December of 2017,
when BTC hit $20,000, that the introduction of the US bitcoin futures market was going to be used to slash the BTC price
drastically, essentially writing the premise for the referenced US Central Banker paper five months before it was written.
In that paper, titled "How Futures Changed Bitcoin Prices", the four authors basically echoed my premise, and stated,
"We suggest
that the rapid rise of the price of bitcoin and its decline following issuance of futures on the CME is consistent with
pricing dynamics suggested elsewhere in financial theory and with previously observed trading behavior. Namely, optimists
bid up the price before financial instruments are available to short the market (Fostel and Geanakoplos 2012). Once
derivatives markets become sufficiently deep, short-selling pressure from pessimists leads to a sharp decline in value.
While we understand some of the factors that play a role in determining the long-run price of bitcoin, our understanding of
the transactional benefits of bitcoin is too imprecise to quantify this long-run price. But as speculative dynamics
disappear from the bitcoin market, the transactional benefits are likely to be the factor that will drive valuation."
While they
did not name the players in the BTC futures markets that drove BTC prices downward from $20,000 to $3,000 in 2018, the
implication is that Central Bankers were involved in this downward spiral. And if Central Bankers were involved in this
downward spiral, the downward price spiral would of course, been far easier to execute, if Central Bankers were also among
the members of the collective that constitutes the largest BTC whale, Satoshi Nakamoto. Even though these dots, though
purely speculative, are clearly possible, most every BTC HODLer that is confident in the achievement of end-year $300,000
BTC prices or higher, will never consider this possibility, even for a nanosecond, despite heavy suggestions of three US
Central Bank employees that Central Bankers were involved in the 2018 BTC price crash. But if one did, as is the rational
and logical thing to do, then one would have far greater difficulties distinguishing the mechanisms that set the price for
NFTs and BTC. And as the introduction of the first BTC ETFs seem to be on the near horizon now, one would be smart to heed
the lessons learned after trading of BTC futures was introduced at the end of 2017. Subscribe to my
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Listen to this article 6 minutes 00:00 / 06:06 1x Earnings, valuation and rampant speculation have all played a role in the extraordinary bull market that began a year ago this week. The latest combination of the three has a troubling reliance on the speculative element. A broad framework for thinking about stocks can be derived from the late economist Hyman Minsky's three stages of debt. In the first stage, borrowers take on only what they can afford to repay in full from their earnings by the time the debt matures; a standard mortgage works like this. Earnings, valuation and rampant speculation have all played a role in the extraordinary bull market that began a year ago this week. The latest combination of the three has a troubling reliance on the speculative element. A broad framework for thinking about stocks can be derived from the late economist Hyman Minsky's three stages of debt. In the first stage, borrowers take on only what they can afford to repay in full from their earnings by the time the debt matures; a standard mortgage works like this. A broad framework for thinking about stocks can be derived from the late economist Hyman Minsky's three stages of debt. In the first stage, borrowers take on only what they can afford to repay in full from their earnings by the time the debt matures; a standard mortgage works like this. A broad framework for thinking about stocks can be derived from the late economist Hyman Minsky's three stages of debt. In the first stage, borrowers take on only what they can afford to repay in full from their earnings by the time the debt matures; a standard mortgage works like this. U.S. 10-year Treasury yield Source: Tullett Prebon As of March 24 % Pre-pandemic peak of S&P 500 2020 '21 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 S&P 500 forward price/earnings ratio Source: Refinitiv Note: Weekly data S&P 500 peak 2020 '21 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 The parallel in the stock market is stocks going up when earnings -- or rather the expectation of earnings, since the market looks ahead -- go up. There is a risk of course, just as there is with debt: The earnings might not appear, and the stock goes back down. But earnings offer the least risky form of gains, and one that we should welcome as obviously justified. From the low in the summer, 2020 earnings forecasts jumped more than 10%, and expectations for this year rose more than 8%. Stocks responded. In Minsky's second stage, borrowers plan only to repay the interest, and refinance when the main debt is due to be repaid; much company debt works like this. It is taken out with a plan to roll it over indefinitely. Interest rates matter a lot: If they go down when the company needs to refinance, it will pay less. The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might be hit no matter how earnings pan out. A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the The parallel in the stock market is stocks going up when earnings -- or rather the expectation of earnings, since the market looks ahead -- go up. There is a risk of course, just as there is with debt: The earnings might not appear, and the stock goes back down. But earnings offer the least risky form of gains, and one that we should welcome as obviously justified. From the low in the summer, 2020 earnings forecasts jumped more than 10%, and expectations for this year rose more than 8%. Stocks responded. In Minsky's second stage, borrowers plan only to repay the interest, and refinance when the main debt is due to be repaid; much company debt works like this. It is taken out with a plan to roll it over indefinitely. Interest rates matter a lot: If they go down when the company needs to refinance, it will pay less. The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might be hit no matter how earnings pan out. A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the In Minsky's second stage, borrowers plan only to repay the interest, and refinance when the main debt is due to be repaid; much company debt works like this. It is taken out with a plan to roll it over indefinitely. Interest rates matter a lot: If they go down when the company needs to refinance, it will pay less. The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might be hit no matter how earnings pan out. A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the In Minsky's second stage, borrowers plan only to repay the interest, and refinance when the main debt is due to be repaid; much company debt works like this. It is taken out with a plan to roll it over indefinitely. Interest rates matter a lot: If they go down when the company needs to refinance, it will pay less. The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might be hit no matter how earnings pan out. A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might be hit no matter how earnings pan out. A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the The equity parallel is to gains in valuation due to lower long-term rates. As with corporate debt, this is entirely justified and sustainable so long as rates stay low, because future earnings are now more appealing. The danger is that rates rise, in which case the stock might be hit no matter how earnings pan out. A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the A big chunk of the gains in stocks in the past year came from the sharply lower rates in the first response to the pandemic when the Federal Reserve flooded the system with money. Price-to-forward-earnings multiples soared. From the S&P 500's low on March 23 to the end of June, the market went from 14 to more than 21 times estimated earnings 12 months ahead, even as those estimated earnings fell amid lockdown gloom. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, already down sharply from mid-February's high, fell further as stocks rebounded. In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the In Minsky's third phase, borrowers take loans where they can't afford to pay either the interest or principal from income, in the hope of capital gains big enough to make up the gap. Land speculators are a prime example. The parallel in the stock market is the The parallel in the stock market is the The parallel in the stock market is the hunt for the greater fool . Sure, GameStop < shares bear no relation to the reality < of the company, but I can make money from buying an overpriced stock if I can find someone willing to pay even more because they "like the stock." Wild bets became obvious this year, as newcomers armed with stimulus, or "stimmy," checks Wild bets became obvious this year, as newcomers armed with stimulus, or "stimmy," checks Wild bets became obvious this year, as newcomers armed with stimulus, or "stimmy," checks drove up the price of many tiny stocks, penny shares and those popular on Reddit discussion boards. Speculative bets such as the solar and ARK ETFs rallied up until mid-February, long after growth stocks peaked in August Price performance Source: FactSet *Russell 1000 indexes As of March 25, 7:02 p.m. ET % Invesco Solar Value* ARK Innovation Growth* Sept. 2020 '21 -25 0 25 50 75 100 125 The concern for investors: How much of the market's gain is thanks to this pure speculation, and how much to the justifiable gains of the improving economy and low rates? If too much comes from speculation, the danger is that we run out of greater fools and prices quickly drop back. The concern for investors: How much of the market's gain is thanks to this pure speculation, and how much to the justifiable gains of the improving economy and low rates? If too much comes from speculation, the danger is that we run out of greater fools and prices quickly drop back. me title= A look at how stocks moved through the pandemic suggests earnings and bond yields are still much more important than the gambling element for the market as a whole, but is still troubling. From the S&P peak in mid-February to the end of June, the story was of cratering earnings partly offset by higher valuations. The S&P was down 8%. Earnings forecasts for 12 months ahead fell 20%, while with 10-year yields down almost a full percentage point, valuations were up from a precrisis high of 19 times forecast earnings (itself the highest since the aftermath of the dot-com bubble) to 21 times. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. A look at how stocks moved through the pandemic suggests earnings and bond yields are still much more important than the gambling element for the market as a whole, but is still troubling. From the S&P peak in mid-February to the end of June, the story was of cratering earnings partly offset by higher valuations. The S&P was down 8%. Earnings forecasts for 12 months ahead fell 20%, while with 10-year yields down almost a full percentage point, valuations were up from a precrisis high of 19 times forecast earnings (itself the highest since the aftermath of the dot-com bubble) to 21 times. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. A look at how stocks moved through the pandemic suggests earnings and bond yields are still much more important than the gambling element for the market as a whole, but is still troubling. From the S&P peak in mid-February to the end of June, the story was of cratering earnings partly offset by higher valuations. The S&P was down 8%. Earnings forecasts for 12 months ahead fell 20%, while with 10-year yields down almost a full percentage point, valuations were up from a precrisis high of 19 times forecast earnings (itself the highest since the aftermath of the dot-com bubble) to 21 times. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. From the S&P peak in mid-February to the end of June, the story was of cratering earnings partly offset by higher valuations. The S&P was down 8%. Earnings forecasts for 12 months ahead fell 20%, while with 10-year yields down almost a full percentage point, valuations were up from a precrisis high of 19 times forecast earnings (itself the highest since the aftermath of the dot-com bubble) to 21 times. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. From the S&P peak in mid-February to the end of June, the story was of cratering earnings partly offset by higher valuations. The S&P was down 8%. Earnings forecasts for 12 months ahead fell 20%, while with 10-year yields down almost a full percentage point, valuations were up from a precrisis high of 19 times forecast earnings (itself the highest since the aftermath of the dot-com bubble) to 21 times. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. Growth stocks -- based on the Russell 1000 index of larger companies -- were slightly up, because they benefit most from falling bond yields, having more of their earnings far in the future. Cheap value stocks, which benefit less, were down 18%. NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP
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Since June the story has reversed. Earnings forecasts have soared, and this year's earnings predictions are now
back up to match where 2020 earnings were expected to be before the recession. The bond yield has leapt almost
a full percentage point, and is higher than it was last February.
Yet, since June, the market's overall valuation is slightly up, and growth stocks are up 23%. Sure, cheap value
stocks responded as expected, rising almost a third and beating growth stocks. But if a lower bond yield
justified the rise in valuations, a higher bond yield ought to mean lower valuations, and probably outright
lower prices for growth stocks.
This is concerning but, directionally at least, is explained by the oddity of August, when bond yields rose
alongside valuation multiples and
the
biggest technology stocks leapt in price
. Measure it from the end of August, instead of the end of June,
and valuations have dropped a bit as bond yields have risen.
But the fall isn't enough to provide much comfort, and worse is that the highly speculative stocks popular with
many individual traders bucked the trend. Notable themes including electric cars, hydrogen, SPACs and wind and
solar power went into ludicrous mode until the middle of February this year, when the rise in bond yields
accelerated and the speculative stocks fell back some.
Share prices propelled more by earnings expectations than bond yields is healthy, while speculation is -- by its
nature -- fickle, and so a poor basis for holding on to a stock for long. My hope is that the contribution of pure
gambling to the overall level of the market is relatively small. But it is hard to explain why stocks should be
so much higher than before the pandemic panic when the earnings outlook is worse and bond yields are back to
where they were.
P Paul Avila SUBSCRIBER 8 hours ago U.S. stocks edged higher Wednesday as investors
awaited more testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
Good grief. Is there any way his subordinates could prevent that? Perhaps lock him in a
supply closet until the market closes? Every time he opens his pie hole, I lose money.
W Will Bee SUBSCRIBER 8 hours ago Actually I suspect we are waiting for all the FED and
Treasury "people" to stop jawboning us so Markets can assimilate their irrelevance
Sellers got more than they listed for in 36% of deals in February, according to
Redfin
... the median home price of U.S. residences rose 14.4% last month, to $336,200, compared to
the same time the previous year, the data showed. That marks the biggest jump since July
2013.
Mar.24 -- Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) asks Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen if she would
direct the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to consider designating BlackRock as a
firm whose failure could threaten the financial system.
(Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Wednesday it is important to "look
carefully" at systemic risks posed by asset managers, including BlackRock Inc, but said
designating them as systematically important financial institutions may not be the right
approach.
Yellen's remarks came in response to questions from Senator Elizabeth Warren, a longtime
Wall Street critic, who demanded to know why BlackRock and other large asset managers had not
been added to the list of designated institutions.
"I believe it is important to look very carefully at the risks posed by the asset management
industry, including BlackRock and other firms," Yellen, who as Treasury secretary, chairs the
Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), which is charged with making such
designations.
"FSOC began to do that, I believe, in 2016 and 2017, but the risks it focused on were ones
having to do with open-end mutual funds that can experience massive withdrawals and be forced
to sell off assets that could create fire sales. That is actually a risk we saw materialize
last spring in March," she said.
In 2014, BlackRock and other asset managers won a battle in their fight against tighter
regulation when a panel of top financial regulators agreed to revamp their review of
asset-management firms to focus on potentially risky products and activities rather than
individual firms.
"I think that with respect to asset management, rather than focus on designation of
companies, I think it is important to focus on an activity like that and consider what the
appropriate restrictions are," Yellen said.
"The past two administrations in the US, and numerous global regulators, have studied our
industry for a decade and concluded that asset managers should be regulated differently from
banks, with the primary focus being on the industry's products and services," BlackRock said in
a statement.
The collapse of Greensill involved a predicable cast of unwise enablers, but it should
serve as a warning to the growing number of Alternative Asset buyers on the dangers of complex deals which promise much but
deliver less. Due diligence is critical in the highly illiquid alternatives sector.
You really can't make it up when it comes to the collapse of supply chain charlatan Greensill. I suspect it will make a great
film It should also send a judder down our spines, reminding us things are seldom what they seem in complex structured finance:
I'm wondering how many fund managers are quietly nervous about what's really in their alternative asset/direct lending
investment buckets this morning?
If I was a holder of complex European securitisation/receivables deals that promise much, but actually provide very little
information on the performance of underlying assets, then I might suddenly find an anxious desire to check just how they are
REALLY doing.
At least former UK premier David Cameron will be happy. A majority comprising Tory MPs on the UK's Treasury Select Committee
blocked
an inquiry
into Greensill yesterday on the basis it may be politically influenced. The fact
Call-Me-Dave
was
texting chancellor Rishi Sunak pleading for GFC to be a special case for Covid Bailout loans says it all about the dangers of
lobbying. The SNP will be equally delighted at the lack of scrutiny of dodgy dealings up in the Highlands.
The Greensill collapse is unlikely to be the last time financial chicanery is exposed as
sham. And that is why holders of European Alternatives and Asset backed transactions should be nervous. The lessons of the
Greensill deals are multiple:
Don't assume the deals you are sold are what you are told they are,
There is no substitute for deep due diligence.
Companies that look impossible to finance do not suddenly become AAA credits after a sprinkling of magic secured funding dust.
Anything promising of low-risk/high-returns from complex structuring and technical innovation is suspect.
Let's review the unfolding Greensill mess:
There over 1000 holders of the $10 bln plus of defaulted Greensill investment structures packaged and issued by Credit Suisse –
which marketed them as ultra-safe secured investments. Under the law, what the holders recover on these deals will rather depend
on how much the administrator and the courts can jemmy out of Sanjay Gupta's
dead-firm walking
;
steel and commodities business GFC Alliance. (I have no hesitation in saying GFC will go to the wall – there can't be a single
sane financial firm on the planet willing to finance them as the story of its' Greensill relationship emerges and its connected
in-house banking arrangements become clearer – although, apparently, a state rescue is under consideration to save jobs.)
Investors will be lucky to see much more than the 30% recovery already in the pot from non-Gupta related investments in the
Greensill funds – but Credit Suisse may decide to make its investors good. The reputational damage of seeing their private and
investment banking clients clobbered for their stupidity, which would negate their private banking brand, may mean it's worth
taking the hit. No wonder CS staff are very grumpy about their bonuses.
Successful financial scams require willing participants. All the usual fools are there in
the mix.
Yet again the German regulator missed what was going on in Greensill's German bank and its exposures to Gupta. The team at Credit
Suisse who agreed to warehouse Greensill originated "future receivables" and sell them as pristine secured assets have a limited
shelf life. The insurance broker who managed to convince an insurance fund the underlyings were AAA quality looks vulnerable. Or
what about the sales teams in Morgan Stanley who actually marketed the deals. Yet again Softbank is in the frame after it
invested in excess of $1.5 bln at a $4-7 bln valuation, hailing Greensill as a leading Finech, when the actual truth is that its
high-tech driven lending algos were nothing more than basic Excel spread sheets.
Greensill's financial magic was little more than sheer chutzpah – being able to persuade investors that the dull old low margin
conservative business of factoring – short-term secured lending against invoices and accounts receivable, was something
incredibly clever, undervalued and able to generate huge returns based on unique proprietary tech.
Greensill deals went further. Rather than just factoring Gupta's bills to suppliers and its invoices, the firm conjured up
"future receivables" – pledging the company's expected future earnings for lending now. That's not necessarily a bad thing – its
basic credit – but it only works if these earnings were completely predictable like obligated mortgage payments. What Greensill
was doing was lending on future earnings on very volatile commodities. Remember – oil prices went negative in 2020.
In return for funding challenging names we know Greensill took divots out these clients. It made over £36 mm financing Gupta's
deals in Scotland, and an amazing $108mm in fees from the $850mm Bluestone coal deals in the US – for which it is now being taken
to court. All these fees gave Lex Greensill the wherewithal for his private Air Greensill fleet – but didn't make the financings
any safer.
Any smart investors would probably have asked questions – but what's not to like about a deal that's secured on receivables,
offers a high coupon, is wrapped with an insurance package from reputable insurer and involves major investment firms like Credit
Suisse banking them, and Morgan Stanley marketing them?
One question is how did Greensill get away with it so long?
It was clear as early as 2017 there were major issues with some of the supply chain financing deals Greensill was putting
together. The following year a major Swiss investment group, GAM, blew up when deals a leading fund manager had bet the shop on
were questioned internally. A review by external investigators discovered a lack of information and documentation on a whole
series of Greensill deals. They questioned how due diligence was done on the deals. The fund manager was suspended and later
dismissed – triggering a redemption run on the fund. The whistle-blower was also shown the door on the back of massive client
exits.
GAM invested in the funds because it's very hard to turn down the promise of a low risk / high return deal that promised so much
more than the tiny yields available in conventional credit markets.
Despite the events at GAM, Credit Suisse went on to package $10 bln plus of Greensill deals. It was all done with an insurance
wrap from a single name put them in its safe bucket. I know other insurance firms refused the deals. The trigger for the collapse
of the Greensill scam was the withdrawl of that critical insurance – causing Credit Suisse to stop. Greensill has known for a
year Tokyo Marine (which sacked the underwriter involved) would not renew and had been unable to find alternative cover.
Perhaps Credit Suisse bought the story and Softbank link that Greensill was a remarkable new Fintech with the Midas touch of
changing dull, conservative factoring into a money machine? All that glitters is not gold.
One of the major developing themes in markets has been a shift from financial assets – which are seriously mispriced due to
monetary distortion and financial asset inflation – into real assets, the so-called alternatives market. Alternative because they
are not stocks or bonds, but cash flows and real assets. The collapse of Greensill will heighten awareness of due diligence risks
in these non-standard, off-market, asset backed alternatives. Alternative asset holders will be looking at holdings for what else
might be wobbly.
For instance, I might urge them not to be hypnotised by the assumptions underlying a well-known fund investing in music
royalties, the basis of which is also being questioned by analysts. (I certainly won't mention the fund by name as the manager is
a well-known litigant.) I have no reason to believe or disbelieve what analysts, the FT and a US investment bank have said about
it overpaying for assets or questioning the valuation hikes it puts on future revenues when it acquires catalogues. Personally I
like music assets, know their value, and, given certain circumstances the fund in question might come good. Equally.. it might
not.
To understand how these deals works its critical to understand exactly what's occurring within the structures – how real are the
assets, how the cash flows, how its accounted, and where it goes. That's why having top notch accountants and lawyers is such an
important requirement for any deal. However, if they are working in the interests of the issuers and bankers – then investors are
the likely patsies. There is a real difference between the way US and European Asset Backed deals are structured – basically US
deals are transparent. European deals tend to be opaque.
Alternative deals based on real assets and tangible cash flows are often, but not always, decorrelated from distorted financial
assets, allowing low risk deals to yield better long- term returns. They tick can the box in terms of risk vs return and provide
significant diversification away from conventional markets. The major negative is there is little pretence they will be liquid
assets. If you want to sell – even in good markets it will not be easy.
The only way you should participate in Alternative type deals is by knowing exactly what's going on. And – yes, my day job is
Head of Alternative Assets. Happy to discuss in depth any time.
Contrary to the previous immigrants - who were economic immigrants (not religious
immigrants, as the official history of the USA states) - the post-war immigrants to the USA
are all political immigrants. They're the remnants of South Vietnam, Kuomintang, South Korea,
Mensheviks, Refuseniks, Zionism, Batista's Cuba, Latin American comprador elites. I remember
that once Hugo Chávez or the then president of Ecuador claimed that in Florida alone
were more than 2,000 wanted people (most of them compradores and generals) enjoying political
refugee status.
The only exception to the rule are the Mexican immigrants and some Central American
immigrants (El Salvador, Guatemala in some cases), which had their economies dollarized or
devastated by the advent of NAFTA, and were by chance close to the USA's territory.
In the Spectator article linked -- thank you b and all -- Kimball quotes a canny friend
who said "I'd rather be ruled by the Chinese than the Yale faculty". Yes, I thought, that is
how the west is now.
I am a teacher in Australia's oldest university whose new vice-chancellor (CEO) is a pure
technocrat without academic background or a PhD.
This is the strange norm now: grey neoliberal managers are rushed into areas that require
specialists in order to 'streamline' or 'set up structures of accountability' or simply
hollow out the joint. This guy sees 'tech' as the answer, so will accelerate the pedagogical
catastrophe taking place across the world (Zoom-'teaching') whose implications are dystopian,
psychologically alienating and frankly depressing.
He is the Yale faculty at the local level; Blinken is the Yale faculty on the diplomatic
stage: a recognisable and familiar type of manager from no particular background whose career
is made leap-frogging from bureaucratisation process to bureaucratisation process.
He berates the Chinese thinking that they are the old faculty resisting the newspeak of
neoliberal managerialism, an empty meaningless feedback loop of tickboxing. The 'rules-based
order' is some imaginary thing produced in the mind of grey men to obscure their
self-aggrandisement in a vacuum; zero time has been invested in any thought about it. The
'Biden-Doctrine' is a vacuum of intellectual reflection. In short, Blinken simply doesn't
care about his job, he just cares about ticking a box on his CV as he sets himself up for the
promotion/next job. Where once we had career specialists dedicated to the actual job (like
Chas Freeman) now the whole world is run by these empty people. The consequences are very
depressing.
University administrators need not have doctoral or other academic achievements. What is
needed, in any enterprise, is the commitment to the health and to prosperity of that
enterprise.
In America, they promoted men who promised lower taxes and easier money. Men with dubious
loyalty to the long term health and well being of that country or her population. The results
is there for the world to see. Same in Italy; Mr. Berlusconi would promise to cut taxes, and
would omit to also mention that he would also cut state services. And foolish plebians would
vote for him.
When the late Mr. Khomeini came to power in Iran, one of his observations was that he
could not find enough men with integrity to put them in executive positions.
I would like to respectfully suggest to try to preserve what you can but do not try to be
a lean department or program. Maintain the "fat" so that you van save as much of the
scholarly muscle as you can when the cutting times come.
Also, reach out to the public and the alumni and ask for whatever help you can obtain. Use
Kung-Fu approaches, never attack directly. Keep trying to find alternative careers for your
older or newer faculties. Take any and all positive action and try to preserve Learning and
Scholarship for the future generations.
The late Joseph Stalin observed: "Cadres decide everything."
May be you cannot stop this, but you can delay and dlelay and derail, thus buying time for
people to adjust to their new circumstances.
That would be Mark Scott as Vice Chancellor of the University of Sydney? What a decline
from when Enoch Powell was Professor of Greek at Sydney. I greatly admire Powell's scholarly
work on Herodotus and his edition of Thucydides (one of my set texts when I was at Oxford).
How much of that work did he do at Sydney?
"....Yang responded sharply to the US officials and criticized Washington for both
domestic and foreign policy issues. "The United States uses its military force and financial
hegemony to carry out long arm jurisdiction and suppress other countries," he said. "It
abuses so-called notions of national security to obstruct normal trade exchanges, and incite
some countries to attack China."
"....The US took several steps ahead of the talks that made it clear the meeting would be
contentious. Blinken visited Japan and South Korea with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin
earlier this week. While meeting with his Japanese and Korean counterparts, Blinken slammed
Beijing, accusing China of using "coercion and aggression" in the region. On Wednesday, the
US slapped sanctions on 24 Chinese and Hong Kong officials...."
using coercion and aggression - two very definitive qualities of American Imperialism post
WWII
Now they are pushing the "China genociding Uyghurs" lies to frame the minds of Americans
and people in the West and around the global to prepare a hot war against China.
Now they are pushing the "China genociding Uyghurs" lies to frame the minds of Americans
and people in the West and around the global to prepare a hot war against China.
There is no "Hot War" in preparation against China, this is simply procedural posturing in
the absence of any other means of relating to the Chinese civilisation.
The Zio-American empire is well aware this would mean a nuclear annihilation or at the
least a re-shuffling of the global order against their interests.
The US has developed no means of relating to civilizational challenges other than
violence, so it is merely cycling through the motions it knows of but with an understanding
that it cannot take them to their logical conclusion.
Thanks for your perspective, xot! Interesting insights.
trump changed that, suddenly the ugly side of the empire became visible
I've heard this about Trump a lot, but I've always wondered why Trump was the ultimate
catalyst for this epiphany. You would think that the Iraq War should have been that watershed
moment, or even Libya (and perhaps they were for many, like me). I suppose from the
perspective of inter-imperialist relations in the first world, a lack of decorum of the level
of Trump's is more anomalous and egregious than the imposition of death and destruction of
people in the global south.
I think that the presidency of Mr. Trump revealed the ugly side of the United States;
suddenly the gilded papier marche of America, carefully created by the best propaganda
techniques over 70 years, was shredded and USA was revealed to be a country just like so many
others.
It is up to American people, Judeo-Christians as well as others, to address the deep deep
social problems of the United States.
Despite a roomful of hot air amerikans will always be considered War Criminals by the
rest of us
I have to admit having become totally bored with the words which any gang of elites from
any nation whose population is far too large to have the types at the top comprehend much
less represent citizens' points of view, spout.
I get that there are fans of particular nations here, who believe some of these nation
states have more humane policies than other nation states, but all of them however humane are
essentially spouting toop down driven attitudes.
We know that amerika with its narrow & prescriptive "you can vote for anyone as long as
it is someone from one of these two virtually identical political organisations" system pays
little attention to their citizens' views. Unfortunately humans being humans, once a person
gains a little power their priorities focus on retaining & increasing power, so that
after time, no matter how egalitarian things may have been at the start, a shift to imbalance
between the governors and the governed is inevitable.
It is impossible to imagine that President Xi Jinping would do as Mao Zedong did and hand
power to the people, especially the nation's young people to trigger the 1966 Cultural
Revolution.
One thing is for sure though, that is however many may have died during the cultural
revolution, the casualties were confined to China's citizens and the casualties &
atrocities were infinitesimal compared to the murders, rapes and savagery committed by
amerika's war upon the people of Indochina.
IOW 50+ years ago China moved to resolve generational differences with an internal, domestic
debate, whilst amerika tried to resolve that issue by indoctrinating its young people into a
thoroughly racist anti-asian POV, then sent their youth to "kick out the jams" on the heads
of the people of Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia.
The results were horrific and since courtesy of TV, they were far better documented than the
horror inflicted upon the citizens of Korea less than a decade before have stuck in all
non-amerikans minds ever since.
I have sounded off here at MoA quite a few times that most amerikans view the Indochina
conflict negatively because it was such a waste of 'young amerikan' lives, rather than the
way the rest of us see it, that amerika butchered and raped their way through Indochina
without the slightest remorse.
Last week I stumbled across an old documentary released back in 1972 "Winter Soldier". The
film documents the
1971 Winter Soldier hearing held by Vietnam Vets Against War.
VVAW had tried to stop the Indochina slaughter by the standard means - protests, marches,
contacting politicians, all to no avail. So then they came up with the 'Winter Soldier'
hearing which had veterans of the war against the people of Indochina, telling their stories
of the atrocities they had committed.
The witnesses came from across the range of amerika's military; from grunts - surprisingly
most were volunteers rather than draftees, to a Marine captain who served as a helicopter
pilot.
These guys who returned to amerika lauded as heroes while deep down feeling nothing but
Guilt & shame,
make it clear that My Lai was no outlier, it was SOP.
It is also clear from what they tell us of their boot camp experience that racist
anti-asian indoctrination featured big time in their training which led them to regard all
Vietnamese as the enemy.
The behaviour got worse and worse, particularly rapes and the mutilation of children, once
the troops realised no one was would restrict their cruel antics against those they all
considered to be less than human. Senior officers either joined in or 'looked the other
way'.
Most of this documentary is in the form of testimony as cameras were generally kept away from
the 'fun' but even so I found just hearing the stories too much to bear.
Anyway although copies of 'Winter Soldier' do become available on You Tube from time to
time, they can be hard to find and are frequently taken down, so if anyone does want to know
what is commonplace for the brave amerikan military, they can download a copy of Winter
Soldier from here .
The hearings likely did the job eventually, in that the thugs in control of amerika got
the message that if the war continued, more and more truth about the scale & horror of
awful amerikan atrocities would become public and that would be counter to satiating these
elite thugs' greed inside and outside amerika. A peace agreement was signed and VVAW went
back to emphasising the damage done to amerikan soldiers rather than the horrors inflicted
upon a much, much larger Indochinese civilian population.
This is why BidenCorp are confidently denying their crimes while asserting all these other
nations are killers, simply because amerikans have never been required to comprehend the true
scale of the crimes amerika has committed upon their (mostly unjustly selected, amerikan
created) enemies.
All the words spouted by elites only ever reinforce prevailing attitudes. Change in the
way amerika views itself will only be effected when amerikans are forced to honestly consider
all the crimes which have been committed in their name.
I'm not holding my breath, neither do I see much point in any analysis of who said what to
whom as words are worthless in the face of fell deeds.
"China and the US are two major world powers. No matter how many disputes they have, the
two countries should not impulsively break their relations. Coexistence and cooperation are
the only options for China and the US. Whether we like it or not, the two countries should
learn to patiently explore mutual compromises and pursue strategic win-win cooperation ."
[My Emphasis]
The big question: Does the Outlaw US Empire possess enough wisdom to act in that
manner.
I don't understand why so many otherwise intelligent people are seemingly unable to bring
themselves to question the fundamental 'model' that supposedly describes what is going on in
the 'West'. If political 'models' were subjected to the same sort of analysis that scientific
ones were, then the model used by b and most of the people who comment here would undoubtedly
be rejected. There are simply too many elephants in the room.
Why are European countries going along with all the stupidity? Such as America's rampage
through the middle east, originating and perpetuated with proven lies, flooding Europe with
migrants as a result.
Why are European countries apparently happy to go along with the Russophobia and the
Sinophobia. Are their leaders really so lame-brained that they took the ludicrous Skripal
poisoning story and the even more ridiculous Navalny yarn at face value?
Why are European countries going along with the stupid and unfair sanctions? sanctions
that cost Europe far more than they do America.
Why is Europe going along with the increased militarisation of the of the border with the
Russian federation and the open war-mongering? Surely European leaders realise that they are
wantonly courting WW3 and risking a nuclear conflagration? Could they really be so stupid as
to imagine that lining the border they share with the Russians with ABM's was actually
'defensive' in nature?
Last but certainly not least, why is Israel so important? How come a tiny country in the
middle east gets to thumb its nose at international law on a daily basis? Why is it OK for
them to have nukes? Why is it OK when they shoot literally thousands of unarmed protesters?
killing hundreds. How come they can build walls and that is OK, How come they can run an
openly apartheid state but somehow be immune to criticism?
The answer to all these questions is actually quite simple, the US and Europe are pretty
much controlled by the same set of oligarchs and the most powerful of the oligarchs are the
bankers. Once you realise that it is the bankers driving most of this garbage all of the
elephants are explained.
MarkU @ 39 -- HossKara struck gold with his suggestion @34, to which I responded @35.
It's all about the Benjamins, particularly the Petrodollar controlled by what
Psychohistorian euphemistically calls "Private Finance" and is the world's reserve currency.
Any attempt to circumvent the Petrodollar in trade, especially energy resources, brings
violent aggression to punish the wayward country and its leaders.
"Private Finance" in this context really means the thug standing behind you with a
baseball bat. "You don't know who you're dealing with, punk." Iran trades with other
countries in other currencies, so does Venezuela, so does China, so does Russia. Get the
picture?
Saddam Hussein announced that he was going to accept other currencies than the dollar for
Iraq's oil -- look what happened to him. Same with Gaddafi. They and their countries were
made examples of what happens when you deny Uncle Ratschild his pound of flesh.
This is about neoliberlization of education. Early over-specialization essentially is
detrimental to professional development. this is clearlly a neoliberal approach -- to get ready
cogs into the machinery that does not reuare any additional trianing to be productive and save on
training.
Like Knuth said on a different potic "Premature optimization is the root of al evil"
Why has it taken so long for professional-services firms in the U.S. to adopt a bespoke
graduate-degree approach (
"Employers Customize Business Degrees," Business News, March 5)?
The former president of the University of Limerick, Edward Walsh, was way ahead of the game
in this regard. Dr. Walsh arguably created a new norm in Irish third-level education back in
the early 1970s, from the university's modest beginnings in the "White House" as the building
was and is still known, to a now very impressive campus with a proud record of innovation in
education and excellence in research and scholarship. Dr. Walsh customized our degrees to match
the requirements of Irish companies and industry.
My bespoke electronics-production degree was customized because the electronics industry in
Ireland at the time found that many electronic-engineering grads applying for
production-oriented positions weren't suitably qualified. As a graduate in engineering, I
believe it made my finding a job much easier than some of my counterparts in other
universities, both in Ireland and abroad. Our degrees opened many doors for my class in a lot
of different industries, and I believe they still hold us in good stead today when changing our
careers or setting up indigenous businesses.
Since inception in 2011, the Commercial Banking Program in the Mays Business School of Texas
A&M University has joined with the banking industry in implementing and teaching a required
commercial-banking curriculum that is designed to position our graduates for successful careers
in commercial banking. The banking industry provides us with valuable input on essential
training and skills they require of our students to be considered for employment. In addition,
selected parts of the program curriculum are taught by senior banking executives from our
advisory board of directors. Students receive current, relevant banking-industry training
taught by banking executives positioning them for successful careers in commercial banking.
Banks find our graduates are trained according to industry requirements and are productive
sooner than their peers, and the Commercial Banking Program is helping alleviate the shortage
of trained talent within the banking industry.
Disposable people are indispensable. Who else would fight the wars? Who would preach? Who
would short derivatives? Who would go to court and argue both sides? Who would legislate? Who
would sell red hots at the old ball game?
For too long disposable people have been misrepresented as destitute, homeless, unemployed,
or at best precariously employed. True, the destitute, the homeless, the unemployed and the
precarious are indeed treated as disposable but most disposable people pursue respectable
professions, wear fashionable clothes, reside in nice houses, and keep up with the Jones.
Disposable people are defined by what they do not produce. They do not grow food. They do
not build shelters. They do not make clothes. They also do not make the tractors used to grow
food, the tools to build shelters or the equipment to make clothes.
Although disposable people do not produce necessities what they do is not unnecessary. It is
simply that the services they provide are not spontaneously demanded as soon as one acquires a
bit of additional income. One is unlikely, however, to engage the services or purchase the
goods produced by disposable people unless one is in possession of disposable income.
Disposable income is the basis of disposable people. Conversely, disposable people are the
foundation of disposable income.
Why is it so expensive to get anything done in the US?
Neoclassical economics and the missing equation.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
The US's high cost of living pushes up wages making it expensive to get anything done in
the US.
See where neoclassical economists go wrong?
Employees get their money from wages, and the employers pay the cost of living through wages,
reducing profit.
It is the US's employers who pay the high cost of living, via wages, reducing profit.
Do you really want to pay the US's high cost of living in wages?
No way.
You will have to off-shore to maximise profit.
The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by
removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with
"capital".
They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the Classical
Economists as this is where rentier activity in the economy shows up.
It's so well hidden no one even knows it's there.
The neoliberals picked up this pseudo economics and thought it was the real deal.
Things were never going to go well.
Imagine the Chamber of Commerce actively lobbying for state-supported child care, massive
increases in funding for public transportation, public education, public health, and
housing.
Perhaps we should take a look at China to learn how we too can become better capitalists,
and so help USA businesses focus on the business of business.
Western companies couldn't wait to off-shore to low cost China, where they could make
higher profits.
China had coal fired power stations to provide cheap energy.
China had lax regulations reducing environmental and health and safety costs.
China had a low cost of living so employers could pay low wages.
China had low taxes and a minimal welfare state.
China had all the advantages in an open globalised world.
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)
Strong 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.
"Keynesian ideas went wrong in the 1970s" and from the 80s on because the (primarily)
Republicans had forgotten that Keynes originally stipulated that the government debt incurred
during "bad times" be liquidated during "good times". Since Reagan, Republicans have
increased debt to stimulate the economy, but failed to pay it down once that part of Keynes's
took effect. Republicans are the biggest half-Keynesians of all time.
Behind all this is the neo-liberal renunciation of any 'national' policies. Define a
'nation' as you will, it still is a valid category. It has definite 'needs' and requirements
to function well and continue as a viable entity. The 'national' government has functioned in
the past as the representative and facilitator for the 'nation.' "Drown that in a bathtub"
and you eventually eliminate the 'nation's' ability to function. The end stage of that
process is the collapse and extinction of the 'nation.'
The above process should be familiar to anyone who has studied the past few decades of
American history. What the proponents of the neo-liberal dispensation have not advertised, if
indeed they even know, is what replaces the 'nation?' An International Syndicate of
Oligarchs? If so, such an endeavour is doomed to failure. History has shown, time and again,
that the concept and practice of commercial business is not an adequate organizing principle
for large scale human society. It simply does not make allowances for human variability.
The best example of the point above that I can think of is the present dominance of short
term thinking and planning in the business sphere. Restricting the inputs of the decision
making process to short term issues, such as quarterly earnings and stock prices in the
bourse, leads to the dysfunctions bemoaned in the piece above. Offshoring a factory makes
sense from a short term business point of view, but ignores the long term 'national'
implications. Here is a direct conflict between the two methods of social organization. At
present the short term methodology is ascendant. Alas, it looks as if America is going to
have to learn this lesson of setting proper 'national' priorities the hard way; such as by
losing a war decisively.
I look on the bright side here. A small thermonuclear exchange between America and some
peer adversary will not only 'thin out' the population, but also bring on a nuclear winter
and retard the progression of global warming for a while. It might be the breathing space the
Terran human race needs to survive beyond the upcoming evolutionary bottleneck.
"... By Guy Standing, Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London, Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, and co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). Subjects of recent books include basic income, rentier capitalism and the growing precariat. He is a council member of the Progressive Economy Forum. Originally published at Open Democracy . ..."
"... the precariat was evolving as a class-in-the-making. ..."
"... we should interpret what Karl Polanyi was to call the Great Transformation as beginning with a period of dis-embeddedness, when the old social formation with its specific systems of regulation, social protection and redistribution was being dismantled mainly by the interests of financial capital, guided by an ideology of laissez-faire liberalism ..."
"... "For the proletariat, the norm was and is to be in a stable job. There is nothing labourists love more than to have as many people as possible in jobs. They romanticise being in a job, promising Full Employment, and quietly resorting to workfare. They conveniently forget that being in a job is being in a position of subordination and fail to recall Marx's depiction of labour in jobs as 'active alienation'." ..."
"... Though for most of the 1848-1945 period, its not really true. The proletariat of Capital and Condition of the Working Class in England had an existence as precarious as today's precariat. Indeed, this was one of the things driving the growing militance. There was little in the way of a consumer goods industry selling to proletarians because until quite late in the 19th century the entire wages of all but the skilled and fortunate went for subsistence. ..."
"... A side note: my understanding is that classical Marxism's worry about the lumpenproletariat, aka a "reactionary mass," was based on the observation that their services could be bought to form King and Country mobs to attack working class organizations, along with serving as pogrom foot soldiers. Part of that function was superseded by the formation of regular armies of domestic occupation, aka the police. ..."
"... By complicating basic class analysis with an elaborate class structure, with the revolution to be led by a minority of young, educated 'progressive' precariats, he may be setting the stage for fragmentation of the Left, and further massive losses for workers. ..."
"... being drawn into platform capitalism, as 'concierge' or cloud taskers, controlled and manipulated by apps and other labour brokers. Above all, they are being gradually habituated to precariatisation, told to put up with a norm of unstable task-driven bits-and-pieces existence. ..."
"... That passage called to mind the increasing use by universities of adjunct faculty positions, which are the very definition of precarious. In recent days the was a report of the dismissal of tenured faculty by a college in New York State, whose name escapes me. ..."
"... I could see the 'Go Fund Me' phenomena for Medical (or just groceries, etc) costs in this thought:(my bold) ..."
"... Those characteristics are bad enough. But it is the distinctive relations to the state that most define the precariat. The precariat are denizens rather than citizens, meaning that they are losing or not gaining the rights and entitlements of citizens . Above all, they are reduced to being supplicants, dependent on the discretionary benevolence of landlords, employers, parents, charities and strangers, showing them pity. ..."
"... The writer of this article seems to be very optimistic, celebratory even when it comes to the insecurity of the precariat. It isn't difficult to romanticize the power and the potential of people suffering extreme insecurity when your employment and your social status are linked to the privileges of the (Left or Right) political elite ..."
"... Open Democracy is a Soros organ. Which immediately brings to mind the aspect of our precarious position that the author does not address or even allude to: the nexus of financial, media and paramilitary power that is the "Deep State" or the Spook Apparat if you will. ..."
"... Much of what Standing refers to as the Precariat is basically just the Proletariat yet again. ..."
"... Now that I know it's an Open Democracy piece, I suppose that it's meant to soften the blow of prolonged, steep unemployment and to desensitize people to the pain of "doing more with less" (as the tippytopp rakes it in) by calling it an Arts & Leisure Society. ..."
"... I must agree with DJG, Reality Czar's and others similar take. The writer of this article seems to be very optimistic, celebratory even when it comes to the insecurity of the precariat. It isn't difficult to romanticize the power and the potential of people suffering extreme insecurity when your employment and your social status are linked to the privileges of the (Left or Right) political elite, and when you are a (most likely well paid) participant in the current political system, by working closely with the leadership of one of the bigger old political parties while holding positions that come with stable income if not fungible prestige ["Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London, Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, and co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN)]. ..."
"... "a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion of currently produced wealth. This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves the kind of effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital accumulation in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped" ..."
"... "The other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing." ..."
"... "When the credit ran out, the game stopped" ..."
"... Revolt of the Public ..."
"... Can't Get You Outta My Head ..."
"... Charter for the Precariat ..."
"... "The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers." ..."
"... "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." ..."
"... "The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community" ..."
"... The labourers had before 25 The landlords 25 And the capitalists 50 .. 100 ..."
"... Framing Corbyn's election defeat as a failure to understand the needs of the "Labour" electorate, and hence supporting Standing's premise, whilst totally ignoring the fact that Corbyn was hammered by the powers of the right, BBC, MSM, Israel etc etc is totally disingenuous and seems to me to be a case of very sour grapes. ..."
Lambert here: A dense treatment of a subject of burning concern.
By Guy Standing, Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London, Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences,
and co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). Subjects of recent books include basic income,
rentier capitalism and the growing precariat. He is a council member of the Progressive Economy Forum.
Originally published at Open Democracy .
Transformations tend to go through several preliminary phases. In Britain, the 'dis-embedded' phase in the development of industrial
capitalism involved the Speenhamland system launched in 1795, the mass enclosures that created a proto-proletariat, and disruption
by a technological revolution. All this prompted a period of primitive rebels – those who know what they are against, but not agreed
on what they are for – in which protests were mainly against the breakdown of the previous social compact.
Those included the days-of-rage phase that culminated in the mass protest in Peterloo in 1819, brutally suppressed by the state,
and the Luddites, misrepresented ever since as being workers intent on smashing machines to halt 'progress', when in fact what they
were doing was protesting at the destruction of a way of living and working being done without a quid pro quo.
In my A Precariat Charter
written in 2014, sketching a precariat manifesto for today's Global Transformation, I concluded by citing the stanza from Shelley's
The Masque of Anarchy
, written in reaction to the Peterloo massacre. Jeremy Corbyn was later to cite it in his campaign speech of 2017, which James Schneider
recalls in his contribution
to this debate . Shelley expressed it in class, not populist terms, as I did, in my case signifying that the precariat was
evolving as a class-in-the-making. Corbyn seems to have expressed it in support of a left populism.
Until his drowning at an early age, Shelley along with Byron and other artists of that era, including Mozart, were railing against
the bourgeoisie, which is why Mozart and Byron were both drawn to the Don Juan/Don Giovanni theme. The Romantics failed to arrest
the march of industrial capitalism but their art put out a marker for the future counter movement.
The UK and 'Decent Labour'
The trouble was that at the time the emerging mass 'working class', the proletariat, had not yet taken shape as a class-for-itself,
and was not ready to do so until late in the century. Three other primitive rebel events should be read into the narrative – the
pink revolutions of 1848, often called the Springtime of the Peoples, wrongly seen by some at the time as presaging the proletarian
revolution, the brave prolonged activities of the Chartists in the 1830s and 1840s, which advanced the cause of political democracy
despite defeat, and the upheavals in the 1890s that the left have tended to underplay.
The latter marked an enormous historical error by 'the left'. It is why the term 'dangerous class' was in the sub-title of my
The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class
, published in early 2011. Although some Marxists have used it to describe the 'lumpen proletariat', the term 'dangerous class' was
used in the nineteenth century to describe those who were in neither the bourgeoisie nor the emerging proletariat. They were the
craftsmen, artisans, street traders and artists, from whose ranks came the leading figures articulating a version of socialism as
rejection of labourism – freedom from labour, freedom to work and to leisure (reviving ideas of ancient Greece, embracing schole
).
In the 1890s, against William Morris and colleagues, including some anarchists, who championed that emancipatory vision, were
the labourists, state socialists, Fabians and others who wanted to generalise decent labour. By the turn of the twentieth century,
the latter had triumphed and marched forward in labour unions, social democratic parties and Leninism, even though most of the first
batch of Labour MPs in 1906, when asked by an enterprising journalist what book had most influenced them, mentioned John Ruskin's
Unto This Last , not anything by Karl Marx.
So, we should interpret what Karl Polanyi was to call the Great Transformation as beginning with a period of dis-embeddedness,
when the old social formation with its specific systems of regulation, social protection and redistribution was being dismantled
mainly by the interests of financial capital, guided by an ideology of laissez-faire liberalism .
This produced growing structural insecurities, inequalities, stress, precarity, technological disruption, debt and ecological
destruction, culminating in an era of war, pandemics – most relevantly, the Spanish flu of 1918-1920, which may have killed 50 million
people – and the Great Depression.
... ... ...
...Donald Trump epitomised the rentiers; he used anti-establishment rhetoric but jealously preserved and advanced the interests
of the rent-seeking plutocracy. He never followed a neo-liberal economic agenda. He stood for mercantilism in foreign economic strategy
and for rentiers eager to plunder the commons domestically, while pursuing a pluto-populist fiscal policy. It is better to see his
era in Gramscian terms, a malignancy of a class-based system in deepening if not terminal crisis.
"For the proletariat, the norm was and is to be in a stable job. There is nothing labourists love more than to have as many
people as possible in jobs. They romanticise being in a job, promising Full Employment, and quietly resorting to workfare. They
conveniently forget that being in a job is being in a position of subordination and fail to recall Marx's depiction of labour
in jobs as 'active alienation'."
Yep, large scale wage-slavery is not something to be embraced but something to be abolished.
Indeed, per the Bible, wage-slavery was the EXCEPTION, not the rule, for Hebrews in ancient Israel with roughly equal ownership
of the means of production being the rule. Yet this was NOT communism since the means of production were individually owned, and
not by the State, which didn't even exist for 400 years or so.
So accepting wage-slavery as some kind of norm is to concede way too much, Biblically speaking.
An "eved" in the Hebrew bible is not really the same thing as a wage slave. The first time slavery is discussed in the Book
of the Covenant following the Ten Commandments in Exodus, the only limitation is 7 years. There was no requirement to pay the
slave anything. This is modified in the "Second Law" in Deuteronomy where the master is required to pay the slave some compensation
upon the end of the 7 years, but not before. And these "eveds" were only the Hebrew slaves. Foreigners (goys) were slaves for
life, but since neither Israel nor Judah won many wars, there were probably never that many foreign slaves anyway.
I'm using "wage-slavery" in the more general sense that if one does not own assets (impossible for a Hebrew in Israel/Judah
for more than 49 years (cf. Leviticus 25)) then one was de facto either a beggar or forced to live as a scavenger in the wilderness
OR forced to work for wages.
As for foreign "permanent slaves", this is in conflict with no Hebrew OR CONVERT(?) could be held for more than 6 years as
a well-treated indentured servant to be released, well provisioned, in the 7th year. So "permanent slavery" of foreigners was
plausibly, imo, a conversion strategy (see Deuteronomy 23:3-7).
Not that the Old Testament is authoritative for Christians since the New Testament but can't we do at least as well wrt economic
justice?
Though for most of the 1848-1945 period, its not really true. The proletariat of Capital and Condition of the Working Class
in England had an existence as precarious as today's precariat. Indeed, this was one of the things driving the growing militance.
There was little in the way of a consumer goods industry selling to proletarians because until quite late in the 19th century
the entire wages of all but the skilled and fortunate went for subsistence.
And until after the changes beginning with the New
Deal and consolidated in the war and postwar years, the end of a job meant the end of income, period.
One take would be that he underplays the interrelationship of class identity, class aspirations, and class struggle. This comes
out most clearly when he makes it seem as though mid-20th c social democracy lost a vision of the future through negligence, rather
than running up against resistance from capital that was gradually getting its ideological act together after the fascist period.
Strong class identity was contingent on a number of things, but one was maintaining labor militancy, MacAlevey's "strike muscle,"
and that became increasingly difficult, and not just because labor movement leadership went for business unionism.
The same applies to the present. The author seems hesitant to define what a Labor Vision should be now, and oscillates between
UBI and other ideas without directly discussing the intensity of resistance from capital that different programs would set off.
He might at least roll in Kalecki, as we so often do here, and with good reason. UBI will bring a very different response compared
to demands that threaten to supplant capital's control of investment decisions, the sphere of "management prerogative." And so
the author seems to be advocating fresh thinking without directly addressing what stands in its way, both the real threat of intensified
class conflict and how that has been "internalized" in various ways over the last 50 or so years.
A side note: my understanding is that classical Marxism's worry about the lumpenproletariat, aka a "reactionary mass," was
based on the observation that their services could be bought to form King and Country mobs to attack working class organizations,
along with serving as pogrom foot soldiers. Part of that function was superseded by the formation of regular armies of domestic
occupation, aka the police.
There is much substance here but it seems that Standing ignores the elephant in the room -- the role that the age of limits (resource,
environmental/climate change, economic/financial ) plays in the emergence of an era of rentier capitalism.
He says: "Reinventing the future, in class terms, has always been the primary task of 'the left'." But he is quick to condemn
"phoney dualism of crude populism of 'the people' versus 'the elite'".
By complicating basic class analysis with an elaborate
class structure, with the revolution to be led by a minority of young, educated 'progressive' precariats, he may be setting the
stage for fragmentation of the Left, and further massive losses for workers.
being drawn into platform capitalism, as 'concierge' or cloud taskers, controlled and manipulated by apps and other labour
brokers. Above all, they are being gradually habituated to precariatisation, told to put up with a norm of unstable task-driven
bits-and-pieces existence.
This is a great framing of the hoped for (by the technologists)labor contract
That passage called to mind the increasing use by universities of adjunct faculty positions, which are the very definition
of precarious. In recent days the was a report of the dismissal of tenured faculty by a college in New York State, whose name
escapes me.
Proposition 22(?) in California epitomizes precarity.
Quit a lot to think on here, and presented pretty clearly.
De-stranding is a part of understanding (and understanding being part of good progress)
I could see the 'Go Fund Me' phenomena for Medical (or just groceries, etc) costs in this thought:(my bold)
Those characteristics are bad enough. But it is the distinctive relations to the state that most define the precariat. The
precariat are denizens rather than citizens, meaning that they are losing or not gaining the rights and entitlements of citizens
. Above all, they are reduced to being supplicants, dependent on the discretionary benevolence of landlords, employers, parents,
charities and strangers, showing them pity.
Much of this essay seems like a good diagnosis, although, after a certain point, I began to mistrust the foundations of the
analysis. And there is this: "So when it came to framing a Precariat Charter, it seemed appropriate to take as a guiding principle
the adage of Aristotle that only the insecure man is free. That means we must not be stuck in the old sense of security, even
though it is a human need to enjoy basic security."
The author is fudging. Aristotle was writing about a stratified society in which there were many slaves (and, yes, Mediterranean
slavery was different from the Anglo-American version). The ideal was the life of leisure (scholē), which was a kind of contemplation
of how to act (but untroubled by having to work, which is a distraction). The "insecure" man was either Diogenes (who was unique)
or a prosperous citizen with property.
We simply don't live in that kind of society. Yet the author keeps making the mistake of describing "labourists" and their
supposedly antiquated ideas about unions and the organization of the workplace as all wet.
Current labor unrest in the U S of A indicates otherwise. Further, I happened to listened to some deeper analysis of the recent
events at Smith College, and the NYTimes writer, Powell, pointed out how much unions shape attitudes (including eliminating racism),
offer real protections, and teach the value of concerted action.
People like Standing, because of his position in society, can be blithe about being precarious. It is indeed a "philosophical"
issue for them. Yet the current Draghi government in Italy has several members who want to remove labor protections and make more
Italians precarious. Everyone will live the glory of being a U.S. style at-will employee. Hmmm. I wonder why this project still
goes on among the powerful.
The writer of this article seems to be very optimistic, celebratory even when it comes to the insecurity of the precariat.
It isn't difficult to romanticize the power and the potential of people suffering extreme insecurity when your employment and
your social status are linked to the privileges of the (Left or Right) political elite, and when you are a (most likely well paid)
participant in the current political system, by working closely with the leadership of one of the largest old political parties,
while holding positions that come with stable income if not fungible prestige ["Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University
of London, Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, and co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network
(BIEN)].
The author acknowledges that a simplistic, not multidimensional understanding of class is pseudo-Marxist; why not then
go back to the original texts and review the writings of Marx, Engels, Gramsci et al in order to update the concept of class,
perhaps broadening what being "working class" means today?
Why not trying to organize the workers, those who are precariat and
those who aren't, around the goal of "reinventing the future in class terms", as he puts it?
How will the precariat advance its
own sociopolitical goals now (as "a class-in-the-making") and later (as "a class-for-itself)"? Will it be capable of exerting
any pressure and of promote real transformations without unions and without political parties?
The default arrangement for human intercourse is some sort of feudalism. Regardless of best intended efforts to midwife a kinder
gentler world, some sort of feudal hierarchic death-wish inheres in all social efforts. It seems woven into our humanity.
Aboriginal hunter gatherers have managed to maintain a continuous non-feudal culture, even now, for approximately 50,000 years.
Perhaps the precariat are heading that way?
Agreeing with Heelbiter, feudal hierarchies only emerge when there's a surplus that can be stolen, which tempts people with
power (strongmen + sycophants) to keep it for themselves. Remove either the surplus or the agreement to steal, it's not at all
universal.
Surplus also creates lasting valuable institutions which create huge social good (like Universities, Court systems, School
systems, Regulatory oversight of the private sector, etc.).
Naked Capitalism commentators don't have a concept of hierarchical nature of talents which humans have. Meaning, there are
super producer humans in any field of human endeavor: sports, music, arts, mathematics, sciences, film stars, singers, painters,
etc.
Why would you not expect super producer humans in economic realm (business world)?
The talent spectrum is very wide and desire and ability to take risks for a possible "first mover advantage in business" that
some humans go after.
Even luck (right place at the right time) requires the ability, desire and eye to recognize talents in other humans to create
a high powered team which creates truly outsized results.
Talents of some humans is thousands of times the talents of more average humans.
Our job (democracy's job) is to get the most out of them. And I don't mean tax them a lot. I mean channel their energies in
such a way through appropriate rules (laws) so they contribute outsized social good.
And yet in actual, existing polities for as long as records have been kept, there's a tendency for those with "thousand times
the talents" to make off with all the surplus. Leading to, "The default arrangement for human intercourse is some sort of feudalism.
Regardless of best intended efforts to midwife a kinder gentler world, some sort of feudal hierarchic death-wish inheres in all
social efforts. It seems woven into our humanity."
It appears to be the structural force of "surplus" that engages our social heuristics into self defeating and brutal heirarchies.
I'm with HH & FS that the track record of egalitarianism is a great deal longer than that of material heirarchy and hasn't anywhere
threatened the ecosystems on which all life depends.
Not saying we can get out of our exploitative and self destructive rut, but that this condition is no more essential to our
nature than egalitarianism.
Your super producers "talent" is making money, not producing things or goods, and right behind all of your "there are super
producer humans in any field of human endeavor: sports, music, arts, mathematics, sciences, film stars, singers, painters, etc."
all are the face of a machine in the background with some unknowable tech tracking selling data collecting those are your actual
producers but that isn't good pr, we're great at tracking people, we produce surveillance and sell people things they don't need
and support disintegrating institutions in order to undermine your quote here
"Surplus also creates lasting valuable institutions which create huge social good (like Universities, Court systems, School systems,
Regulatory oversight of the private sector, etc.)."
All of these things are being disintegrated for the benefit of your "super producer" BS as we speak. Maybe it's not the NC
commentariat that has an understanding problem.
I think as far as the religious " concept of hierarchical nature of talents " I think the essential workers proved who they
are over the pandemic, they're the ones who had to face risk, grocery workers, garbage collectors etc I doubt these people are
very high up in your hierarchy.
"If human capital theory someday becomes the fly on the power-theory-of-income elephant, it would signal not only a scientific
revolution, but also a social one. I doubt I'll live to see it happen. And if I do, I have no idea what type of society would
emerge from the other side."
Open Democracy is a Soros organ. Which immediately brings to mind the aspect of our precarious position that the author
does not address or even allude to: the nexus of financial, media and paramilitary power that is the "Deep State" or the Spook
Apparat if you will.
Having a token whack at 'atavist' populism is just 'Basket of Deplorables' put another way. The author is deeply tied to the
technocratic set and the slant is clear enough. The constant manipulation through fear-based stochastic 'war' efforts: War on
Terror, War on COVID. Always some empty and obviously fake rallying point. UBI sounds like a sensible solution if we lived in
the Jetsons future the Great Reset promises. But Klaus Schwab is no Bucky Fuller. Gates, Soros and Schwab are just investors.
Investors with the power to manipulate the markets. Heads they win. Tails you lose.
To them, a guy like Trump is just the last echo of the Industrial age and the installation of a senile grifter the triumph
of the technocracy, shielded by the CIA and MI5/6. These spy organizations were always private companies.
CIA was built by Wall Street and British Intelligence is an arm of the British monarchy and has never been accountable to the
public. A realignment is definitely taking place. Behind the curtain. Challenging the old guard is the nexus of more openly private
intelligence organizations like that of Erik Prince and computer oligarchs like Thiel and Mercer. This is exactly who put Trump
over.
Good summary of the evolution and status quo of liberalism. Liberalism being capitalism. And capitalism being profit. So there's
a conundrum: The "strange death of populism" does not equate with some strange death of survival. Survival is always with us.
There were atavists seeking out remote caves even during the agricultural revolution. Maybe even George Soros' ancient ancestors;
the stone age bond vigilantes.
The underlying argument here by Standing seems to be for a Basic Income. Which is OK, but maybe ahead of its time. A jobs guarantee
is a better option because there is so much work to be done that can be done best by humans it's just that none of them are profit
making. That's the problem with all this political (aka economic) analysis. Because, for one thing, who is gonna clean the latrines?
Yes, of course robots are. So then who is gonna arbitrage the robots? Who is monitoring the protection of the environment for
fraud and graft? All of that will be necessary to ensure nobody is profiteering and polluting in a non-capitalist world. Labor
was actually the best defense against rampant profiteering, because it was labor that was always exploited, so what will replace
it? We should stick with a jobs guarantee for now. A better analysis at this point in time is not how do we live with the ruins
of neoliberalism, but how do we live, equitably, without profit? It will take a while to figure that out. Clearly we'll live by
fiat, but it will have to be controlled as well. I'd just say that if the Precariat is condescendingly guaranteed a "basic income"
so should the rest of society be. That controls everyone. And protects the environment, and stays focused on all the things that
are now imperative.
Good investment and growth are definable as whatever investment and growth would remain if all artificial stimulants by the
government and economists were removed. The ordinary liberal is usually several steps removed from real life. That is how he can
be so foolish.
He is almost always either wealthy, or academic, or artistic, or political, or in some other way has escaped from the need
to do productive work for a living.
It's just really weird seeing a 'left' site conflate 'populism' with 'rightism'. As in, "representing the economically hurting
bottom of 50-90% of voters is bad (because the poor, the struggling working class, and the precarious middle class peoples are
obviously morally suspect – or so saith the economic elites. / heh)." No. That's the elite's take on populism. It isn't the populists'
history and political stance. It's almost like reading the elite's dictating what the bottom 50% economic polity must agree to.
(As if the top 50% (or 1%) don't have an economic interest in guiding the bottom 50%'s away from their own economic interest.
/heh )
I didn't get that, maybe I'll re-read when I have a minute.
What I got was dissaggregating the struggling class into groups with common experience and history resulting in what the author
called "reactionary" and I think you are calling 'rightism'.
The basic message I got was the left can no more restore that past than can the right and when it tries it ends up bolstering
the right by accident.
Much of what Standing refers to as the Precariat is basically just the Proletariat yet again. But coming to the fore
in a period resembling the Victorian era in terms of security more than it resembles the short-lived triumphal period of postwar
welfare state, Keynesian, social democratic capitalism.
I think he wants to expand the definitions of work and "productivity," maybe challenging the labor theory of value, etc. This
piece reminded me of David Graeber in that respect.
Now that I know it's an Open Democracy piece, I suppose that it's meant to soften the blow of prolonged, steep unemployment
and to desensitize people to the pain of "doing more with less" (as the tippytopp rakes it in) by calling it an Arts & Leisure
Society. UBI is a lubricant for privatization, although I did notice and appreciate Standing's mention of the commons.
I must agree with DJG, Reality Czar's and others similar take. The writer of this article seems to be very optimistic,
celebratory even when it comes to the insecurity of the precariat. It isn't difficult to romanticize the power and the potential
of people suffering extreme insecurity when your employment and your social status are linked to the privileges of the (Left or
Right) political elite, and when you are a (most likely well paid) participant in the current political system, by working closely
with the leadership of one of the bigger old political parties while holding positions that come with stable income if not fungible
prestige ["Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London, Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, and co-founder
and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN)].
The author acknowledges that a simplistic, not multidimensional understanding of class is pseudo-Marxist; why not then go back
to the original texts and review the writings of Marx, Engels, Gramsci et al in order to update the concept of class, perhaps
broadening what being "working class" means today? Why not trying to organize the workers, those who are precariat and those who
aren't, around the goal of "reinventing the future in class terms", as he puts it? Will the precariat succeed in advancing its
sociopolitical goals as a class ("a class-in-the-making" or "a class-for-itself") outside of organized structures like unions
and political parties (not necessarily the existing, often compromised ones)?
What has happened to inequality? Pretty much what you would expect really.
Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48, observed what the capital accumulation of neoclassical economics did to the US economy
in the 1920s. "a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion of currently produced wealth. This
served then as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves
the kind of effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital accumulation in new plants. In
consequence as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the
game only by borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped"
With the capital accumulation of neoclassical economics wealth concentrates at the top. A few people have all the money and
everyone else gets by on debt. Wealth concentrates until the system collapses.
What could they do? Keynes added some redistribution to stop all the wealth concentrating at the top, and developed nations
formed a strong healthy middle class.
The neoliberals removed the redistribution. With the capital accumulation of neoclassical economics wealth concentrates at
the top. A few people have all the money and everyone else gets by on debt. Wealth concentrates until the system collapses.
"The other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing." Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48
Your wages aren't high enough, have a Payday loan.
You need a house, have a sub-prime mortgage.
You need a car, have a sub-prime auto loan.
You need a good education, have a student loan.
Still not getting by? Load up on credit cards. "When the credit ran out, the game stopped" Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48
Oh yes, I remember now, it was Keynesian capitalism that won the battle against Russian communism. The Americans could clearly
demonstrate the average American was much better off than their Russian counterparts.
Today's opioid addicted specimens might have struggled.
The arc of progress isn't supposed to look like a U-turn. You are supposed to keep moving forwards. After the Keynesian era
we went back to what had preceded it.
After a few decades of Keynesian, demand side economics, the system became supply side constrained. Too much demand and not
enough supply causes inflation. Neoclassical, supply side economics should be just the ticket to get things moving again. It does,
but it's got the same problems it's always had.
I found this article massively interesting and relevant, especially at the same time that I'm trying to process Martin Gurri's
Revolt of the Public and Adam Curtis' new documentary Can't Get You Outta My Head . My take is that all of them
are professing a sort of political realism that is opposed to what they identify as magical thinking on the left, and that's how
I take Standing's critique of left populism.
But more importantly, I want to share a few other related resources that I found as I was digging into this more. First, Standing
has a few TED talks, and this one from 2016 helped me to understand
this article better.
Also, Standing's Charter for the Precariat (linked differently in the article) is currently available on Bloomsbury
open access, so you can actually
download chapter
pdfs of it for free with no login.
Mankind first started to produce a surplus with early agriculture. It wasn't long before the elites learnt how to read the
skies, the sun and the stars, to predict the coming seasons to the amazed masses and collect tribute.
They soon made the most of the opportunity and removed themselves from any hard work to concentrate on "spiritual matters",
i.e. any hocus-pocus they could come up with to elevate them from the masses, e.g. rituals, fertility rights, offering to the
gods . etc and to turn the initially small tributes, into extracting all the surplus created by the hard work of the rest.
The elites became the representatives of the gods and they were responsible for the bounty of the earth and the harvests. As
long as all the surplus was handed over, all would be well.
The class structure emerges.
Upper class – Do as little as they can get away with and get most of the rewards
Middle class – Administrative/managerial class who have enough to live a comfortable life
Working class – Do the work, and live a basic subsistence existence where they get enough to stay alive and breed
Their techniques have got more sophisticated over time, but this is the underlying idea. They have achieved an inversion, and
got most of the rewards going to those that don't really do anything.
Everything had worked well for 5,000 years as no one knew what was really going on. The last thing they needed was "The Enlightenment"
as people would work out what was really going on. They did work out what was going on and this had to be hidden again.
The Classical Economists had a quick look around and noticed the aristocracy were maintained in luxury and leisure by the hard
work of everyone else. They haven't done anything economically productive for centuries, they couldn't miss it. The Classical
economist, Adam Smith:
"The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury.
The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions
from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But
every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers."
There was no benefits system in those days, and if those at the bottom didn't work they died. They had to earn money to live.
The classical economists could never imagine those at the bottom rising out of a bare subsistence existence as that was the way
it had always been.
The classical economists identified the constructive "earned" income and the parasitic "unearned" income. Most of the people
at the top lived off the parasitic "unearned" income and they now had a big problem. (Upper class – Do as little as they can get
away with and get most of the rewards)
This problem was solved with neoclassical economics, which hides this distinction. It confuses making money and creating wealth
so all rich people look good. If you know what real wealth creation is, you will realise many at the top don't create any wealth.
Can you believe Adam Smith said this?
"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the
masters of mankind."
The classical economists, Adam Smith and Ricardo, are not what you might expect.
We got some stuff from Ricardo, like the law of comparative advantage. What's gone missing? Ricardo was part of the new
capitalist class, and the old landowning class were a huge problem with their rents that had to be paid both directly and through
wages.
"The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community" Ricardo
1815 / Classical Economist
What does our man on free trade, Ricardo, mean?
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Employees get their money from wages and the employers pay the cost of living through wages, reducing profit.
Employees get less disposable income after the landlords rent has gone.
Employers have to cover the landlord's rents in wages reducing profit.
Ricardo is just talking about housing costs, employees all rented in those days.
Low housing costs work best for employers and employees.
In Ricardo's world there were three classes. He was in the capitalist class. The more he paid in labour costs (wages) the lower
his profits would be. He was paying the cost of living for his workers through wages, and the higher that was, the higher labour
costs would be. There was no benefits system in those days and those at the bottom needed to earn money to cover the cost of living
otherwise they would die. They had to earn their money through wages. The more he paid in rents to the old landowning class, the
less there would be for him to keep for himself.
From Ricardo: The labourers had before 25
The landlords 25
And the capitalists 50
.. 100
He looked at how the pie got divided between the three groups.
There were three groups in the capitalist system in Ricardo's world (and there still are).
Workers / Employees
Capitalists / Employers
Rentiers / Landowners / Landlords / other skimmers, who are just skimming out of the system, not contributing to its success
The unproductive group exists at the top of society, not the bottom. Later on we did bolt on a benefit system to help others
that were struggling lower down the scale. Classical economics, it's not what you think.
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. Small state, unregulated capitalism was where it all started
and it's rather different to today's expectations.
Framing Corbyn's election defeat as a failure to understand the needs of the "Labour" electorate, and hence supporting
Standing's premise, whilst totally ignoring the fact that Corbyn was hammered by the powers of the right, BBC, MSM, Israel etc
etc is totally disingenuous and seems to me to be a case of very sour grapes.
The fact that the basic income was not implemented doesn't mean much given that there are many on all sides of the debate who
do not agree with the idea. I think Standing is just pissed off because no one listened to him.
What the proponents of the neo-liberal dispensation have not advertised, if indeed they
even know, is what replaces the 'nation?'
What replaces a nation is often referred to as a "colony", where most of the inhabitants are
no longer "citizens" but "natives" who can be exploited at will.
American unions pathetic, absolutely pathetic! We have been hearing this very same winging
from them for 50 years. Then they, universally, go out and support the glad handing
politicians who do a few rounds of golf with the their bosses and a few more jobs are lost.
Mention to them that maybe they would have a bit more job security if owned their factories
and work places, and watch the smoke start to rise from their collective heads. A hundred
years ago you could have sat in a bar, discussed workers owning the means of production and
the beers would have kept magically appearing in front of you. We are a long, long way from
Flint.
The limited successes of the old trade unions in the US have been their undoing. If only
because they always had, and continue to have, limited vision. They all think that they have
scored major victories if they squeeze another dime out of the bosses. According to this
union VP "We're at the mercy of whoever is supplying us." The guy is an idiot. He and
his cohort are at the mercy of their bosses, and they will always be at the mercy of their
bosses until they become their own bosses. Pathetic!
I thought Mr. Conway's connection of domestic manufacturing with war and imperialism,
a.k.a. 'national security', was pretty obvious. 'War is the health of the state.' However, I
suppose one might say that the American state now includes Japan. God, yes, we need more and
more 'airplanes, munitions, satellites, civilian jetliners' and so on, and more reasons to
keep armies in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and also so on, till the end of the world.
Well yes, but the opposite also applies. If you have a self sufficient economy you don't
have to get involved in wars on the other side of the planet because that's where "your"
energy, raw materials, finance, food, key manufactured goods etc come from. The US did not
have to get involved in either WW1 or WW2 for economic reasons, it was nearly self sufficient
at that time. That is not the case today, hence the fore-ever wars in the middle east, and
military bases scattered as confetti around the globe. Did America have to globalise its
economy? No, but the wind fall profits (initially) that could be reaped from doing so could
not be resisted by America's elites. The problem now is that America's economy has now been
so gutted that it cannot function without globalisation, which will bankrupt it further.
However look on the bright side, America's elites have never been so despised and hate in
their history. And nobody expects them to change, because they have not changed for 50 years.
People are now figuring out that they have to change things themselves. Expect fireworks.
Michael Hudson (of course!) has the first and last word on this. The general principle at
work here is that U.S. industry and jobs must be off-shored so Wall Street and Washington
politicians can create more debt – IOW keep Super (monetary) Imperialism going.
The US is the world's leader in manufacturing DEBT not the wealth that really matters in
today's world.
Yes. Regrettably, the article above is whistling past the graveyard, and I too thought of
Hudson's analysis and shook my head as I read it.
If money is created as credit -- and it is -- and every notional dollar of credit has an
obverse side of debt -- and it does -- then for the U.S. to be the Richest Country In The
World™ and have an elite with so many multibillionaires, there must be debt on the the
other side of all those notional dollars the elite have created for themselves.
You might familiarize yourself with how the national government funds its spending. It
creates new dollars every time it pays a bill. No debt required. So why do we have all this
public debt if it was unnecessary to begin with? It lines the pockets of the One Percent who
buy the safest bonds in the world to insure their immense fortunes. It's a subsidy. The rich
have the best socialism in the world. Right here in the USA.
This issue has very little if any relationship to "how the national government funds its
spending" or any of the other nominally 'conservative' debt bugbears. Those "safest bonds in
the world" would not insure squat if US debt wasn't backed by the US military and threats to
bomb any country that refuses to accept more of it back into the stone age. As Minsky wrote
"Any (economic) unit can create money. The problem is getting it accepted."
The world is being destroyed environmentally as well as militarily because the world's one
percent can think of no better alternative than allowing the US to continue creating debt,
destruction and death so they can – as Trump put it – "keep score" with each
other in the game to see who can accumulate the most unpayable debt.
To paraphrase Woody Allen (or somebody) the US is allowed to continue creating debt
because the world's One Percent needs the money to continue playing their game.
the majority of stocks are weakening and not making new highs, it's not a good sign
when only 30 stocks are leading the way.
Institutional investors pile into stocks
We have different (hopefully better) ways of measuring divergence these days --
specifically, cumulative breadth indicators, new highs vs. new lows, etc., so we don't
have to "stretch" to draw a conclusion about the Dow today.
"... The psychologies of speculation and gambling are almost indistinguishable: both are dangerously gambler places a bet on a horse he is creating a risk, while the speculator who buys a share is simply involved in the transfer of an existing risk. ..."
"... To repeat Keynes's warning from the 1930s: "when the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done." Momentum trading, trend-following currency speculators, overleveraged hedge funds, and corporate managements obsessed with daily fluctuations in share quotations are unlikely to produce the optimal distribution of scarce resources in the global economy. We have reached Keynes's "third degree." ..."
"... ...options, developed by Scholes and Merton, which lies at the heart of the modem derivatives world, is dependent on the similar assump- tion diat past volatility is a reliable guide to future volatility. This assumption may be likened to driving a motorcar by looking in the rearview mirror -- line as long as the road continues straight but disastrous when you reach the first comer. ..."
For Smith, the speculator is defined by his readiness to pursue short-term opportunities for profit: his investments are fluid whereas those
of the conventional businessman are more or less fixed. This distinction was retained by John Maynard Keynes, who described "enter-
prise" as "the activity of forecasting the prospective yield of assets
over their whole life,1' in contrast to speculation, which he called "die
activity of forecasting the psychology of the market.'1
Specidation is conventionally defined as an attempt to profit from
changes in market price. Thus, forgoing current income for a
prospective capital gain is deemed speculative. Speculation is active
while investment is generally passive. According to the Austrian
economist J. A. Schumpeter, "the difference between a speculator
and an investor can be defined by the presence or absence of the
intention to 'trade,1 i.e. realize profits from fluctuations in security
prices.112 The line separating speculation from investment is so thin
that it has been said both that speculation is the name given to a
failed investment and that investment is the name given to a suc-
cessful speculation. Fred Schwed. a Wall Street wit, declared that
clarifying the difference between investment and speculation was
"like explaining to the troubled adolescent that Love and Passion
are two different things. He perceives that they are different, but
they don't seem quite different enough to clear up his problem."
Schwed concluded the two could be separated on the grounds that
the first aim of investment was the preservation of capital while the
primary aim of speculation was the enhancement of fortune.
As he put it: "Speculation is an effort, probably unsuccessful, to turn a little money into a lot. Investment is an effort, which should be successful, to prevent a lot of money becoming a little."'
Similar problems of definition are encountered in distinguishing
speculation from gambling. While a bad investment may be a spec-
ulation, a poorly executed speculation is often described as a gamble. The American financier Bernard Baruch was once dismissed
from the presence of Pierpont Morgan for uttering the word "gamble" in relation to a business proposition.4 Later, Baruch recalled
that "there is no investment which doesn't involve some risk and
is not something of a gamble."
The psychologies of speculation and gambling are almost indistinguishable: both are dangerously gambler places a bet on a
horse he is creating a risk, while the speculator who buys a share is simply involved in the transfer of an
existing risk.
Speculation is generally considered riskier them
investment. The securities analyst Benjamin Graham declared that
investment requires a "margin of safety" so that the value of the
principal is maintained even in unforeseen adverse conditions.
An
uninformed or spontaneous investment is more speculative than
one in which the investor has taken the time to investigate and
assess its potential returns. Graham added that buying shares with
borrowed money was always speculative. The capitalist is confronted with a broad spectrum of risk with prudent investment at
one end and reckless gambling at the other. Speculation lies somewhere between the two.
... ... ...
It is often said that speculation never changes because human
nature remains the same. "Avarice, or desire of gain, is a universal
passion which operates at all times, in all places, and upon all per-
sons," wrote David Hume in the eighteenth century. To this we
might add that the fear of loss, emulation of one's neighbour, the
credulity of the crowd, and the psychology of gambling are equally
universal. The early stock markets were moved by hopes and fears
as much as their later counterparts. These emotions are unleashed
during moments of speculative euphoria. They follow die path of
least resistance, moulding each mania, regardless of its historical
context, into a common form. This explains why all great specula-
tive events seem to repeat themselves and why the experience of the
1690s seems so familiar.
The theory of the "rational bubble" appears to be nothing more
than an elaborate restatement of the "greater fool" investment
strategy, whereby the speculator knowingly buys shares above their
intrinsic value hoping that a "greater fool" will pay more for them
later. The exponents of the "rational bubble" appear to overlook
the fact that the success of this strategy is dependent on liquidity
(i.e., the constant presence of both buyers and sellers in the mar-
ket) and that in a panic buyers vanish at the very moment when
"rational bubble" speculators are seeking to unload their shares.
The "greater fool" method of investment has enjoyed great popu-
larity' in the 1990s American bull market where it has been
renamed "momentum investing." Speculators look to buy shares
that are rising faster than the market and sell quickly when the rise
begins to peter out.* The fate of the London banker John Martin in
1720 illustrates the dangers of this frivolous approach to invest-
ment. Early in the summer, he had gleefully argued that "when the
rest of the world is mad, we must imitate them in some measure,"
but he failed to sell out before the crash, lost a fortune, and ended
up complaining pathetically of being "blinded by other people's
advice."19
... ... ...
During the upturn of the cycle, Bagehot argued, people become
convinced the prosperity will last forever and mercantile houses
engage in excessive speculations. At the same time, an increasing
number of frauds are perpetrated on investors, which only come to
light after a crisis: "All people are most credulous when they are
most happy."
... ... ...
...According to John Stuart Mill, the seeds of each boom
are sown during the preceding crisis, when the liquidation of credit
causes asset prices to decline so severely that they become genuine
bargains. Their subsequent sharp rise from a low level leads to a
revival of speculation.55 After each crisis, the financial markets
invariably shrug off past follies and losses to confront the future
with bright optimism and fresh credulity. Capital becomes "blind,"
to use Bagehots term. Unable to remember the past, investors are
condemned to repeat it.
... ... ...
The most striking similarity between the 1920s and 1990s bull
markets is the notion that traditional measures of stock valuation
had become obsolete. Once again it was argued that an investment
in the stock market helped retain purchasing power during infla-
tionary periods and that management wras becoming more respon-
sive to shareholders' interests. Abby Joseph Cohen of Coldman
Sachs claimed that a longer business cycle and lower inflation justi-
fied an upward valuation in stock prices. In their Securities Analy-
sis, Benjamin Craham and David Dodds wrote that "instead of
judging the market price by established standards of value, the new'
era [of the 1920s] based its standards of value upon the market
price." In similar fashion, consultants in the 1990s invented a con-
cept named "market value added," which simply measured the difference between the market value of the firm and the amount of
capital tied up in it. The higher the "market value added," the
greater the firm is deemed to be worth.
The net asset value of a company -- the value of its factories,
machinery, and suchlike -- became the most despised of traditional
valuation tools. Dividend yields, which slipped to a historic low of
less than 1 Vi percent, were also dismissed as irrelevant. At times
even the price-eamings ratio, a measure favourable to speculative
values, has looked too conservative. Discounting future cash flow's
was used to justify any price for fast-growing technology companies. In late October 1996, a headline in the Investors Business
Daily, a stock market daily which published relative strength fig-
ures, asked and answered a question that vexed many minds:
"Overvalued? Not If the Stock Keeps on Rising."90
The new paradigm, or new' economics, of the 1990s provided the
intellectual underpinning for the greatest bull market in American
history. When stock prices fell sharply in October 1997, Abby
Joseph Cohen of Goldman Sachs saved the day by advising her
clients to increase their holding of shares. James Grant has sug-
gested that the reappearance of the new era ideology was a sign
that "markets make opinions not the other way round."
... ... ...
Keynes defined speculation as the attempt to forecast changes in
the psychology of the market. He compared it to various parlour
games -- snap, old maid, and musical chairs. Switching his
metaphor, Keynes likened speculation to a newspaper competition
in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces
from hundreds of photographs,
so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he
Itimself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to
catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking
at the problem from the same point of view ... We have reached
the third degree w here we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.'8
Speculation which is a beneficial, indeed vital, component of the
capitalist process has come to dominate the system to an unhealthy
degree.
To repeat Keynes's warning from the 1930s: "when the
capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the
activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done." Momentum
trading, trend-following currency speculators, overleveraged hedge
funds, and corporate managements obsessed with daily fluctuations in share quotations are unlikely to produce the optimal distribution of scarce resources in the global economy. We have reached
Keynes's "third degree."
... ... ...
...options, developed by Scholes and Merton, which lies at the heart of
the modem derivatives world, is dependent on the similar assump-
tion diat past volatility is a reliable guide to future volatility. This
assumption may be likened to driving a motorcar by looking in the
rearview mirror -- line as long as the road continues straight but
disastrous when you reach the first comer.
In common with all the
practical ideas generated by the Efficient Market Hypothesis, it is
based on the belief that when financial theories are turned into practice there is no change to the underlying reality. This was the error of
portfolio insurance in the 1980s and remained die error of the
derivatives markets a decade later. If markets are not efficient but
are subject to chaotic feedback loops, then the entire financial
superstructure created around derivatives in the 1990s, with its $50
trillion worth of exposure, is based on shaky premises.
Even outside the field of options pricing, the teaching of the Efficient Market Hypothesis has insinuated itself into the practices of
modem finance: the fads for "shareholder value" and corporate
stock-option schemes, the Capital Asset Pricing Model (which "scientifically" calculates companies' cost of capital), and popular
investment in stock index funds are all predicated, to a greater or
lesser extent, on the assumption that shares are efficiently priced by
the market. But if the hypothesis is false -- e.g., because speculative...
>
5.0 out of 5 stars
The
No. 1 history of financial speculation
Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2018
Verified Purchase
Absolutely the single best history of financial speculation. Chancellor seems to
have assimilated just about everything one could on all the major speculative episodes, from ancient origins through the
1990s.
There's not much else to say. If you're an investor, this is a must-read history of how things can go horribly wrong in
financial markets.
In fact, with U.S. equities bumping against all-time high valuations (in mid-2018), this is the perfect moment to take
your time and read through this book. It'll show you all the ways you might be getting swept up in speculative excess,
of which you might not be aware, even if you're invested in the greatest businesses that have ever existed.
>
Shashank V. Nerurkar
4.0 out of 5 stars
Historical
Perspective of Financial Speculation
Reviewed in India on September 9, 2019
Verified Purchase
Devil Take The Hindmost is very informative book which covers the history of
financial speculation from the third century. The author has narrated relevant details from various sources which
reflects the scholarly research undertaken by him. The major speculative bubbles such as tulip mania, south sea bubble,
railway network in Britain and US, automobile revolution in US, the crash of 1929, junk bonds mania, the Japanese bubble
of 1980 and havoc created by derivatives and hedge funds after 1990 are covered in great details. One realizes that not
much has changed as far as factors that lead to financial speculation over the history. The reader will be better
equipped to compare the conditions in financial markets with historical perspective. The author could have avoided bias
against the Republicans in US and Conservatives in Britain as their opposition has not done any better in managing the
financial speculation. The book is a bit dated and as such do not cover the dot-com bubble and 2008 financial crisis.
The book is great read for all participants in financial markets.
An award-winning journalist investigates Amazon's impact on the wealth and poverty of
towns and cities across the United States.
In 1937, the famed writer and activist Upton Sinclair published a novel bearing the subtitle
A Story of Ford-America . He blasted the callousness of a company worth "a billion
dollars" that underpaid its workers while forcing them to engage in repetitive and sometimes
dangerous assembly line labor. Eighty-three years later, the market capitalization of
Amazon.com has exceeded one trillion dollars, while the value of the Ford Motor Company
hovers around thirty billion. We have, it seems, entered the age of one-click America―and
as the coronavirus makes Americans more dependent on online shopping, its sway will only
intensify.
Alec MacGillis's Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our
most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that
falls within that company's growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon's sprawling network of
delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser
cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has
become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.
Ranging across the country, MacGillis tells the stories of those who've thrived and
struggled to thrive in this rapidly changing environment. In Seattle, high-paid workers in new
office towers displace a historic black neighborhood. In suburban Virginia, homeowners try to
protect their neighborhood from the environmental impact of a new data center. Meanwhile, in El
Paso, small office supply firms seek to weather Amazon's takeover of government procurement,
and in Baltimore a warehouse supplants a fabled steel plant. Fulfillment also shows how
Amazon has become a force in Washington, D.C., ushering readers through a revolving door for
lobbyists and government contractors and into CEO Jeff Bezos's lavish Kalorama mansion.
With empathy and breadth, MacGillis demonstrates the hidden human costs of the other
inequality―not the growing gap between rich and poor, but the gap between the country's
winning and losing regions. The result is an intimate account of contemporary capitalism: its
drive to innovate, its dark, pitiless magic, its remaking of America with every click.
" Fulfillment vividly details the devastating costs of Amazon's dominance and brutal
business practices, showcasing an economy that has concentrated in private hands staggering
wealth and power while impoverishing workers, crushing independent business, and supplanting
public governance with private might. A critical read." ―Lina Khan, associate
professor at Columbia Law School and author of Amazon's Antitrust Paradox
"Anyone who orders from Amazon needs to read these moving and enraging stories of how one
person's life savings, one life's work, one multigenerational tradition, one small business,
one town after another, are demolished by one company's seemingly unstoppable machine. They are
all the more enraging because Alec MacGillis shows so clearly how things could have been
different." ―Larissa MacFarquhar, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of
Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the
Overpowering Urge to Help
"Alec MacGillis practices journalism with ambition, tenacity, and empathy that will command
your awe. Like one of the great nineteenth-century novels, Fulfillment studies a social
ill with compelling intimacy and panoramic thoroughness. In the process, Jeff Bezos's dominance
and its costs are made real―and it becomes impossible to one-click again the same."
―Franklin Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of World Without
Mind
"For a generation, inequality has been rising relentlessly in the United States―not
just inequality of income and wealth, but also inequality of power and geography. In
Fulfillment , Alec MacGillis brings this crisis vividly alive by creating a broad
tableau of the way one giant company, Amazon, affects the lives of people and places across the
country. This book should be read as a call to action against the new economy's continuing
assault on working people, small businesses, and left-behind places." ―Nicholas
Lemann, author of Transaction Man
" Fulfillment addresses the human impact of current technologies and economic
inequality with rare power. People in tech don't often think about the ramifications of their
work; Alec MacGillis reminds us that it has consequences, and that even if there are no clear
solutions, we have a moral imperative to consider its effects." ―Craig Newmark,
founder of craigslist
Alec MacGillis is a senior reporter for ProPublica and the recipient of the
George Polk Award, the Robin Toner prize, and other honors. He worked previously at The
Washington Post , Baltimore Sun , and The New Republic , and his journalism
has appeared in The New York Times Magazine , The New Yorker , The
Atlantic , and other publications. His ProPublica reporting on Dayton, Ohio was the
basis of a PBS Frontline documentary about the city. He is the author of The Cynic , a
2014 biography of Mitch McConnell. He lives in Baltimore.
All of these "advancements" are around removing face-to-face interaction with other people.
Whether work-from-home, automated rental & purchase, retail goods delivered, etc. Curious
what long term impact this seemingly exponential shift toward human interaction as personal
irritant is doing to our social cohesion.
Is standing in a line always a burden or is it sometimes a benefit? Sure, sometimes I just
want to do my business and go but have also met fascinating people while in lines. I'm assuming
many of the people working at that ski resort are "ski bums" who used the job as a way to
fulfill their skiing lifestyle. They are a part of the skiing culture that has been removed
from the experience now. So many local jobs are being removed and replaced by tech jobs. We
barely have local community left and it's being replaced with, what? Social media? I'm a big
fan of our online communities here at NC so it's not all bad of course.
Yes, change is inevitable and much of this is convenient but just curious what it's doing to
us as a society. Maybe it's allowing us more time to focus on closer social bonds we've already
developed? Less time in lines or stores means more time with friends and family?
Our prior ways weren't exactly healthy so honestly I don't know if this will lead to better
ways or push us further apart. Any insights or ideas are appreciated. Just been pondering it
and curious what other think.
"In a system that generates masses, individualism is the only way out. But then what happens
to community -- to society?" – Jeanette Winterson
Maybe it's allowing us more time to focus on closer social bonds we've already developed?
Less time in lines or stores means more time with friends and family?
The social bond with your doctor is pretty important I would say. As it is with your local
bookseller or grocery store. They are all people too, and being face to face with them you
build more trust and compassion. This helps us both in times of hardship
I'll take the most dire view here (someone has to!):
Every step this society takes away from face-to-face interaction, and therefore community
and fellowship, is going to proportionally increase the death rate when the rolling disasters
of our era arrive properly at our shore.
I wish I could reach out and shake everyone who is like "I interact with people too much
already, this enforced isolation is GREAT!" don't they realize this philosophy might
kill them? In the upcoming chaos, if they're an unknown unknown to the people around
them, don't they realize they'll be all too easy to leave behind or even sacrifice??
This seems to be the path our society is absolutely determined to take – so be it.
Even NC is posting articles that are more or less cheering it. But as for me, I will rage, rage
against the dying of the light.
Found myself in a rather long line (no complaints) last Sat. for 2nd Covid vaccine. Realized
later that between the long line waiting and the after waiting to leave it was probably the
most people interaction I've had for over a year! We are social creatures. Our system preaches
"individualism" because that is the only way the "instant profit" system can operate. There are
other ways; our ruling classes opt out of those and the general population becomes muddled
instead.
"Modernity" and "AI" technology is great but if u have no human interaction eventually those
traits leave and you have what???? A dead society.
And with every step forward there is a step backward. Going digital across the board is not
always good as it takes away privacy and I have an example here. There is a linked article in
Links today called "Are punitive rules forcing doctors to hide their mental health problems?"
In it, a young doctor is under enormous mental stress and turns to older doctors for advice.
They 'advised her to drive out of town, pay cash and use a pseudonym if she needed to talk
to someone.' If most transaction were done digitally, how would this doctor and others like
her go for help without endangering their jobs? What options would they have?
In cases like this, the only 'options' allowed will be "official" options. As my
misguided attempt at "therapy" years ago taught me, often times, the analyst can be toxic.
Also, in a mental health setting, I encountered the "official" preference for medication
over 'therapy.' Both are situations that put the 'authority's' preferences above the
patients. One big way I eventually 'twigged' to the dystopian dynamic was in observing the
attitudes and body language of the "health care professionals" I was dealing with.
Electronica and devices have no agency, and no "body language." The entire process is
removing useful tools for the patient to navigate the shoals and reefs where the sharks
hang out in any bureaucracy.
The other, knock on effect of telemedicine we encountered was that the charges for
electronic "office visits" have not dropped. This is analogous to when a grocery store
keeps the cost of an individual item stable and reduces the package size.
Others have said it better than I, but it bears repeating; 'modern' methods are reducing
people to the status of 'things.' Just as in the process of reducing a person or group of
people to the status of "other," the next step is 'removal.'
Cash is agency. The spying may be efficient, but its main purpose is to take away
agency. Just like "software as a service" or "in the cloud", when you could just as easily
have the same functionality on your device which you own. The vendors don't want that. They
want to control you.
The only alternative is to support and keep alive businesses that accept customers with
cash and agency. And boycott the rest. Even if it is inconvenient!
Yay, less human interaction, more isolation, fewer seasonal jobs for high school or college
students. More magical technological solutions that the on-site staff has no idea how to fix
when they stop working. You're too busy and important to stand in line! That's socialism! Let's
tell everyone that they're risking imminent death by being around other people and then sell
them ways to avoid it!
The U.S. exported its production of goods and became a "service" economy or a "knowledge"
economy. Thanks to Corona much of the service employment has become virtual. Knowledge workers
can now work from home. How many knowledge workers possess knowledge unique to the U.S. and how
many could be replaced by remote workers from somewhere else?
This post describes changes, some of which may prove temporary and others may prove
permanent. I believe most of the changes and their longer term implications require time to
fully unfold. I am not fond of virtual service. I order online from the independent vendors
still around as Amazon, E-Bay, Etsy, and other platforms grind them down, but how long will
they remain independent? The U.S. Postal Service is under attack and when it falls to
privatization what kind of e-commerce will come after that? Cashless means exposed to me --
exposed to tracking and monitoring and exposed to theft from the shadows.
I don't understand the rush to eliminating cash. Cash is the last way to opt out of
commercial control. People seem to positively embrace it, and I don't get it.
(Exception: I understand why legal cash-business owners like the idea.)
I hear crime prevention and money laundering prevention as reasons. The first is code
for "control of poor people", the second is true as far as it goes, but that's not very
far. You're targeting mainly drug money while completely ignoring corporate and
high-net-worth individuals.
My question (to no one) is how was the automation financed? Did the ski company issue
new shares in equity with first refusal to the employees? Or did the company instead mosey
on down to a local branch of the government-privileged private credit cartel to have
themselves a heaping helping of the PUBLIC'S (including the employees') CREDIT but for the
company owners' PRIVATE GAIN?
As a partridge that hatches eggs which it has not laid,
So is a person who makes a fortune, but unjustly;
In the middle of his days it will abandon him,
And in the end he will be a fool. Jeremiah 17:11
The human population didn't grow to 8 billion through physical distancing, touchless
interaction, and living in isolation. ecommerce is a thing now, but it may not have a long
shelf life. There is an inherent need for human interaction if the specie is to prosper. The
pandemic is transitory and will eventually pass; human needs, wants, and desires will endure. I
look forward to the day when I can speak with a store clerk, browse shelves and racks, and pay
for things with currency. I don't believe that there is no going back. In fact, we must go
back. At least most of the way back.
Tesla down 31%? Not a problem I will use the dividends to offset my losses. Oh wait!
BigJJ 13 minutes ago
I've never understood how Tesla could possibly make money given all the infrastructure
they had to install just to sell shoddily thrown together rusty cars that are useless when
the grid crashes.
Sound of the Suburbs 41 minutes ago (Edited)
...What was the ponzi scheme of inflated asset prices that collapsed in 2008?
El Hosel 1 hour ago (Edited)
Clearly "It's different this time", now that everybody knows "stocks only go up"...
Apple
( AAPL ) is
near an all-time high. So are tech giants Adobe ( ADBE ) and
PayPal ( PYPL ) .
Recent initial public offerings Zoom ( ZM ) ,
Cloudflare ( NET ) and
Peloton ( PTON ) are
at record levels as well. The Nasdaq is a hair's breadth from busting through 10,000
again . Call it irrational exuberance, Part Deux. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan
Greenspan used that term in a speech nearly a
quarter-century ago to describe the 1996 boom in the stock market -- particularly the rise
of big tech stocks and the wave of unprofitable internet IPOs. This year's tech rally is indeed
eerily reminiscent of that late 1990s and early 2000s period, when the Nasdaq surged past the
3,000, 4,000 and 5,000 levels in a matter of months before finally peaking -- and then crashing
in April of 2000.
This week, Head of Investments Nicky Eggers talks to Will Hobbs, Chief Investment Officer,
about concerns that we are watching another technology bubble inflate. They discuss if such
dominance of a handful of companies is unusual and what is driving it. Also, does it make these
still surging stock markets more vulnerable? And what has the Black Death got to do with any of
it?
"There is a clear consensus that we are witnessing our second tech bubble in 15 years," said
Mr. Einhorn of Greenlight Capital Inc. "What is uncertain is how much further the bubble can
expand, and what might pop it."
He described the current bubble as "an echo of the previous tech bubble, but with fewer
large capitalization stocks and much less public enthusiasm."
There are three reasons he cited in an investor letter that back his thesis: the rejection
of "conventional valuation methods," short sellers being forced to cover positions and big
first-day pops for newly minted public companies that "have done little more than use the right
buzzwords and attract the right venture capital."
He didn't specify which companies he felt met that criteria.
Some of the market's biggest
momentum plays , such as biotech, Internet and social-media stocks, have been hit hard
since early March amid concerns that they have gotten too pricey. Many of those names have
recovered some of those losses over the past week and a half.
Without disclosing specific names, Mr. Einhorn said he has shorted a basket of so-called
momentum stocks. He highlighted the risk of such a move: "We have repeatedly noted that it is
dangerous to short stocks that have disconnected from traditional valuation methods," Mr.
Einhorn said. "After all, twice a silly price is not twice as silly; it's still just
silly. "
But now that there is "a clear consensus" that tech stocks are in a bubble, he said he is
more comfortable shorting a basket of these high-flying stocks.
"A basket approach makes sense because it allows each position to be very small, thereby
reducing the risk of any particular high-flier becoming too costly...When the prices reconnect
to traditional valuation methods, the de-rating can be substantial," he said. "There is a huge
gap between the bubble price and the point where disciplined growth investors (let alone value
investors) become interest buyers."
The last time the Internet bubble burst in the early 2000s, Cisco Systems dropped 89% and
Amazon.com Inc. fell 93%, he said. "While we aren't predicting a complete repeat of the
collapse, history illustrates that there is enough potential downside in these [momentum] names
to justify the risk of shorting them," Mr. Einhorn said.
Greenlight Capital lost 1.5% in the first quarter, the New York hedge fund said Tuesday. The
firm said it lost money on its bets against Keurig Green Mountain Inc. and Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.,
among other wagers, while making money on Micron Technology Inc.
Even Société Générale – which rightfully wrote that
"markets will eventually turn but picking bottoms in this type of market is risky business"
– in a note on Friday discussed the "dead cat bounce." That's the little boost in the
market that comes when speculators cover their positions the day after big damage. The French
bank advised they should be "sold into until there are clear catalysts for a turn."
But the truth is that no one knows whether a "dead cat bounce" is a dead count bounce or
something else, even if you have all the short-covering information. Everything is temporary.
Everything is subject to change.
That makes this whole market a casino. Beating a casino requires you to get the odds in your
favor -- but you'll never get them more than just a little in your favor. In the stock market,
they are in your favor if you play it long. In the short term? No one knows.
The next 10
years
Here's Warren Buffett
recently : "I also don't think that I can make money by predicting what's gonna go on next
week or next month. I do think I can make money by predicting what's gonna happen in 10
years."
A lot of Wall Street research has internalized those principles, but the job of people
predicting the market is to predict -- and beat -- the market. Buffett would tell you that just
owning the broad market is fine. You can join it without much thought -- and for cheap --
instead of trying to beat it, which you probably can't do.
A very sensible research note from Bank of America Securities put it succinctly: "avoid
panic selling." It also offered a new perspective on what happens when you miss the 10 best
days of the stock market -- which you can't predict because they can happen when the market is
awful or when the highs are all-time.
"Since the 1930s, if an investor sat out the 10 best return days per decade, his/her returns
would be just 91% compared to 14,962% returns since then," the note said.
In other words, it is incredibly risky to try to time something that is really hard to time.
And in today's extremely volatile market, the stakes are much, much higher.
We have repeatedly noted that
it is dangerous to short stocks that have disconnected from traditional valuation methods.
After all, twice a silly price is not twice as silly; it's still just silly. This understanding
limited our enthusiasm for shorting the handful of momentum stocks that dominated the headlines
last year. Now there is a
clear consensus that we are witnessing our second tech bubble in 15 years. What is
uncertain is how much further the bubble can expand, and
what might pop it .
Given the enormous stock price volatility, we decided to short a basket of bubble stocks. A
basket approach makes sense because it allows each position to be very small, thereby reducing
the risk of any particular high-flier becoming too costly. The corollary to "twice a silly
stock price is not twice as silly" is that when the prices reconnect to traditional valuation
methods, the de-rating can be substantial. There is a huge gap between the bubble price and the
point where disciplined growth investors (let alone value investors) become interested buyers.
When the last internet bubble popped , Cisco (the best of the best bubble stocks) fell 89%,
Amazon fell 93%, and the lower quality stocks fell even more.
In the post-bubble period, people stopped talking about valuing companies based on eyeballs
(average monthly users), total addressable market (TAM), or price-to-sales.
When the re-rating occurred, the profitable former high-fliers again traded based on P/E
ratios, and the unprofitable ones traded as a multiple of cash on the balance sheet. Our
criteria for selecting stocks for the bubble basket is that we estimate there to be at least
90% downside for each stock if and when the market reapplies traditional valuation to these
stocks. While we aren't predicting a complete repeat of the collapse, history illustrates that
there is enough potential downside in these names to justify the risk of shorting them.
At this point, three stocks -- Apple, Amazon and Microsoft -- comprise about 16% of the
S&P 500 and a third of the Nasdaq 100. Their combined value of $5 trillion is bigger than
Germany's entire economy. And the last time the "Big 3" were this expensive relative to free
cash flow was during Tech Bubble Version 1.0.
There is a consensus that there is tech bubble. But it is completely unclear when it will
burst. David Einhorn made the same point in 2014: 'We Are Witnessing Our Second Tech Bubble in 15
Years' David Einhorn's make his name by shorting Lehman Brothers before it dry heaved out of
existence
Today, the S&P 500 and TSX Index are both down 4% and 10%, respectively, from their
pre-pandemic heights. Meanwhile, the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite is at a fresh all-time high,
up a whopping 9% above those February 19 heights, as tech stocks have led the upward
charge.
Many folks have been bringing into question the divergence between the stock market and the
economy lately. But what about the divergence in performance between the tech-heavy NASDAQ and
other indices?
There's no question that the recent rally in tech stocks rhymes with the lead-up to the tech
bubble that burst in 2000, but is the tech sector really in a bubble? Or are the lofty
valuations warranted given the stock market is pointing to a nice economic recovery that could
be in the cards in 2021?
Is there a tech bubble that could burst in 2020?
Probably not.
While the recent tech-driven rally may be of concern to those who invested through the
dot-com bust, tech stock valuations, in aggregate, aren't at the absurd levels they were in
1999. So, no tech stocks aren't partying like it's 1999. At least, not yet.
However, I do see pockets of severe overvaluation within the tech sector that are quite
pronounced. For instance, the cloud stocks that have been riding high on pandemic tailwinds are
looking dangerously frothy at this juncture.
Some of the biggest tech winners over the past quarter now see themselves up well over 100%
over the last few months. Others have more than tripled. And their valuations are now above and
beyond that of their historical averages. While pandemic tailwinds are undoubtedly worth a
premium, I'm in the belief that many momentum chasers looking to the hottest tech stocks today
are in danger of paying up for many years worth of growth right off the bat.
Growth
investors: Valuation always matters
I don't care if you're looking at the best business in the world with the strongest
tailwinds at any given instance. If the price paid is too high, you could stand to lose a
considerable amount of your hard-earned investment dollars.
That's why I'd encourage investors to always consider the valuation of a stock they're
looking to purchase, rather than letting emotions like the fear of missing out force you to buy
at a stock at whatever price Mr. Market asks.
One has to draw a line somewhere, and with some of the hottest stocks out there like Shopify
(TSX:SHOP)
(NYSE:SHOP) , I think there's a chance that the line has been crossed and that investors
looking to buy after the stock's unprecedented bounce could put themselves at risk of feeling
the full force of a correction sparked by a broader correction in tech stocks.
Sure, tech-driven growth is one of the few places that have been
working amid the pandemic. And while I've been pounding the table on shares of Shopify over
the past few months, I'm growing reluctant to recommend the name at these heights.
Shopify has had its fair share of plunges en route to $1,400, not because the company
fundamentals have decayed, but because the stock needed a chance to take a breather.
The tech stocks riding high on pandemic tailwinds are overdue for a mild correction in the
event of a broader growth-to-value rotation. So, if you doubled up on shares of Shopify over
the last few months, can it hurt to take your principal off the table, as you look to play with
the house's money? I'd say it's only prudent, as tech valuations continue swelling at a quicker
rate than most other stocks.
Foolish takeaway
Don't get me wrong. Shopify is a wonderful business -- an e-commerce kingpin that's a force
to be reckoned with. The company is firing on all cylinders under its unstoppable founder
Tobias Lütke, but the valuation has become stretched.
Although I don't see a tech bubble, I do think the hottest tech flyers are at a high risk of
correcting in favour of neglected value stocks.
Fool contributor Joey Frenette has no position in
any of the stocks mentioned. Tom Gardner owns shares of
Shopify. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Shopify and Shopify.
"... Many of these new companies made outrageous, and often fraudulent, claims about their business ventures for the purpose of raising capital and boosting share prices. ..."
"... However, in the midst of the "mania," things like valuation, revenue, or even viable business models didn't matter. It was the "Fear Of Missing Out," which sucked investors into the fray without regard for the underlying risk. ..."
"... Sir Issac Newton, the brilliant mathematician, was an early investor in South Sea Corporation. Newton quickly made a lot of money and recognized the early stages of a speculative mania. Knowing that it would eventually end badly, he liquidated his stake at a large profit. ..."
"... However, after he exited, South Sea stock experienced one of the most legendary rises in history. As the bubble kept inflating, Newton allowed his emotions to overtake his previous logic and he jumped back into the shares. Unfortunately, it was near the peak. ..."
"... The story of Newton's losses in the South Sea Bubble has become one of the most famous in popular finance literature. While surveying his losses, Newton allegedly said that he could "calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people." ..."
"... Yes, this time is different. "Like all bubbles, it ends when the money runs out." – Andy Kessler ..."
I have previously discussed the importance of understanding how "physics" plays a crucial role in the stock market. As Sir Issac
Newton once discovered, "what goes up, must come down."
Andy Kessler, via the Wall Street
Journa l, recently discussed a similar point with respect to the momentum in stock prices. To wit:
"Does this sound familiar: Smart guy owns stock in March at $200, sells it in June at around $600, but then buys it back in
July and August for between $900 and $1,000. By September it's back at $200. Ouch. Tesla this year? Yahoo in 2000? Nope. That
was Sir Isaac Newton getting pulled into the great momentum trade of the South Sea Co., which cratered 300 years ago this month.
He lost the equivalent of more than $3 million today. Newton, whose second law of motion is about the momentum of a body equaling
the force acting on it, didn't know that works for stocks too."
To understand what happened to the South Sea Corporation, you need a bit of history.
The South Sea History
In 1720, in return for a loan of £7 million to finance the war against France, the House of Lords passed the South Sea Bill, which
allowed the South Sea Company a monopoly in trade with South America.
England was already a financial disaster and was struggling to finance its war with France. As debts mounted, England needed a
solution to stay afloat. The scheme was that in exchange for exclusive trading rights, the South Sea Company would underwrite the
English National Debt. At that time, the debt stood at £30 million and carried a 5% interest coupon from the Government. The South
Sea company converted the Government debt into its own shares.
They would collect the interest from the Government and then pass it on to their shareholders.
Interesting Absurdities
At the time, England was in the midst of rampant market speculation. As soon as the South Sea Company concluded its deal with
Parliament, the shares surged to more than 10 times their value. As South Sea Company shares bubbled up to incredible new heights,
numerous other joint-stock companies IPO'd to take advantage of the booming investor demand for speculative investments.
Many of these new companies made outrageous, and often fraudulent, claims about their business ventures for the purpose of
raising capital and boosting share prices. Here are some examples of these companies' business proposals (History House, 1997):
Supplying the town of Deal with fresh water.
Trading in hair.
Assuring of seamen's wages.
Importing pitch and tar, and other naval stores, from North Britain and America.
Insuring of horses.
Improving the art of making soap.
Improving gardens.
The insuring and increasing children's fortunes.
A wheel for perpetual motion.
Importing walnut-trees from Virginia.
The making of rape-oil.
Paying pensions to widows and others, at a small discount.
Making iron with pit coal.
Transmutation of quicksilver into a malleable fine metal.
For carrying on an undertaking of great advantage; but nobody to know what it is.
A Speculative Mania
However, in the midst of the "mania," things like valuation, revenue, or even viable business models didn't matter. It was
the "Fear Of Missing Out," which sucked investors into the fray without regard for the underlying risk.
Though South Sea Company shares were skyrocketing, the company's profitability was mediocre at best, despite abundant promises
of future growth by company directors.
The eventual selloff in Company shares was exacerbated by a previous plan of lending investors money to buy its shares. This "margin
loan," meant that many shareholders had to sell their shares to cover the plan's first installment of payments.
As South Sea Company and other "bubble " company share prices imploded, speculators who had purchased shares on credit went bankrupt.
The popping of the South Sea Bubble then resulted in a contagion that spread across Europe.
Newton's Folly
Sir Issac Newton, the brilliant mathematician, was an early investor in South Sea Corporation. Newton quickly made a lot of
money and recognized the early stages of a speculative mania. Knowing that it would eventually end badly, he liquidated his stake
at a large profit.
However, after he exited, South Sea stock experienced one of the most legendary rises in history. As the bubble kept inflating,
Newton allowed his emotions to overtake his previous logic and he jumped back into the shares. Unfortunately, it was near the peak.
It is noteworthy that once Newton decided to go back into South Sea stock, he moved essentially all his financial assets into
it. In general, Newton was intimately familiar with commodities and finance. As Master of the Mint, his post required him to make
many decisions that depended on market prices and conditions. The story of Newton's losses in the South Sea Bubble has become
one of the most famous in popular finance literature. While surveying his losses, Newton allegedly said that he could "calculate
the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."
Throughout financial history, markets have evolved from one speculative "bubble," to bust, to the next with each one being believed
"it was different this time." The slides below are from a presentation I made to a large mutual fund company. What we some common
denominators between all previous bubbles and now.
The table below shows a listing of assets classes that have experienced bubbles throughout history, with the ones related to the
current environment highlighted in yellow. It is not hard to see the similarities between today and the previous market bubbles in
history. Investors are currently chasing "new technology" stocks from Zoom to Tesla, piling into speculative call options, and piling
into leverage. What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, by the way, the slides above are from a 2008 presentation just one month before the Lehman crisis. The point here is that
speculative cycles are always the same.
The Speculative Cycle
Charles Kindleberger suggested that speculative manias typically commence with a "displacement" which excites speculative interest.
The displacement may come from either an entirely new object of investment (IPO) or from increased profitability of established investments.
The speculation is then reinforced by a "positive feedback" loop from rising prices. which ultimately induces "inexperienced investors"
to enter the market. As the positive feedback loop continues, and the "euphoria" increases, retail investors then begin to "leverage"
their risk in the market as "rationality" weakens.
The full cycle is shown below.
During the course of the mania, speculation becomes more diffused and spreads to different asset classes. New companies are floated
to take advantage of the euphoria, and investors leverage their gains using derivatives, stock loans, and leveraged instruments.
As the mania leads to complacency, fraud and manipulation enter the market place. Eventually, the market crashes and speculators
are wiped out. The Government and Regulators react by passing new laws and legislations to ensure the previous events never happen
again.
The Latest Mania
Let's go back to Andy for a moment:
"When bull markets get going, investors come out of the woodwork to pile in. These momentum investors -- I call them momos
-- figure if a stock is going up, it will keep going up. But usually, there is some source of hot air inflating stocks: either
a structural anomaly that fools investors into thinking ever-rising stock prices are real or a source of capital that buys, buys,
buys -- proverbial 'dumb money.' Think of it as a giant fireplace bellows, an accordion-like contraption that pumps in fresh oxygen
to keep flames growing." – Andy Kessler
We have seen these manias repeated throughout history.
In 1929 you could buy stocks with as little as a 5% down payment
The 1960s and '70s had the Nifty Fifty bubble.
In 1987 it was a rising dollar, portfolio insurance, and major investments by the Japanese into U.S. real estate.
In 2000, it was the new paradigm of the internet and the influx of new online trading firms like E*Trade creating liquidity
issues in Nasdaq stocks. Additionally, record numbers of companies were being brought public by Wall Street to fill investor demand.
In 2008, subprime mortgages, low interest rates, and lax lending policies, combined with a litany of derivative products inflated
massive bubbles in debt instruments.
In 2020?
What about today? Look back at the chart of the South Sea Company above. Now, the one below. See any similarities. Yes, that's
Tesla. However, you can't solely blame the Federal Reserve as noted by Andy:
"Most simply blame the Federal Reserve -- especially today, with its zero-interest-rate policy -- for pumping the hot air that
gets the momos going. Fair enough, but that's only part of the story. Long market runs have always allured investors who figure
they're smart to jump in, even if it's late.
Everyone forgets the adage, 'Don't mistake brains for a bull market.'"
As stated, while no two financial manias are ever alike, the end results are always the same. Are there any similarities in today's
market? You decide.
"From SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, which are modern-day blind pools that often don't end well. Today's
momos also chase stock splits, which mean nothing for a company's actual value. Same for a new listing in indexes like the S&P
500. Isaac Newton could explain the math." – Andy Kessler
You get the idea. But one of the tell-tale indications is the speculative chase of "zombie" companies which are only still alive
primarily due to the Federal Reserve's interventions.
Fixing The Cause Of The Crash
Historically, all market crashes have been the result of things unrelated to valuation levels. Issues such as liquidity, government
actions, monetary policy mistakes, recessions, or inflationary spikes are the culprits that trigger the "reversion in sentiment."
Importantly, the "bubbles" and "busts" are never the same. I previously quoted Bob Bronson on this point:
"It can be most reasonably assumed that markets are efficient enough that every bubble is significantly different than the
previous one. A new bubble will always be different from the previous one(s). Such is since investors will only bid prices to
extreme overvaluation levels if they are sure it is not repeating what led to the previous bubbles. Comparing the current extreme
overvaluation to the dotcom is intellectually silly.
I would argue that when comparisons to previous bubbles become most popular, it's a reliable timing marker of the top in a
current bubble. As an analogy, no matter how thoroughly a fatal car crash is studied, there will still be other fatal car crashes.
Such is true even if we avoid all previous accident-causing mistakes."
Comparing the current market to any previous period in the market is rather pointless. The current market is not like 1995, 1999,
or 2007? Valuations, economics, drivers, etc. are all different from cycle to the next.
Most importantly, however, the financial markets always adapt to the cause of the previous "fatal crash." Unfortunately, that
adaptation won't prevent the next one.
Yes, this time is different. "Like all bubbles, it ends when the money runs out." – Andy Kessler
My eyes were caught by a headline in a business paper yesterday. It said, "Steady rise in
shady deals, price rigging"...
But is greed really good?
I still remember a time in late 2008 when a lot of retail investors I met, including some from
within my family, suggested me that the stock market was a casino only reserved for the lucky
and wealthy few.
Ironically, these very people were playing this casino till a few months ago (around January
2008) when the markets were acting like a drug addict on a high.
The only different was that instead of slot machines, these people were betting on rising
stock prices.
Since the game was there to be won, or so these people thought, they played and played this
casino till the cops came, and the house came crashing down.
History is proof that such people, who play the casino called stock markets, ultimately lose
it all. Because history is also proof that in the casino business, it's the house (the casino)
that always wins and not the gamblers.
The case with gamblers is that while they win for some days, one fine day they lose it all
to the house.
This is exactly what happens to people who treat the stock market as a casino and gamble
with the mindless hope of winning it all.
Let me remind them some lessons from the history of stock markets.
Once upon a time
You see, the original design of the stock market was purely capitalist in intention.
The stock market was created to provide a means for business people – entrepreneurs,
inventors, developers – to obtain needed investment capital, to start or to expand their
businesses.
So stocks were issued, bankers and other investors bought the stock, and the businesses made
use of the invested money. But once a business started flourishing and was producing a profit,
it returned the money back to the stock holders so that it could be used by other
enterprises.
Over the years however, this last part of the process was completely forgotten.
As years passed, the brokers quickly realized that they could make lots of easy money in
trading shares back and forth. They became middlemen, in charge of the flow of capital, earning
their commission on each and every transaction.
As we see now, the game is no longer about capital and businesses, and has become one where
everything is centered on the flow of money from one investor to another, instead of one
business to another.
And in this flow, while investors get doomed time and again, brokers always make money!
This is exactly like it happens in a casino. One gambler gets rich at the expense of others,
but ultimately loses it all.
But whatever happens, the broker (the casino) always wins.
Stock market = Casino?
"So there's no difference between the stock market and casino?" you may start to wonder.
Well, not much!
One difference is that slot machines are replaced by coloured and confusing graphs, and the
loud ring of the jackpot alarm bells is replaced by scary headlines in business channels and
newspapers.
But stock brokers earn their commissions from the flow of traffic, just as in the
casinos.
Also, like in a casino, gamblers bring in lots of money and leave a portion of it behind
(most often everything they came with), thinking that they had a really good time.
So, the money goes into the stock market casino, but one question never seems to get asked
or answered: Where does all that money go?
Of course these are paper losses, but a significant part of these are real gains for the
brokers, who continue to make their bucks while everyone and his mother is selling stocks like
crazy.
Coming back to the question whether the stock market resembles a casino, I've realized over
the years that the question is deeper than it appears.
When I was asked this question a few years back, I used to reply, "No! Casinos are for
gamblers and the stock market is for investors."
However, what I've realized over these years is that there indeed are some similarities as
well as differences (as we just discussed above) between the two.
The closest similarity between the two lies in the mindset of the players/gamblers.
Gamblers go to the casino hoping for the big win. We all hear about the person who went in
poor and left the casino with millions. This seems an easy way to get rich.
What we fail to understand is the enormous odds against such a huge win. But we remain
hopeful and optimistic, and so casinos thrive.
"I would be the next millionaire!" is what all gamblers think till the time they come out of
the casino.
Unfortunately, the stock market has become like a casino for too many people, as the data
from SEBI also suggests.
"Haven't you heard about the guy who bought an unknown stock on a tip from his brother's
friend's colleague and watched it turn into the next Infosys ," asked a
friend. "I wish I was that guy!"
With such a thought, which most people in the stock market have, they buy a stock. Then they
check the ticker every 10 minutes for the next month, just like the gambler watching the wheels
turn on a slot machine, waiting for that "Yes, I'm the millionaire!" moment.
If it doesn't pay off, they speculate on another stock, just like a gambler goes to another
slot machine to try his luck.
However, the market does not operate exactly like a casino. It's the gamblers who think it
does.
In a casino, the longer you play, the more you will lose (remember, the house always
wins!).
However, in the stock market, the longer you play, the more likely you are to win.
Of course you will hear stories of people who made a quick killing in the stock market, just
as there have been people who left the casino with millions, but always remember this for a
fact – these are exceptions, not the rule.
The rule is that you can create wealth from the stock market only by buying quality
businesses and holding them over the long run.
So my answer to the question – Is stock market a casino? – isn't "No! Casinos
are for gamblers and the stock market is for investors."
The answer is – "You must know the difference and not try to treat stock market like a
casino."
If you treat the stock market like a casino, you will be a loser in the long run.
Though you might not know it from the enthusiasm of the gamblers, the current Buffett
indicator
reveals an overwhelmingly inflated stock market . Today's market cap sits at a staggering
185.4% over GDP. Even if total assets of Federal Reserve banks are included, the indicator is
still 137% over GDP. Based on these metrics, the stock market is estimated to return
-2.5% per year (on average) for the next eight years . That number doesn't even
include inflation.
Take a long, hard look at your retirement savings. Check your allocations to high-risk,
overvalued assets.
The first Fed stimulus was issued in March 2020 to prop up the economy in the midst of the pandemic. A second stimulus was issued
in January 2021.
Both seem to have set the stage to turn the markets into an overvalued "casino,"
and
here's why
What exactly did the stimulus stimulate?
The first pair of Fed "free money" stimulus packages seemed to, at least partially, do their job from a consumer standpoint.
Consumers spent money in record amounts on both
durable
and
nondurable
goods
according to official sources.
Durable goods spending spiked by about 18% to an adjusted rate of
$1.86 trillion
annually,
as you can see on the chart below:
Nondurable goods spending (things like energy and food) also increased by roughly 6% to an adjusted rate of
$3.21
trillion
annually.
So why all the concern about the high-risk market "casino" if the stimulus checks went toward buying stuff?
Strap in, because this is about to take a weird turn in the
wrong
direction
Less "pent up" consumer spending
According to
Wolf
Richter
, it seems like one reason that consumers spent like they did for the last year
is
they
deferred their mortgages:
Millions of homeowners didn't have to make their mortgage payments because they'd entered their mortgages into forbearance
programs.
But "2.6 million mortgages are still in forbearance,"
according to the
article
.
Eviction bans and student loans
automatically
going into forbearance are only
some
of
the reasons consumers went on the spending spree we saw above.
The problem is, either these mortgages, rent agreements, and loans eventually have to be repaid by the consumer, or the lenders
might have to seek other remedies.
To complicate matters even more, Wolf
thinks
any
demand for consumers to spend more could evaporate completely:
What will come when this crisis settles down, and when this free money fades, is a scenario where consumers have bought all
the goods they wanted to buy. That's the opposite of pent-up demand.
If the potential implications of this weren't bad enough, it still gets more interesting.
Even
more
stimulus?
At this moment, Congress is
thinking
about
raining even more "free cash" down on Americans.
If Wolf's prediction is right, and pent up consumer demand is gone, where will the money go?
I call it, or something like it,
the
"
boredom
markets
hypothesis
":
People got bored in their coronavirus-related lockdowns, and they couldn't bet on sports because sports were canceled, so they
turned to
betting on stocks as a form of entertainment
, not investment
or financial analysis.
The stock market is a casino that happens to still be open
.
[emphasis added]
"Robinhood's (RBNHD) trading in equities and options spiked to a level
more than double
its
previous peaks,"
thanks
to
these gamblers.
You may think calling the stock market "casino-like" is an exaggeration. Massachusetts financial regulators disagree. When they
filed a complaint against Robinhood last year, they accused the app of
encouraging
frequent trading
, rewarding users with carefree animations like confetti (whether the trade is profitable or not).
I have to say, I sometimes play computer games on my phone, and my impression is that the thing that distinguishes Robinhood
from other smartphone games is not so much the in-app animations as it is the
money
.
Like, on Robinhood, you play a game on your phone, and sometimes you win money! Other times you lose money!
Whether or not it's because of the confetti, we do know that Robinhood's $0-per-trade business model forced other brokerages
including Fidelity, E*trade, TD Ameritrade, even Charles Schwab to match their free-trading model.
This competition put even more money on the table.
Retail investors going "all in" on their casino bets?
In addition to Robinhood's spiking trade volume, "Fidelity's retail accounts totaled 26M in 2020, up 17% from a year earlier,
while daily trading volume doubled,"
according
to
an article on Seeking Alpha. "Brokerages were also bolstered as more people stayed at home due to COVID-19."
We've been wondering why currently-astronomical stock prices keep rising, inflating the
already
historic "everything bubble"
even more. It seems like the Fed isn't
just
supporting
stock prices through "quantitative easing," but
also
by handing out chips for the
world's biggest casino.
We can expect more stock market chaos. Maybe from "short squeezes" like the WallStreetBets fiasco in the last week of January. Or
we might see even sillier things like gambling on a stock because
it
has a cool name
The individual investors that powered GameStop Corp.'s meteoric rise have a new target: Rocket Cos., the parent company of
Quicken Loans. Trading of Rocket shares was halted several times this week because of its volatility. Individual investors on
WallStreetBets, the Reddit community that gave birth to GameStop's rise, have been encouraging each other to buy the stock in
recent days and sharing evidence of their own massive gains. They have relished in the company's name -- Rocket -- an apt one for
their goal of higher prices. "The $RKT is fueled and ready for liftoff," one user wrote early this week.
Matt Levine's analysis
: "An important feature of modern stock markets, unfortunately, is that companies sometimes go up not
for any fundamental reason but because their names or tickers sound like something good. It makes as much sense as everything
else, which is to say none at all."
The financially savvy know that, in the typical Vegas casino, it's a well-known fact that the odds are stacked in favor of the
house. Some say, "The house always wins."
Don't gamble your retirement savings
Though you might not know it from the enthusiasm of the gamblers, the current Buffett
indicator
reveals
an
overwhelmingly inflated stock market
. Today's market cap sits at a staggering
185.4% over GDP. Even if total assets of Federal Reserve banks are included, the indicator is
still
137%
over GDP. Based on these metrics,
the
stock market is estimated to return -2.5% per year
(on average) for the
next
eight years
. That number doesn't even include inflation.
And of course an average number like that smooths out the huge losses and the marginal wins. An average number like that is how
the house looks at their earnings at sunrise, when all the gamblers have gone back to their hotels. A lucky few walk with a
little spring in their steps, a little extra cash in their pockets. An unlucky few wait outside pawn shops on the Strip, wallets
and bank accounts empty, hoping to sell anything for a few more rolls of the dice. Everyone else, they walk away a little bit
poorer, but still hopeful. Still looking forward to tomorrow's chance at a big win
Fortunately, there are other choices available to you.
Take a long, hard look at your retirement savings. Check your allocations to high-risk, overvalued assets...
"... In the Risk Alert below, the itemization of various forms of abuses, such as the many ways private equity firms parcel out interests in the businesses they buy among various funds and insiders to their, as opposed to investors' benefit, alone should give pause. And the lengthy discussion of these conflicts does suggest the SEC has learned something over the years. Experts who dealt with the agency in its early years of examining private equity firms found the examiners allergic to considering, much the less pursuing, complex abuses. ..."
"... Undermining legislative intent of new supervisory authority the SEC never embraced its new responsibilities to ride herd on private equity and hedge funds. ..."
"... The agency is operating in such a cozy manner with private equity firms that as one investor described it: It's like FBI sitting down with the Mafia to tell them each year, "Don't cross these lines because that's what we are focusing on." ..."
"... Advisers charged private fund clients for expenses that were not permitted by the relevant fund operating agreements, such as adviser-related expenses like salaries of adviser personnel, compliance, regulatory filings, and office expenses, thereby causing investors to overpay expenses ..."
"... Current SEC chairman Jay Clayton came from Sullivan & Cromwell, bringing with him Steven Peikin as co-head of enforcement. And the Clayton SEC looks to have accomplished the impressive task of being even weaker on enforcement than Mary Jo White. ..."
"... On the same side though, fraud is a criminal offence, and it's SEC's duty to prosecute. And I believe that a lot of what PE engage in would happily fall under fraud, if SEC really wanted. ..."
"... Crimogenic: Producing or tending to produce crime or criminality. An additional factor is that, in the main, the criminals do not take their money and leave the gaming tables but pour it back in and the crime metastasizes. AKA, Kleptocracy. ..."
"... You might add that the threat of consequences for these crimes makes the criminals extremely motivated to elect officials who will not prosecute them (e.g. Obama). They're not running for office, they're avoiding incarceration. ..."
"... Andrew Levitt, for instance, complained bitterly that Joe Lieberman would regularly threaten to cut the SEC's budget for allegedly being too aggressive about enforcement. Lieberman was the Senator from Hedgistan. ..."
"... More banana republic level grift. What happens when investors figure out they can't believe anything they are told? ..."
"... Can we come up with a better descriptor for "private equity"? I suggest "billionaire looters". ..."
"... Where is the SEC when Bain Capital (Romney) wipes out Toys-R-Us and Dianne Feinstein's husband Richard Blum wipes out Payless Shoes. They gain control of the companies, pile on massive debt and take the proceeds of the loan, and they know the company cannot service the loan and a BK is around the corner. ..."
"... Thousands lose their jobs. And this is legal? And we also lost Glass-Steagal and legalized stock buy-backs. The Elite are screwing the people. It's Socialism for the Rich, the Politicians and Govt Employees and Feudalism for the rest of us. ..."
We've embedded an SEC Risk Alert on private equity abuses at the end of this post. 1 What is remarkable about this
document is that it contains a far longer and more detailed list of private abuses than the SEC flagged in its initial round of examinations
of private equity firms in 2014 and 2015. Those examinations occurred in parallel with groundbreaking exposes by Gretchen Morgenson
at the New York Times and Mark Maremont in the Wall Street Journal.
At least some of the SEC enforcement actions in that era look
to have been triggered by the press effectively getting ahead of the SEC. And the SEC even admitted the misconduct was more common
at the most prominent firms.
Yet despite front-page articles on private equity abuses, the SEC engaged in wet noodle lashings. Its pattern was to file only
one major enforcement action over a particular abuse. Even then, the SEC went to some lengths to spread the filings out among the
biggest firms. That meant it was pointedly engaging in selective enforcement, punishing only "poster child" examples and letting
other firms who'd engaged in precisely the same abuses get off scot free.
The very fact of this Risk Alert is an admission of failure by the SEC. It indicates that the misconduct it highlighted five years
ago continues and if anything is even more pervasive than in the 2014-2015 era. It also confirms that its oft-stated premise then,
that the abuses it found then had somehow been made by firms with integrity that would of course clean up their acts, and that now-better-informed
investors would also be more vigilant and would crack down on misconduct, was laughably false.
In particular, the second section of the Risk Alert, on Fees and Expenses (starting on page 4) describes how fund managers are
charging inflated or unwarranted fees and expenses. In any other line of work, this would be called theft. Yet all the SEC is willing
to do is publish a Risk Alert, rather than impose fines as well as require disgorgements?
The SEC's Abject Failure
In the Risk Alert below, the itemization of various forms of abuses, such as the many ways private equity firms parcel out interests
in the businesses they buy among various funds and insiders to their, as opposed to investors' benefit, alone should give pause.
And the lengthy discussion of these conflicts does suggest the SEC has learned something over the years. Experts who dealt with the
agency in its early years of examining private equity firms found the examiners allergic to considering, much the less pursuing,
complex abuses.
Undermining legislative intent of new supervisory authority the SEC never embraced its new responsibilities to ride herd on
private equity and hedge funds.
The SEC has long maintained a division between the retail investors and so-called "accredited investors" who by virtue of having
higher net worths and investment portfolios, are treated by the agency as able to afford to lose more money. The justification is
that richer means more sophisticated. But as anyone who is a manager for a top sports professional or entertainer, that is often
not the case. And as we've seen, that goes double for public pension funds.
Starting with the era of Clinton appointee Arthur Levitt, the agency has taken the view that it is in the business of defending
presumed-to-be-hapless retail investors and has left "accredited investor" and most of all, institutional investors, on their own.
This was a policy decision by the agency when deregulation was venerated; there was no statutory basis for this change in priorities.
Congress tasked the SEC with supervising the fund management activities of private equity funds with over $150 million in assets
under management. All of their investors are accredited investors. In other words, Congress mandated the SEC to make sure these firms
complied with relevant laws as well as making adequate disclosures of what they were going to do with the money entrusted to them.
Saying one thing in the investor contracts and doing another is a vastly worse breach than misrepresentations in marketing materials,
yet the SEC acted as if slap-on-the-wrist-level enforcement was adequate.
We made fun when thirteen prominent public pension fund trustees wrote the SEC asking for them to force greater transparency of
private equity fees and costs. The agency's position effectively was "You are grownups. No one is holding a gun to your head to make
these investments. If you don't like the terms, walk away." They might have done better if they could have positioned their demand
as consistent with the new Dodd Frank oversight requirements.
Actively covering up for bad conduct . In 2014, the SEC started working at giving malfeasance a free pass. Specifically, the SEC
told private equity firms that they could continue their abuses if they 'fessed up in their annual disclosure filings, the so-called
Form ADV. The term of art is "enhanced disclosure". Since when are contracts like confession, that if you admit to a breach, all
is forgiven? Only in the topsy-turvy world of SEC enforcement.
The agency is operating in such a cozy manner with private equity firms that as one investor described it: It's like FBI sitting down with the Mafia to tell them each year, "Don't cross these lines because that's what we are focusing
on."
Specifically, as we indicated, the SEC was giving advanced warning of the issues it would focus on in its upcoming exams, in order
to give investment managers the time to get their stories together and purge files. And rather than view its periodic exams as being
designed to make sure private equity firms comply with the law and their representations, the agency views them as "cooperative"
exercises! Misconduct is assumed to be the result of misunderstanding and error, and not design.
It's pretty hard to see conduct like this, from the SEC's Risk Alert, as being an accident:
Advisers charged private fund clients for expenses that were not permitted by the relevant fund operating agreements, such
as adviser-related expenses like salaries of adviser personnel, compliance, regulatory filings, and office expenses, thereby causing
investors to overpay expenses
The staff observed private fund advisers that did not value client assets in accordance with their valuation processes or in
accordance with disclosures to clients (such as that the assets would be valued in accordance with GAAP). In some cases, the staff
observed that this failure to value a private fund's holdings in accordance with the disclosed valuation process led to overcharging
management fees and carried interest because such fees were based on inappropriately overvalued holdings .
Advisers failed to apply or calculate management fee offsets in accordance with disclosures and therefore caused investors
to overpay management fees.
We're highlighting this skimming simply because it is easier for laypeople to understand than some of the other types of cheating
the SEC described. Even so, industry insiders and investors complained that the description of the misconduct in this Risk Alert
was too general to give them enough of a roadmap to look for it at particular funds.
Ignoring how investors continue to be fleeced . The SEC's list includes every abuse it sanctioned or mentioned in the 2014 to
2015 period, including undisclosed termination of monitoring fees, failure to disclose that investors were paying for "senior advisers/operating
partners," fraudulent charges, overcharging for services provided by affiliated companies, plus lots of types of bad-faith conduct
on fund restructurings and allocations of fees and expenses on transactions allocated across funds.
The SEC assumed institutional investors would insist on better conduct once they were informed that they'd been had. In reality,
not only did private equity investors fail to demand better, they accepted new fund agreements that described the sort of objectionable
behavior they'd been engaging in. Remember, the big requirement in SEC land is disclosure. So if a fund manager says he might do
Bad Things and then proceeds accordingly, the investor can't complain about not having been warned.
Moreover, the SEC's very long list of bad acts says the industry is continuing to misbehave even after it has defined deviancy
down via more permissive limited partnership agreements!
Why This Risk Alert Now?
Keep in mind what a Risk Alert is and isn't. The best way to conceptualize it is as a press release from the SEC's Office of Compliance
Inspections and Examinations. It does not have any legal or regulatory force. Risk Alerts are not even considered to be SEC official
views. They are strictly the product of OCIE staff.
On the first page of this Risk Alert, the OCIE blandly states that:
This Risk Alert is intended to assist private fund advisers in reviewing and enhancing their compliance programs, and also
to provide investors with information concerning private fund adviser deficiencies.
Cutely, footnotes point out that not everyone examined got a deficiency letter (!!!), that the SEC has taken enforcement actions
on "many" of the abuses described in the Risk Alert, yet "OCIE continues to observe some of these practices during examinations."
Several of our contacts who met in person with the SEC to discuss private equity grifting back in 2014-2015 pressed the agency
to issue a Risk Alert as a way of underscoring the seriousness of the issues it was unearthing. The staffers demurred then.
In fairness, the SEC may have regarded a Risk Alert as having the potential to undermine its not-completed enforcement actions.
But why not publish one afterwards, particularly since the intent then had clearly been to single out prominent examples of particular
types of misconduct, rather than tackle it systematically? 2
So why is the OCIE stepping out a bit now? The most likely reason is as an effort to compensate for the lack of enforcement actions.
Recall that all the OCIE can do is refer a case to the Enforcement Division; it's their call as to whether or not to take it up.
The SEC looks to have institutionalized the practice of borrowing lawyers from prominent firms. Mary Jo White of Debevoise brought
Andrew Ceresney with her from Debeviose to be her head of enforcement. Both returned to Debevoise.
Current SEC chairman Jay Clayton came from Sullivan & Cromwell, bringing with him Steven Peikin as co-head of enforcement. And
the Clayton SEC looks to have accomplished the impressive task of being even weaker on enforcement than Mary Jo White. Clayton made
clear his focus was on "mom and pop" investors, meaning he chose to overlook much more consequential abuses by private equity firms
and hedgies. The New York Times determined that the average amount of SEC fines against corporate perps fell markedly in 2018 compared
to the final 20 months of the Obama Administration. The SEC since then levied $1 billion fine against the Woodbridge Group of Companies
and its one-time owner for running a Ponzi scheme that fleeced over 8,400, so that would bring the average penalty up a bit. But
it still confirms that Clayton is concerned about small fry, and not deeper but just as pickable pockets.
David Sirota argues that the OCIE
was out to embarrass Clayton and sabotage what Sirota depicted as an SEC initiative to let retail investors invest in private equity.
Sirota appears to have missed that that horse has left the barn and is in the next county, and the SEC had squat to do with it.
The overwhelming majority of retail funds is not in discretionary accounts but in retirement accounts, overwhelmingly 401(k)s.
And it is the Department of Labor, which regulates ERISA plans, and not the SEC, that decides what those go and no go zones are.
The DoL has already green-lighted allowing large swathes of 401(k) funds to include private equity holdings.
From a post earlier this month :
Until now, regulations have kept private equity out of the retail market by prohibiting managers from accepting capital from
individuals who lack significant net worth.
Moreover, even though Sirota pointed out that Clayton had spoken out in favor of allowing retail investors more access to private
equity investments, the proposed regulation on the definition of accredited investors in fact not only does not lower income or net
worth requirements (save for allowing spouses to combine their holdings) it in fact solicited comments on the idea of raising the
limits.
From a K&L Gates write up :
Previously, the Concept Release requested comment on whether the SEC should revise the current individual income ($200,000)
and net worth ($1,000,000) thresholds. In the Proposing Release, the SEC further considered these thresholds, noting that the
figures have not been adjusted since 1982. The SEC concluded that it does not believe modifications to the thresholds are necessary
at this time, but it has requested comments on whether the final should instead make a one-time increase to the thresholds in
the account for inflation, or whether the final rule should reflect a figure that is indexed to inflation on a going-forward basis.
It is not clear how many people would be picked up by the proposed change, which was being fleshed out, that of letting some presumed
sophisticated but not rich individuals, like junior hedge fund professionals and holders of securities licenses, be treated as accredited
investors. In other words, despite Clayton's talk about wanting ordinary investors to have more access to private equity funds, the
agency's proposed rule change falls short of that.
Moreover, if the OCIE staff had wanted to undermine even the limited liberalization of the definition of accredited investor so
as to stymie more private equity investment, the time to do so would have been immediately before or while the comments period was
open. It ended March 16 .
So again, why now? One possibility is that the timing is purely a coincidence. For instance, the SEC staffers might have been
waiting until Covid-19 news overload died down a bit so their work might get a hearing (and Covid-19 remote work complications may
also have delayed its release).
The second possibility is that OCIE is indeed very frustrated with the enforcement chief Peikin's inaction on private equity.
The fact that Peikin's boss and protector Clayton has made himself a lame duck meant a salvo against Peikin was now a much lower
risk. If any readers have better insight into the internal workings of the SEC these days, please pipe up.
______
1 Formally, as you can see, this Risk Alert addresses both private equity and hedge fund misconduct, but on reading
the details, the citing of both types of funds reflects the degree to which hedge funds have been engaging in the buying and selling
of stakes in private companies. For instance, Chatham Asset Management, which has become notorious through its ownership of American
Media, which in turn owns the National Enquirer, calls itself a hedge fund. Moreover, when the SEC started examining both private
equity and hedge funds under new authority granted by Dodd Frank, it described the sort of misconduct described in this Risk Alert
as coming out of exams of private equity firms, and its limited round of enforcement actions then were against brand name private
equity firms like KKR, Blackstone, Apollo, and TPG. Thus for convenience as well as historical reasons, we refer only to private
equity firms as perps.
2 Media stories at the time, including some of our posts, provided substantial evidence that particular abuses, such
as undisclosed termination of monitoring fees and failure to disclose that "senior advisers" presented as general partner "team members"
were in fact consultants being separately billed to fund investments, were common practices. Yet the SEC chose to lodge only marquee
enforcement actions against one prominent firm for each abuse, as if token enforcement would serve as an adequate deterrent. The
message was the reverse, that the overwhelming majority of the abuses were able to keep their ill-gotten gains and not even face
public embarrassment.
TBH, in the view of Calpers ignoring its advisors, I do have a little understanding of the SEC's point "you're grown ups" (the
worse problem is that the advisors who leach themselves to the various accredited investors are often not worth the money.
On the same side though, fraud is a criminal offence, and it's SEC's duty to prosecute. And I believe that a lot of what PE
engage in would happily fall under fraud, if SEC really wanted.
Yes, the SEC conveniently claims a conflicted authority – 1. to regulate compliance but without an "enforcement authority",
and 2. report egregious behavior to their "enforcement authority". So the SEC is less than a permissive nanny. Sort of like "access"
to enforcement authority. Sounds like health care to me.
No, this is false. The SEC has an examination division and an enforcement division. The SEC can and does take enforcement actions
that result in fines and disgorgements, see the $1 billion fine mentioned in the post. So the exam division can recommend enforcement
to the enforcement division. That does not mean it will get done. Some enforcement actions originate from within the enforcement
division, like insider trading cases, and the SEC long has had a tendency to prioritize insider trading cases.
The SEC cannot prosecute. It has to refer cases that it thinks are criminal to the DoJ and try to get them to saddle up.
Crimogenic: Producing or tending to produce crime or criminality. An additional factor is that, in the main, the criminals
do not take their money and leave the gaming tables but pour it back in and the crime metastasizes.
AKA, Kleptocracy.
Thus in 2008 and thereafter the criminal damage required 2-3 trillion, now 7-10 trillion.
Any economic expert who does not recognize crime as the number one problem in the criminogenic US economy I disregard. Why
read all that analysis when, at the end of the run, it all just boils down to bailing out the criminals and trying to reset the
criminogenic system?
You might add that the threat of consequences for these crimes makes the criminals extremely motivated to elect officials who
will not prosecute them (e.g. Obama). They're not running for office, they're avoiding incarceration.
The SEC has been captured for years now. It was not that long ago that SEC Examination chief Andrew Bowden made a grovelling
speech to these players and even asked them to give his son a job which was so wrong-
But there is no point in reforming the SEC as it was the politicians, at the beck and call of these players, that de-fanged
the SEC – and it was a bipartisan effort! So it becomes a chicken-or-the-egg problem in the matter of reform. Who do you reform
first?
Can't leave this comment without mentioning something about a private equity company. One of the two major internal airlines
in Oz went broke due to the virus and a private equity buyer has been found to buy it. A union rep said that they will be good
for jobs and that they are a good company. Their name? Bain Capital!
We broke the story about Andrew Bowden! Give credit where credit is due!!!! Even though Taibbi points to us in his first line,
linking to Rolling Stone says to those who don't bother clicking through that it was their story.
Of course I remember that story. I was going to mention it but thought to let people see it in virtually the opening line of
that story where he gives you credit. More of a jolt of recognition seeing it rather than being told about it first.
Of the three branches of government which ones are not captured by big business? If two out of three were to captured then
does it matter what the third does?
Is the executive working for the common good or for the interests of big business?
Is the legislature working for the common good or for the interests of big business?
Is the judiciary working for the common good or for the interests of big business?
In my opinion too much power has been centralised, too much of the productivity gains of the past 40 years have been monetised
and therefore made possible to hoard and centralise. SEC should (in my opinion) try to enforce more but without more support then I do not believe (it is my opinion, nothing more
and nothing less) that they can accomplish much.
The SEC is a mysterious agency which (?) must fall under the jurisdiction of the Treasury because it is a monetary regulatory
agency in the business of regulating securities and exchanges. But it has no authority to do much of anything. The Treasury itself
falls under the executive administration but as we have recently seen, Mnuchin himself managed to get a nice skim for his banking
pals from the money Congress legislated.
That's because Congress doesn't know how to effectuate a damn thing – they legislate
stuff that morphs before our very eyes and goes to the grifters without a hitch. So why don't we demand that consumer protection
be made into hard law with no wiggle room; that since investing is complex in this world of embedded funds and glossy prospectuses,
we the consumer should not have to wade through all the nonsense to make decisions – that everything be on the table. And if PE
can't manage to do that and still steal its billions then PE should be declared to be flat-out illegal.
Please stop spreading disinformation. This is the second time on this post. The SEC has nada to do with the Treasury. It is an independent regulatory agency. It however is the only financial regulator that does not keep what it kills (its own fees and fines) but is instead subject
to Congressional appropriations.
Andrew Levitt, for instance, complained bitterly that Joe Lieberman would regularly threaten
to cut the SEC's budget for allegedly being too aggressive about enforcement. Lieberman was the Senator from Hedgistan.
It should be noted that out here in the countryside of northern Michigan that embezzlement (a winter sport here while the men
are out ice fishing), theft and fraud are still considered punishable felonies. Perhaps that is simply a quaint holdover from
a bygone time. Dudley set the tone for the C of C with his Green Book on bank deregulation. One of the subsequent heads of C of
C was reported as seeing his position as "being the spiritual resource for banks". If bank regulation is treated in a farcical
fashion why should be the SEC be any different?
I was shocked to just now learn that ERISA/the Dept of Labor is in regulatory control of allowing pension funds to buy PE fund
of funds and "balanced PE funds". What VERBIAGE. Are "PE Fund of Balanced Funds" an actual category? And what distinguishes them
from good old straightforward Index Funds? And also too – what is happening before our very glazed-over eyes is that PE is high
grading not just the stock market but the US Treasury itself. Ordinary investors should be buying US Treasuries directly and retirement
funds should too. It will be a big bite but if it knocks PE out of business it would be worth it. PE is in the business of cooking
its books, ravaging struggling corporations, and boldly privatizing the goddamned Treasury. WTF?
What about the wanton destruction of the purchased companies? If this solely about the harm done to the poor investors?
If so, that is seriously wrong.
If, you know, the neoliberal "because markets" is the ruling paradigm then of course there is no harm done. The questions then
become: is "because markets" a sensible paradigm? What is it a sensible paradigm of? Is "because markets" even sensible for the
long term?
an aside: farewell, Olympus camera. A sad day. Farewell, OM-1 and OM-2. Film photography is really not replicated by digital
photography but the larger market has gone to digital. Speed and cost vs quality. Because markets. Now the vulture swoop.
Where is the SEC when Bain Capital (Romney) wipes out Toys-R-Us and Dianne Feinstein's husband Richard Blum wipes out Payless
Shoes. They gain control of the companies, pile on massive debt and take the proceeds of the loan, and they know the company cannot
service the loan and a BK is around the corner.
Thousands lose their jobs. And this is legal? And we also lost Glass-Steagal and
legalized stock buy-backs. The Elite are screwing the people. It's Socialism for the Rich, the Politicians and Govt Employees and
Feudalism for the rest of us.
"... Kane, who coined the term "zombie bank" and who famously raised early alarms about American savings and loans, analyzed European banks and how regulators, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, backstop them. ..."
"... We are only interested observers of the arm wrestling between the various EU countries over the costs of bank rescues, state expenditures, and such. But we do think there is a clear lesson from the long history of how governments have dealt with bank failures . [If] the European Union needs to step in to save banks, there is no reason why they have to do it for free best practice in banking rescues is to save banks, but not bankers. That is, prevent the system from melting down with all the many years of broad economic losses that would bring, but force out those responsible and make sure the public gets paid back for rescuing the financial system. ..."
"... In 2019, another question, alas, is also piercing. In country after country, Social Democratic center-left parties have shrunk, in many instances almost to nothingness. In Germany the SPD gives every sign of following the French Socialist Party into oblivion. Would a government coalition in which the SPD holds the Finance Ministry even consider anything but guaranteeing the public a huge piece of any upside if they rescue two failing institutions? ..."
Running in the background, though, was a new, darker theme: That the post-2008 reforms had gone too far in restricting policymakers'
discretion in crises. The trio most responsible for making the post-Lehman bailout revolution -- Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner,
and Henry Paulson --
expressed their
misgivings in a joint op-ed :
But in its post-crisis reforms, Congress also took away some of the most powerful tools used by the FDIC, the Fed and the Treasury
the FDIC can no longer issue blanket guarantees of bank debt as it did in the crisis, the Fed's emergency lending powers have
been constrained, and the Treasury would not be able to repeat its guarantee of the money market funds.
These powers were critical in stopping the 2008 panic The paradox of any financial crisis is that the policies necessary to
stop it are always politically unpopular. But if that unpopularity delays or prevents a strong response, the costs to the economy
become greater.
We need to make sure that future generations of financial firefighters have the emergency powers they need to prevent the next
fire from becoming a conflagration.
Sotto voce fears of this sort go back to the earliest reform discussions. But the question surfaced dramatically in Timothy Geithner's
2016 Per Jacobsson Lecture, " Are We Safer? The Case for Strengthening
the Bagehot Arsenal ." More recently, the Group of Thirty
has advanced similar suggestions -- not too surprisingly, since Geithner was co-project manager of the report, along with Guillermo
Ortiz, the former Governor of the Mexican Central Bank, who introduced the former Treasury Secretary at the Per Jacobson lecture.
Aside from the financial collapse itself, probably nothing has so shaken public confidence in democratic institutions as the wave
of bailouts in the aftermath of the collapse. The redistribution of wealth and opportunity that the bailouts wrought surely helped
fuel the populist surges that have swept over Europe and the United States in the last decade. The spectacle of policymakers rubber
stamping literally unlimited sums for financial institutions while preaching the importance of austerity for everyone else has been
unbearable to millions of people.
Especially in money-driven political systems, affording policymakers unlimited discretion also plainly courts serious risks. Put
simply, too big to fail banks enjoy a uniquely splendid situation of "heads I win, tails you lose" when they take risks. Scholars
whose research INET has supported, notably
Edward Kane , have shown how the certainty of government bailouts advantages large financial institutions, directly affecting
prices of their bonds and stocks.
For these reasons INET convened a panel at a G20 preparatory meeting in Berlin on "
Moral Hazard Issues in Extended Financial Safety Nets ."
The Power Point presentations of the three panelists are presented in the order in which they gave them, since the latter ones sometimes
comment on Edward Kane
's analysis of the European banks. Kane, who coined the term "zombie bank" and who famously raised early alarms about American
savings and loans, analyzed European banks and how regulators, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, backstop them.
Peter Bofinger
, Professor of International and Monetary Economics at the University of Würzburg and an outgoing member of the German Economic Council,
followed with a discussion of how the system has changed since 2008.
Helene Schuberth
, Head of the Foreign Research Division of the Austrian National Bank, analyzed changes in the global financial governance system
since the collapse.
The panel took place as public discussion of a proposed merger between two giant German banks, the Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank,
reached fever pitch. The panelists explored issues directly relevant to such fusions, without necessarily agreeing among themselves
or with anyone at INET.
But the point Robert Johnson, INET's President, and I
made some years back , amid an earlier wave of talk about using public money to bail out European banks, remains on target:
We are only interested observers of the arm wrestling between the various EU countries over the costs of bank rescues,
state expenditures, and such. But we do think there is a clear lesson from the long history of how governments have dealt with
bank failures . [If] the European Union needs to step in to save banks, there is no reason why they have to do it for free best
practice in banking rescues is to save banks, but not bankers. That is, prevent the system from melting down with all the many
years of broad economic losses that would bring, but force out those responsible and make sure the public gets paid back for rescuing
the financial system.
The simplest way to do that is to have the state take equity in the banks it rescues and write down the equity of bank shareholders
in proportion. This can be done in several ways -- direct equity as a condition for bailout, requiring warrants that can be exercised
later, etc. The key points are for the state to take over the banks, get the bad loans rapidly out of those and into a "bad bank,"
and hold the junk for a decent interval so the rest of the market does not crater. When the banks come back to profitability,
you can cash in the warrants and sell the stock if you don't like state ownership. That way the public gets its money back .at
times states have even made a profit.
In 2019, another question, alas, is also piercing. In country after country, Social Democratic center-left parties have shrunk,
in many instances almost to nothingness. In Germany the SPD gives every sign of following the French Socialist Party into oblivion.
Would a government coalition in which the SPD holds the Finance Ministry even consider anything but guaranteeing the public a huge
piece of any upside if they rescue two failing institutions?
There needs to be an asset tax on/break up of the megas. End the hyper-agglomeration of deposits at the tail end. Not holding
my breath though. (see NY state congressional delegation)
To be generous, tax starts at $300 billion. Even then it affects only a dozen or so US banks. But would be enough to clamp
down on the hyper-scale of the largest US/world banks. The world would be better off with lot more mid-sized regional players.
Anyone who mentions Timmy Geithner without spitting did not pay attention during the Obama reign of terror. He and Obama crowed
about the Making Home Affordable Act, implying that it would save all homeowners in mortgage trouble, but conveniently neglected
to mention that less than 100 banks had signed up. The thousands of non-signatories simply continued to foreclose.
Not to mention Eric Holder's intentional non-prosecution of banksters. For these and many other reasons, especially his "Islamic
State is only the JV team" crack, Obama was one of our worst presidents.
Fergusons graph on DBK's default probabilities coincides with the ECB's ending its asset purchase programme and entering the
"reinvestment phase of the asset purchase programme". https://www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/implement/omt/html/index.en.html
The worst of the euro zombie banks appear to be getting tense and nervous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKpzCCuHDVY
Maybe that is why Jerome Powell did his volte-face last month on gradually raising interest rates. Note that the Fed also reduced
its automatic asset roll-off. I'm curious if the other euro-zombies in the "peers" return on equity chart are are experiencing
volatility also.
Apparently the worst fate you can suffer as long as you don't go Madoff is Fuld. According to Wikipedia his company manages
a hundred million which must be humiliating. It's not as humiliating as locking the guy up in prison would be by a very long stretch.
Greenspan famously lamented that there isn't anything the regulators can really do except make empty threats. This is dishonest.
The regulations are not carved in stone like the ten commandments. In China they execute incorrigible financiers all the time.
Greenspan was never willing to counter any problem that might irritate powerful financial constituencies. For example, during
the internet stock bubble of the late 1990's, Greenspan decried the "irrational exuberance" of the stock market. The Greenspan
Fed could have raised the margin requirement for stocks to buttress this view, but did not. As I remembered reading, Greenspan
was in poor financial shape when he got his Fed job.
His subsequent performance at the Fed apparently left him a wealthy man. Real regulation by Greenspan may have adversely affected
his wealth. It may explain why Alan Greenspan would much rather let a financial bubble grow until it pops and then "fix it".
Everybody forgets (or at least does not mention) that Greenspan was a member of the Class of '43, the (mostly Canadian) earliest
members of the Objectivist Cult with guru Ayn Rand. Expecting him to act rationally is foolish. It may happen accidentally (we
do not know why he chose to let the economy expand unhindered in 1999), but you cannot count on it. In a world with information
asymmetry expecting markets to be concerned about reputation is ridiculous. To expect them to police themselves for long term
benefit is even more ridiculous.
I think Finance is currently about 13% of the S&P 500, down from the peak of about 18% or so in 2007. I think we will have
a healthy economy and improved political climate when Finance is about 8-10% of the S&P 500 which is about where I think finance
plays a healthy, but not overwhelming rentier role in the economy.
"... She soldiered through her painful stomach ailments and secretly tape-recorded 46 hours of conversations between New York Fed officials and Goldman Sachs. After being fired for refusing to soften her examination opinion on Goldman Sachs, Segarra released the tapes to ProPublica and the radio program This American Life and the story went viral from there... ..."
"... In a nutshell, the whoring works like this. There are huge financial incentives to go along, get along, and keep your mouth shut about fraud. The financial incentives encompass both the salary, pension and benefits at the New York Fed as well as the high-paying job waiting for you at a Wall Street bank or Wall Street law firm if you show you are a team player . ..."
"But the impotence one feels today -- an impotence we should never consider permanent -- does not excuse one from remaining true
to oneself, nor does it excuse capitulation to the enemy, what ever mask he may wear. Not the one facing us across the frontier or
the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us
its slaves. The worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this Apparatus, and to trample underfoot, in its
service, all human values in ourselves and in others."
Simone Weil
"And in some ways, it creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the
checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they're not. And what you're going to see and what
we are seeing is it'll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions. And you'll see governments that continue to have policies
that feed the interests of -- and I don't want to get clichéd, but the one percent or the .1 percent -- to the detriment of everyone
else...
If TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the
same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car... I think it's inevitable. I mean, I don't think how you can look at all
the incentives that were in place going up to 2008 and see that in many ways they've only gotten worse and come to any other conclusion."
Neil Barofsky
"Written by Carmen Segarra, the petite lawyer turned bank examiner turned whistleblower turned one-woman swat team, the 340-page
tome takes the reader along on her gut-wrenching workdays for an entire seven months inside one of the most powerful and corrupted
watchdogs of the powerful and corrupted players on Wall Street – the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The days were literally gut-wrenching. Segarra reports that after months of being alternately gas-lighted and bullied at
the New York Fed to whip her into the ranks of the corrupted, she had to go to a gastroenterologist and learned her stomach lining
was gone.
She soldiered through her painful stomach ailments and secretly tape-recorded 46 hours of conversations between New York Fed officials
and Goldman Sachs. After being fired for refusing to soften her examination opinion on Goldman Sachs,
Segarra released the tapes to ProPublica and
the radio program This American Life and the story went viral from there...
In a nutshell, the whoring works like this. There are huge financial incentives to go along, get along, and keep your mouth shut
about fraud. The financial incentives encompass both the salary, pension and benefits at the New York Fed as well as the high-paying
job waiting for you at a Wall Street bank or Wall Street law firm if you show you are a team player .
If the Democratic leadership of the House Financial Services Committee is smart, it will reopen the Senate's aborted inquiry into
the New York Fed's labyrinthine conflicts of interest in supervising Wall Street and make removing that supervisory role a core component
of the Democrat's 2020 platform. Senator Bernie Sanders' platform can certainly be expected to continue the accurate battle cry that
'the business model of Wall Street is fraud.'"
Both major parties work according the the scheme of a pyramidal control. To control a
company A, you need to get majority of voting shares. Which belong to company B that owns,
say, 60%. In turn, 60% or shares of B belongs to C which controls A while having 60% x 60% =
36% of capital. After adding D, E etc., you can get away with the following: you start with
actual majority of shares, and the company prospers. Time to realize gains. But that would
deprive you of control. Thus you organize company B and sell 40% of its shares. Control
preserved. Wash and repeat.
In a similar spirit, a narrow circle can control a major party. Of course, the rules are
different and more hidden. On the bottom level, the equivalent of B controlling A, it was
observed that rational arguments are boring, and the wide masses have hard time following
them and following what (itself controlled) B advocates. So you invent easy to remember
[expletive deleted] like "Obama birth's certificate", "Russian collusion" etc. An energetic
group with group solidarity needs its tribal spirit and shibboleths.
The Democratic Party civil war between the 'progressive anti-war socialist' and 'neocon
Wall Street beltway' wings. It will go on for at least two years
TBT or not TBT 1 hour ago
Oh hogwash. The minute Obama took over from Bush Cindy Sheehan and the rest disappeared
from the news. There was no real push back within the Dem electorate against the foreign wars
because they all support the Democrat War on America above all. They only pretend to give a
rip about some backward misogynist theocratic craphole people when Republicans are in
office.
King of Kalifornia 1 hour ago
It's been going on for years. The socialists keep falling for it, and the neoliberals (in
the mold of their heroes, Reagan and Thatcher) have forced their compliance.
Michael Mackenzie and James Fontanella-Khan in New York Fri, March 5, 2021, 7:00 PM
The veteran value investor John Rogers predicted the US is headed for a repeat of the
"roaring twenties" a century ago that will finally encourage investors to dump tech stocks in
favour of companies more sensitive to the economy. The founder of Ariel Investments told the
Financial Times in an interview that value investing "dinosaurs" like him stood to win as
higher economic growth and rising interest rates took the air out of some of the hottest stocks
of recent years. The US central bank is "overly optimistic that they can keep inflation under
control", he said, and higher bond market interest rates would reduce the value of future
earnings for highly popular growth stocks such as tech companies and for the kinds of
speculative companies coming to market in initial public offerings or via deals with Spacs.
I ordered this book when Paul Craig Roberts mentioned, and quoted from it, on February 14,
2021. I especially liked PCRs quote halfway through the essay:
The United States isn't a nation any longer . It is a collection of peoples
without a country. A nation requires a unifying spirit of the people, and the United States
has no such unifying spirit. Martyanov observes that there is nothing in common between
a white WASP farm worker from Iowa, a Jewish lawyer from Manhattan, and a black rapper from
the Bronx. They view the world, America and their place in it differently, and those
visions are irreconcilable.
This has been obvious to some of us for decades. Worse yet, there is no mechanism or
movement anyone can imagine that will keep the disintegration process in check. If anything,
the elites are finding new and exciting ways to divide Americans further, and nobody is
happier about it than the social media addicts who enjoy bigger and better rotten egg memes
they can toss at the enemy de jour.
This is interesting too:
Not only is America's crisis systemic, but its elites are uncultured , badly educated
and mesmerized by decades of their own propaganda, which in the end, they accept as a
reality
I do hope the author means "uncultured" in the pejorative, insulting, Russian sense of the
word. They are the "elites" who are revolting, and they are too dumb to know they are kicking
the floorboards out from under their feet.
"People of the United States, your ruling elites are lying to you just like the chamber
orchestra on the Titanic that was playing music while the supposedly "unsinkable" Titanic
was sinking!".
The difference is, the actual American ship was just fine and hadn't hit an iceberg.
Rather, we were being deliberately sunk by a bunch of loons who were punching holes in the
hull of the ship!
But don't go thinking the whole shebang is about to go under. This has been the dream of
preppers on the right, and various anti-American groups on the other side, for generations.
The Big Collapse, in which the whole North American continent, with all its power and wealth,
just vanishes, is a pipe dream.
The most immediate causes of US collapse are, in my opinion, the rise of the predator,
parasite, class to a position of total dominance while the proles have sunk into the shite,
and the rise of China...
Here is a graph to look at. It depicts the share of the US national wealth owned by 0.1% of
families, that is 160 thousand families with more than $20 million per head. They had it
wonderfully good in the years leading to the Great Depression; or rather, their wonderful life
brought on the Great Depression. As their share dropped, ordinary Americans got a chance to
fulfill the American dream. Life was good for ordinary guys until the late Seventies; then
Thatcher and Reagan succeeded in turning the tide, and since then the fat cats' share has
increased and your share has dropped, until we have arrived at the present miserable state.
This graph is taken from this work by two young Berkeley
economists, Emmanuel Saez and
Gabriel Zucman , who updated it
here last year. True Left (I aspire to this lot) aren't politically correct diversity
lovers, but people who think that the wealthy should be reined in. The very rich hog resources;
they distort democracy by their lobbying and their NGOs; and now they want to save mankind,
while mankind should be saved from them. Naturally the rich guys do not relish the idea of
being taxed, let alone expropriated Lenin style; that's why they invented the faux-Left of
radical feminists and race equality activists. A good Christian would approve of bridling the
rich: it would be better for their souls. What is a man profited, if he gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul, asked Christ. But this graph proves that keeping their share down isn't
only good for their souls, but is good for our wellbeing, too. The crazy idea of trickle-down
wealth may be safely discarded as not working.
As journalist Emily Atkin explained Tuesday, the jet stream
"bringing frigid and dangerous Artic weather to millions of Americans" is, like other forms of
extreme weather, related to global warming. That's because, as Kevin Trenberth, a climate
scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Atkin several years ago, "all
weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is
warmer and moister than it used to be."
What's made Winter
Storm Uri especially fatal in Texas is not only the arrival of an unprecedented cold spell,
but the way the weather event is occurring in the context of preexisting social injustices like
homelessness as well as how it is interacting with the state's underdeveloped infrastructure,
inadequate planning and regulation, and lack of emergency preparedness.
Writing for Discourse Blog Tuesday, Samantha Grasso argued that
"occasionally, something will happen in Texas to remind the people who live here that we live
in a failed state."
Grasso explained how freezing temperatures cascaded into power outages causing millions to
go without heat and water in the midst of a winter storm and pandemic:
"While people began losing power Thursday, statewide outages spiked early Monday morning,
after the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the entity that controls the power
grid for almost the entire state, announced a 'rolling blackout,' estimating outages around
40 minutes long in order to keep the grid from being overwhelmed. (The ERCOT, for what it's
worth, was borne out of Texas' brainless reflex to
buck federal regulation .) But by that time, it was likely too late, for a variety of
reasons . Forty minutes turned into hours, and then days, with
no real sign of when things will get better. After the power went out, so did the water,
with several cities issuing
boil water notices , or asking residents
not to drip their faucets despite their pipes freezing, or even shutting
off the water."
As Grasso noted, "It would be an understatement to say that
ERCOT was unprepared for a cold weather crisis of this scale."
The rest of the lower 48 states use two electric grids: the Eastern Interconnect and the
Western Interconnect. By contrast, in Texas, 90 percent of the state's residents rely on ERCOT.
As Kate Galbraith
reported Monday in the Texas Tribune , the Lone Star state sought independence from
the national grids to avoid federal regulations.
While Republican lawmakers and right-wing media figures have used the crisis in Texas as an
opportunity to attack renewable energy for its
alleged unreliability, The Daily Posterreported Tuesday that
ERCOT
attributed the blackouts to "a shortage of natural gas due to a drop in pressure and frozen
instruments at fossil fuel and nuclear facilities."
"The fact that Texas
deregulated its power grid in the 1990s could also be part of the problem," The Daily
Poster added. "Electricity market incentives are currently structured in such a way that
Texas' power companies receive
more money if they don't weatherize all their plants and shut down some of them during cold
weather."
Notably, the parts of Texas that are connected to the two national grids have not been
devastated by power outages. In El Paso, for instance, "about 3,000 customers had power outages
lasting five minutes or less when the winter storm moved in on Sunday," a local ABC
affiliate
reported . "As of Monday afternoon, only 12 customers were impacted."
Occurring as they did in the midst of a pandemic, the widespread power outages in Texas
threatened to squander thousands of doses of the Moderna vaccine, which must be kept between
-13°F and 5°F. As the Houston Chronicle
reported Monday night, public health officials in Harris County "hustled to distribute
thousands of doses" after the storage facility lost power and "its backup generator
failed."
NBC News
reported Tuesday that "of the 8,430 vaccines, county health officials distributed 5,410
doses to five locations, including 3,000 to the Harris County Jail, 1,000 to Houston Methodist
Hospital, 810 to Rice University, and 600 to Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital and Ben Taub
Hospital."
"The remaining doses were salvaged," the news outlet added, "after Moderna advised county
officials that the rest could be refrigerated and used for patients later that same day."
Meanwhile, mutual aid and political action groups were scrambling to provide resources and
shelter to people "who were facing below-freezing temperatures without robust city assistance,"
Grasso wrote. "Though cities opened warming centers and shelters, facilities quickly reached
capacity and weren't safe to travel to in the harsh weather conditions."
Reflecting on Covid-19, Grasso said that "Texas, just like the rest of the country, killed
so many people because our leaders thought it more important to prioritize short-term gains
than invest in people for a long-term gain."
"And through this mismanaged crisis," she added, "it will kill others, too."
By Tuesday night, at least 23 people had died nationwide, the majority in Texas, as a result
of Winter Storm Uri, according to the
The New York Times .
It is impossible to define neoliberalism purely theoretically, for several reasons. First,
methodologically, although neoliberal experiences share important commonalities (explained in
what follows), neoliberalism is not a mode of production. Consequently, these experiences do
not necessarily include a clearly defined set of invariant features, as may be expected in
studies of 'feudalism" or 'capitalism", for example. Neoliberalism straddles a wide range of
social, political and economic phenomena at different levels of complexity. Some of these are
highly abstract, for example the growing power of finance or the debasement of democracy, while
others are relatively concrete, such as privatisation or the relationship between foreign
states and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Nevertheless, it is not difficult to
recognise the beast when it trespasses into new territories, tramples upon the poor, undermines
rights and entitlements, and defeats resistance, through a combination of domestic political,
economic, legal, ideological and media pressures, backed up by international blackmail and
military force if necessary.
Second, as is argued in Chapters 7 and 9., neoliberalism is inseparable from imperialism and
globalisation. In the conventional (or mainstream) discourse, imperialism is either absent or,
more recently, proudly presented as the 'American Burden': to civilise the world and bring to
all the benediction of the Holy Trinity, the green-faced Lord Dollar and its deputies and
occasional rivals, Holy Euro and Saint Yen. New' converts win a refurbished international
airport, one brand-new branch of McDonald's, two luxury hotels, 3,000 NGOs and one US military
base. This offer cannot be refused - or else.- In turn, globalisation is generally presented as
an inescapable, inexorable and benevolent process leading to greater competition, welfare
improvements and the spread of democracy around the world. In reality, however, the so-called
process of globalisation - to the extent that it actually exists (see Saad-Filho 2003) - is
merely the international face of neoliberalism: a worldwide strategy of accumulation and social
discipline that doubles up as an imperialist project, spearheaded by the alliance between the
US ruling class and locally dominant capitalist coalitions. This ambitious power project
centred on neoliberalism at home and imperial globalism abroad is implemented by diverse social
and economic political alliances in each country, but the interests of local finance and the US
ruling class, itself dominated by finance, are normally hegemonic.
Third, historical analysis of neoliberalism requires a multi-level approach. The roots of
neoliberalism are long and varied, and its emergence cannot be dated precisely. As Chapters
я to 6 show, neoliberalism amalgamates insights from a range of sources, including Adam
Smith, neoclassical economics, the Austrian critique of Keynesianism and Soviet-style
socialism, monetarism and its new classical and 'supply-side' offspring. Their influence
increased by leaps and bounds with the breakdown of the postwar order: the end of the 'golden
age' of rapid worldwide growth in the late 1960s, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in
the early 1970s, the erosion of the so-called 'Keynesian compromise' in the rich countries in
the mid 1970s, the meltdown of the Soviet bloc in the 1980s and the implosion of developmental
alternatives in the poor countries, especially after balance of payments crises in the 1980s
and 1990s. Chapters 1 and 2 show that the collapse of the alternatives provided space for the
synthesis between conservative view's and the interests of the US elite and their minions. The
cauldron was provided by the aggressive populist conservatism of Ronald Reagan and Margaret
Thatcher, and the broth was tendered by finance - that had become hegemonic worldwide after the
'coup- led by the chairman of the US Federal Reserve System, Paul Volcker, in 1979.3 By
persuasion and by force, neoliberalism spread everywhere.
It is, however, important to avoid excessively linear accounts of the rise of neoliberalism.
For example, in the United Kingdom, key elements of Thatcher's monetarist economic platform had
been imposed by the previous Labour government; she only expanded them and gave them a
compelling rationale. There was also an irresolvable tension between the puritanical claims
made by milk-snatching Thatcher, Reagan's ventriloquists, and the intellectual harlots peddling
their wares around the US Imperial Court, and the political practice of these neoliberal
administrations. For example, Reagan's 'voodoo economics' (in the words of his deputy, George
Bush pere) would have been unacceptable to the guardians of the scriptures. History shows that
it is easier to impose pristine economic and political models in the dominions, because at home
the strength of conflicting interests and the messy realities of limited power do not allow
history to start anew on demand. This is best illustrated in Chapter 14's discussion of the
asymmetric application of agrarian liberalism. It is relatively easy to parachute well-paid
advisers into distant and unimportant countries, where Lord Dollar can easily bend the natives'
will. This purifying ritual will make them almost civilised. However, should the ignorant
masses and their brutal leaders reject dollar diplomacy and be reluctant to play by the (new)
rules, weapons of mass destruction are available and they can be deployed increasingly
effectively from great distances.
Although every country is different, and historical analysis can reveal remarkably rich
details, the overall picture is clear. Tire most basic feature of neoliberalism is the
systematic use of state power to impose (financial) market imperatives, in a domestic process
that is replicated internationally by 'globalisation'. As Chapters 22. 23 and 30 argue in the
cases of the United States, the United Kingdom and east and south-east Asia respectively,
neoliberalism is a particular organisation of capitalism, which has evolved to protect
capital(ism) and to reduce the power of labour. This is achieved by means of social, economic
and political transformations imposed by internal forces as well as external pressure. The
internal forces include the coalition between financial interests, leading industrialists,
traders and exporters, media barons, big landowners, local political chieftains, the top
echelons of the civil service and the military, and their intellectual and political proxies.
These groups are closely connected with 'global' ideologies emanating from the centre, and they
tend to adapt swiftly to the demands beamed from the metropolis.
Their efforts have led to a significant worldwide shift in power relations away from the
majority. Corporate power has increased, wiiile finance has acquired unrivalled influence, and
the political spectrum has shifted towards the right. Left parties and mass organisations have
imploded, while trade unions have been muzzled or disabled by unemployment. Forms of external
pressure have included the diffusion of Western culture and ideology, foreign support for state
and civil society institutions peddling neoliberal values, the shameless use of foreign aid,
debt relief and balance of payments support to promote the neoliberal programme, and diplomatic
pressure, political unrest and military intervention when necessary. For example, Chapter 24
shows how' the ruling economic and political forces in the European Union have instrumentalised
the process of integration to ensure the hegemony of neoliberalism. This account is
complemented by Chapter 2n's analysis of the segmentation of Eastern Europe into countries that
are being drawn into a Western European-stvle neoliberalism and others that are following
Russia's business oligarchy model. In sum, neoliberalism is everywhere both the outcome and the
arena of social conflicts. It sets the political and economic agenda, limits the possible
outcomes, biases expectations, and imposes urgent tasks on those challenging its assumptions,
methods and consequences.
In the meantime, neoliberal theory has not remained static. In order to deal with the most
powerful criticisms levelled against neoliberalism, that it has increased poverty and social
dislocation around the world, neoliberal theory has attempted to present the ogre in a more
favourable light. I11 spite of the substantial resources invested in this ideologically
inspired make-over, these amendments have remained unconvincing, not least because the heart of
the neoliberal project has remained unchanged. This is discussed in Chapter 15 for poverty and
distribution, while Chapter 21 unpicks the agenda of the 'Third Way', viewed by many as
'neoliberalism with a human face'.
A MULTI-PRONGED POWER PROJECT
Neoliberalism offered a finance-friendly solution to the problems of capital accumulation at
the end of a relatively long cycle of prosperity. Chapters 1. 22 and 30 show that neoliberalism
imposed discipline upon a restless working class through contractionary fiscal and monetary
policies and wide-ranging initiatives to curtail social rights, under the guise of
anti-inflation and productivity-enhancing measures. Neoliberalism also rationalised the
transfer of state capacity to allocate resources inter-temporally (the balance between
investment and consumption) and inter-sectorally (the distribution of investment, employment
and output) towards an increasingly internationally integrated (and US-led) financial sector.
In doing so, neoliberalism facilitated a gigantic transfer of resources to the local rich and
the United States, as is shown by Chanters 11 and 15. Neoliberal globalism is not at all a
model of 'economic deregulation', and it does not promote 'private initiative' in general.
Under the ideological veil of non-intervention, neoliberalism involves extensive and invasive
interventions in every area of social life. It imposes a specific form of social and economic
regulation based on the prominence of finance, international elite integration, subordination
of the poor in every country and universal compliance with US interests. Finally, neoliberalism
does not foster rapid accumulation. Although it enhances the power and the living standards of
the global elite and its appendages, it is destructive for the vast majority. Domestically, the
expansion of 'market relations' tramples upon rights of access to food, water, education, work,
land, housing, medical care, transportation and public amenities as well as 011 gender
relations, as is shown by Chanters 16 to 18. Lawrs are changed to discipline the majority,
restrict their rights of association and make it difficult to protest against the consequences
of neoliberalism and to develop alternatives. The police, the courts and the armed forces are
available to quash protests in the 'new democracies' such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Nigeria, South
Africa, South Korea and Zambia, as well as in 'old democracies' such as France, India, Italy,
Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Chanter 20 shows that democracy is everywhere
limited by the rights of global capital to seize the land and exploit its people, while Chanter
8 reviews the systematic seizure of assets which has gone hand in hand with neoliberalism in
many countries. Finally, an increasing share of global profits is being pumped into the rich
countries, especially the United States. These transfers increase the pressure 011 the
periphery, where rates of exploitation must increase sharply in order to support extraordinary
levels of elite consumption domestically as well as in the United States. In other words,
neoliberalism is a hegemonic system of enhanced exploitation of the majority. Chanter 12 shows
that the neoliberal promise of rising living standards for poor countries has not been
fulfilled, and Chanter ip, discusses the manner in which foreign aid has served this process of
exploitation. These and other chapters in this volume argue that neoliberalism prevents the
implementation of those very policies that would most likely contribute to economic growth and
poverty reduction: as Chapter 28 argues for South Asia, neoliberalism has fatally narrowed the
policy discourse. This exploitative agenda is primarily but not exclusively the outcome of a
shift in the power relations within (and between) countries. It is also the outcome of
technological changes, especially cheaper international transportation, communications and
computing power, the internet, the emergence of 'flexible' production, greater international
integration between production chains and in the financial markets, and so 011. These material
changes responded to existing social changes at least as much as they induced them.
TRANSCENDING NEOLIBERALISM
In spite of its power, the transformations that it has wrought 011 the world economy, and
the achievement of ever rising living standards for the minority, neoliberalism does not offer
an efficient platform for capital accumulation. Under neoliberalism, economic growth rates have
declined, unemployment and underemployment have become widespread, inequalities within and
between countries have become sharper, the living and working conditions of the majority have
deteriorated almost everywhere, and the periphery has suffered greatly from economic
instability. In other words, neoliberalism is a global system of minority power, plunder of
nations and despoilment of the environment. This system breeds economic, political and social
changes, creating the material basis for its own perpetuation and crushing the resistances
against its reproduction. Chanters 26 to 30 discuss the continuing crisis in Latin America,
sub- Saharan Africa, South Asia, Japan and East and South-East Asia. They argue that neoliberal
policies have enhanced instability everywhere, while Chanter 10 shows that the theoretical and
empirical evidence cannot support neoliberalism's central hypothesis that trade openness is
good for growth.
However, neoliberalism also destroys its own conditions of existence. Its persistent failure
to deliver sustained economic growth and rising living standards exhausts the tolerance of the
majority and lays bare the web of spin in which neoliberalism clouds the debate and legitimates
its destructive outcomes. Tire endless mantra of 'reforms' which systematically fail to deliver
their promised 'efficiency gains' delegitimises the neoliberal states, their discourse and
their mouthpieces. The explosion of consumer credit that has supported the improvement of
living standards in the centre, given the growing fiscal constrains upon the state, limits the
scope for interest-rate manipulation - the most important neoliberal economic policy tool. Most
importantly, popular movements have emerged and successfully challenged the neoliberal
hegemony. Whatever their limitations, as Chapter ?? argues, the recent social explosions in
Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, as well as more limited social movements elsewhere, show that
neoliberalism is not invulnerable. This book details and substantiates these claims, and points
toward an agenda of reflection, critique and struggle.
Canadian Cents@9 The book Capitalism on a Ventilator is a collection of essays or articles
produced by the Workers World Party, one of the Communist Parties in the US.
Amazon lists the book as currently unavailable (and asks if you want an email if it
becomes more available.)
It is indeed possible this is a surreptitious way of censoring the book, especially if the
unavailability means WWP (which operates the International Action Center) simply hasn't
complied with technical requirements imposed by Amazon.
Such as guaranteeing delivery within a limited number of days. Amazon has, apparently,
tightened up a lot to make it difficult for independents to sell on Amazon.
But it is also possible that the limited budgets and other resources led to limited
numbers of copies which are now sold out. When the new press run is complete, the book
becomes available again.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you've most likely been
inundated with all kinds of new stories and finger-pointing social media diatribes about
Texas' shocking grid failure as temperatures dropped below freezing across the Lone Star
State earlier this month. And, adding insult to injury, after coping with rolling blackouts
and a plague of burst pipes during the harsh winter storm, some residents were hit with
power
bills big enough to bankrupt them--in some cases over $15,000.
As these disastrous (and in some cases
deadly ) developments unfolded, there was no shortage of accusations and blame games to
go around, with different factions (
mistakenly ) pointing to frozen wind turbines while others blamed the state's uniquely
deregulated power grid. Now, as Texas lawmakers launch an investigation into the source of
the energy system failures, state regulators have also come under fire amidst a general
atmosphere of "finger pointing and blame shifting" at the unfolding legislative
hearings .
While the outages came as a shock to Texans, as well as to the rest of the world watching
the news unfold on their various screens, the elements that came together in a perfect storm
(so to speak) to cause the systemwide failures have been in place for years, and in some
cases, decades. Texas' unique utilities market has been blazing its own trail for a long time
now, having begun its course towards energy independence in 1999, but it's only when
something goes wrong that these kinds of innovations (or "the nation's most extensive
experiment in electrical deregulation" according to the New York Times) come under
scrutiny.
Texas is in a unique position to run its own grid however it sees fit, as 90 percent of the state's energy is produced
on its very own grid. And the state has seen fit to run that grid with very, very little
regulation, "handing control of the state's entire electricity delivery system to a
market-based patchwork of private generators, transmission companies and energy retailers" as
the New York Times reported last week.
This decision was not a sinister and sneaky back-room deal; it was widely publicized and
supported in equal measure by constituents and industry leaders alike. "Competition in the
electric industry will benefit Texans by reducing monthly rates and offering consumers more
choices about the power they use," then- Texas-governor George W. Bush was quoted when he
became a signatory on the 1999 deregulation legislation.
But while Texans were promised cheap electricity in exchange for rallying around grid
deregulation, that simply never came to fruition. Since long, long before the $15,000
one-month utility bills, Texans have been paying a premium for the very same energy they were
promised to receive at a discounted rate. A deregulated power grid is particularly vulnerable
to the ebbs and flows of the market, and nearly 60% of Texans now buy their electricity from
a retail power company at a market-based rate instead of a local utility. A recent
Wall Street Journal analysis based on nationwide data from the U.S. Energy Information
Administration revealed that not only have Texans not received the lower power bills they
were expecting, on the whole they've paid more than other U.S. consumers--a lot more.
"Customers of that deregulated energy market have paid a total of $28 billon more for their
power since 2004 than they would have paid if they'd been covered by the state's traditional
utilities,"
Earther reported this week.
While the slow trickle of money of of Texans' pockets over the last 17 years is
newsworthy, considering that deregulation was sold to the public to do the exact opposite,
it's entirely likely that the system would have charged on unchanged without the massive and
scandalous grid failures cause by this months storms--although with changing weather patterns
this kind of catastrophic climate event was coming sooner or later. But in the wake of the
devastating outages, the U.S. and Texas energy industries are already changing in response as
power companies bail on deregulated
grids . "Investors prefer steady dividends from regulated utilities over erratic profits
in the freewheeling American power production industry," the Financial Times reported this
week.
While there are certainly still plenty of benefits to deregulation--incentivizing
innovation and pricing out coal plants are just two examples--this months events show that
those benefits no longer outweigh the risks for many Texan power producers and consumers.
Regarding the Renegade Inc. link @Karlof has provided and the interview with
Richard A. Werner, the research paper he talks about in the midsection can be read here:
Can banks create money out of nothing? .
Strangeley enough, it's probably the first empirical reasarch attempt on how a bank "loan" is
indicated on a bank balance sheet. He does it by taking a fictitious loan from one of these
small local community banks he talks about in the interview.
The paper is easily accessible and also contains a brief history of the perception on how
money is created and how banks operate.
And since the documentary The Spider's Web has been mentioned, there are two
complementary films to banking and finance which are worth watching: 97% Owned and Princes of Yen , the latter based on
Richard Werner's same-titled book. The book tells the story about a slow coup d'etat that
happened in Japan during the 70's and late 80's and how Japan was transformed from a
centralized command economy where credit creation was "window-dressed" by the powerful
Finance Ministry by means of an artificially created housing bubble into one that is
dominated by a neoliberalized Central Bank with all the monetary, financial and social
ramifications we can see today, not just in Japan but around the globe.
Patricia McDonald layered on sweaters, socks and mittens and huddled under blankets for 15
hours as the temperature in her Duncanville, Texas, home plunged to 42 degrees in the wake of
Winter Storm Uri.
Well after the water in her kitchen froze, McDonald decided she'd had enough and braved a
hair-raising ride over snow-covered, ice-slicked roads to get to her daughter's house several
miles away.
The Dallas County probation officer was safe and warm there. However, McDonald couldn't
establish the computer connection she needed to check in with colleagues, and she worried about
clients who had had fewer resources than she did for surviving the state's massive power
failure.
This isn't merely a Texas problem. Failing infrastructure -- from pothole-scarred roads and
run-down bridges to aging utility lines and dilapidated water systems -- poses just as big a threat to the rest
of the country.
Without a bold rebuilding campaign, Americans will continue to risk their well-being and
livelihoods as the nation collapses around them.
McDonald, financial secretary for United Steelworkers (USW) Local 9487, which represents
hundreds of city and county workers in Dallas, grew increasingly angry knowing that it took
just several inches of snow and frigid temperatures to knock out the Texas power
grid and paralyze the state.
Some Texans, confronted with days-long power outages,
slept in idling motor coaches that officials turned into makeshift warming centers or drove
around seeking hotel rooms that still had light and heat.
But even as McDonald and other Texans waited for power to be restored, police and
firefighters in Philadelphia used rafts to
rescue at least 11 people trapped by a torrent of water after a 48-inch main ruptured in
the city's Nicetown neighborhood.
America cannot move forward if it continues falling apart. That's why the USW and other
labor unions are championing a
historic infrastructure program that will modernize the country, improve the nation's
competitiveness and create millions of jobs while simultaneously enhancing public safety.
"There needs to be change," said McDonald, one of the millions affected by the blackouts
that utilities hurriedly imposed because surging demand and equipment failures put the whole
power grid "
seconds and minutes away " from a catastrophic failure that could have left the state
without electricity for months.
A major infrastructure investment, such as the one President Joe Biden envisioned in his
Build Back Better plan, will
create jobs not only for the workers who build roads and bridges but also for the Americans who
manufacture aluminum, cement, fiberglass, steel and other items essential for construction
projects.
Stronger, more resilient infrastructure will help America weather the ever
more frequent, increasingly severe storms associated with climate change. That means not
only upgrading power grids but also encasing utility poles in concrete or relocating power
lines underground. It also requires strengthening coastal barriers to guard
against the growing hurricane damage that Texas and other states face.
Expanding broadband and rebuilding schools will ensure that children across the country have
equitable access to educational opportunities. Investments in manufacturing facilities will
enable the nation to rebuild
production capacity decimated by decades of offshoring.
And an infrastructure campaign will ensure local officials have the resources they need to
manage growth, such as the
huge expansion underway at the Electric Boat submarine shipyard in Groton, Connecticut.
Kevin Ziolkovski welcomes the business that the shipyard brings to his community. But
Ziolkovski, who represents dozens of Groton Utilities workers as unit president of USW Local
9411-00, said it makes no sense for the federal government to continue awarding bigger
contracts to Electric Boat without providing sufficient funds for related infrastructure.
Ziolkovski says Groton Utilities needs $3.5 million more just to construct a new water tank
for the shipyard, one of its biggest customers. He also knows that Groton and other towns need
funds to upgrade roads, sewerage systems, public transit and recreational amenities to
accommodate the expected influx of workers and their families.
"If you want to see these multibillion-dollar nuclear submarines get built for the defense
of the entire nation, you should support everything that goes into that, too," said Ziolkovski,
who sees a national infrastructure program as one solution and developed a briefing book on
local infrastructure needs for Connecticut's congressional delegation.
McDonald, who returned to her home after three days to find the power back on but her
neighborhood under a boil-water advisory, knows that other communities will suffer unless the
nation embraces a rebuilding program.
It pains her to know that America fell into such disrepair that it cannot provide basic
services, like power and safe roads, at the very time people need them most.
We need infrastructure upgrade. How to fund? It seems a fair number of the examples here
were originally funded by local taxes. As local property taxes have been cut/ held down, the
local money to repair and maintain has disappeared. Now the same local tax cutters want
Federal money for their projects. What happened to local borrowing and funding? Is it
different from the past?
I am all for Federal funding of national projects such as roads, but local stuff might be
best funded at local level with some Federal guarantees.
all we really need is a policy to upgrade infrastructure rather than a policy of handing
money to connected insiders. Local borrowing and funding won't be a drop in the bucket and
that lack will be used to say " sorry, you can't have that! unless you guarantee profits to
the funding banksters". The system as it stands now makes this article seem fantastic, in the
disney sense
The Fed can easily fund an entire $10 trillion infrastructure package over a decade. If
not completely corrupted, this adds productive capacity at good to high rates of return
lowering total factor costs.
Also, savings could be had from the healthcare rackets that siphon off an unreal 8% to 10%
(up to $2 trillion/year) of GDP in skims. The US needs to increase investment by 5% of GDP
($1 trillion) / year to get back on track.
The funds are in "our" insanely huge "defense" budgets where because they routinely break
the 1996 law requiring an annual accounting,over $21 Trillion dollars have been unaccounted
for,n this by outside investigaters. Imagine the real amount if investigated by insiders.
When we defund the military from the size of the next 10 largest military budgets globally
down to merely the largest, we will be able to rebuild our country,pay off student debt and
pay for Medicare 4 All with change left over. This will also decrease our military's huge
pollution footprint as they are 1 of the largest sources.
The U.S. is run by predatory plutocrats. Biden and the coin-operated Congress are there
just to maintain a dignified facade on the looting operation. As long as the majority of
voters are willing to lower their standard of living in return for receiving infusions of
hatred from their favorite demagogues, the nation will continue to decline.
Even if Biden launches a large scale infrastructure and infrastructure repair program I am
not sure how much infrastructure and infrastructure repair the money would buy without major
changes in the ownership of construction Cartels and some of the ownership of existing
infrastructure -- like the Grid, Internet, and telecommunications. But look on the bright
side of life there are probably still shovel-ready projects waiting from the Obama years. I
trust that Biden has replaced the government appointees who oversaw where the CARES Act
trillions went so that we will at least have some idea where all the infrastructure and
infrastructure repair money went.
Neoliberals know next to nothing about the monetary system.
All their mistakes during globalisation have allowed heterodox economists to make enormous
progress in this area.
Even amongst the mainstream there are one or two that do have some idea.
Paul Ryan was a typically confused neoliberal and Alan Greenspan had to put him
straight.
Paul Ryan was worried about how the Government would pay for pensions.
Alan Greenspan told Paul Ryan the Government can create all the money it wants, 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.
Neoliberals have got very confused about where the real wealth in the economy lies and
money, which comes out of nothing.
They don't know what real wealth creation is, and think it comes from things like making
money, trade and inflating asset prices.
It's a recipe for disaster.
They always think there is no money, when money comes out of nothing and Governments can
create as much as they want.
They don't know what real wealth creation is and how to grow an economy in a sustainable
way.
They usually adopt the economic growth model of the US in the 1920s.
Bank credit is used for unproductive purposes and it is the money creation of bank credit
that drives the economy.
Debt rises faster than GDP, as you head towards a financial crisis.
No one realises the problems that are building up in the economy as they use an economics
that doesn't look at debt, neoclassical economics; apart from the Chinese.
1929 – US
1991 – Japan
2008 – US, UK and Euro-zone
The PBoC saw the Chinese Minsky Moment coming and you can too by looking at the chart
above.
The Chinese were lucky; it was very late in the day.
Mankind first started to produce a surplus with early agriculture.
It wasn't long before the elites learnt how to read the skies, the sun and the stars, to
predict the coming seasons to the amazed masses and collect tribute.
They soon made the most of the opportunity and removed themselves from any hard work to
concentrate on "spiritual matters", i.e. any hocus-pocus they could come up with to elevate
them from the masses, e.g. rituals, fertility rights, offering to the gods . etc and to turn
the initially small tributes, into extracting all the surplus created by the hard work of the
rest.
The elites became the representatives of the gods and they were responsible for the bounty of
the earth and the harvests.
As long as all the surplus was handed over, all would be well.
The class structure emerges.
Upper class – Do as little as they can get away with and get most of the rewards
Middle class – Administrative/managerial class who have enough to live a comfortable
life
Working class – Do the work, and live a basic subsistence existence where they get
enough to stay alive and breed
Their techniques have got more sophisticated over time, but this is the underlying
idea.
They have achieved a total inversion, and got most of the rewards going to those that don't
really do anything.
Everything had worked well for 5,000 years as no one knew what was really going on.
The last thing they needed was "The Enlightenment" as people would work out what was really
going on.
They did work out what was going on and this had to be hidden again.
The classical economists identified the constructive "earned" income and the parasitic
"unearned" income.
Most of the people at the top lived off the parasitic "unearned" income and they now had a
big problem. (Upper class – Do as little as they can get away with and get most of the
rewards)
This problem was solved with neoclassical economics, which hides this distinction.
It's a pseudo economics that was designed to hide the way the economy actually works.
It confuses making money and creating wealth so all rich people look good.
Great minds think alike.
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.
Small state, unregulated capitalism was where it all started and it's rather different to
today's expectations.
Engdahl takes a look at the energy crisis in Texas.
The Green Energy Fallacy
In addition US oil production, centered in Texas, has plunged by a third, and more than
20 Gulf Coast oil refineries are blocked as are grain barge shipments along the Mississippi
River. Several analysts of the deregulated Texas grid model point out that had the state
maintained a "reliable emergency backup" such as is possible with nuclear or coal power,
the blackout could have been averted. Recently Texas has forced six coal power plants to
close since 2018, owing to state rules that force power companies to take the subsidized
wind and solar power, undercutting the cost of their own coal generation. It simply forced
them to shut down functioning coal plants that generated 3.9 GW. Had those still been on
line, sources say the blackouts could easily have been averted. Unlike current wind
technology or solar, coal and nuclear plants can store up to a month or more capacity on
site for power emergencies.
While in northern states like Minnesota where severe winters are common and prepared
for, Texas has no such requirements for reserve capacity. For example, the Minnesota Public
Utilities Commission requires plants to have enough reserve capacity online to ensure the
power stays on during extreme circumstances. Instead, Texas operates an "energy-only"
market, where wholesale power prices are seen as an adequate incentive to bring more power
plants online. The aim of the energy only model was to make intermittent wind and solar
more profitable to increase their market share over conventional alternatives like coal or
nuclear.
The state grid model forced Texas coal and nuclear plants to sell electricity at a loss
on the market because they are unable to reduce their electricity output when high wind and
solar output force prices into the red. Ultimately, it forced the unnecessary closing of
the six coal plants, just what the green energy advocates wanted. The flaws in the model
are glaring, as is the growing dependence on unreliable wind and solar options to get a
dubious zero carbon footprint.
It should be obvious to all that "price signals" do not convey public interest all the
time, and definitely not in the times of crisis.
To prevent or alleviate a crisis, investments are needed that may be "wasted" or not. I
did not notice a public debate like that: "do you want to pay 1c/kWh more so the power supply
will be adequate even during to relatively short events that happen every 10 years or so?" It
is cheaper to build pipes and other equipment if they do not have to work in cold weather,
and to close usually unneeded thermal power stations rather then keeping them capable of
producing electricity during occasional weeks of peak demand.
Funnily enough, the "novel pricing mechanisms" reward the companies that did not
prevent the crisis, even few kWh's sold at a price 1000 times larger than the usual
contributes very well to the balance sheets. IMF is busy convincing borrowing countries to
engage in "reforms" of that kind (and worse, persistent jacking up of prices).
A Texas electric company has been hit with a $1 billion class action lawsuit from a woman
who claims her bill skyrocketed to more than $9,000.
Houston resident Lisa Khoury says her monthly Griddy electric bill spiked to $9,340 from
$200, and that the company pulled $1,200 from her bank account until she blocked further
payments,
according to KTRK-TV .
"It went through my mind how are we going to pay this, what are we going to do, this is
life-changing," Khoury
told KXAS-TV .
The suit accuses Griddy of price gouging and failing to protect its customers from
astronomical energy costs.
The electric company, which serves nearly 30,000 Texans, sent an email out to their
customers on Feb. 13 before the winter storm, warning them of the high costs and even
encouraged them to switch providers.
"Prices are looking to stay at record rates over the next couple of days due to the polar
vortex. Your well-being is more important than our bottom-line. Unless you are a Griddy
energy-saving expert, we recommend you immediately switch to another provider due to these
price surges," a screenshot of the email posted to Twitter reads.
A Griddy spokesman
told The Dallas Morning News that "the lawsuit is meritless and we plan to vigorously
defend it."
"Liberal" appeared in Europe in a socio-economic context in the late 1600s to describe an
system where business would be free, unhindered by royal/government control. For the most
part, to start up a business, one needed a royal license or patent. The liberals wanted
unregulated business, and their motto was "laissez faire" (let it be done/happen).
Laissez-faire capitalism is generally considered the first (entrepreneurial) phase of
capitalism, starting in the early 1700s.
Outside the English-speaking world, the word still relates to free trade and unregulated
business practices.
"Neoliberal" is more recent, coming into common usage since the arrival of the
Thatcher/Reagan regime of globalization. Neoliberals go one further than the original
liberals. While the latter just wanted governments to let businesses do their thing, the
neoliberals believe that it is government's duty to promote and support business, in other
words to play a major role in making it possible for corporations to make money. Hence,
Boeing and the other corporations and the big banks must NEVER be allowed to fail, for that
would represent a failure of government as it is understood in neoliberal ideology.
The liberalism which is referred to here is the economic liberalism which was adopted in
the United Kingdom in the 1840s after the "reform" of the Corn Laws, which permitted free
trade in grain and therefore brought down both the price of wheat and the small farming
community in the UK, as it was intended to do. Later these liberal policies (largely modelled
on the "comparative advantage" economic theory, which had already been refuted by the time it
was developed by David Ricardo) were used to justify the Irish genocide of 1847-9.
This policy was eventually abandoned later in the nineteenth century, except for places
like India, of course. It was restored in the West in the 1970s, under the name of "free
trade", and therefore is called neoliberalism, or new liberalism in the economic sense.
The term is not a compliment.
I suspect that the term "liberal-fascist" derives partly from the term Islamofascist,
meaning a Muslim who does not bow to Washington six times a day, and partly from the term
"social-fascist", a Stalinist term for a socialist who did not bow to Moscow six times a
day.
Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. According to Losurdo, the term "liberal" (as an
adjective) is first found in 16th Century Spain, and essentially was a defense of slave labor
to serf labor.
The first theoretician of Liberalism that I can think of is John Locke. If he wasn't the
first, he certainly was the most influential, as he was the philosopher of the Founding
Fathers of the USA.
Liberalism was never an organized "school" or ideology. The term itself as we know today
(an ism) was only consolidated sometime around the French Revolution (1789), hence why many
people today (mainly Western First Worlders) still associate the term is progressivism and
even leftism. In reality, they are confounding the term with radicalism, which was the
faction of the abolitionist liberals who extrapolated liberalism to all human beings.
Neoliberalism is literally the New Liberalism. The neoliberals believe that everything
that happened between the Russian Revolution (1917) and the post-war welfare state
social-democracy was an abortion of History that should've never have happened. They then
propose the return to the classical liberal era (until 1914) with updates to the new
technological realities of their time, as if the period of 1917-1975 never existed. They then
seek to "link up" 1980-present to 1500-1914.
@vk "The neoliberals believe that everything that happened between the Russian Revolution
(1917) and the post-war welfare state social-democracy was an abortion of History that
should've never have happened."
Personally, I tend to define 'neoliberalism' as global financial capitalism. 'Global'
being the key. Something similar to what's described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-imperialism
. Technological advances in global communications and transportation (containerization) being
its most important precursors.
But I agree that the collapse of the Soviet Union, a competing alternative model, has to
be an important component also.
@ Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Feb 25 2021 12:28 utc | 87
You're thinking about Monetarism - the economics school founded by Milton Friedman that
served as the economic theory of neoliberalism after the 1980s.
Neoliberalism was founded in 1947 (Mont Pelerin Society). One interesting thing about the
original neoliberals was that they didn't distinguish between European social-democracy and
communism: in their view, the welfare state was the realization of the Communist Manifesto's
program (it really does propose for what we nowadays call the welfare state in some of its
pages as some kind of transition program).
@ Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Feb 25 2021 12:49 utc | 89
Monetarism is the economic theory. Neoliberalism is the political-ideological doctrine.
Neoliberalism found in Monetarism the missing piece for them to govern the Western world,
sometime in the mid-1970s.
It is common for a political-ideological doctrine to absorb theories outside of its
"field" in order to strengthen itself and gain power. Change of clothes (i.e. change of the
theories it adopts) is also common.
The impression Westerners have nowadays that one political-ideological doctrine must
always have exactly one economic theory or even that they are the same thing comes from the
fact that we live in the Era of Marxism, i.e. a historical period where Marxism is dominant.
But Marxism is the exception to the rule, based on the scientific theory of the greatest
philosopher of all time.
In practice, the bourgeois ideologues will have to make do with much inferior
theoreticians (John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Paul Samuelson, Mises, Hayek,
Böhm-Bawerk, Walras, Keynes, Friedman etc. etc. etc.) and so it is expected for them to
change their thinkers from time to time.
@vk "Neoliberalism found in Monetarism the missing piece..."
The way I see it, economics is the base. Like I said, technological advances in global
communications and transportation shifted the paradigm. What we have now is international
division of labor, controlled by west-owned global finance. Global financial capital is
rising above national boundaries; the role of national governments is to provide resources,
infrastructure, and disciplined low-cost labor, thus attracting a portion of global capital,
competing for it.
That's what I call 'neoliberalism', but I don't insist on it. What's in the name?
'Hyperimperialism', 'super-imperialism', 'inter-imperialism' or even 'state cartel' would
do.
It's just that 'neoliberalism' is a popular word these days, that seems to be used to
describe the current form of "relations of production". And why not.
Now, about ideologies. My feeling is, there are always hundreds of various ideologies
flying around. The establishment will pick a suitable one, shine it up in think-tanks, and go
with it. It'll become the dominant ideology. Until it doesn't suffice anymore, and then
they'll replace it with another. But that's all bullshit. Pwogwessivism, liberalism, social
democracy, the third way, whatever. No need to pay attention.
@ Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Feb 25 2021 14:18 utc | 97
Now, about ideologies. My feeling is, there are always hundreds of various ideologies
flying around. The establishment will pick a suitable one, shine it up in think-tanks, and
go with it. It'll become the dominant ideology. Until it doesn't suffice anymore, and then
they'll replace it with another. But that's all bullshit. Pwogwessivism, liberalism, social
democracy, the third way, whatever. No need to pay attention.
That's the definition of democracy in the post-war, as defined by the likes of Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr. and Hannah Arendt.
Schlesinger defined democracy or Western democracy as the system with a "vital center". A
vital center is a political system dominated by a political spectrum (left-right). The
ideologies within this political spectrum freely compete against each other in the public
arena for political power (getting into the White House; forming a majority within a
Parliament). Schlesinger is the father of what we nowadays call "pluralism". In opposition, a
totalitarian system is one of a single party, in which he put Nazi Germany and the USSR -
they don't have a "vital center".
Hannah Arendt defined totalitarianism as any system that vertebrates itself on one single
meta-narrative (History). She put as the totalitarian holotypes both Nazi Germany and the
USSR - the first built itself over the narrative of the master race; the second over class
struggle. By exclusion, she defines a democratic system as those without a single narrative
or any meta-narrative. By a different route, she comes to a similar endgame as Schlesinger,
with the exception that, in her model, democracies don't necessarily need to be multi-party
or even plural. You could be a single-party system and not plural - as long as the party
doesn't adopt any "meta-narrative", it suffices as free and democratic. Needless to say,
Arendt is one of the precursors to Postmodernism (absolute relativity).
That's why the West, until the present days, still consider itself as fully democratic and
China and Russia fully totalitarian: as long as the West doesn't adopt a meta-narrative and
keeps more than one party, they are democratic by post-war standards. It's not and never was
about eradicating poverty, turning the world a better place, fomenting progress for the
people etc. etc.
Lots of stabs being made at a definition for Neoliberalism. The following is from Hudson's
J is for Junk Economics , pgs 167-8:
" Neoliberalism: An ideology to absolve banks, landlords and monopolists from
accusations of predatory behavior. Just as European fascism in teh 1930s reflected the
failure of socialist parties to put forth a viable alternative, today's U.S.-centered
neoliberalism reflects the failure of industrial capitalism or socialism to free society from
rentier interests that are a legacy of feudalism.
"Turning the tables on classical political economy, rentier interests act as
plaintiffs against public regulation and taxation of their economic rents in contrast
to Adam Smith and other classical liberals, today's neoliberals want to deregulate
monopoly income and free markets for rent seeking, as well as replacing progressive income
taxation and taxes on land and banking with a value-added tax (VAT) on consumers.
"Endorsing an oligarchic role of government to protect property and financial fortunes
(see Chicago School and Moral Hazard ), neoliberalism loads the economy with an
exponential growth of debt while depicting it in a way that avoids recognizing the rising
rentier overhead (rent, interest and insurance) paid to the FIRE sector. (See Junk
Economics and Social Market .) Neoliberals want to privatize public
infrastructure. They defend this grabitization by depicting public ownership and regulation
as less efficient than congtrol by financial managers, despite their notorious short-termism.
The pretense is that private operators will provide goods and services at lower cost even
while extracting monopoly rent, building interest, dividends and high management salaries
into prices. (See Pentagon Capitalism .)"
A related definition follows:
" Neoliberal Disease: A term coined by Jan Hellevig to describe the free hand that
leaders of the demoralized post-Soviet bureaucracies gave neoliberals to redesign and
de-industrialize their economies by creating client kleptocracies . 'They freed the
markets, but only for the criminals. They totally neglected investments to modernize the
industry, and let the assets and cash streams be openly or covertly stolen by insiders and
the mob. The result was total chaos and the breakup of the Soviet Union.'" (Jon Hellevig,
"Russian Economy--The disease is not Dutch but Liberal," Awara March 2 2016, reprinted in Johnson's Russia
List , March 3, 2016, #12.)" [All Emphasis Original]
It should be noted the strategy Hellevig describes is the same as that used by those
termed "Corporate Raiders" that first prominently surfaced during Reagan/Bush and were
responsible for the so-called Savings & Loan Crisis.
If you don't have Hudson's book, I highly suggest getting it as it's filled with excellent
information and beats taking both micro- and macroeconomics. It's the companion book to
Killing the Host , which is essential for understanding Neoliberalism. The only part
of the Saga missing is a definitive history telling how the Neoliberal doctrine arose in the
UK and was exported to the USA @1880. Hudson has provided key portions but the overall story
still remains to be told.
the worst mistake jimmy carter ever made was to hire brzezinski, father of the
mujahideen and grandfather of al-qaeda. we used to brag about arming terrorists with weapons
to shoot down russian helicopters, hell they even made a "comedy" about it called charlie
wilsons war. now we accuse the russians of placing bounties on americans in afganistan and
demand more sanctions be placed on russia.
utter hypocrisy.
as for the maidan cookie monster and her neocon half wit husband, further proof of
failing upward, nothing succeeds like failure in washington. /div
Most Americans consider Kissinger a war criminal too, and informed Americans know that
Zbignue Brzenski has lost all credibility. He was a cold war era Anti-Russian. He has said
little if anything relevant since the collapse of the USSR.
Informed Americans would prefer a doplomatic relationship with their neighbors south of
the border. It would be much more economically and environmentally sustainable to have a
cooperative agreement with Venezuela, rather than the KXL advocates north of the border, that
Biden thankfully banned. It may be the only thing tbat he ends up doing correctly. I hope
not. I did not vote for him, Trump, or anyone else. Biden, Blinken, and Austin speak about
wanting to go back to the JCPOA and START, but whether they are willing to give up their
policy errors of force through sanctions, and falsely blaming Iran for the attack on the
Irbil Iraq airport will probably determine whether they can do this successfully or not.
Everyone is sick of the bullshit from the American government, including American citizens!
The government does what they Globzi investors demand from them. They really do not give a
damn about anyone else. Everyone is just a means to an end to them, and unkess someone is
exceptionally wealthy, they are an irrelevant pain in the ass to the government, unless they
are willing to sell out their own interest in order to elevate the corrupt government.
That's true. As a barometer of establishment thinking, Foreign Affairs is indeed
useful. I would just make a distinction of using it to understand establishment thinking
versus using it as a source for good policy, which is evidently questionable if its editors
still think Robert Kagan has anything useful to propose.
The tendency of liberalism to deny the consequences of society stems from its myth of the
'individual'. Liberalism imagines a world of rational subjects each making decisions in a
sovereign way (Thatcher's 'there is no such thing as society'). This allows capitalism to
erect a moral framework that represents the consequences of an economy as the consequences of
personal decisions. In this way, success (wealth) is 'reward' and failure (poverty) is
punishment. It's what Max Weber called 'secular Protestantism'. The working classes
participate in this evaluative ideology (Gramsci); it is the source of their self-loathing
and the reason they always vote against their own best interests. They all believe their lack
of means is a consequence of their lack of intelligence, work ethic, failure of
entrepreneurial spirit, etc etc. Here is Marx's own critique of the way liberalism washes its
hands of the effects of capitalism:
"The... theory... which is also expressed as a law of nature, that population grows faster
than the means of subsistence, is the more welcome to the bourgeois as it silences his
conscience, makes hard-heartedness into a moral duty and the consequences of society into
the consequences of nature, and finally gives him the opportunity to watch the destruction
of the proletariat by starvation as calmly as any other natural event without bestirring
himself, and, on the other hand, to regard the misery of the proletariat as its own fault
and to punish it. To be sure, the proletarian can restrain his natural instinct by reason,
and so, by moral supervision, halt the law of nature in its injurious course of
development." - Karl Marx, Wages, December 1847
While it may be superficially true that our poor Texan could have cunningly evaded copping
the wholesale price the fact remains that he is -- as all Texans are -- a victim of a system
structurally designed to extract exorbitant rents from his need for power. A socialist system
would not see him as a battery hen to be skimmed or as an atomized individual who should
'sink or swim' (in the words of that local mayor) but would seek to prevent power, food,
water, air, housing, education, health, etc etc from being hijacked and sequestered by vested
interests accessible only by outrageous fees. Socialism would outlaw rent-seeking, which is
the theft of meaningful life by carpetbaggers and their corrupt partners in government.
As we saw with Lavrov's latest interview, the gloves are coming off as China and Russia
escalate the diplomatic war in response to the "US-centered, racist, and mafia-styled
community" attacking them. The quote is from the Global Times Editor and deserves to be put
in full:
"Canada, the UK and Australia, three members of the Five Eyes alliance, have recently
taken action to put pressure on China. They have formed a US-centered, racist, and
mafia-styled community, willfully and arrogantly provoking China and trying to consolidate
their hegemony as all gangsters do. They are becoming a racist axis aimed at stifling the
development rights of 1.4 billion Chinese."
Despite the proven fact that there's only one race of humans--the Human Race--the 5-Eyes
nations continue to employ racism as a key tool of their so-called diplomacy. Again, the GT
Editor:
"Five Eyes alliance members are all English-speaking countries. The formation of four
states, except the UK, is the result of British colonization. Those countries share the
Anglo-Saxon civilization. The Five Eyes countries have been brought together by the US to
become the 'center of the West.' They have a strong sense of civilization superiority
. The bloc, which was initially aimed at intelligence sharing, has now become an organization
targeting China and Russia. The evil idea of racism has been fermenting consciously or
unconsciously in their clashes with the two countries."
And this "idea" is nothing new and has existed for centuries. My research led me to a 100+
year-old work, The Day of The Saxon , and to the work that suggested it, The Empire
of "The City" , both of which are freely available at The Archive. What is suggested by
them and the recent work ( Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy ),
reviewed by Pepe about the planning that resulted in the post-war Outlaw US Empire is that
Empire is merely the continuance of the global Saxon Empire that still exists, and that what
we're experiencing are the ongoing "political adjustments" that confer superiority to the
Saxons since that's what they seek. In updated parlance, that would be Full Spectrum
Dominance. As we know, the Chinese have already felt Saxon love and want no more of it and
have finally made the connection between past and present. The Editor again:
"With a common language, a common historical background, and a coordinated attack target,
such an axis is destined to erode international relations and allow hooliganism to rise to
the diplomatic stage in the 21st century." [My Emphasis]
Hooliganism, an apt term given its roots in British football. Do read the entire editorial
for there is much more commendable content. Those in the EU need to understand that they're
doing the Saxon's bidding even through the UK is no longer a member as NATO still remains and
is dominated by Saxons.
"... Not only was Lloyd's still self-regulating, it was empowered to determine itself what was meant by the notion of self-regulation, unilaterally making rules governing its operations, without answering to any outside authority, even Parliament. Lloyd's secrets were still safe. ..."
I've been following Scottish independence closely now for about six months, and so have
formed a view of the protagonists. Nicola Sturgeon puts me in mind of Lady Mary Archer,
someone I knew for about four years. She is oh so sweet and polished on the outside - indeed
a High Court judge famously said of her "is she not sweet? Is she not fragrant?". But on the
inside....phew!
I believe it comes from a sense of impunity, a sense they can do anything they like,
however disgusting and depraved, and there is nobody that can touch them because they are
best female friends with Queen Elizabeth II. And the result is, well, abomination.
Let me give you some insights.
The source of wealth for Lord Archer is Lloyds of London, specifically the asbestosis
fraud. The quotes I am about to relate come from David McClintick's "The Decline and Fall of
Lloyds of London", Time Magazine Europe, February 21 2000 vol 155 no 7
Caressed by a soft breeze, Ralph Rokeby-Johnson and Roger Bradley surveyed the forbidding
fourth hole of the vintage Walton Heath golf course south of London. It was a bright
Thursday in early October, 1973. "Orator, you're not orating," Rokeby-Johnson
said. "Have I upset you?" Rokeby-Johnson had been needling the normally loquacious Bradley
for inside information since they'd teed off in the autumn golf outing of Lloyd's of
London, the world's pre-eminent insurance market. Bradley and Rokeby-Johnson were leading
executives at competing firms in the market and Lloyd's men maintained a spirited rivalry
in golf as well as business. But as they shop-talked their way along
the first three holes, "Orator" Bradley had fallen silent, because he sensed that
Rokeby-Johnson was himself harboring information that could prove explosive: the threat to
Lloyd's posed by asbestos, the ubiquitous, benign-looking insulation material that was
slowly but surely infecting workers in the asbestos industry with deadly lung
diseases--asbestosis and cancer--prompting lawsuits and insurance claims in America.
"What can you tell me?" Bradley finally asked as they idled on the fourth
tee, waiting for the players ahead to clear the green. "What I can tell you,"
Rokeby-Johnson replied in a stage whisper, "is that asbestosis is going to change the
wealth of nations. It will bankrupt Lloyd's of London and there is nothing we can do to
stop it."
It was Jefrey Archer who devised a means to turn an impending disaster into the Midas
touch.
Fast forward to February 2000. Over a quarter of a century has passed since Ralph
Rokeby-Johnson shared his apocalyptic vision with Orator Bradley. Legendary Lloyd's of
London, pioneer of the insurance industry and synonymous with it, has escaped bankruptcy.
But the organization that was once part of the very bedrock of Britannia has been
devastated by losses including massive compensation claims from American workers afflicted
by asbestosis and lung cancer. The wealth of nations may not have changed dramatically, but
Lloyd's fundamental character has changed, and thousands of Lloyd's investors--the
so-called Names who pledge all their personal wealth to underwrite insurance policies
issued by Lloyd's syndicates--have been ruined. The decline and fall of
Lloyd's, like all engrossing tragedies, has been building to a spectacular d?nouement. The
final act is now upon us and waiting in the wings are a group of Names who could yet prove
to be Lloyd's nemesis. These are the dissident investors, including members of the
so-called United Names Organization, who have refused to settle their asbestos-related
debts with Lloyd's because, they claim, they are the victims of a massive and calculated
swindle. Back in the 1980s, they argue, Lloyd's duped them into becoming Names by
fraudulently misrepresenting its profitability and concealing the ruinous asbestosis losses
that were in the pipeline. Do they have a case? The truth, they say, will
soon out. Later this month, in what could prove to be the trial of the new century, the
Lloyd's dissidents will claim in England's High Court that they have been the victims, not
just of negligent underwriting, but of one of the greatest fraudulent conspiracies of all
time. They will argue that they were recruited to Lloyd's at a time when the 300-year-old
institution knew it was facing massive asbestosis claims and needed extra capital to absorb
its forecast losses. The dissident Names will further charge that this massive fraud was
not the work of a few posh-mannered, money-grubbing Lloyd's underwriters, but was condoned
and indeed orchestrated by the Lloyd's hierarchy itself.
How much was involved?
Admonished by their partners to stop the shop-talk, Bradley and Rokeby-Johnson dropped the
subject until after the game when they settled with drinks in a corner of the tweedy bar of
the clubhouse. "Were you serious about asbestosis destroying Lloyd's?"
Bradley asked. "Of course," Rokeby-Johnson replied. On the back of his
scorecard, he then proceeded to calculate that Lloyd's could be swamped by claims far in
excess of the market's ability to pay--perhaps as much as $120 billion by the year 2000.
"Do you mean 'million' or 'billion'?" the incredulous Bradley asked.
"Billion," Rokeby-Johnson stressed. "It's the time bombs that worry me."
"What are the time bombs?" "The time bombs are the young
victims [of asbestosis] who will gradually develop lung disease. When they die, the lawyers
are going to have a field day. Pick a figure, but it won't be far off what I've told you.
See whether I am right. I shall be gone long before you."
The day after the golf match, Bradley recounted the conversation to a senior Lloyd's
colleague who warned him against repeating it to anyone else. It seemed to Bradley then
that at least a few Lloyd's insiders were aware of the looming asbestos problem even as
they recruited new Names to bolster the market's capital base. And recruit
they did. The number of names soared beyond 7,000 in the early '70s to 14,000 in 1978 and
reached over 34,000 by the late '80s. After nearly three centuries of genteel, discreet
one-by-one recruitment in Britain, Lloyd's salesmen fanned out across the world, especially
North America, touting Lloyd's as an exclusive club offering secure investments to only a
select few who qualified for membership. According to many of these new recruits, the
Lloyd's sales pitch promised not only risk-free profits, but the opportunity to join an
elite and prestigious "society" which had existed for 300 years and whose membership
included titled British aristocrats. New investors signed up in droves. As one Name
recalled later, "You don't need to drop the names of many English earls to attract a bunch
of North American dentists."
Evans says the clinching argument for joining came again from Coleridge, who boasted to
recruits that Lloyd's was backed by its own act of Parliament. "He said, 'Parliament would
never have passed the act had Lloyd's accounts and regulation not been impeccable.' I
thought to myself, if Parliament has given its seal of approval to Lloyd's, what more do I
need?"
None the wiser, Parliament on July 23, 1982, gave Lloyd's its exemption from lawsuits. It
could be held liable for damages only if a plaintiff could prove "bad faith," which is
difficult to establish under English law where the "buyer-beware" principle is more firmly
established than in the U.S. (an obstacle the Jaffray suit will have to surmount). Not
only was Lloyd's still self-regulating, it was empowered to determine itself what was meant
by the notion of self-regulation, unilaterally making rules governing its operations,
without answering to any outside authority, even Parliament. Lloyd's secrets were still
safe.
And Jeffrey Archer, what was his big idea?
In 1986, Lloyd's quietly added a clause to its contract with investors. Any legal dispute
over the investment would have to be resolved in England under English law. Investors were
not told that Parliament four years earlier had effectively inoculated Lloyd's from
lawsuits in England.....Most lawsuits by private investors against Lloyd's in the U.S. were
stymied, too. The fraud allegations for the most part never got a hearing because Lloyd's
invoked the clause it had slipped into its contracts with investors beginning in 1986
calling for any legal disputes to be litigated in England. Even though the investors
argued that they had been tricked into signing that clause --and Americans' rights
under U. S. securities laws generally cannot be waived by such contracts--U.S. appellate
courts ruled that the contracts were valid and that Names had to sue Lloyd's in England.
Archer has a plot in one of his books where a contract is central. One protagonist asks
another "Did he sign"? And the other replies "Yes, he didn't see that, nor any of the other
three clauses I had slipped in."
If you understand what happened you will understand why Lord and Lady Archer are such
favourites of the British royal family.
But my point is about Mary Archer, and the blackness within. It was not enough for this
person to reduce others to absolute penury, oh no. She had herself appointed as Chair of the
Lloyds Hardship Committee.
If you tell Lloyds you cannot pay your bill you can claim hardship. But you will have to
justify yourself before this committee. Can you imagine Mary's joy and pleasure at making
others beg for mercy? Her ecstasy as she noses through the most personal matters of other
women she has just cut down to size. She probably became quite moist at the excitement of it
all.
No, this is not my imagination. When "Lady" Archer got rid of her secretary for
"disloyalty" she didn't just fire her. She sued her, took away her house and bankrupted the
poor woman. Remember, she's best friends with the Queen.
These people are monsters. And Nicola Sturgeon is one of them.
Note to b. I do not have a link to the Time Magazine piece, but i'd be happy to post the
entire text if your readers are interested.
Don't you know that whining about race, from the racist or the anti-racist side, doesn't
matter, is more important than billionaires fucking us over. It's more important than
anything. It doesn't matter if we die of freezer burn sleeping on cardboard after we've been
laid-off, evicted, and starved. It doesn't matter if we die in a nuclear war that the
billionaires started because they think it would be a good idea.
Nope. All that matters is whining about race. That's the most important thing. All else is
trivial.
Didn't American people suffer from the disease? Yes, the US government is "grotesquely
and manifestly incompetent" and they were likely to expect "a massive coronavirus outbreak
in China would never spread back to America".
The crucial factor here is that the US is not a nation per the most basic definition of
the word, "a group of people born of a common ancestry". Consequently, as illustrated by
job-killing "trade deals" and in countless other ways, there are plenty of "Americans" who
don't care a whit about the fate of Americans. That makes it entirely plausible that the Deep
State and/or one or more billionaires would release a virus in China in the full expectation
that it would hit the US and that once here it would disrupt, impoverish, and kill millions
of Americans. This was a win-win for them. The Deep State and the billionaires don't like
China, which is a non-liberal country and curtails their power by restricting the use of US
tech products. So if somehow the virus were contained in China it would be okay with them, as
it just would be a smaller win. However, what they really wanted was for the virus circle
back to the US. They knew that once here the disruption it would cause would further enrich
and empower them while giving them a pretext to dump it all on Donald Trump, whom they would
accuse of being incompetent and uncaring.
While full of good insights, the problem with this article as far as COVID is concerned is
that it misleads on the main point. COVID is not biowarfare, it is not a pandemic, it's just
the flu. The US recorded the same death rate in 2020 as in previous years and, as Dr. Colleen
Huber has documented, medical oxygen and supply sales were no different from previous
years.
All those COVID-19 deaths were simply deaths of a different name. Of course, we knew from
last March's Diamond Princess cruise–still by far the best controlled COVID
"experiment"–that the case-fatality rate of COVID-19 for the general public is in the
flu range.
But, it never was about COVID-19, which is just a glorified coronavirus of the type seen
even before the dawn of humans. Long before the virus even hit the streets, the media and
governments and medical establishments had secretly planned to to create a "panic-demic" to
scare people into a whole lot of strange and dangerous behaviors–like giving up their
liberties and economic futures. COVID-19 is just a medical nothing-burger that convinced a
lot of otherwise sane people to scare themselves into oblivion. Or did it? If the
post-election analyses are correct, Trump won in a major landslide and even those who voted
against him were already suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. So, maybe the people
weren't fooled by COVID so much as electorally raped by the vast elite cabal.
Whatever we say is a fact-based result of diligent research; whatever you say is a
conspiracy theory – both the US and China representatives subscribe to this
mantra.
Maye both Washington and Beijing are guilty -- of a perpetrating a hoax.
Putin surprised me. He flatly refused the offer of Schwab and his ilk. He condemned the
manner of recent pre-Covid growth, for all the growth went into a few deep pockets.
Moreover, he noted that digital tycoons are dangerous for the world.
The next strong man we elect must be an actual STRONG man. I salute Trump for his genius
in identifying the real majority in this country and for forcing the techno-oligarchs into
overdoing their election steal. Now we need someone who is willing to establish real
authority on behalf of the un-queer.
'Freedom' under neo-liberal capitalism is all of the negative type. You are free to be as
greedy and arrogant as you like, as rich, ie as big a thief, as you like, and as poor as you
like. You are to ignore the liberal injunction that your freedom must not interfere with that
of others, and screw as many patsies as you desire. You are 'free' to vote for two or so near
identical parties, then have no 'freedom' but that which your money buys you. 'Freedom' is
the biggest lie of all Big Lies.
Don't be spooked by those words. Do you know where the words sustainable and inclusive
come from? Tycoons didn't think them up. They're just parroting them to try and twist their
meaning. Those words are from the Addis Ababa consensus. Tycoons give lip service to those
words because if they don't, no one will give them the time of day.
AA is the consensus of the ECOSOC bloc, treaty parties of the ICESCR, 171 of them, the
overwhelming majority of the world. ECOSOC reports to the UNGA, the most participative and
least controllable UN organ. US UN delegates don't even dare mention the AA outcome –
they fixate on the Monterrey Consensus, two documents ago.
Inclusive means, don't let usurers like the IMF get you on the debt hook and immiserize
your people. Sustainable means no pillage of national wealth or resources and no imposition
of externalities (like Chevron did to Ecuador, for instance.) You will see that the outcome
document subordinates everthing the tycoons or the US want to human rights and rule of law.
Economic rights too. The outcome curbs US "Western" corporatist development by pulling WTO
and IMF under the authority of G-192 organizations like UNCTAD and ILO.
It's hard for people in US satellites to interpret this stuff because the underlying
intitiatives of the G-192 (that is, the world) are hidden from you and buried in US
propaganda. Xi is quoting his Five Principles, four of which are straight out of the UN
Charter. China has ratified the ICESCR. So China is not communist. China is not capitalist.
China is a member of the ECOSOC bloc. People in the US or its satellites have no idea what
that is, but it's vastly bigger than the Third International was. It's development based on
human rights. Tycoons and the US hate that shit but they can't stop it.
A couple of things that would go a long way to correct the goddamn stupidity running
rampant in this country are.
Correcting the following horrendous actions: The SCOTUS has passed down egregious
decisions that abridge the First Amendment and show contempt for the concept of
representative democracy. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1976 and exacerbated by continuing
stupid SCOTUS decisions First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, Citizens United v. Federal
Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.
These decisions have codified that money is free speech thereby giving entities of wealth and
power total influence in elections.
And-
Making it absolutely impossible for anyone to amass more than 100 million dollars extreme
wealth concentrates too much power.
"Tim Boyd, the mayor of Colorado City, Texas, said in a post to the public that ' No
one owes you or your family anything; nor is it the local government's responsibility to
support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim it's your choice! The City and
County, along with power providers or any other service owes you nothing! '
"He also wrote that, 'Only the strong will survive and the weak will perish,' and he even
said that 'this is sadly a product of a socialist government where they feed people to
believe that the few will work and others will become dependent for handouts.' Boyd later
resigned as his remarks had provoked public anger, but it seems that he really believes in
what he posted, and so do many American politicians.
"From the perspective of an outsider, the logic of the tragedy of nearly 500,000 deaths
due to the COVID-19 epidemic in the US so far and more than 20 people being killed in the
winter storm in Texas are the same. The logic is that the attention of the capital and the
government has not been directed toward the protection of human rights . The capitalist
system in the US has derived a set of national morals that deviated from the public interest
and has gradually become flashy but useless." [My Emphasis]
I hope thomas @140 reads this. The Global Times editor's words bear repeating:
" The capitalist system in the US has derived a set of national morals that deviated
from the public interest and has gradually become flashy but useless ." [My Emphasis]
Essentially, the clock's been turned-back over 100 years as the editor notes:
"The US' concept of 'freedom' actually conceals the cold-blooded proposition of the
'freedom of being eliminated.'
The US' notion of 'democracy, human rights and freedom' is actually a combination of
'elections, political rights and social Darwinism.' As such, it comes as no surprise that
various human tragedies often occur in such a wealthy country as the US. To live in the
US, you must have the strength and capability to save yourself in the event of a disaster, or
you should be able to pay a considerable amount of money for the help you seek. Otherwise,
you deserve the miserable situation you are in, and it's more worthy for you to pin your
hopes on charitable organizations and God, instead of the government ." [My Emphasis]
That's what the state of things was prior to the Great Depression when the national
government was finally provoked into providing the most miniscule of safety nets, termed
"Automatic-Stabilizers" to satisfy the Predatory Financial Class with the promise that the
business cycles of boom and bust wouldn't be as harsh as previously. That a particular
segment of the Political Class has sought the elimination of that safety net since its
inception verifies the editor's thesis as he continues:
"Boyd portrayed the government's assisting the victims as 'sadly a product of a socialist
government.' This reflects how much he and many other American politicians like him feel
contempt for government's efforts on people's livelihood. Whether they will survive or die in
the face of natural disasters is the public's own business and it's not worthy for US
governments and officials to protect people's lives - Boyd's words are really shocking
.
"Such a US should stop preaching to China on human rights. The US and China have different
political focuses. What China seeks is the health, safety and happiness of its people
, while the US wants to see political rights orderly distributed among social elites in a
capitalist manner. The human rights outlooks held by China and the US are based on different
groups of people. Different rights are positioned in different places in the two countries.
As a result, China's human rights construction has brought tangible benefits to all
Chinese people, while the US human rights view is more suitable to be used to brag about and
as an ideological tool to launch attacks against others ." [My Emphasis]
Ex-mayor Boyd reminds me of the fictional character Frank played by Henry Fonda in Once
Upon a Time in the West , for whom any means can be used to gain the outcome. Such
characters were once very visible in movies made about the USA--the sociopathic killer always
aiming for A Fistful of A Few Dollars More where even the good guy was ugly. I couldn't agree
more with the editor's closing comment:
"Washington, please take care of your own people in the freeze and put an end to the
deaths caused by COVID-19 first thing first. We may not link these issues to human rights,
but this should be what 'America First' is all about."
The personification of Boyd passed away yesterday and is much to blame for the woefulness
of the USA's moral condition. Unfortunately, there are too many creatures like him, many of
which are in governments throughout the land.
"Why does the US use the winter storm as the excuse every time?" Shu Bin, director of the
State Grid Beijing Economics Research Institute, told the Global Times on Thursday, noting
that the power grid system is very vulnerable and requires constant maintenance and
upgrade.
A report from the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 2015 said that 70 percent of power
transformers in the country were 25 years or older, 60 percent of circuit breakers were 30
years or older, and 70 percent of transmission lines are 25 years or older. And the age of
these components "degrades their ability to withstand physical stresses and can result in
higher failure rates," the report noted.
[...]
"The US has no nationwide power grid network allocation plan like China. When it
encounters extreme weather, a state won't help another state like some Chinese provinces
and regions do with flexible allocation plans," Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center
for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Thursday.
[...]
"China uses 50Hz across the country, like the country has the same heartbeat," he said,
adding that China has never experienced such a scale of blackouts as the US.
[...]
China has mastered the top technologies such as "UHV transmission" and "flexible DC
transmission" and started the strategic "west-east electricity transmission" and
"north-south electricity transmission" projects, which in turn offer an opportunity for the
development of the country's western region.
Not as apocalyptic as it may seem. I wrote a comment on the situation in the earlier
thread
here .
Temps are starting to move up and tomorrow (Thursday) should begin the thaw. Friday is
sunny and 47 deg F for a high, then sunny weekend and following. So we're over the worst of
it. The lowest it ever got was around 0 deg F.
The infrastructure failed - the people paid to manage this failed - everybody is angry, 10
people died so far last I heard.
Rolling blackouts, some people very much suffering, townships opening warming shelters -
probably not millions of pipes bursting. Not totally iced in, just nowhere to go. People
stayed home. Businesses stayed closed. Not totally without food, people stocked up staples in
2020.
Not that dire. Absolutely fucking disgusting, and a hardship that touched everyone - some
people got really screwed and I don't know why the treatment was uneven like that - not
demographics, something with the grid. Dire, yes, and life-threatening to some or perhaps
many (numbers not clear to me yet), but not so dire as your picture suggests. Nothing like
Katrina, except the same ineptness.
But heads will roll. The governor has mandated an investigation into the regulator, ERCOT.
What follows next is of great interest. Facts will appear. I'll post anything useful.
I heard a rumor it was getting better. Could be less blackouts. Will post now in case
power goes off ;)
This Texas debacle may light a heated debate in the USA for the next weeks, for two
reasons:
1) Texas is the big alt-right/Trumpist Festung for the foreseeable future. Their
nation-building process involve catapulting Texas as the anti-California ,
the conservative version of the Shining City on the Hill, around which the USA will be
rebuilt;
2) What is happening in Texas right now goes directly to the heart of neoliberalism, which
is the political doctrine that vertebrates the alt-right. That's why conservative ideologues
such as Tucker Carlson et al are desperately scrambling on TV and social media to blame the
outage on the so-called Green New Deal.
What is happening right now in Texas, therefore, may be another episode on the battle for
the soul of the American Empire.
Chris Hedges, Just talkin' 'bout revolution [against the Borg? Chris can't quite bring
himself to name just who "they" are] on Jimmy Dore yesterday:
"These people...you know, quite literally, will kill us...not just us...I'm talking about
snuffing out the possibility of the next generation...my kids...and they have to be
stopped"
Astonishing lack of understanding of history, basic humanity and common sense.
It seems no one among the current group of "victors" has heard the phrase "win the battle but
lose the war."
With all the witch hunting and hate mongering going on, it also seems no one in authority has
heard "treat others as you would have them treat you."
Also applies to WEF Great Reset Masters of the Universe.
A huge amount of karma heading their way.
Fox News ' Tucker Carlson said on the
Thursday night episode of his program that his show has been targeted for cancellation.
Carlson said
that "in the last several weeks, and particularly in the last 24 hours, the call to take
this show off the air by groups funded -- for real -- by the Ford Foundation, or by George
Soros, by Michael Bloomberg, by Jeff Bezos, has become deafening, going after our advertisers,
going after the companies that carry our signal into your home."
What's more, he added, there has been a "cowardice and complicity" on behalf of the "entire
media class in all of this," suggesting that eventually, reporters at legacy news outlets will
be targeted as well.
Writing for Fox News' website, Carlson added that it may be part of a larger campaign to
silence Fox News and other media, noting that some legacy news outlets have dedicated resources
calling for the channel to be taken down. One columnist for The New York Times, he added, "has
written three separate columns demanding that someone yank this news channel off the air
immediately" and on Wednesday, "suggested that 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' was somehow guilty of
terrorism and violence, something that we've opposed consistently for four years."
"Fox is the last big organization in the American news media that differs in even the
smallest ways from the other big news organizations. At this point, everyone else in the media
is standing in crisp formation, in their starched matching uniforms and their little caps,
patiently awaiting orders from the billionaire class. And then there's Fox News off by itself,
occasionally saying things that are slightly different from everyone else," Carlson wrote
.
He added: "These are craven servants of the Democratic Party. They are feline, not canine.
All of their aggression is passive aggression."
Most to these so-called "jews" are NOT ACTUAL JEWS although they claim to be. Rather, they
superficially converted to Judaism about 1200 years ago, for political and financial
advantages. Think of them more like a criminal organization (Rothschild Khazarian Mafia)
which uses the terms "jew" and "anti-semitism" as Liability Shields: designed to
Deflect-Accountability and Evoke False-Trust and Sympathy with which to deceive the victims
of their Banking-Financial-$cams, War-Profiteering, Cultural-$ubversion, and other Massive
Cons.
This is why it's Important not to fall for their Primary Trap THEY RELY ON BEING
PERSECUTED so they can continue using their main go-to (anti-semitism) get out of jail free
card.
Wall Street killed the truth squad and protected the profits from job and investment
offshoring. This is what happens to elected officials when they attempt to represent the
general interest rather than the special interests that finance political campaigns. The
public interest is blocked off by a brick wall posted with a sign that says get compliant
with the Establishment or get out of politics.
As for the "direct collision course" re the EU and Russia, the collision course has been
imposed by the Master-oligarchy of U. S. on the hapless vassal EU.
Slobodan's "The Globalists" is a great look at Von Mises and Hayek peddling
NeoLiberalism to the last hereditary aristocracy standing in Europe in the interwar
years.
It's Slobodian, Quinn.
To my mind, this set up a deracinated pseudo-nazism
So you're on to something.
Hayek is the Grandfather of neoliberalism and the primary influence on Hayek's thought was
the Vienna of his youth: the go-go years after Franz Josef surrendered to the Hungarians,
created the dual monarchy, and there was the great cultural efflorescence of Vienna that
preceded the Austro-Hungarian empire's collapse.
Two ideologies emerged after WWI from Austria in reaction to the traumatic experience of
that collapse -- ideologies formulated by Austrians that then deeply damaged the rest of the
world.
Neoliberalism was one, of course. The other? Well, someone once asked Ernst Hanfstaengl
aka Putzi, Hitler's confidant, what caused Hitler's antiSemitism.
Hanfstaengl replied: 'Anyone who did not know Vienna before 1914 cannot understand.'
Hanfstaengl then explained that before WWI Vienna was full of beautiful people, the soldiers
in their uniforms, the Hapsburg Empire's citizens in their local traditional clothes etc and
'then these strange people came from the East all dressed in black and speaking a strange
kind of German'. These were the Orthodox Jews who came from Silesia, a part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kaiser Franz Josef had done much to emancipate and help the Jews, so
many crossed over to Vienna to start a new life.
Now, to further put Hitler and Nazism's policies in their historical context, it's
necessary to understand the situation in Germany prior to their appearance.
In 1871, Bismarck had nationalized healthcare, making it available to all Germans, then
provided old-age pensions as public social security. Child labor was abolished and public
schools were provided for all children. The Kaiser implemented worker protection laws in
1890. After WW I, the Social Democrats' influence had remained strong. Germany had an active
union membership. An official "Decree on Collective Agreements, Worker and Employees
Committees and the Settlement of Labor disputes" enabled collective bargaining, legal
enforcement of labor contracts as well as social security for disabled veterans, widows, and
dependents. In 1918, unemployment benefits were given to all German workers.
In the 1932 elections, the Nazi Party didn't have an outright majority. According to the
Nuremberg Trial transcripts, on January 4, 1933, German bankers and industrialists had a
secret backroom deal with then-Chancellor Von Papen to make Hitler the Chancellor of Germany
in a coalition.
"In February 1933, as Chancellor, Hitler met with the leading German industrialists at the
home of Hermann Goring. There were representatives from IG Farben, AG Siemens, BMW, coal
mining magnates, Theissen Corp, AG Krupp, and others bankers, investors, and other Germans
belonging to the top 1%. In this meeting, Hitler said, "Private enterprise cannot be
maintained in the age of democracy.'"
In 1934 the Nazis outlined their plan to revitalize the German economy with the
reprivatization of significant industries: railways, public works project, construction,
steel, and banking. Hitler guaranteed profits for the private sector; many American
industrialists and bankers flocked to Germany to invest.
The Nazis had a thorough plan for deregulation. The Nazi's chief economist stated," The
first thing German business needs is peace and quiet. It must have a feeling of absolute
legal security and must know that work and its return are guaranteed." Likewise, businesses
weren't to be hampered by too much "regulation." On May 2, 1933, Hitler sent his Brown Shirts
to all union headquarters. Union leaders were beaten, and sent to prison or concentration
camps. The Nazi party expropriated union funds -- money workers paid for union membership --
for itself.
On January 20, 1934, the Nazis passed the Law Regulating National Labor, abrogating the
power of the government to set minimum wages and working conditions. Employers lowered wages
and benefits. Workers were banned from striking or engaging in other collective bargaining
rights, and worked longer hours for lower wages. Their conditions so deteriorated that when
the head of the AFL visited Nazi Germany in 1938, he compared an average worker's life to
that of a slave. .
The Nazis also privatized medicine. One of Hitler's economists was the head of a private
insurance company. These private for-profit health insurance companies immediately started to
profit from Anti-Semitism. In 1934, they eliminated reimbursements for Jewish physicians,
which allowed them to profit further.
And so on.
Philip K. Dick once wrote a novel whose particular ontological riff was that the Roman
empire never really ended and in the 20th century people lived in an imposed illusion under
the same elite, or their heirs, that had headed the Roman empire.
That sort of science-fictional novel could be written based on our own reality, riffing on
the theme: The Nazis won.
I am curious as to why Prof. Hudson does not describe the holding of mortgages by
financial entities as de facto landlordism, even if it is decentralized and theoretically
time-limited (tho' not so with infinite re-fi and heloc).If the mortgage lenders are granted
the monopoly of literally creating a debt on a ledger, rather than it being a public utility,
and the benefits (read as: interest payments) accrue solely to those private entities, how is
that substantially different than hereditary land title and rent? I concede that at the end
of the lengthy mortgage term, the aristos cede the deed, but the parasitism is considerable,
often over the entire working life of a person or couple.
My whole point, which I hope I've stated repeatedly clearly enough, is that "Rent is for
paying interest." The financial class today has replaced the 19th-century's post-feudal
landlord class.
Loans are also taken out against financial assets such as stocks/bonds. Is that another
reason for propping up the stock market to the bizarre levels now seen?
Great stuff. While some of us are resistant to using money and debt to explain
everything , who can deny that this country has always been about money above all with
a not altogether insincere love of freedom on the side. Perhaps that latter is the source of
the "you're not the boss of me" approach to the rest of the world that Hudson talks
about.
Although I'm more text than video oriented, this time I watched the latter first instead
of reading the transcript. It was like sitting in a master class about the ongoing pernicious
influence of the American financial sector on our country's foreign policy since early in the
20th century. Even if you've already read the transcript you should watch the video as
well.
The IMF system was designed to impoverish debtors. The purpose of the IMF was to make other
countries so poor and dependent on the United States so they could never be militarily
independent. In the discussion of the British loan for instance, in the 1930s the discussion in
the London Economic Conference was, "Yes, we're bankrupting Europe, but if we give Europe
enough money to avoid austerity, they're just going to spend the money on the military." That
was said by the Americans in the State Department and the White House again and again,
especially by Raymond Moley who was basically in charge of President Roosevelt's foreign policy
towards Europe.
The question is: how do you create an international financial system designed to promote
prosperity, not austerity? The Bretton Woods is for austerity for everybody except the United
States, which will have a free ride forever. The question that I'm involved with in the work
I'm doing in China and with other countries is how to create a system based on prosperity
instead of austerity, with mutual support between creditors and debtors, without the kind of
financial antagonism that has been built in to the international financial system ever since
World War I. Financial reform involves tax reform as well: how do we end up taxing economic
rent instead of letting the rentiers take over society. That is what classical economics
is all about: how do we revive it?
Oscar Brisset
Final question: these austerity and anti-labor policies which the IMF imposes on countries
of the global South seem to be well known practices from before the IMF was created, from what
you've discussed. Did the IMF invent anything new? In addition, in the 19th century, was
predatory lending something common, or was direct invasion always the go-to method for
subjugating a territory?
Prof Hudson
The 19th century was really the golden age of industrial capitalism. Countries wanted to
invest to make a profit. They didn't want to invest in dismantling an existing industry,
because there wasn't much industry to dismantle. They wanted to make profit by creating
industry. There was a lot of investment in infrastructure, and it almost always lost money. For
instance, there was recently a criticism of China saying, "Doesn't China know that the Panama
Canal went bankrupt again and again, and that all the investments in canals and the railroads
all went broke again and again?" Of course China knows that. The idea is that you make
investment not to make a profit on basic large infrastructure. The 19th century was basically
inter-state lending, inter-governmental lending, public sector lending. That's where the money
was made. The late 20th century was one of financialization, dismantling the industry that was
already in place, not lending to create industry to make a profit. It's asset-stripping, not
profit-seeking
The United States of America is now a classic oligarchy. The clarity that it has brought to
our situation by recognizing this fact is its only virtue...
"Either the Constitution matters and must be followed . . . or it is simply a piece of
parchment on display at the National Archives."
- Texas v. Pennsylvania et al.
T exas v. Pennsylvania et al. did not deny setting rules for the 2020 election contrary to
the Constitution. On December 10, 2020, the Supreme Court
discounted that . By refusing to interfere as America's ruling oligarchy serves itself, the
court archived what remained of the American republic's system of equal justice. That much is
clear.
In 2021, the laws, customs, and habits of the heart that had defined the American republic
since the 18th century are things of the past. Americans' movements and interactions are under
strictures for which no one ever voted. Government disarticulated society by penalizing
ordinary social intercourse and precluding the rise of spontaneous opinion therefrom. Together
with corporate America, it smothers minds through the mass and social media with relentless,
pervasive, identical, and ever-evolving directives. In that way, these oligarchs have
proclaimed themselves the arbiters of truth, entitled and obliged to censor whoever disagrees
with them as systemically racist, adepts of conspiracy theories.
Corporations, and the government itself, require employees to attend meetings personally to
acknowledge their guilt. They solicit mutual accusations. While violent felons are released
from prison, anyone may be fired or otherwise have his life wrecked for questioning
government/corporate sentiment. Today's rulers don't try to convince. They demand obedience,
and they punish.
Russians and East Germans under Communists Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker in the 1970s
lived under less ruling class pressure than do today's Americans. And their rulers were smart
enough not to insult them, their country, or their race.
In 2015, Americans could still believe they lived in a republic, in which life's rules flow
from the people through their representatives.
In 2021, a class of rulers draws their right to rule from self-declared experts' claims of
infallibility that dwarf baroque kings' pretensions. In that self-referential sense, the United
States of America is now a classic oligarchy.
The following explains how this change happened. The clarity that it has brought to our
predicament is its only virtue.
Oligarchy had long been growing within America's republican forms. The 2016 election posed
the choice of whether its rise should consolidate, or not. Consolidation was very much "in the
cards." But how that election and its aftermath led to the fast, thorough, revolution of
American life depended on how Donald Trump acted as the catalyst who clarified, energized, and
empowered our burgeoning oligarchy's peculiarities. These, along with the manner in which the
oligarchy seized power between November 2016 and November 2020, ensure that its reign will be
ruinous and likely short. The prospect that the republic's way of life may thrive among those
who wish it to depends on the manner in which they manage the civil conflict that is now
inevitable.
From Ruling Class to Oligarchy
By the 21st century's first decade, little but formality was left of the American republic.
In 1942, Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism,
Socialism, and Democracy described the logic by which government and big business tend to
coalesce into socialism in theory, oligarchy in practice. But by then, that logic had already
imposed itself on the Western world. Italy's 1926 Law of Corporations -- fascism's charter --
inaugurated not so much the regulation of business by government as the coalescence of the
twain. Over the ensuing decade, it was more or less copied throughout the West.
In America, the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act's authors had erected barriers against private
oligopolies and monopolies. By maintaining competition between big business, they hoped to
preserve private freedoms and limit government's role. But the Great Depression's pressures and
temptations led to the New Deal's rules that differed little from Italy's. No matter that, as
the Supreme Court pointed out in Schechter Poultry v. U.S . , public-private
amalgamation does not fit in the Constitution. It grew nevertheless alongside the notion that
good government proceeds from the experts' judgment rather than from the voters' choices. The
miracles of production that America brought forth in World War II seemed to validate the
point.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had come to understand large organizations that feed on
government power and dispense vast private benefits, was not shy in warning about the danger
they pose to the republic. His warning about the " military-industrial
complex " that he knew so well is often misunderstood as a mere caution against militarism.
But Ike was making a broader point: Amalgams of public and private power tend to prioritize
their corporate interests over the country's.
That is why Eisenhower cautioned against the power of government-funded expertise. "The
prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and
the power of money is ever-present and is gravely to be regarded," he said, because "public
policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." Government money
can accredit a self-regarding elite. Because "a government contract becomes virtually a
substitute for intellectual curiosity," government experts can end up substituting their power
for truth.
The expansion of government power throughout the 1960s and '70s in pursuit of improving
education, eradicating poverty, and uplifting blacks created complexes of public-private power
throughout America that surpassed the military-industrial complex in size, and above all in
influence.
Consider education. Post-secondary education increased fourfold, from 9 percent of Americans
holding four-year degrees in 1965 to 36 percent in 2015. College towns became islands of wealth
and political power. From them came endless "studies" that purported to be arbiters of truth
and wisdom, as well as a growing class of graduates increasingly less educated but ever so much
more socio-politically uniform.
In the lower grades, per-pupil expenditure (in constant dollars) went from $3,200 in 1960 to
$13,400 in 2015. That money fueled an even more vast and powerful complex -- one that includes
book publishers, administrators, and labor unions and that has monopolized the minds of at
least two generations. As it grew, the education establishment also detached itself from the
voters' control: In the 1950s, there were some 83,000 public school districts in America. By
2015, only around 13,000 remained for a population twice as large. Today's parents have many
times less influence over their children's education than did their grandparents.
Analogous things happened in every field of life. Medicine came to be dominated by the
government's relationship with drug companies and hospital associations. When Americans went to
buy cars, or even light bulbs and shower nozzles, they found their choices limited by deals
between government, industry, and insurance companies. These entities regarded each other as
"stakeholders" in an oligarchic system. But they had ever less need to take account of mere
citizens in what was becoming a republic in name only. As the 20eth century was drawing to a
close, wherever citizens looked, they saw a government and government-empowered entities over
which they had ever less say, which ruled ever more unaccountably, and whose attitude toward
them was ever less friendly.
The formalities were the last to go. Ever since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 A.D.,
the rulers' dependence on popular assent to expenditures has been the essence of limited
government. Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution enshrines that principle.
Congressional practice embodied it. Details of bills and expenditures were subject to public
hearings and votes in subcommittees, committees, and the floors of both Houses. But beginning
in the early 1980s and culminating in 2007, the U.S government abandoned the appropriations
process.
Until 1981, Congress had used "continuing resolutions" to continue funding government
operations unchanged until regular appropriations could be made. Thereafter, as congressional
leaders learned how easy it is to use this vehicle to avoid exposing what they are doing to
public scrutiny, they legislated and appropriated ever less in public, and increasingly put
Congress' output into continuing resolutions or omnibus bills, amounting to trillions of
dollars and thousands of pages, impossible for representatives and senators to read, and
presented to them as the only alternative to "shutting down the government." This -- now the
U.S government standard operating procedure -- enables the oligarchy's "stakeholders" to
negotiate their internal arrangements free from responsibility to citizens. It is the practical
abolition of Article I section 9 -- and of the Magna Carta itself.
In the 21st century, the American people's trust in government plummeted as they -- on the
political Left as well as on the Right -- realized that those in power care little for them. As
they watched corporate and non-profit officials trade places with public officials and
politicians while getting much richer, they felt impoverished and disempowered. Since the
ruling class embraced Republicans and Democrats, elections seemed irrelevant. The presidential
elections of 2008 and 2012 underlined that whoever won, the same people would be in charge and
that the parceling out of wealth and power among stakeholders would continue.
Americans on the Right were especially aggrieved because the oligarchy had become culturally
united in disdain for Western civilization in general and for themselves in particular. The
cultural warfare it waged on the rest of America inflamed opposition. But it also diluted its
own focus on solidifying profitable arrangements.
By 2016, America was already well into the classic cycles of revolution. The atrophy of
institutions, the waning of republican habits, and the increasing, reciprocal disrespect
between classes that have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways
of life more different from one another, than did the 19th century's Northerners and
Southerners precluded returning to traditional republican life. The election would determine
whether the oligarchy could consolidate itself. More important, it would affect the speed by
which the revolutionary vortex would carry the country, and the amount of violence this would
involve.
The Trump Catalyst
By 2015, the right side of America's challenge to the budding oligarchy was inevitable.
Trump was not inevitable. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had begun posing a thorough challenge to
the "stakeholders" most Americans disrespected. Candidate Trump was the more gripping showman.
His popularity came from his willingness to disrespect them, loudly. Because the other 16
Republican candidates ran on different bases, none ever had a chance. Inevitably, victory in a
field so crowded depended on when which minor candidate did or did not withdraw. There never
was a head-to-head choice between Trump and Cruz.
Trump's candidacy drew the ferocious opposition it did primarily because the entire ruling
class recognized that, unlike McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012, he really was mobilizing
millions of Americans against the arrangements by which the ruling class live, move, and have
their being. Since Cruz's candidacy represented the same threat, it almost certainly would have
drawn no less intense self-righteous anger. Nasty narratives could have been made up about him
out of whole cloth as easily as about Trump.
But Trump's actual peculiarities made it possible for the oligarchy to give the impression
that its campaign was about his person, his public flouting of conventional norms, rather than
about the preservation of their own power and wealth. The principal consequence of the ruling
class' opposition to candidate Trump was to convince itself, and then its followers, that
defeating him was so important that it legitimized, indeed dictated, setting aside all laws,
and truth itself.
Particular individuals had never been the oligarchy's worry. In 2008, as Barack Obama was
running against Hillary Clinton and John McCain -- far cries from Trump -- he pointed to those
Americans who "cling to God and guns" as the problem's root. Clinton's 2016 remark that Trump's
supporters were "a basket of deplorables," -- racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. -- merely
voiced what had long been the oligarchy's consensus judgment of most Americans. For them,
pushing these Americans as far away as possible from the levers of power, treating them as less
than citizens, had already come to define justice and right.
Donald Trump -- his bombastic, hyperbolic style, his tendency to play fast and loose with
truth, even to lie as he insulted his targets -- fit perfectly the oligarchy's image of his
supporters, and lent a color of legitimacy to the utterly illegitimate collusion between the
oligarchy's members in government and those in the Democratic Party running against Trump.
Thus did the FBI and CIA, in league with the major media and the Democratic Party, spy on
candidate Trump, concocting and spreading all manner of synthetic dirt about him. Nevertheless,
to universal surprise, he won, or rather the oligarchy lost, the 2016 election.
The oligarchy's disparate members had already set aside laws, truth, etc. in opposition to
Trump. The realization that the presidency's awesome powers now rested in his hands fostered a
full-court-press #Resistance. Trump's peculiarities helped make it far more successful than
anyone could have imagined.
"Dogs That Bark Do Not Bite"
Applying this observation to candidate Trump's hyperbole suggested that President Trump
might suffer from what Theodore Roosevelt called the most self-destructive of habits, combining
"the unbridled tongue with the unready hand." And, in fact, President Trump neither fired and
referred for prosecution James Comey or the other intelligence officials who had run the
surveillance of his campaign. He praised them, and let himself be persuaded to fire General
Michael Flynn, his national security advisor, who stood in the way of the intelligence
agencies' plans against him. Nor did he declassify and make public all the documents associated
with their illegalities.
Four years later, he left office with those documents still under seal. He criticized
officials over whom he had absolute power, notably CIA's Gina Haspel who likely committed a
crime spying on his candidacy, but left them in office. Days after his own inauguration, he
suffered the CIA's removal of clearances from one of his appointees because he was a critic of
the Agency. Any president worthy of his office would have fired the entire chain of officials
who had made that decision. Instead, he appointed to these agencies people loyal to them and
hostile to himself.
He acted similarly with other agencies. His first secretary of state, secretary of defense,
and national security advisor mocked him publicly. At their behest, in August 2017, he gave a
nationally televised speech in which he effectively thanked them for showing him that he had
been wrong in opposing ongoing war in the Middle East. He railed against Wall Street but left
untouched the tax code's "carried interest" provision that is the source of much unearned
wealth. He railed against the legal loophole that lets Google, Facebook, and Twitter censor
content without retribution, but did nothing to close it. Already by the end of January 2017,
it was clear that no one in Washington needed to fear Trump. By the time he left office,
Washington was laughing at him.
Nor did Trump protect his supporters. For example, he shared their resentment of being
ordered to attend workplace sessions about their "racism." But not until his last months in
office did he ban the practice within the federal government. Never did he ban contracts with
companies that require such sessions.
Thus, as the oligarchy set about negating the 2016 electorate's attempt to stop its
consolidation of power, Trump had assured them that they would neither be impeded as they did
so nor pay a price. Donald Trump is not responsible for the oligarchy's power. But he was
indispensable to it.
#TheResistance rallied every part of the ruling class to mutually supporting efforts.
Nothing encourages, amplifies, or seemingly justifies extreme sentiments as does being part of
a unanimous chorus, a crowd, a mob -- especially when all can be sure they are acting safely,
gratuitously. Success supercharges them. #TheResistance fostered the sense in the ruling class'
members that they are more right, more superior, and more entitled than they had ever imagined.
It made millions of people feel bigger and better about themselves than they ever
had.
Logic and Dysfunction
Disdain for the "deplorables" united and energized parts of American society that, apart
from their profitable material connections to government, have nothing in common and often have
diverging interests. That hate, that determination to feel superior to the "deplorables" by
treading upon them, is the "intersectionality," the glue that binds, say, Wall Street
coupon-clippers, folks in the media, officials of public service unions, gender studies
professors, all manner of administrators, radical feminists, race and ethnic activists, and so
on. #TheResistance grew by awakening these groups to the powers and privileges to which they
imagine their superior worth entitles them, to their hate for anyone who does not submit
preemptively.
Ruling-class judges sustained every bureaucratic act of opposition to the Trump
Administration. Thousands of identical voices in major media echoed every charge, every
insinuation, non-stop and unquestioned. #TheResistance made it ruling-class policy that Trump's
and his voters' racism and a host of other wrongdoing made them, personally, illegitimate. In
any confrontation, the ruling class deemed these presumed white supremacists in the wrong,
systemically. By 2018, the ruling class had effectively placed the "deplorables" outside the
protection of the laws. By 2020, they could be fired for a trifle, set upon in the streets,
prosecuted on suspicion of bad attitudes, and even for defending themselves.
Because each and every part of the ruling coalition's sense of what may assuage its
grievances evolves without natural limit, this logic is as insatiable as it is powerful. It is
also inherently destructive of oligarchy.
Enjoyment of power's material perquisites is classic oligarchy's defining purpose. Having
conquered power over the people, successful oligarchies foster environments in which they can
live in peace, productively. Oligarchy, like all regimes, cannot survive if it works at
cross-purposes. But the oligarchy that seized power in America between 2016 and 2020 is engaged
in a never-ending seizure of ever more power and the infliction of ever more punishment -- in a
war against the people without imaginable end. Clearly, that is contrary to what the Wall
Street magnates or the corps of bureaucrats or the university administrators or senior
professors want. But that is what the people want who wield the "intersectional" passions that
put the oligarchy in power.
As the oligarchy's every part, every organ, raged against everything Trump, it made itself
less attractive to the public even as Trump's various encouragements of economic activity were
contributing to palpable increases in prosperity.
Hence, by 2019's end, Trump was likely to win reelection. Then came COVID-19.
The
COVID Fortuna
The COVID-19 virus is no plague. Though quite contagious, its infection/fatality rate (IFR),
about 0.01 percent, is that of the average flu, and its effects are generally so mild that most
whom it infects never know it.
Like all infections, it is deadly to those weakened severely by other causes. It did not
transform American life by killing people, but by the fears about it that our oligarchy
packaged and purveyed. Fortuna , as Machiavelli reminds us, is inherently submissive to whoever
bends her to his wishes. The fears and the strictures they enabled were not about health -- if
only because those who purveyed and imposed them did not apply them to themselves. They were
about power over others.
COVID's politicization began in February 2020 with the adoption by the World Health
Organization -- which is headed by an Ethiopian bureaucrat beholden to China -- and upon
recommendation of non-scientist Bill Gates, of a non-peer-reviewed test for the infection. The
test's chief characteristic is that its rate of positives to negatives depends on the number of
cycles through which the sample is run. More cycles, more positives. Hence, every test result
is a "soft" number. Second, the WHO and associated national organizations like the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control reported COVID's spread by another "soft" number: "confirmed cases." That
is, sick persons who tested positive for the virus.
When this number is related to that of such persons who then die, the ratio -- somewhat
north of 5 percent -- suggests that COVID kills one out of 20 people it touches. But that is an
even softer number since these deaths include those who die with COVID rather than of it, as
well as those who may have had COVID. Pyramiding such soft numbers, mathematical modelers
projected millions of deaths. Scary for the unwary, but pure fantasy.
For example, the U.S. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which modeled the
authoritative predictions on which the U.S. lockdowns were based, also predicted COVID-19
deaths for Sweden, which did not lock down. On May 3, the IHME predicted that Sweden would
suffer 2,800 COVID deaths a day within the next two weeks. The actual number was 38. Reporting
on COVID has never ceased to consist of numbers as scary as they are soft.
Literate persons know that, once an infectious disease enters a population, nothing can
prevent it from infecting all of it, until a majority has developed antibodies after
contracting it -- so-called community immunity or herd immunity. But fear leads people to
empower those who promise safety, regardless of how empty the promises. The media pressed
governments to do something . The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan screamed: "don't panic is
terrible advice." The pharmaceutical industry and its Wall Street backers salivated at the
prospect of billions of government money for new drugs and vaccines. Never mind the little
sense it makes for millions of people to accept a vaccine's non-trivial risk to protect against
a virus with trivial consequences for themselves. All manner of officials yearned to wield
unaccountable power.
Because the power to crush the general population's resistance to itself is the oligarchy's
single-minded focus, it was able to bend fears of COVID to that purpose. Thus, it gathered more
power with more consequences than the oligarchs could have imagined.
But only President Trump's complaisance made this possible. His message to the American
people had been not to panic, be mindful of the scientific facts -- you can't stop it, and it's
not that bad -- while mitigating its effects on vulnerable populations. But on March 15, Trump
bent, and agreed to counsel people to suspend normal life for two weeks to "slow the spread,"
so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed. Two weeks later, the New York Times crowed that
Trump, having been told "hundreds of thousands of Americans could face death if the country
reopened too soon," had been stampeded into "abandoning his goal of reopening the country by
Easter." He agreed to support the "experts'" definition of what "soon" might mean. By
accrediting the complex of government, industry, and media's good faith and expertise, Trump
validated their plans to use COVID as a vehicle for enhancing their power.
Having seized powers, the oligarchs used them as weapons to disrupt and disaggregate the
parts of American society they could not control.
The economic effects of lockdowns and social distancing caused obvious pain. Tens of
millions of small businesses were forced to close or radically to reduce activity. More than 40
million Americans filed claims for unemployment assistance. Uncountable millions of farmers and
professionals had their products and activities devalued. Millions of careers, dreams that had
been realized by lifetimes of work, were wrecked. Big business and government took over their
functions. Within nine months, COVID-19 had produced 28 new billionaires .
Surplus and scarcity of food resulted simultaneously because the lockdowns closed most
restaurants and hotels. As demand shifted in ways that made it impossible for distribution
networks and processing plants to adjust seamlessly, millions of gallons of milk were poured
down drains, millions of chickens, billions of eggs, and tens of thousands of hogs and cattle
were destroyed, acres of vegetables and tons of fruit were plowed under. Prices in the markets
rose. Persons deprived of work with less money with which to pay higher prices struggled to
feed their families. This reduced countless self-supporting citizens to supplicants. By
intentionally reducing the supply of food available to the population, the U.S. government
joined the rare ranks of such as Stalin's Soviet Union and Castro's Cuba.
But none of these had ever shut down a whole nation's entire medical care except for one
disease. Hospitals stood nearly empty, having cleared the decks for the (ignorantly) expected
COVID flood. Emergency rooms were closed to the poor people who get routine care there. Forget
about dentistry. Most Americans were left essentially without medical care for most of a year.
Human bodies' troubles not having taken a corresponding holiday, it is impossible to estimate
how much suffering and death this lack of medical care has caused and will cause yet.
The oligarchy's division of all activity into "essential" -- meaning permitted -- and
"nonessential" -- to be throttled at will -- had less obvious but more destructive effects.
Private clubs, as well as any and all gatherings of more than five or 10 people, were banned.
Churches were forbidden to have worship services or to continue social activities. The "social
distancing" and mask mandates enforced in public buildings and stores, and often on the
streets, made it well-nigh impossible for people to communicate casually. Thus, was that part
of American society that the oligarchy did not control directly disarticulated, and its members
left alone to face unaccountable powers on which they had to depend.
Meanwhile, the media became the oligarchy's public relations department. Very much including
ordinary commercial advertising, it hammered home the oligarchy's line that COVID restrictions
are good, even cool. These restrictions reduced the ideas available to the American people to
what the mass media purveyed and the social media allowed. Already by April 2020, these used
what had become near-monopoly power over interpersonal communications to censor such
communications as they disapproved. Political enforcers took it upon themselves even to cancel
statements by eminent physicians about COVID that they judged to be "misleading." Of course,
this betrayed the tech giants' initial promise of universal access. It is also
unconstitutional. (In Marsh v. Alabama , decided in 1946, the
Supreme Court barred private parties from acting as de facto governments). Since these
companies did it in unison, they also violated the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. But the ruling
class that had become an oligarchy applauded their disabling whatever might be conducive to
conservatives' interests and inconvenient to their own candidates.
Private entities wielding public powers in coordination with each other without having to
observe any of government's constitutional constraints is as good a definition of oligarchy as
there is. Oligarchy had increasingly taken power in the buildup to the 2020 election. In its
aftermath, it would try to suffocate America.
Sovereignty of the Vote Counters
The oligarchy's proximate objective, preventing the 2020 presidential election from
validating the previous one's results, overrode all others. The powers it had seized under
COVID's cover, added to the plethora that it had exercised since the 2016 campaign's beginning,
had surely cowered some opposition. But as November 2020 loomed, no one could be sure how much
it also had energized.
Few people were happy to be locked down. It was a safe bet that not a few were unhappy at
being called systemically racist. The oligarchy, its powers notwithstanding, could not be sure
how people would vote. That is why it acted to take the presidential election's outcome out of
the hands of those who would cast the votes and to place it as much as possible in the hands of
its members who would count the votes.
Intentionally, traditional procedures for voting leave no discretion to those who count the
votes. Individuals obtain and cast ballots into a physical or electronic box only after showing
identification that matches their registration. Ballot boxes are opened and their contents
counted by persons representing the election's opposing parties. Persons registered to vote
might qualify to vote-by-mail by requesting a ballot, the issuance and receipt of which is
checked against their registration. Their ballots are counted in the same bipartisan
manner.
The Democratic Party had long pressed to substitute universal voting by mail -- meaning that
ballots would be sent to all registered voters, in some states to anyone with a driver's
license whether they asked for them or not and regardless of whether these persons still lived
at the address on the rolls or were even alive. The ballots eventually would arrive at the
counting centers, either through the mail, from drop boxes, or through "harvesters" who would
pick them up from the voters who fill them out, and who may even help them to fill them out.
Security, if any, would consist of machine-matching signatures on the ballot and on the
envelope in which it had come. The machine's software can be dialed to greater or lesser
sensitivity.
But doing away with scrutiny of ballots counted by representatives of the election's
contenders removes the last possibility of ensuring the ballot had come from a real person
whose will it is supposed to represent. Once the link between the ballot and the qualified
person is broken, nothing prevents those in charge of the electoral process from excluding and
including masses of ballots as they choose. The counters become the arbiters.
Attorney General William Barr pointed out the obvious: Anyone, in America or abroad, can
print up any number of ballots, mark them, and deliver them for counting to whoever is willing
to accept them and run them through their machines. Since the counters usually dispose of the
envelopes in which ballots arrive -- thus obviating any possibility of tracing the ballot's
connection to a voter -- they may even dispense of the fiction that there had ever been any
signed envelopes. That is especially true of late-found ballots. Who knows where they came
from? Who cares to find out?
Only in a few one-party Democratic states was universal vote-by-mail established by law.
Elsewhere, especially in the states sure to be battlegrounds in the presidential election,
mail-in voting was introduced by various kinds of executive or judicial actions. Questions of
right and wrong aside, the Constitution's Article II section 1's words -- "Each State shall
appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct " -- makes such actions
unconstitutional on their face. Moreover, in these states -- Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan,
and Wisconsin -- the counting of votes in the most populous counties is firmly in the hands of
Democratic Party bosses with a well-documented history of fraud.
To no one's surprise, the 2020 presidential election was decided by super-majorities for the
Democratic candidate precisely from these counties in these states. Yes, Trump's percentage of
the vote fell in certain suburbs. But Trump received some 11 million more votes in 2020 than
four years earlier, and nearly doubled the share of votes he received from blacks. The
Democrats' gain of some 15 million votes came exclusively from mail-in ballots, and their
victory in the Electoral College came exclusively from the supermajorities piled up in these
corrupt counties -- the only places where Trump's share of the black vote was cut by
three-quarters. Did people there really think so differently?
This is not the place to recount the list of affidavits sworn under penalty of perjury by
persons who observed ballot stuffing, nor the statistical anomaly of successive batches of
votes that favored Biden over Trump by precisely the same amounts, of un-creased (i.e., never
mailed) ballots fed into counting machines, nor the Georgia video of suitcases of ballots being
taken from under tables and inserted into counting machines after Republican observers had been
ousted. Suffice it to note that references to these events have been scrubbed from the
Internet. It is more important to keep in mind that, in America prior to 2020, sworn affidavits
that crimes have been committed had invariably been probable cause for judicial, prosecutorial,
or legislative investigations. But for the first time in America, the ruling class dismissed
them with: "You have no proof!" A judge (the sister of Georgia's Stacey Abrams) ruled that even
when someone tells the U.S. Postal Service they have moved, their old address is still a lawful
basis for them to cast a ballot. Certainly, proof of crime is impossible with such judges and
without testimony under oath, or powers of subpoena.
Just as important, Republicans in general and the Trump White House in particular bear heavy
responsibility for failing to challenge the patent illegality of the executive actions and
consent decrees that enabled inherently insecure mail-in procedures in real-time, as they were
being perpetrated in key states. No facts were at issue. Only law. The constitutional
violations were undeniable.
Pennsylvania et. al. answered Texas's late lawsuit by arguing it demanded the invalidation
of votes that had been cast in good faith. True. But Texas argued that letting stand the
results of an election carried out contrary to the Constitution devalued the votes cast in
states such as Texas that had held the election in a constitutional manner. Also true. Without
comment, the Supreme Court chose to privilege the set of voters on the oligarchy's side over
those of their opponents. Had the lawsuit come well before the election, no such choice would
have existed. Typically, the Trump Administration substituted bluster for action.
The
Oligarchy Rides its Tigers
Winning the 2020 election had been the objective behind which the oligarchy had coalesced
during the previous five years. In 2021, waging socio-political war on the rest of America is
what the oligarchy is all about.
The logic of hate and disdain of ordinary Americans is not only what binds the oligarchy
together. It is the only substitute it has for any moral-ethical-intellectual point of
reference. Donald Trump's impotent, inglorious reaction to his defeat offered irresistible
temptations to the oligarchy's several sectors to celebrate victory by vying to hurt whoever
had supported the president. But permanent war against some 74 million fellow citizens is a
foredoomed approach to governing.
The Democratic Party had promised a return to some kind of "normalcy." Instead, its victory
enabled the oligarchy's several parts to redefine the people who do not show them due deference
as "white supremacists," "insurrectionists," and Nazis -- in short, as some kind of criminals
-- to exclude them from common platforms of communication, from the banking system, and perhaps
even from air travel; and to set law enforcement to surveil them in order to find bases for
prosecuting them. Neither Congress nor any state's legislature legislated any of this. Rather,
the several parts of America's economic, cultural, and political establishment are waging this
war, uncoordinated but well-nigh unanimously.
Perhaps most important, they do so without thought of how a war against at least some 74
million fellow citizens might end. The people in the oligarchy's corporate components seem to
want only to adorn unchallenged power with a reputation for "wokeness." For them, causing pain
to their opponents is a pleasure incidental to enjoying power's perquisites. The Biden family's
self-enrichment by renting access to influence is this oligarchy's standard.
But the people who dispense that reputation -- not just the professional revolutionaries of
Antifa and Black Lives Matter, but "mainstream" racial and gender activists and self-appointed
virtue-crats, have appetites as variable as they are insatiable. For them, rubbing conservative
America's faces in excrement is what it's all about. A Twitter video viewed by 2.6 million
people urges them to form "an army of citizen detectives" to ferret out conservatives from
among teachers, doctors, police officers, and "report them to the authorities." No doubt,
encouraged by President Biden's characterization of opponents as "domestic terrorists," any
number of "authorities" as well as private persons will find opportunities to lord it over
persons not to their taste. This guarantees endless clashes, and spiraling violence.
Joseph Biden, Kamala Harris, and the people they appoint to positions of official
responsibility are apparatchiks, habituated to currying favor and pulling rank. They have
neither the inclination nor the capacity to persuade the oligarchy's several parts to agree to
a common good or at least to a modus vivendi among themselves, never mind with conservative
America. This guarantees that they will ride tigers that they won't even try to dismount.
At this moment, the oligarchy wields an awesome complex of official and unofficial powers to
exclude whomever it chooses from society's mainstream. Necessarily, however, exclusions cut
both ways. Invariably, to banish another is to banish one's self as well. Google, Facebook, and
Twitter let it be known that they would exclude anything with which they disagree from what had
become the near-universal means of communication. They bolstered that by colluding to destroy
their competitor, Parler. Did they imagine that 74 million Americans could find no means of
communicating otherwise? Simon and Schuster canceled a book by Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)
critical of communications monopolies. Did its officials imagine that they would thereby do
other than increase the book's eventual sales, and transfer some of their customers to Hawley's
new publisher ? The media effectively suppressed inconvenient news. Did they imagine that
this would prevent photos of Black Lives Matter professionals in the forefront of the January 6
assault on the U.S. Capitol from reaching the public?
In sum, intending to relegate conservative America to society's servile sidelines, the
oligarchy's members drew a clear, sharp line between themselves and that America. By telling
conservative Americans "these institutions and corporations, are ours, not yours," they freed
conservative America of moral obligations toward them and themselves. By abandoning
conservative America, they oblige conservative America to abandon them and seek its own
way.
Clarity, Leadership, and Separation
To think of conservative America's predicament as an opportunity is as hyperbolic as it was
for Machiavelli to begin the conclusion of The Prince by observing that "in order to know
Moses' virtue it was necessary that the people of Israel be slaves in Egypt, and to know the
greatness of Cyrus's spirit that the Persians be oppressed by the Medes, and to know the
excellence of Theseus, that the Athenian people be dispersed, so at the present, in order to
know the virtue of an Italian spirit it was necessary that Italy reduce herself to the
conditions in which she is at present . . ."
Machiavelli's lesson is that the clarity of situations such as he mentions, and such as is
conservative America's following the 2020 election, is itself valuable. Clarity makes illusions
of compromise untenable and points to self-reliant action as the only reasonable path. The
people might or might not be, as he wrote, "all ready and disposed to follow the flag if only
someone were to pick it up." But surely, someone picking up the flag is the only alternative to
servitude.
What, in conservative America's current predicament, might it mean to "pick up the flag?"
Electoral politics remains open to talented, courageous, ambitious leadership. In Florida and
South Dakota, Governors Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem have used their powers to make room for
ways of life different from and more attractive than that in places wholly dominated by the
oligarchy. Texas and Idaho as well attract refugees from such as California and New York by
virtue of such differences with life there as their elected officials have been able to
maintain. Governmental and corporate pressures on such states to conform to the oligarchy's
standards, sure to increase, are opportunities for their officials to lead their people's
refusal to conform by explaining why doing this is good, and by personally standing in the way.
They may be sure that President Kamala Harris would not order federal troops to shoot at state
officials for closing abortion clinics or for excluding men from women's bathrooms.
For more than a generation, a majority of Americans have expressed growing distrust of, and
alienation from, the establishment. The establishment, not Donald Trump, made this happen. That
disparate majority, in many ways at cross purposes with itself, demands leadership. Pollster
Patrick Caddell's in-depth study of the American electorate, which he titled "We Need Smith," showed how the themes that
made it possible for the hero of the 1939 movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" to prevail
against the establishment then are even more gripping now and appeal to a bigger majority.
Trump was a bad copy of Mr. Smith.
More than ever, an audience beyond the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump hungers for
leadership. The oligarchy came together by ever more vigorously denigrating and suppressing
these deplorables. Already before the 20th century's turn, the FBI and some elements in the
Army and the Justice Department had concluded that they are somehow criminal, and that
preparations should be made to treat them as such. The official position of the administration
taking power after the 2020 election is that domestic terrorism from legions of "white
supremacists" is the primary threat facing America. No wonder those so designated for outlawry
demand protection.
The path to electoral leadership is straightforward. Whoever would lead the deplorables-plus
must explain their cause to friend and foe, make it his own, and grow it by leading successful
acts of resistance.
Increasingly, conservative Americans live as if under occupation by a hostile power. Whoever
would lead them should emulate Charles de Gaulle's 1941 basic rule for la résistance :
refrain from individual or spontaneous acts or expressions that produce only martyrs. But join
with thousands in what amount to battles to defeat the enemy's initiatives, weaken his grip on
power, and prepare his defeat. Thus, an aspirant to the presidency in 2024, in the course of
debunking the narrative by which the oligarchy seized so much power over America, might lead
millions to violate restrictions placed on those who refuse to wear masks. Or, as he pursues
legislative and judicial measures to abolish the compulsory racial and gender sensitivity
training sessions to which public and private employees are subjected, he might organize
employees in a given sector unanimously to stay away from them in protest. They can't all be
fired or held back.
Such a persuasive prospective president, or president, could finish the process that,
beginning circa 2010, initiated the process of reshaping the Republican Party into something
like Caddell's Mr. Smith would have personified.
Electoral politics, however, is the easy part. Major corporations, private and semi-private
institutions such as schools, publishing houses, and media, are the oligarchy's deepest
foundations. These having become hostile, conservative Americans have no choice but to populate
their own. This is far from impossible.
Sorting ourselves out into congenial groups has been part of America's DNA since 1630, when
Roger Williams led his followers out of Massachusetts to found Providence Plantations. In the
19th century, the Mormons left unfriendly environments to establish their own settlements.
Since 1973, Americans who believe in unborn children's humanity have largely ceased to
intermarry with those who do not. Nobody decided this should happen. It is in the logic of
diverging cultures.
As American primary and secondary education's dysfunction became painfully apparent, parents
of all races have fled the public schools as fast as they could. Businesses have been fleeing
the Rust Belt for the Sun Belt for generations. When Democratic governors and mayors used COVID
to make life difficult in their jurisdictions, people moved out of them. When Twitter's
censorship of conservatives became undeniable, Parler added customers by the hundreds of
thousands each day. Facebook and Twitter's stock lost $50 billion in a week. Much more
separation follows from the American people's diverging cultures.
As conservative America sorts itself out from oligarchy's social bases, it may be able to
restore something like what had existed under the republic. Effectively, two regimes would have
to learn to coexist within our present boundaries. But that may be the best, freest,
arrangement possible now for the United States.
The thing to really wonder about is how society is changing and what that means for
financial markets. After all, it's the madness of crowds, sentiment and human behaviours that
drive market prices. Modern communications via immediate 24/7 news, social media, the ease and
gamification of trading, and the influences of inputs such as Reddit and Fake News are changing
the way markets function. It was revealing how quickly a loose internet shock-flock of aligned
retail investors swiped the market this week.
Their anger at the financial machine was palpable. They demonstrate a fundamental change at
the heart of market capitalism.
The basis of " shareholder capitalism " was best summed up by Gordon Gecko: "Greed is Good"
. It was utterly corrupting. Anything to improve returns to the owners, the shareholders, was
apparently justified. It was justified by the belief free markets would achieve an equilibrium
where shareholders would make optimal profits by providing maximum utility to their
customers.
Just like communism, it didn't quite work out the way the economists and sociologists
predicted. Everyone talks a good talk about fair shares of the cake, but try a simple
experiment and ask you kids to divide it. Everyone wants a bigger slice. (My father's solution
was simple: whoever cuts the cake chooses last.)
In reality nothing is really fair. Inequality is a driver of the human condition. Companies
cut corners to improve their share of the cake - often the management sneak in and take the
rewards, cutting out shareholders and customers. To make profits big corporates will compromise
what they can: safety, the environment, law and justice – everything from poisoning the
planet, unsafe aircraft, or bursting dams. Costs were seen as externalities addressed through
insurance, or hiring the best lawyers.
Its no wonder we now have kickback against it, and a new mantra of "stakeholder" capitalism
trying to ensure we all get that fairer slice of the pie.
Every single big investor now swears by their strict adoption of the principals and
importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Environment, Social and Governance (ESG)
investment, and Sustainability. (I have serious concerns these valid and laudable goals have
been diminished into mere tickbox investing by corporate bureaucracy.)
Yet for all the noise and stakeholders sharing the pie, we are still seeing the steepest
ever transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. Income inequality is rising. Across the
Occidental Western economies the poor have become desperately poor. Witness the growth in
Foodbanks in Europe and the US and the success of Marcus Rashford in addressing the appalling
reality of kids arriving in school unfed, penalising their life chances from the get-go.
And it's not just the poorest in society. The middle classes have also been hollowed out by
the difficulties of stretching static incomes to cover every rising living costs, and
TAXES.
Oh yes these two great certainties in life; death and taxes. Except . If you are rich enough
..
As we've seen the concept of Shareholder capitalism stopped delivering anything much to any
but the wealthiest. Since 2008, and particularly since the outbreak of the Covid Pandemic,
we've seen the bulk of QE money creation and government stimulus work its way into financial
assets, with the effect of driving up the price of stocks. As I wrote a few weeks ago a rough
number is that $3 trillion out of $5 trillion subsidy money in the US has gone into the pockets
of the richest in society through the inflation of their financial assets.
Try and explain how that has worked – will immediately get you branded a communist.
But it's really simple. Stocks go up because bond yields are so low – and bond yields are
so low because its policy. How to correct it?
This is why Taxes are really interesting.
If you look at the new generation of the uber-wealthy Tech barons, and the last US
President, they all share a common theme – the belief that minimising tax payments is a
signal of entrepreneurial genius. However, the reality, at the end of the day, is tax
optimisation through complex tax structures is pretty much the same as tax evasion.
Ask any right of centre American what raising taxes would do to the economy – and they
will immediately counter it's the success of tax cuts that's driven growth and markets. Tax
cuts/handouts to the rich are credited as the singular success of the last White House
administration – creating thousands of low-paid jobs across the states. If you were to
tax the rich they wouldn't invest their money in job creation, and there would be no trickle
down to the poor. Even questioning the efficacy of tax burdens on the rich could apparently
shake the edifice of US shareholder capitalism to the ground.
The thing is.. we might not actually need taxes at all. If central banks can create
limitless money with zero consequences, then why does anyone have to pay taxes? Let the rich
keep it all and we can print more money to keep the poor happy.
But Taxes have an important role in society. They are a fee members of society pay to be
part of it – you work in order to pay the taxes that allow you membership of society. The
more you pay, the greater your contribution – the more society should value you. You want
the benefits of society, then be willing to pay for it.
In an ideal world we would laud billionaires for their hard work, effort, and paying the
bulk of their earnings in taxes to raise the up rest of us. Instead, they impress their equals
by avoiding taxes, while the rest of us increasingly resent their conspicuous wealth –
earned off our backs which is very much how anyone under 30 working hard to save a deposit for
a rabbit-hutch flat they can never afford increasingly feels about the world.
We are only now beginning to questioning tax equality and tax evasion. The papers will make
some righteous noise about the dislikeable high-street retailer who has emptied the company
pension fund to finance his yachts in a tax-haven, or it might expose a singer who has not paid
a penny in tax. We almost feel sympathy for the entertainer whose stellar career ends up on the
skids because they can't meet a tax-demand.
We regard the Inland Revenue as the ultimate baddie for harassing us to pay our modest
amounts of tax – it's easy for them to go after little people. If they try to catch the
big tax-avoiders they face a battery of lawyers and accountants and deliberately complex webs
to be unravelled.
In short, the rich get away with not paying Tax while poor get harassed and get poorer.
Inequality rises.
And this where we return to Norges Bank and why their decision to act on bad tax players is
so critical.
NBIM own 1.5% of the global stock market, with stakes in over 9ooo companies. They've not
named the seven stocks they dumped – there is no blacklist, it says – but clearly
it should set every CFO thinking about their tax transparency – including paying tax
where value creation takes place. That's a clear shot across the bows for any of the big tech
firms currently selling stuff over the internet, delivering it your front door and booking all
the revenues somewhere low tax, and repatriating profits via somewhere that's agreed a
zero-taxes deal in exchange for opening a HQ office.
Some of the most valuable firms on the planet have the least transparent tax policies. Just
saying but there is a fascinating article in the Garuniad y'day: "Inside
the mind of Jeff Bezos". It reports Jeff (till recently the richest guy on the planet)
saying: " the only way I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my
Amazon winnings into space travel ."
Personally, I would love to mine asteroids, but Bezos could probably ensure every child on
the planet has access to clean water, or cure cancer and have statues to himself erected across
the planet proclaiming what a wonderful philanthropic champion.
Or he and every single other billionaire could just pay taxes, thankful for the
opportunities they had to realise their dreams building their companies, while making society
better. I'm not saying take every penny – but let's be realistic who can spend a couple
of billion dollars? Even the first Mrs Blain would have struggled with that one (although I
suspect young Ms Blain could make a significant dent )
I know exactly what posts will be made on this website and Zerohedge on this article. I will
be screamed at for being a socialist. Some libertarian idiot will call himself "John Galt" and
declare a belief that helping others is weakness. Not interested. The only way we make the
world better as politicians keep reminding us – is to remember we are in this together,
on a very small planet. [ZH: 'fair and balanced' - everyone deserves to speak their mind and be
heard.]
High taxation economies – like the Scandinavians – tend to be fairly happy
places. Entrepreneurs live well and are held in high regard. Their taxes fund social provision,
health and education that are the envy of the rest of us.
In low tax countries the wealth creators live in bunker complexes protected by guards while
the masses eke out their miserable crusts .
On Thursday afternoon President Biden gave a much anticipated and wide-ranging speech laying
out his foreign policy agenda during a visit to the State Department. As expected much of it
was a repudiation of Trump's "America First" vision - though without mentioning Donald Trump by
name. His address to State Department diplomats and staff was centered around the theme of his
words: "America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy."
Alarming for anyone who has called for an end to the vision which sees Washington as
essentially acting the like to 'global police force' - which unfortunately became a
(disastrous) reality starting in the Bush years and under the neocons, Biden vowed that as
commander-in-chief he would "defend democracy globally" .
He urged for the US to rebuild "the muscles of democratic alliances that have atrophied from
four years of neglect and abuse." He emphasized that "We can't do it alone."
Of course, the big question is what will that look like, with many expecting a return to the
kind of 'humanitarian interventionism' abroad and liberal internationalism that defined the
Obama years . This often took the form of covert wars (with the foremost example being Syria)
and military interventions under the guise international coalitions (such as NATO's war on
Libya) aimed at regime change.
"We must meet this new moment of accelerating global challenges – from a pandemic to
the climate crisis to nuclear proliferation – that will only be solved by nations working
together in common cause," Biden said in the afternoon address. "That must start with
diplomacy, rooted in America's most cherished democratic values: defending freedom, championing
opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, treating every person with
dignity."
Here are some of the highlights and significant foreign policy changes in US posture...
Russia
Biden said that "we will not hesitate to raise the costs on Russia." At a moment Russian
opposition leaders are lobbying Washington for the targeted use of Magnitsky sanctions on
Putin's inner circle, Biden actually mentioned the imprisoned opposition activist Alexey
Navalny by name.
He called on the Kremlin to release Navalny "immediately and without condition" while
expressing that authorities had targeted him for "exposing corruption" of Putin and top Kremlin
leadership. And
further :
He said that he "made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my
predecessor, that the days the United States rolling over in the face of Russia's aggressive
action" – pointing to cyber attacks from the SolarWinds breach and the poisoning of
opposition figure Alexei Navalny – "are over."
It is a general rule that corrupt economies tend to operate on faith and not on
fundamentals. And to be clear, it's not so much about naive faith that the system is stable or
functional. No, it's more about the masses having faith that the corruption and instability
will never be derailed. Most people are not as stupid as the establishment and central bankers
think they are – Almost everyone knows the system is broken, they just refuse to consider
the possibility that the fraud will be disrupted, or that it will be allowed to fail.
The old mantra "too big to fail" is a lie. NOTHING is too big to fail, and that includes the
US economy, the dollar and the elaborate Kabuki theater that keeps them both afloat. All it
takes is a single moment, an epiphany that the Ponzi scheme is unsustainable rather than
unstoppable.
I'm reminded specifically of the inflationary crisis of Argentina in 2001 – 2002.
Argentina's economy was highly dependent on foreign capital inflows, and its currency peg to
the US dollar, not to mention they were precariously reliant on support from the IMF. The IMF
openly validated the government of Argentina and their currency peg model, but foreign capital
began to decline and the peg became unsustainable. Without tangible growth in manufacturing and
a strong middle class, an economy cannot survive for long. A top down system based on illusory
"financial products" and creative accounting is doomed to crash eventually.
All it took was for the IMF to criticize the policies they initially endorsed and announced
that they were removing financial aid, and all hell broke loose in Argentina.
Almost overnight the Argentina peso plunged in value, interest rates spiked and inflation
struck hard. People poured into the streets and civil unrest erupted. The IMF would later
admit it made "errors" in its handling of the Argentina situation, but this was simply spin
control designed to protect them from further scrutiny. The IMF avoided most of the blame and
has been growing into a monstrous global centralization machine ever since.
I think we are witnessing the beginning of a similar end of mass faith in fraud in the US.
The recent Robinhood short squeeze event as well as the current decoupling of physical silver
prices from the paper ETF market have accelerated the timetable. Not surprisingly, these moves
have forced the establishment to intervene to some extent to essentially stop renegade traders
from freely investing. Accusations are flying and deplatforming has ensued. The idea that the
system is a functional fraud is gone; The world now knows it is a dysfunctional fraud, and
collapse cannot be very far behind.
Furthermore the collusion between banks, hedge funds and Big Tech is blatantly revealed.
These relationships are supposed to remain hidden in the ether. They are obvious to anyone with
any financial knowledge and sense, but they aren't supposed to be wielded in the open.
Conspirators aren't supposed to admit to the conspiracy? Right?
Some people might say the establishment has been forced to unmask by activists. Maybe. But,
as I have been warning for many years, when criminals start openly admitting to their crimes it
is probably because they think that it's too late for anyone to do anything about it.
The point is, bankers and globalists have ways of avoiding responsibility for the disasters
they engineer. When the con-game breaks, they always have patsies to take the fall.
This sets up a bizarre dynamic in which the money elites that constructed the economy like a
time-bomb are treated like victims (or heroes) and the people telling the truth about the fraud
are treated like villains and criminals. Are activist stock market traders and silver market
guerrillas to blame for any crisis that erupts in the near future? No, of course not, but they
will be blamed anyway.
That said, propaganda narratives and scapegoats may not be enough to save the bankers this
time. They will never allow a major fiscal crash to develop in a vacuum. They need more cover,
and they need to have the means to lock down the public to prevent civil unrest or rebellion
from spilling over into their backyards. I have long suspected that the covid pandemic is a
useful tool in this regard. As I noted in my article
'How Viral Pandemic Benefits The Globalist Agenda' , published in January of 2020:
" Even if a pandemic does not kill a large number of people, it still disrupts
international travel, it disrupts exports and imports, it disrupts consumer behavior and
retail sales, and it disrupts domestic trade. If it does kill a large number of people, and
if the Chinese government's response is any indication, it could result in global martial
law. With many economies including the US economy already in a precarious balancing act of
historic debt vs. crashing demand and useless central bank repo market intervention, there is
little chance that the system can withstand such a tsunami "
As we all know, medical martial law in the name of "public health" is being established in
most countries regardless of the actual death rate. The insane globalist
rantings of the World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab have been very revealing; Schwab and
other elites have even called the pandemic a "perfect opportunity" to execute there agenda for
the "Great Reset".
However, the globalists are highly fallible, and mistakes in judgment have been made. During
the Event 201 pandemic
wargame on a coronavirus outbreak (conveniently held two months before the real thing
happened), the elites forecast at least 65 million initial deaths globally from such a virus.
We are a year into the pandemic and nowhere near that kind of death rate. In fact, the
death rate is so minuscule (0.26%) , that the public is beginning to realize the lockdown
mandates are pointless.
In the US, conservative states are moving on and keeping their economies wide open. Half the
population is refusing to take the vaccines, and many members of law enforcement are refusing
to implement lockdown policies. I don't think this is what the globalists expected at all. They
needed mass fear and they are getting mass defiance.
They're going to need a bigger threat, or a bigger virus.
This is why I have been repeatedly warning that the talk of reopenings by Biden and other
democrats is going to be very short lived. I have predicted that Biden will attempt a federal
lockdown similar to the Level 4 lockdowns used in Europe and Australia after a couple of months
of relative calm. I based this prediction on the covid "mutation" narrative being spread right
now by the mainstream media and establishment cronies like Anthony Fauci. It is not hard to see
where this is headed.
The globalists must have the "legal" option of restricting public movement as well as large
gatherings, and they must have the option of surveillance on individuals 24/7 through contact
tracing. This is the only way to prevent rebellion against the Reset and rising anger due to
economic turmoil. The veil has been lifted, the conspiracy is being widely broadcast. Martial
law alone would only inspire more dissent, medical tyranny in the name of "saving lives" is the
ONLY play the globalists have. They have to have help from a large portion of the citizenry, so
they must maintain the appearance that they are operating from the moral high ground.
The covid mutation story is clearly the next play, and Bank of America economists appear to
agree with me . They recently stated that they see little optimism in terms of a reopening
of the economy, and that hard lockdowns will return, possibly in March or April.
Another factor to consider is that the economic crash will have to reach a peak soon because
Joe Biden now resides in the White House. If the crash happens in the near term, activist
investors can be blamed, Trump can be blamed, and conservatives and liberty activists can be
blamed. If the crash happens a year or two from now, only Biden and the globalists will get the
blame.
Without lockdowns and scapegoats the scenario will end very badly for the globalists. It
might end badly for them anyway. Be ready for more chaos by Spring; I suspect the elites are
getting desperate, and if they allow America to go back to normal and for the pandemic to end
with a whimper they will never get another chance at their precious Reset.
Stakeholders consist of "customers, suppliers, employees, and local communities" in addition
to shareholders. But for Klaus Schwab and the WEF, the framework of stakeholder capitalism must
be globalized. A stakeholder is anyone or any group that stands to benefit or lose from any
corporate behavior -- other than competitors, we may presume. Since the primary pretext for the
Great Reset is global climate change, anyone in the world can be considered a stakeholder in
the corporate governance of any major corporation. And federal partnerships with corporations
that do not "serve" their stakeholders, like the Keystone Pipeline project, for example, must
be abandoned.
...T ake one David Campbell, a British socialist (although non-Marxist) and author of The
Failure of Marxism (1996). After declaring that Marxism had failed, Campbell began advocating
stakeholder capitalism as a means to the same ends. His argument with the British orthodox
Marxist Paddy Ireland represents an internecine squabble over the best means of achieving
socialism, while also providing a looking glass into the minds of socialists determined to try
other, presumably nonviolent tacks.
Campbell castigated Ireland for his rejection of stakeholder capitalism. ... Ireland's
more-radical-than-thou Marxism left Campbell flummoxed. Didn't Ireland realize that his market
determinism was exactly what the defenders of "neoliberalism" asserted as the inevitable and
only sure means for the distribution of social welfare? "Marxism," Campbell rightly noted, "can
be identified with the deriding of 'social reform' as not representing, or even as obstructing,
'the revolution.'" Like so many antireformist Marxists, Ireland failed to recognize that "the
social reforms that [he] derided are the revolution."
Ireland and Campbell agreed that the very idea of stakeholder capitalism derived from
companies having become relatively autonomous from their shareholders. The idea of managerial
independence and thus company or corporate autonomy was first treated by Adolf A. Berle and
Gardiner C. Means in The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932) and after them in James
Burnham's The Managerial Revolution (1962). In "Corporate Governance, Stakeholding, and the
Company: Towards a Less Degenerate Capitalism?," Ireland writes of this putative autonomy:
"[T]he idea of the stakeholding company is rooted in the autonomy of 'the company' from its
shareholders; its claim being that this autonomy can be exploited to ensure that companies do
not operate exclusively with the interests of their shareholders in mind."
This apparent autonomy of the company, Ireland argues, came about not with incorporation or
legal changes to the structure of the corporation, but with the growth of large-scale
industrial capitalism. The growth in the sheer number of shares and with it the advent of the
stock market made for the ready salability of the of the share. Shares became "money capital,"
readily exchangeable titles to a percentage of profit, and not claims on the company's assets.
It was at this point that shares gained apparent autonomy from the company and the company from
its shareholders.
Moreover, with the emergence of this market, shares developed an autonomous value of their
own quite independent of, and often different from, the value of the company's assets.
Emerging as what Marx called fictitious capital, they were redefined in law as an autonomous
form of property independent of the assets of the company. They were no longer conceptualized
as equitable interests in the property of the company but as rights to profit with a value of
their own, rights which could be freely and easily bought and sold in the marketplace .
On gaining their independence from the assets of companies, shares emerged as legal
objects in their own right, seemingly doubling the capital of joint stock companies. The
assets were now owned by the company and by the company alone, either through a corporation
or, in the case of unincorporated companies, through trustees. The intangible share capital
of the company, on the other hand, had become the sole property of the shareholder. They were
now two quite separate forms of property. Moreover, with the legal constitution of the share
as an entirely autonomous form of property, the externalization of the shareholder from the
company had been completed in a way not previously possible.
Thus, according to Ireland, a difference in interests emerged between the holders of the
industrial capital and the holders of the money capital, or between the company and the
shareholder.
Nevertheless, Ireland maintains, the autonomy of the company is limited by the necessity for
industrial capital to produce profit. The value of shares is ultimately determined by the
profitability of the company's assets in use. "The company is, and will always be, the
personification of industrial capital and, as such, subject to the imperatives of profitability
and accumulation. These are not imposed from the outside on an otherwise neutral and
directionless entity, but are, rather, intrinsic to it, lying at the very heart of its
existence." This necessity, Paddy argues, defines the limits of stakeholder capitalism and its
inability to sustain itself. "The nature of the company is such, therefore, as to suggest that
[there] are strict limits to the extent to which its autonomy from shareholders can be
exploited for the benefit of workers or, indeed, other stakeholders."
Here is a point on which the "neoliberal" Milton Friedman and the Marxist Paddy Ireland
would have agreed, despite Ireland's insistence that the extraction of "surplus value" at the
point of production is the cause. And this agreement between Friedman and Ireland is exactly
why Campbell rejected Ireland's argument. Such market determinism is only necessary under
capitalism, Campbell asserted. Predictions about how companies will behave in the context of
markets are only valid under current market conditions...
Despite this insurmountable "neoliberal"/Marxist impasse, the notion of stakeholder
capitalism is at least fifty years old. Debates about the efficacy of stakeholder capitalism
date to the 1980s. They were stirred up by Friedman's rejection of the "soulful corporation,"
which reached its peak with Carl Kaysen's "The Social Significance of the Modern Corporation"
in 1957. Kaysen viewed the corporation as a social institution that must weigh profitability
against a broad and growing array of social responsibilities: "there is no display of greed or
graspingness; there is no attempt to push off onto the workers or the community at large part
of the social costs of the enterprise. The modern corporation is a soulful corporation." Thus,
in Kaysen, we see hints of the later notion of stakeholder capitalism.
Likely, stakeholder capitalism can be traced, although not in an unbroken line of
succession, to the "commercial idealism" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
when Edward Bellamy and King Camp Gillette, among others, envisioned corporate socialist
utopias via incorporation. For such corporate socialists, the main means for establishing
socialism was through the continuous incorporation of all the factors of production. With
incorporation, a series of mergers and acquisitions would occur until the formation of a
singular global monopoly, in which all "the People" had equal shares, was complete. In his
"World Corporation , " Gillette declared that "the trained mind of business and finance sees no
stopping-place to corporate absorption and growth, except final absorption of all the World's
material assets into one corporate body, under the directing control of one corporate mind."
Such a singular world monopoly would become socialist upon the equal distribution of shares
among the population. Stakeholder capitalism falls short of this equal distribution of shares
but gets around it by distributing value on the basis of social and political pressure.
Interestingly, Campbell ends his argument, rather undogmatically, by stating unequivocally
that if Friedman was right and "if these comparisons [between shareholder and stakeholder
capitalism] tend to show exclusive maximization of shareholder value to be the optimal way of
maximizing welfare," then "one should give up being a socialist." If, after all, the
maximization of human welfare is really the object, and "shareholder capitalism" (or
"neoliberalism") proves to be the best way to achieve it, then socialism itself, including
stakeholder capitalism, must necessarily be abandoned.
Last week, a large number of small-time investors drove up the price of GameStop's (GME)
stock a
historic 1,784 percent . But this was no mere spike in some obscure stock. The stock's
price spiked in part as a result of efforts by "an army of smaller investors who have been
rallying on Reddit and elsewhere online to support GameStop's stock and beat back the
professionals." These professionals were hedge fund managers who had shorted GameStop's stock.
In other words, hedge funders were betting billions that GameStop's stock would go down. But
the price went up instead, meaning hedge funds like Melvin Capital (and Citron Research) took
"a significant loss," possibly totaling
$70 billion.
There surely were plenty of insiders on both sides of this deal. Given the complexity of
various schemes employed by seasoned investors, it seems it is very unlikely that this is just
a simple matter of little Davids taking on Wall Street Goliaths.
But it also looks like that's not all that was going on. Had this only been just another
scheme by some Wall Street insiders against some other Wall Street insiders the story would
probably have ended there.
But that's not what happened. Rather, it appears that, for many of the smaller investors who
were involved, much of this "short squeeze" was conducted for the purposes of throwing a monkey
wrench in the plans of Wall Street hedge funds which exist within the rarified world of
billionaires and their friends.
Pro–Wall Street Fearmongering
The reactions to the event from media pundits and other commentators were telling in that
there was clearly fear and outrage over the fact that business as usual on Wall Street wasn't
being enforced. Predictably, much of the reaction to the Reddit rebellion was to label it a
"fiasco," " insanity
," and something sure to leave a "
trail of destruction ." The important thing was to use words designed to make it all look
like the threat to hedge funds represents some sort of grave threat to the overall economy. Jim
Lebenthal at CNBC, for example,
declared the "short-squeeze fiasco is a threat to the proper functioning of financial
markets."
The fearmongering went beyond even the usual places we hear about financial news. On The
View , for example, Meghan McCain delivered the sort of status quo
–defending bromides we've come to expect from her. She insisted the GameStop affair could
spiral into an economy-killing disaster because
If the stock ends up plunging because of this, because of GameStop and Wall Street loses
billions, at a certain point, it will impact stocks like Apple and Disney and stocks that a
lot of average Americans do invest in, and if that happens, average Americans will end up
losing even more money.
Her comment doesn't rally make any sense, and she doesn't seem to have even a rudimentary
understanding of what happened. But her comment delivered the important point: namely, that
anything that causes volatility in the market could be a disaster for every American household.
Translation: and we should all be very, very afraid if something isn't done to keep these
Reddit people --
whom she compared to the Capitol "insurrectionists" -- under control.
Of course, in a functioning and relatively unhampered market, unusual, unexpected things
happen all the time. Entrepreneurial actors do things the incumbent firms and "experts" hadn't
counted on. This leads to "instability" and big swings in prices. This is actual capitalism,
and it doesn't mean the marketplace isn't functioning properly. In fact, it probably means the
marketplace is dynamic and responsive to consumers and other market participants.
But that's not something Wall Street insiders or their pals in Washington like in the modern
era. Although Wall Streeters love to portray themselves as capitalist captains of industry, the
fact is they have very little interest in real, competitive capitalism.
Rather, we live in the era of "too big to fail" (TBTF), when market freedom means nothing
and preserving the portfolios of powerful Wall Street institutions is what really
matters.
Decades of "Too Big to Fail"
It's based on the idea that Wall Street is just too important to the whole economy, and
Washington must intervene to make sure rich guys on Wall Street stay rich. David Stockman
explains this philosophy:
[It is] the notion that the "threat of systemic risk" and a cascading contagion of losses
form the failure of any big Wall Street institution would be so calamitous that it warranted
an exemption from free market discipline.
This goes back at least to the 1994 Mexican bailout -- which was really a bailout of
investors, not of Mexico -- which solidified the process of normalizing huge transfers of
wealth from taxpayers and dollar holders to the Wall Street elite. By then, the "Greenspan put"
was already in place, with the central bank forever poised to embrace more easy money in
pursuit of propping up stock prices. Then came the bailouts of 2008 and the covd-19 avalanche
of easy money -- all of which lopsidedly benefited Wall Street over the rest of the
economy.
This "exemption from free market discipline" is what Wall Street is all about these days.
The financial sector has become accustomed to enjoying bailouts, easy money, and the resulting
financialization which puts ever greater amounts of the US economy into the hands of Wall
Street money managers. The sector is now built on corporate welfare, not "free markets." No
matter what happens, Wall Street expects the deck to be stacked in its favor.
This is why "volatility" has become a bad word, and "stability" is now the name of the game.
It's why Lebenthal thinks anything out of the ordinary is a threat to the "proper functioning
of financial markets." If some free market innovation and inventiveness actually takes place in
some small corner of the marketplace, well, then we're all expected to get very upset.
That's the way Wall Street likes it. ay_arrow 1
Kayman 8 hours ago
The marketing slogan "Too Big Too Fail" conveniently presumed Wall Street was more
important than the Real Economy. A fatal presumption.
Wall Street is a Parasite, backstopped by the Fed, who, in turn, are backstopped by the
Nation. A crumbling nation, where the Fed strangles lending/savings intermediation, and saves
the blood suckers by bleeding the dying core of America.
wmbz 8 hours ago
"The sector is now built on corporate welfare, not "free markets."
This is NOT a new thing. Corporate welfare has been in play for a long, long time. I am
amazed how long it has taken otherwise "smart" people to grasp this fact.
The only difference is, it is out in the glaring sunlight for all to see. TPTB are damn
proud of it!
junction 7 hours ago (Edited)
Except for the involvement of WallStreetBets in temporarily blocking the hedge fund bear
raid on GameStop using "naked" shorts, it is still business as usual on Wall Street. No one
at the SEC does anything but collect a salary, issue press releases and go to lunch as the
Mafia crime families. . . oops, hedge funds run "bust out" operations on businesses. The
lapdog financial press cheered on the hedge funds as they demolished American businesses. The
same gutter journalists who are not yet linking micro-manager Bezos giving up total control
of Amazon right after his cloud service illegally de-platformed Parler for violation of
bogus. made-up community standards. But then, bigger things are afoot. Bolshevik president
Biden just approved deploying B-1 bomber to Norway for the first time. Nuclear bomb carrying
B-1 bombers. Anything to distract people from how rotten things are.
Cognitive rationalist 7 hours ago
Banking financial sector: private profits for me, public losses for thee
gladitsover 8 hours ago remove link
"..the table is tilted folks. The game is rigged.."
George Carlin
Lokiban 8 hours ago
I think it was all about showing to those unawares how corrupt and rigged Wall street
truly is and they have gotten the message out bigtime.
The only question to be asked is who became the proverbial bagholder when average people saw
their 'Bitcoin-Tulipmania' chance to get out with amazing profits and with that breaking the
promise to continue pumping gme till it hits $1500.
One has always to be carefull if these kind of actions are true populism going against the
controllers or is it controllers playing their hideous games again for a reason, like the
great reset.
Greed has never been a good advisor in these times, easy sheoplemoney. It works all the
time..
COMMENT: Message: Re Reddit "WallStreetBets"
Hi Marty,
Thanks for this blog post but I think they are not trying to make money out of short
squeezing GME really, they are trying to make a point. If you follow some of the posts you
see many stories about how badly people and their families were hurt in 2008 when not a
single banker went to prison. Stories of Fathers losing jobs and houses and descending into
alcoholism in front of their children who now are part of WallStreetBets, others who had to
live off of beans and rice or what Mama could grow in the garden and went hungry etc.
So they are not buying GME to see it rise, though that is fine, they are spending money
"they can afford to lose" to punish the hedge funds that have along with bankers hurt the
little guy repeatedly. These same people IMO have bought off our politicians, removed
regulations like Glass Steagal etc all to reap profits to the top while crushing everyone
else.
Listen in June 2008 I got laid off from Palm, in July I broke my arm ( badly ), in August
some tenants left so I tried to put that property up for sale but in September Lehman fell
and the real estate agent told me the market was OFF that I could not sell and needed to rent
it with no one renting for 5 more months. At the same time in September I had a 100K home
equity line I took out just for emergencies and since I was having one I wanted to use it
– but then Wells Fargo pulled the whole thing.
So there I was Marty, sitting on the couch with a cast from fingers to shoulder watching
the world meltdown on a tiny TV set while on lots of pain killers
I was forced to use my small 401K, and ended up using the whole thing through 9 months of
disability, two surgeries and a job search that did not yield a job until the fall of
2011.
So IMO these arrogant SOB cheating hedge fund guys should pound sand on GME for once because
the casino is rigged, heads they win, tails they win, and the taxpayers lose their jobs,
homes, and pay for their bailouts.
I say give it to 'em.
Off my soapbox
REPLY: I fully understand that. I have fought against these people my whole life. I was
more interested in learning HOW the economy functioned where they were only interested in
guaranteed trades. I guess I was the Leonardo da Vinci of finance. Instead of digging up
bodies to figure out how the anatomy functioned, I searched history and developed a computer
model to try to ascertain what made the world economy tick.
A professor from Princeton where Einstein taught said to me that I reminded him of
Einstein. I was surprised, for I did not see myself as comparable to Einstein in any way. He
then explained that what he meant was my curiosity which moved me to try to figure out what
made it all function. I came to understand what he meant. If you are not CURIOUS and seek out
knowledge, then you will NEVER discover anything new! I was not dealing with the physics of
the world, but the finance. People are attracted by this blog and Socrates for that same
reason. They have that spark of curiosity and seek to also understand what makes it all tick!
We need to teach students to be curious. That is the key to all progress we desperately need
to survive this never-ending battle of authoritarianism v independence and freedom.
I have stated many times that I had discovered the 8.6-year frequency in my research I
conducted at Princeton, University in the Firestone Library. Those were fond memories for it
was an amazing resource back then as was the Royal British Newspaper Library, which I
gathered my FOREX database by sifting through the largest newspaper collection in the
world.
This was the difference between me and the "club" where I tried to understand the movement
of the ages that caused the rise and fall of civilization and therein the economy/markets,
and the "club" which seeks to manipulate everything by sheer force armed with bribes. They
own the Southern District of New York courts, the Second Circuit, and the Department of
Justice along with the SEC and CFTC. Goldman Sachs has even stacked the SEC and CFTC with
their former people. Nobody was prosecuted despite the fact that they were involved in the
looting of capital in Malaysia and Greece. And people have the audacity to claim there was
absolutely no election fraud? There is nothing we can trust that goes on in government
anymore and it will only get far worse as we head into 2032.
I am well aware of the sentiment behind this Reddit trend. My concern is simple. Don't put
it past the "club" to be in there making this seem like a sure bet and then set everyone up
for the big crash. Be careful here going into Feb/March 2021.
In neoliberalized universities there are too many PhD degree holders. It is a conveyer to produce them. .And too few real
scientists...
Notable quotes:
"... The previous generation of university educators didn't retire on schedule (I can't really blame them, tenure and ridiculously light teaching loads) and that, coupled with the rise of adjuncts and funding siphoned off for administrators, changed the nature of academia and the number of available jobs. ..."
"... I'm sorry for Herring, but she really should have anticipated what happened. I've read probably a dozen articles and essays repeating her exact experience, and none of them less that 15 years old. ..."
"Today, almost a year after I officially became Dr. Herring, I resigned from my postdoc at Ghent University. There are several reasons that motivated this decision but the
main one is that I no longer enjoy the work enough to justify how demanding it is .
As I neared
the end of my PhD, I worried about my future. It is hard to explain to those who are not in
academia just how bad things are for those who are starting out. Say the words "job market"
within earshot of a junior researcher and watch fatalistic dread cloud their face.
I was
relatively lucky because I secured a research job straight out of my PhD. But despite being
somewhat cushy, my position was still fixed-term. To hope to one day obtain an elusive
permanent contract, I had to accept that my current job would most likely be the first in a
series of short-term contracts in various distant locations.
To succeed in academia, I would
have to make a number of sacrifices. The simple truth is that I am no longer willing to make
these sacrifices. A great deal of enthusiasm is needed to survive early career academia with
its endless applications, rejections and precarity. Sadly, this enthusiasm is too often
exploited. For instance, academics are not paid to publish their research in journals. To
guarantee the quality of the research being published in these journals, they review the
findings of other researchers, also for free.
But journal publishers tend to charge thousands
in yearly subscription fees to university libraries. Increasingly, higher education staff
suffer casualisation and unreasonable workloads, and the pandemic (or rather, the ways in which
governments and university high-ups are dealing with the pandemic) is making things worse.
I do
not mean to discourage anyone who is currently working in academia or who might be considering
it as a profession. The enthusiasm and persistence of researchers is admirable and important.
Their work should be celebrated and their enthusiasm should be nourished rather than exploited.
I am proud of my friends who have managed to make things work despite all these obstacles. For
my part, I have come to terms with the fact that academia is not for me."
Regarding "Why I Am Leaving Academia," this has been true for a long time now, maybe
twenty years or so.
The previous generation of university educators didn't retire on schedule
(I can't really blame them, tenure and ridiculously light teaching loads) and that, coupled
with the rise of adjuncts and funding siphoned off for administrators, changed the nature of
academia and the number of available jobs.
How did the author not know this?
I was halfway through my MA when I understood that a PhD would likely end in economic and
professional disaster, so I gave up my dream (or more accurately, woke up).
I'm sorry for Herring, but she really should have anticipated what happened. I've read
probably a dozen articles and essays repeating her exact experience, and none of them less
that 15 years old.
While Special Counsel John Durham's investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe
is generally focused on the FBI's activities, sources familiar with the investigation told Fox
News the prosecution of high-ranking FBI officials, such as former Director James Comey, is
"unlikely."
In a report
published Tuesday, Fox News reports that sources told the publication that the investigation is
ongoing and that Durham last year concluded the part of his investigation looking into the CIA
and he is now examining the FBI's activities.
Additionally, another source told the news outlet that the special counsel had been pursuing
"new and credible leads" through the end of the Trump administration, however, Fox News noted
that it is unclear at this point what those lines of inquiry entail.
Moreover, a spokesperson for Durham told the outlet that they had "no comment from Mr.
Durham."
Durham's probe is looking into the origins of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's
investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election as well as
now-debunked collusion between Russian officials and the Trump campaign. Former President
Donald Trump
and conservatives have called Mueller's yearlong probe a "witch hunt" and accused it of being
motivated by anti-Trump animus.
Mueller's investigation yielded no evidence that collusion occurred between the Trump
campaign and Russian officials during the 2016 election.
Tuesday's report comes after the first and only criminal sentencing stemming from Durham's
investigation was issued last week.
Last Friday,
Kevin Clinesmith , a former FBI lawyer,
was sentenced to one year of probation and 400 hours of community service for altering an
email during the Mueller's investigation that was used as grounds for the surveillance of
former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Previously, Comey has said that investigators have yet to reach out to him.
"I have had no contact with him and haven't talked to him," the former FBI director
told CBS News' "Face the
Nation" back in August.
"I can't imagine that I'm a target."
Last summer, Durham's team also questioned former CIA Director John Brennan for about eight
hours at the CIA headquarters . Brennan later said through a spokesman he was assured he was
"not a target," according to Fox News.
Back in December, Brennan told
"Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace that he had no issue with Durham's investigation extending
into 2021 and also divulged briefly about the eight-hour session.
"I think that is fine, I have no problems with it," the former CIA director said, adding
that Durham's team already talked with him for eight hours. "I do believe that John Durham is
going to carry out his responsibilities ably and hopefully not with any political influence."
5,713 64 NEV play_arrow
Clee Torres 4 minutes ago
No sh*t Sherlock.
You mean there are two levels of justice? One for me and one for thee?
When lynch met clinton on the plane and it barely made a ripple.
That's when I knew.
enough of this 11 minutes ago (Edited)
No surprise. Durham and his pals are milking the investigation for all its worth. In the
meantime, Comey skates and the amendment named in his honor remains in full force.
On a happier note, Mr. Durham is looking for a nice beachfront mansion...
WOODisGOOD 3 minutes ago
Deep State gotta protect Deep State. That's just the way it works.
squib 4 minutes ago
I remember, Strzok, Comey, Clapper, Brennan etc. always looked smug bc they knew that
they'd be taken care of.
PaulDF 3 minutes ago
"Insurance Policy" indeed
Alex Jones was right... 4 minutes ago remove link
In other news, water is wet...
Reaper 16 minutes ago
US Law makes Dunham a Principle who abeted the crimes he's investigating. As such, under
US Code, he's liable for the same punishment as the perps. Remember how quickly Roger Stone
was prosecuted for lying.
Those who have the most to say about the burdens of government regulation tend to be silent
about the enormous infrastructure supporting a very specific conception of corporate
personhood, limited liability, and intellectual property.
It's like an industrialist looking out upon a vast landscape of canals, dams, and levees, and
complaining at the "unnatural" construction of a bridge putting a ferryman out of a job.
It's still not clear exactly what the clinic's customers were being injected with...
My guess is that it's something less hazardous to your health than the real vaccine, but
still not what the greatest scientist of all time, Dr. Fauci, and our greatest president of
all time, His Excellency Joe Biden, have mandated that you take.
Mike Konczal has a new book, Freedom from the Market ( Bookshop.org locator , Amazon ). I've been wanting to write about this book for a while,
but first had to wait for it to come out, and then had my working life banjaxed by the madness
of the last few weeks. But it is a great book that looks to remake the American debate about
freedom and largely succeeds. Full disclosure: Mike is a friend of the 'see very occasionally
but like very strongly' variety; I also read an early version of the mss and commented on
it.
When I say that this book is about the American debate, I mean it. Non-Americans will learn
from the book, but they aren't the target audience. The examples that Konczal draws on to
inform modern Americans are drawn from their own, largely forgotten history. This could be seen
as a reflection of the American parochialism that Konczal mentions in passing, but it is, I
think, a deliberate political move. It also is in some ways refreshing – rather than
weaving fairytales about the wonders of Fantasy Sweden or Fantasy Germany, it tells stories
where the ambiguities are necessarily more visible to its readers.
Still, it provides measured hope. By drawing on what has happened in American history,
Konczal makes it easier for Americans to understand that things they might not believe are
possible in America must be, because they have been. He rescues moments such as the WWII
government run daycare centers that allowed women to work, or the use of the power of the
federal state to force through the integration of Southern hospitals, from the enormous
condescension of posterity. Notably, although he doesn't dwell on this point, many of these
changes began at moments that seem shittier and more despairing than our own.
Konczal neither provides a standard linear history, nor a policy textbook. Instead, he is
claiming an alternative American tradition, which has not looked to the market as its
apotheosis, but instead has sought to free Americans from its random vagaries. His history
explains how America has responded collectively to the real and expressed needs of publics, who
have organized to fight for them. And it does so in the plain language that he mentions in
passing was necessary to allow ordinary people to organize and understand who was trying to
stop them.
Konczal's fundamental claim is that people who attribute freedom to markets miss out on much
of the story. Equally important is a notion of freedom from markets, "rooted in public
programs that genuinely serve people and checking market dependency." This notion goes back
much further in time than the New Deal. The nineteenth century is sometimes depicted as a reign
of laissez-faire, both by those who admired it and deplored it. Konczal argues instead that
there was an emerging sense of public needs – and imperfect ways in which the government
provided for them. This helps us understand, for example, the provision of public land through
the Homestead Act and the land grant universities.
The nineteenth century notion of the public was clearly horribly flawed and contradictory
– it did not include slaves or Native Americans. Some, like Horace Greeley ended up
fleeing these contradictions into the welcoming arms of free market absolutism. But within
these contradictions lay possibilities that opened up in the twentieth century. Konczal builds,
for example on Eric Schickler's work to argue that as the New Deal began to provide concrete
benefits to African Americans, it created a new relationship between them and the Democratic
Party, breaking up the old coalition that had held Jim Crow together.
The organizing ideas in this book are Polanyian – the stresses of the market lead to
social rupture, which may in turn create the conditions for political mobilization. But Konczal
doesn't depict this as necessary or inevitable – people's choices have consequences. He
is also more precise than Polanyi in his understanding of how change happens – through
social movements and the state:
While the Supreme Court can be effective at holding back change and enforcing already
existing power structures, it is actually very weak at creating new reform itself. It
controls no funding and is dependent on elite power structures to carry out its decisions.
What really creates change is popular mobilization and legislative changes.
Finally, Konczal not only employs Polanyi's ideas, but the ideas of Polanyi's friendly
critics like Quinn Slobodian, to describe how modern Hayekians have sought to "encase" the
market order in institutions and practices that are hard to overturn. Property rights aren't
the foundation of liberty, as both nineteenth century jurists and twentieth century economists
would have it. They are a product of the choices of the state, and as such intensely
political.
This allows Konczal to turn pragmatism against the Hayekians. Hayek's notion of spontaneous
order is supposed to be evolutionary, to provide a more supple response to what people (thought
of as individuals want). But if there is a need to provide collective goods for people that
cannot be fulfilled through voluntarism, the Hayekian logic becomes a brutal constraint on
adaptation.
The efforts of Hayekians to enforce binding legal constraints, to cripple the gathering of
the collective knowledge that can guide collective action, to wink at legal doctrines intended
to subvert social protections against the market; all these prevent the kinds of evolutionary
change that are necessary to respond to changing circumstances. Konczal makes it clear that
Oliver Wendell Holmes was no left-winger – but his pragmatist criticisms of the rigid and
doctrinaire laissez-faire precepts of his colleagues rings true. Their "willingness to use a
very specific understanding of economics to override law writes a preferential understanding of
economics into the constitution itself." Although Konczal wrote this book before the current
crisis, he describes Holmes as mentioning compulsory vaccination laws as one of the ways in
which government interference in private decisions can have general social benefits. The
wretched contortions of libertarians and market conservatives over anti-pandemic measures
during the last several months, and the consequences of their intellectual rigidity for human
welfare in states such as North Dakota illustrate the point, quite brutally.
What Konczal presses for is a very different notion of freedom. This doesn't deny the
benefits of markets, but it qualifies them. In Konczal's words, "markets are great at
distributing things based on people's willingness to pay. But there are some goods that should
be distributed by need." Accepting this point entails the necessity of keeping some important
areas of life outside the determining scope of markets. Furthermore, people's needs change over
time, as societies and markets change. Konczal's framework suggests the need for collective
choice to figure out the best responses to these changes, and a vibrant democratic politics, in
which the state responds to the expressed needs of mobilized publics as the best way to carry
out these choices.
All this makes the book sound more like an exercise in political theory than it is. That's
because of my own professional deformities, and because I want you to read the book itself, if
you really to get the good stuff – the stories, the examples, and the overall narrative
that Konczal weaves together. Freedom from the Market has the potential to be a very
important book, focusing attention on the contested, messy but crucially important intersection
between social movements and the state. It provides a set of ideas that people on both sides of
that divide can learn from, and a lively alternative foundation to the deracinated technocratic
notions of politics, in which good policy would somehow, magically, be politically self
supporting, that has prevailed up until quite recently. Strongly recommended.
I'll second this recommendation – it was a great read. I would especially recommend
reading it for the section on Medicare integration, since that's a story that rarely gets
told but is genuinely quite fascinating. It gives me greater respect for LBJ, given that he
was giving them full-support despite a difficult, treacherous political battle to integrate
hospitals in the South despite immense resistance.
He also made a very interesting point after the Homestead section when he got to the
section on work-hour labor movements, about how they needed to specifically make it so that
certain rights couldn't be contracted away, because otherwise even laws establishing
such-and-such rules would get end-runned by businesses requiring their employees to give them
up in contracts.
Henry, you write, "if there is a need to provide collective goods for people that cannot
be fulfilled through voluntarism, the Hayekian logic becomes a brutal constraint on
adaptation." That seems like a big "if." Other than the classic examples of national defense
and perhaps police and courts, what goods cannot be provided through voluntarism?
There's a nice line in Slobodian's book about Americans not knowing much about the rest of
the world but imagining that the US is a scale-model of it. Isn't the worry about the general
claim here that it is more plausible to see property rights as merely the creature of the
state when you have a vast internal market with many needs catered for by domestic production
than it is when you have small states with relatively specialized domestic production that
need to trade across borders to satisfy their needs. In such a case, where the real economy
transcends borders and where trade barriers at those borders just make everyone poorer, you
need transnational guarantees (or at least a very strong degree of confidence) for property
rights and investment against the potential interference of local governments. So even if
Konczal is right for the US, the question of how to do social democracy transnationally
remains for the rest of us. The EU is one possible answer to that, but the continuation of
national political narratives, blaming other nations within the structure for their own
problems (Germany > Greece, Italy) etc remains a big obstacle to anti-market pushback at
that level.
reason 01.27.21 at 11:20 am (no link)
Just a short aside, this sentence struck me:
" Property rights aren't the foundation of liberty, as both nineteenth century jurists and
twentieth century economists would have it."
Property rights are inherently a restriction of liberty. They restrict the rights of
everybody but the designated owner. It may be that in some circumstances they are net a
positive, that this is clearly not something one can expect from the nature of the thing.
That this point isn't made more often and more strongly puzzles me.
Jake Gibson 01.27.21 at 1:22 pm (no link)
I think it can be illuminating to think of "property rights" in the context that at some
point all property was taken (stolen) from The Commons.
And that property laws are enshrinement of common law on possession (nine tenths).
The "twentieth century economists" like the "nineteenth century jurists" refer just to
those discussed in the book (basically Friedman, Chicago School, market for corporate control
people etc etc). So they're not claims about the general class of economists in the twentieth
century, where there is tons of disagreement on lots of stuff obviously, but a particular
strain of economic thought that Konczal writes about.
There is no "the" market. All markets are not the same.
The Hayekians first insistence is that in fact all markets are the same. They then have
designed the 'markets' they want, and if you design a market you win.
Mike Huben 01.27.21 at 4:11 pm (no link)
Kurt Schuler @ 3 asks: "what goods cannot be provided through voluntarism?"
The glib answer is "none" because you can always find an exceptional case of private
production.
But the problem is "provided" is underspecified: it could mean provision to only one
person, or (better) provision of ENOUGH. And even enough is underspecified.
Look at something like water. Public provision of vast volumes of clean, safe, cheap
drinking water is an alternative to voluntarism's answer: expensive bottled water which must
be used frugally by the poor, consumes much energy in transportation and waste in plastic:
which is enough? Which is proper provision? Should there be only one type of provision?
And of course that question implies another; what goods should not be provided through
voluntarism? Maybe pollution, addiction, crime, and a host of others.
"Voluntarism" is an example of framing, trying to focus the world through an ideological
lens. If you accidentally accept this narrow peephole on the world, your thinking is greatly
constrained because of the things is has misdirected you from. The same kind of framing as
"markets are freedom", which Konczal is apparently decrying. (I have not yet read the
book.)
Given the tenor of most responses, it doesn't seem likely Konczal's book is going to
change the narrative in any significant way.
Bob@2 seems a good example of the pro-market reasoning. For one thing, "economics" says
that if a person with a scarce talent can earn more money than is necessary to induce them to
exercise that talent, the income can be taxed away without affecting the market outcome.
Considering the real life examples of professional athletes, movie stars and artists, the
sage advice to tax the athletes, stars and artists, precisely because it won't endanger the
market outcomes of professional athletics, Hollywood and the art world presupposes the market
outcomes of pro sports, Hollywood and the museum/art gallery circuit are just and wise.
Bob@2 wrote "Economics is wisely silent on people's preferences and needs. The point
surely is not that there is something inherent in certain goods that means they should be
distributed by need–who decides what those "good" goods are that everyone (ought to?)
need?; the point is that income should be redistributed so that everyone can buy whatever
they see fit to buy based on their own understanding of their needs."
Yes, I recall reading a short article by von Hayek explaining there was no scientific way
to distinguish between wants and needs, thus there was no way ever, even in principle, to
deny there was such a thing as scarcity. Like von Hayek, the assumption that, given the
impossibility of pronouncing a difference between needs and wants (nor apparently even a way
of merely satisficing any such distinction,) the only valid way of deciding what must be
produced is by consumer sovereignty. The "votes" by rational consumers are the only possible
means of justice. Like distinguishing between productive and unproductive labor, anything
less than the market is tyranny.
I have no idea why Bob says Konczal's book as presented doesn't pose a problem, given two
market refutations of it are endorsed in the comment. It may be something like compatibilism,
the philosophical position that people have free will in the religious sense despite the
myriad of facts and millennia of experience showing that the religious notion of moral
responsibility is, to say the least, flawed. In words, compatibilists will say they accept
things like mental illness leave old notions of moral responsibility -- which is to say, old
notions about retribution and punishment -- then in practice, they will do things like try
adolescents as adult or arbitrarily limit the definition of mental illness or simply ignore
such fiddling objections to honor time-honored customs. Similarly, market proponents will
give lip service to the notion of market failure, then inexplicably (?) fail to see it.
Chris Bertram@5 writes " the continuation of national political narratives, blaming other
nations within the structure for their own problems (Germany > Greece, Italy) etc remains
a big obstacle " to social democracy. Is the illustrative example meant to condemn Germany
blaming Greece and Italy for creating their own problems and leeching (or trying to) off of
Germany? Or, is it Greece and Italy blaming of Germany for not curing their own failures for
them? Is it somehow both? Also, the definition of the EU as a consortium of states premised
on fiscal integrity may be more of an obstacle to social democracy than political narratives,
however construed?
Well, insulin clearly (see above). But also: schools that make everybody literate and
promote basic social solidarity. Colleges that are cheap enough to educate all of the
talents. Hospitals that treat illnesses irrespective of ability to pay. Universal
vaccinations. Flood defences. Disaster relief. Food inspectors. Drug safety testers.
Buildings inspectors. Fire inspectors. Transport safety inspectors. Highways. Mending
potholes in highways. Keeping bridges safe. Last-mile rural electrification. Universal mail
coverage at a single price. Legal advice to even access to justice by rich and poor.
Excellent daycare at prices poor people can afford. Basic research in particle physics and
astronomy. R & D in far-from-market areas society needs. Drug discovery for diseases poor
people get. Training of specialists in non-profitable yet essential professions. Landscape
conservation. Pollution control. Tech regulation. Setting a carbon price/tax. Railways that
move people fast enough and cheaply enough to take custom away from ecocidal airlines. Mass
transit in cities. Space programmes. A welfare safety net permitting risky careers in the
arts. A welfare safety net to equalise the chances of children. A welfare safety net allowing
every member of a society to go to sleep every night in a state of delicious moral luxury,
knowing that no-one is hungry. Lighthouses. Earthquake detection. Censuses. Diplomacy.
Peacemaking. Peacekeeping. Public broadcasters with editorial independence. Et cetera et
cetera et cetera, in every flavour from civilisational basic to utopian flight of fancy.
Collective action! Getting the job done everywhere on the planet where libertarians
aren't.
" In such a case, where the real economy transcends borders and where trade barriers at
those borders just make everyone poorer, you need transnational guarantees (or at least a
very strong degree of confidence) for property rights and investment against the potential
interference of local governments."
Much of the world did social democracy pretty well last century, without transnational
guarantees. Conversely, the creation of investor guarantees like ISDS has been a gift to
predatory corporations like Philip Morris.
Insulin (and Epi pens) become unaffordable in the U.S. because the government massively
screwed up the regulations. These are off-patent drugs, so in theory anybody can make them.
BUT, getting production facilities FDA-approved is a long, expensive process. So when there's
an effective monopoly on a drug, no other company will enter the market to compete -- even
after huge price hikes. Why not? Because after the new company had invested the time and
money to get its production line built and approved, the original monopolist would drop its
prices back down, and the new entrant would make no money. And everybody knows this, so
potential new entrants don't bother. An obvious solution is reciprocity to allow importation
of drugs already approved in the EU. But there's no way the FDA is going to allow that
to happen and lose its regulatory monopoly.
The bottom line is that these are not failures of unregulated markets, they are cases of
government failure in the most heavily regulated market in the U.S. (and where, in fact, the
strict regulation is the key enabler of the bad outcome and where the obvious fix is blocked
by the regulatory agency defending its turf).
MPAVictoria 01.29.21 at 1:39 am (no link)
"Insulin (and Epi pens) become unaffordable in the U.S. because the government massively
screwed up the regulations."
Just need to point out that this is completely false. Insulin prices are high in the US
because of a lack of price controls. Canada has very similar patent rules and our insulin is
made by the same companies but guess what? We set a maximum price for pharmaceuticals. The US
should do the same.
mw 01.29.21 at 1:23 pm (no link)
MPAVictoria @ 23 Just need to point out that this is completely false. Insulin prices
are high in the US because of a lack of price controls. Canada has very similar patent rules
and our insulin is made by the same companies but guess what? We set a maximum price for
pharmaceuticals. The US should do the same.
Yes, you could layer on additional price-control regulations to fix the problems caused by
the existing regulations. Of course it's one thing for Canada to adopt such rules where the
U.S. has not (and remains a source of profits and R&D incentives) and another when the
U.S. is also controlling prices. Incidentally, if price controls were to be adopted in the
U.S., my suggested approach is that the U.S. should require all pharma companies within, say,
two years to sell drugs here for the lowest price they have negotiated in any industrialized
country with a comparable per-Capita GDP. Then we can all be in it together.
But that's all a discussion for another thread -- the point remains that insulin and epi
pens are not examples of a free, unregulated market failing, they're an example of a very
heavily (but badly) regulated market failing. Yes bad U.S. regulations are responsible --
they create barriers to entry (specifically high costs of setting up a production facility
combined with an FDA regulatory monopoly and a ban on imports) that enable monopoly
pricing.
notGoodenough 01.29.21 at 8:01 am (no link)
mw @ 19, MPAVictoria @ 23
Not to side-track the thread, but I think there was an attempt to explore this on a
previous thread (particularly with respect to Daraprim, though I believe many of the points
are applicable in a general sense) [1]. While I´ll freely admit I am not an economist,
I didn´t find the responses to my queries and concerns from those advocating
"regulations are the issue" sufficiently satisfactory [2, 3] to warrant changing my position
– in short, I see little evidence to support the notion that it is US regulations
responsible for the high price of pharmaceuticals (particularly as it appears that R&D
spending is frequently less than that of marketing and administration). I hope the discussion
at the links provided is of interest.
Apologies to everyone for the interjection, but Pharma is a topic of keen interest and
concern to me.
mw @ 30: I forgot to respond to your by-the-by argument that the pharmas' US profits fund
their R&D. This is, as with the rest of your arguments, untrue.
(1) the US taxpayer funds most pharma research
(2) Last I checked, pharmas spend more on advertising and lobbying than they do on
R&D.
'nuff said.
MPAVictoria 01.30.21 at 1:29 am (no link)
@ NotGoodenough – Interesting links thank you! And I completely agree that I am
unconvinced that over regulation in it the reason the US has uniquely high drug prices.
@ me – Drug approval and manufacturing requirements in the US are not that different
from any other developed country. Neither is it's Drug IP regime. So the argument that these
features are what cause these outrageous pharmaceutical prices doesn't make much sense. In
fact the US had a bit of a reputation of being too ready to approve drugs with limited
effectiveness. The reason that Americans pay more than anyone else in the world is simple
– no price controls.
Hunter Biden's laptop. The article is by Peter Van Buren, who indeed is not a nutcase.
Anyone here ever / currently a free lance? You'll love these details:
"for example, on September 28, 2018, Hunter ordered $95,000 transferred without
explanation), a "business" run by Jim Biden out of a residential address. Jim regularly
invoiced Hunter for office expenses and employee costs, as well as a monthly retainer cost of
some $68,000, plus other fees in the tens of thousands of dollars."
Sure: My accountant would have been ga-ga for that. Then there's this little tidbit in
which the CPA seems to believe that paying taxes is voluntary:
"The CPA's concern is that the IRS is sensitive to the fact that some try to conceal
income as loans to be written off as expenses later, especially if the amounts are large.
This can trigger an audit. If the loans are "forgiven," then they are income. If not
declared, that is potential fraud. The same note from the CPA indicates Hunter owes $600,000
in personal taxes and another $204,000 for Owasco and urges him to file a return even if he
is not going to pay the taxes."
The most charitable reading of the sleazy saga is that Joe Biden, one of the most powerful
men in the world, is an incredibly gullible idiot. (By
vasilis asvestas / Shutterstock)
Iread the files on Hunter Biden's laptop. They paint a sleazy picture of multi-million
dollar wire transfers, potential money laundering, and possible tax evasion. They raise serious
questions about the judgment and propriety of Jim Biden, the president-elect's brother, and Joe
himself. Call it smoke not fire, but smoke that should not be ignored. The files were supplied
to TAC by a known source previously established to have access.
Joe Biden is lucky a coordinated media effort kept Hunter out of the campaign. The FBI has
had the laptop since 2019, when they subpoenaed
the files in connection with a money laundering investigation. Federal investigators also
served a round of subpoenas on December 8, a month after the election, including one for Hunter
Biden himself. While the legal thrust of the investigation by the federal prosecutor in
Delaware is taxes, the real focus seems to be on Hunter's Chinese connections. This all comes
after the FBI has had over a year to examine some of the same files TAC looked at.
In the final weeks before the election, Hunter's laptop fell into Republican hands. The
story went public in the New York Post , revealing that Hunter Biden introduced his
father, then vice president, to a top executive at Ukrainian energy firm Burisma less than a
year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor
who was investigating the company. The meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that
Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, sent Hunter Biden about a year after
Hunter himself joined the Burisma board at a salary of $ 83,000
a month with no obvious work duties past making such introductions.
Nice work if you can get it, and to get it your dad better be vice president. If all that
alone does not meet the test of impropriety, we need a new test. Hunter Biden's value to
clients was his perceived access to the White House. His father Joe was at least a passive
participant in the scheme, maybe more than that.
The problem was many Americans never heard this story. Twitter led a social media charge to
not allow the information online. After years of salivating over every bit of Trump family
gossip, the mainstream media claimed the Biden story did not matter, or was Russian disinfo .
Surveys suggest the information could have swung the election if voters had known about it. One
survey showed
that enough people in battleground states would have changed their votes to give Trump 311
electoral votes and reelection.
No mind, really. As soon as it became clear Joe Biden was going to win, the media on all
sides lost interest in the laptop. The story became about the story. It devolved into think
pieces about the Orwellian role of social media and some online giggling about the sex tapes on
the laptop. But our short attention spans have consequences. The laptop still has a lot to tell
us.
00:11 / 01:00 Next Video First Panel, TAC's 7th
Annual Foreign Policy Conference What Does 2020 Mean For Foreign Policy Cancel Autoplay is
paused
Hunter's laptop was chock-a-block with video that appears to show Hunter smoking crack while
engaged in a sex act with a woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images. There's
evidence there that Hunter spent money on
escorts , some
$21,000 on cam sites, big plays on all sorts of
depravities . There is also Joe's car insurance information, Hunter's SSN, pages of call
logs, and lots of email addresses, bank account numbers, and personal information of prominent
people. None of the material is encrypted, just dumped on a standard MacBook Pro using the
password "Hunter02." The machine was regularly connected to the internet and might as well have
had an electronic sign on it saying "My dad is important, here's what you'll need to blackmail
me and others to get to him."
But there is more. The laptop shows Hunter, through a number of front companies, accepted
money from Chinese and Ukrainian entities and moved that money to the U.S. where it was
parceled out to other entities, including Joe Biden's brother. Some of it then went back to
Chinese hands. There is no way a simple read-through can tell if the money was legal consulting
fees or illegal money laundering and tax fraud. But it all smells bad: multi-million dollar
transfers to LLCs without employees, residences used as multiple business addresses, legal
tricks from Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, and even a minor CIA connection.
Ask yourself if this demands more investigation. Ask yourself if voters might not have
benefited from knowing more about Joe Biden's side of all this.
The majority of the contents of the laptop are a jumbled record of Hunter's international
business ventures and financial records. Outstanding in the haystack are a large number of wire
transfers. Those with traceable addresses appear to be mostly anonymous shell companies run out
of lawyers' offices, with no employees and fuzzy public paper trails. One off the top involved
$259,845 traveling on April 2, 2018, from the Hudson West III in New York to a numbered account
held by Cathay Bank. Hudson West was created by Hunter Biden's own law firm, Owasco, with
several Chinese nationals, including a Ye Jianming associate, Gong Wendong. Ye Jianming is
chairman of CEFC China Energy, who reportedly
had close ties to both the Chinese government and the People's Liberation Army. He's been
arrested in China on corruption charges and has conveniently disappeared.
Biden in August 2018 also returned $100,000 back to CEFC in China via its own New York
subsidiary LLC, Hudson West V, whose listed address is 12 Foxwood Road, Great Neck, NY 11024.
That address is not a business office but instead a single family home worth over $6 million.
Phone records
suggest two people live there, including Gong Wendong. Money appears to move from physical
China to virtual Hunter back to virtual China in the U.S., starting and ending in accounts tied
to Gong Wendong after touching base with Hunter, a potential indicator of laundering. Chinese
money in China changed into Chinese money in America. Caution is needed; while what looks like
money laundering at first glance may indeed be so, it may be designed to hide the cash from the
Chinese government while staying inside American law, a quasi-legal service Hunter possibly
supplied.
That 12 Foxwood address shows up again on Biden's laptop as the mailing address for another
Gong Wendong venture, ColdHarbour Capital, which sent and received money to Biden. It is also
listed as the residence of Shan Gao, who appears to control accounts in Beijing tied to Hudson,
CEFC, and 12 Foxwood.
The most significant appearance of 12 Foxwood was as the mailing address for a secured VISA
card in the name of Biden's company, Hudson West III. The card is funded by someone unnamed
through Cathay Bank for $99,000 and guaranteed by someone's checking account held by Cathay
worth $450,000. Shared users of the card are Hunter and Gong Wendong. The card was opened as
CEFC secured a stake in a Russian state-owned energy company. Biden and others subsequently
used the credit card to purchase $101,291.46 worth of extravagant items, including airline
tickets and multiple items at Apple stores, pharmacies, hotels, and restaurants. A Senate
report
characterized these transactions as "potential financial criminal activity." Putting money on a
secured VISA card in lieu of a direct wire transfer to Biden may be seen by some as an attempt
to hide the source of the money and thus allow Biden not to claim it as income.
James Biden and Sara Biden were also authorized users of the credit card, though their
business connection to Hunter and Gong Wendong is unclear. Jim is Joe's brother, Sara his wife.
Jim over the years has been a nightclub owner, insurance broker, political consultant, and
investor. When he ran into financial
trouble having triple mortgaged his home, he was bailed out via loans from Joe and Hunter and
by a series of Joe's donors. Jim also received a loan of $500,000
from John Hynansky, a Ukrainian-American businessman and longtime donor to Joe Biden's
campaigns. This all was in 2015, at the same time the then-vice president oversaw U.S. policy
toward the country. As a senator, Joe Biden made use of a private jet owned by Hynansky's
son.
The 12 Foxwood address also appears on millions of dollars worth of bank transfers among
Cathay Bank, CEFC, and multiple semi-anonymous LLCs and hedge funds. One single transfer to
Hudson West III on August 8, 2017, represented the movement of $5 million from Northern Capital
International, which appears to be a
Chinese government-owned import-export front company.
Switch over to the CDB Bank folder and you see a wire transfer from Burisma for 36,000
euros, run through a bank in Cyprus, to Biden's own account on that island. Burisma is the one
company from the laptop that made the news. Hunter's role, what he actually did besides
introduce his father to other people, is still unclear.
Burisma must be an interesting place. Hunter's laptop partially exposes a complex web of
sub-companies in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands such that figuring out who owns who is
near impossible. Hunter, speaking to his business partner, speculates about buying a Lithuanian
bank to receive the Ukrainian money, and he also notes that Joseph Cofer Black , former director
of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, sits on Burisma's board. Black previously served as vice
chairman at mercenary provider Blackwater Worldwide (now Academi).
All just business, right? Not everyone saw it that way. An email from Wells Fargo's
corporate compliance team (Wells Fargo handled many of the international wire transfers) asks
on September 20, 2018, what the actual business of Hudson West is, who its owners are, and
where it is located. Also asked is what the purpose of all the incoming wires is. It notes some
business accounts appear to be for personal expenses. It also questions numerous outgoing wires
to the Lion Hall Group (for example, on September 28, 2018, Hunter ordered $95,000 transferred
without explanation), a "business" run by Jim Biden out of a residential address. Jim regularly
invoiced Hunter for office expenses and employee costs, as well as a monthly retainer cost of
some $68,000, plus other fees in the tens of thousands of dollars.
There is no record of these questions being answered. It is possible to see the disbursal of
funds via credit card to Jim Biden as a way to diffuse the amounts away from Hunter, and via
Jim's invoices, a way to convert income from China into deductible business expenses for Hunter
in America, reducing his tax burden. The involvement of Lion Hall and Jim Biden also spreads
the money around, lowering its profile. If the invoices were shown to be fraudulent (i.e., Jim
did not actually consult for Hunter), the potential for tax fraud exists.
Besides Wells Fargo, others also had questions. Hunter's own CPA, preparing to file 2018
federal taxes, wrote to Hunter asking, "As far as Owasco [Hunter's law firm] is concerned there
were some receipts we classified as loans. Owasco received approximately $550,000 from Burisma
and paid about one half this amount to, I believe, someone named 'Devon.' I am not sure of the
payee The one half payment to 'Devon' was not recorded as income."
Devon is likely Devon Archer , co-founder and managing partner
of Rosemont Capital alongside Hunter. Who else was part of Rosemont? Christopher
Heinz , John Kerry's son. And, small world, Devon Archer sat on the board of Burisma
alongside
Hunter Biden. The CPA's concern is that the IRS is sensitive to the fact that some try to
conceal income as loans to be written off as expenses later, especially if the amounts are
large. This can trigger an audit. If the loans are "forgiven," then they are income. If not
declared, that is potential fraud.
The same note from the CPA indicates Hunter owes $600,000 in personal taxes and another
$204,000 for Owasco and urges him to file a return even if he is not going to pay the taxes.
Besides taxes, things did not always go well for Hunter. On March 6, 2019, he sent an email to
a friend saying, "Buddy do you have a cash app to send me $100 until wire goes. I have no money
for gas and I'm literally stuck at a rest stop on 95." He earlier had sought a $35,000 advance
from his regular "draw" out of Owasco. And keep an eye on Hunter's health -- he pays close to
$9,000 a quarter for life insurance.
Joe Biden is one lucky S.O.B. When the powers that be decided Barack Obama needed someone a
little more, you know, establishment, as his VP to calm voters, there was Joe, as white-bread
as the state he represented, vaulted into the White House that had otherwise eluded him. His
only controversial points came from having supported the status quo for so many years that it
had changed underneath him. Are we tough on crime, or do Black Lives Matter? Didn't matter to
Joe, just point him in the right direction so he knows what to agree with. And so in 2020, when
the Democrats realized exactly what kind of man they needed to wipe away the sins of two
dishonest and chaotic primaries, well, there was Joe again.
Joe was fortunate that the mainstream media memory-holed Hunter's story and conservative
media lost focus looking for a tweetable smoking gun when the truth was a bit too complicated
to parse out in a sentence or two. But there is still a story here.
The short version is there's a lot to suggest money laundering and tax fraud on Hunter's
part. The purpose of the money in and out was always unclear, with invoices for vague expenses
and lots and lots of "consulting." One could invent a legal explanation for everything. One
could imagine many illegal explanations. There is no way anyone could know the difference
without seeing Hunter's taxes, asking him questions, and doing some serious forensic
accounting. It is unlikely any of that will happen now that the election is over. Even to
Guiliani et al., it really doesn't matter any more. They took one shot, missed, and walked
away.
That will leave undigested the bigger tale of president-elect Biden, who ran in part on an
anti-corruption platform following the Trump family escapades. While Joe Biden no doubt regrets
what appears to have been a one-off meeting with the Burisma official, he did indeed take the
meeting as VP. It's always easier to apologize when caught than seek permission in advance in
Joe's world.
A 2017 email chain involving Hunter brokering an ultimately failed deal for a new venture
with old friend CEFC, the Chinese energy company, described a 10 percent set-aside for the "big
guy," whom former Hunter Biden partner Tony Bobulinski publicly identified as Joe Biden
. Joe also took Hunter to China with him on Air Force Two and met with Chinese leaders while
Hunter tried to make deals on his own. Joe also had Hunter and partner Devon Archer to the
White House only two days before they joined Burisma. It was Joe's donors and pals who bailed
out brother Jim over the years with sweetheart loans.
A lot of appearance of improprietous malarkey from a senior statesman who knows better. In
places like China and the Ukraine, where corruption is endemic, it is assumed the sons of rich
and powerful men have access to their father and that access is for sale. Hunter Biden traded
on those assumptions for millions of dollars, and Joe stood by understanding what was
happening. Every father wants to help his son, and Hunter, one can imagine, went to his dad
time after time pleading for just one more little favor to get him clear of his sordid past.
Joe, a decent man at heart, likely nodded. So a meeting. A handshake. An office visit, a posed
photo, whatever would help but was still plausibly deniable. Until the next time. Just one
more, Dad. Please?
Joe's larger role in all things Hunter needs to be questioned. Joe, as well as the Obama
State Department, knew about
Hunter's antics. Joe pretended Hunter's financial windfalls had nothing to do with their
relationship and were simply a constant series of coincidental lucky breaks for a ne'er-do-well
son who happened to fail upward while his dad was VP. Joe says he and his son never talked
about business. Maybe Joe assumed Hunter's Porsche was just a lucky find (his car payments are
on the laptop).
While, of course, Hunter is an adult with his own mind, his father was one of the most
powerful men in the world and yet apparently did nothing to stop what was going on among
Hunter, his brother Jim, the Chinese, the Ukrainians, and himself -- at minimum, the gross
appearance of impropriety over a period of years. Biden's defense has always been sweeping :
"My son did nothing wrong." That alone raises questions of judgment on the part of Joe Biden.
Not least because in a few weeks he becomes president of the United States. And if the
president does it, it's not illegal, right?
Maybe you can offer information that contradicts the assertions and alleged facts in
this article? Please make the effort to enlighten the rest of us. It'll force you to
seriously read the article and learn its contents in order to refute them. If you can't do
that then you haven't the courage to try and support your own assertions. It's hard to face
the possibility that you're wrong, but if you build a case maybe you'll actually change a
few minds here and there. As things stand right now you seem guilty to me of being "just
deluded enough to (not) believe it (the article) because it's what you want to (not)
believe."
That's exactly how I would have felt if Trump's kids had a strong appearance of selling
their father's influence for tens of millions of dollars! And if the Trump kids business
partners turned on them and gave testimony under oath to the FBI about it, and volumes of
documentary evidence supported it!
Nothingburger! I'm sure you and the media would have agreed with how I felt, and
completely ignored Trump corruption before the election. 'Cause that's the fair and
balanced media we all enjoy!
Silly vet. Trump's kids HAVE A STRONG APPEARANCE OF SELLING THEIR FATHER'S
INFLUENCE.
Have you been living under a rock? Why did Ivanka get several Chinese patents AT THE
SAME TIME Daddy was letting a Chinese company off the hook and hosting the Chinese leader
at Mar-A-Lago? Why is Jared Kushner jetting off to ME countries looking for investment
money while an active advisor in the West Wing? Why are Beavis and Butthead (Don Jr and
Eric) looking for foreign properties while Daddy is president?
Trump's children were actively involved in international business concerns long before
Trump ran for office. Hunter Biden is a low-life crack head who never achieved anything
until his daddy was VP. If you can't acknowledge the difference, you are incapable of
reason.
@Joe_Hubris Quite right, we all heard that donkey jr met with the Russians at Trump
Tower. There was ample evidence, before he let it out himself. But that wasn't exactly
conducting business, that was trying to steal an election.
Honest, Ivanka seems rather smart. Of course, Midlle Eastern money into Jared's businesses
will dry up, still, they'll save the furniture.
But, as soon as they are given the chance, Beavis and Butthead will do their best to blow
Trump Inc to smithereens and burn all that remains of it to the ground.
Oh, Hunter was in on the grift long before Joe became VP. He was brought into MBNA's
"Executive Training" program and made a member of the Board of AMTRAC while his daddy was
in the Senate.
I'm awake. Whenever there have been allegations of corruption against Trump's family,
I've tried to track the facts down (same as I've done with Biden, and before either of them
other candidates/Presidents).
There is one difference. My perception of major media the past four years is that with
Democrats, they've worked to minimize the damage on any story harmful to the left (Hunters'
laptop and Tara Reades' allegations of rape being prime examples), while any story
involving Trump they've exaggerated, left important facts out of their coverage, or
outright lied. So I believe that if there was any real corruption involving Trump, the MSM
would have covered it endlessly, just like they did with the bogus allegations of Trump
collaborating with the Russians to steal the election, and many other examples.
I'm not hiding from facts involving Trump family corruption. I just haven't seen
anything supporting it yet. I don't know if Jared Kushner was soliciting investment money
in the ME; that has been rumor and innuendo by his political enemies with no factual basis
so far. Ivanka having a fashion line and protecting it globally seems normal to me (China
is a huge market - bigger than the U.S.). Don Jr. and Eric seem like they're doing the same
things they were doing before DJT sought office, which is managing a normal business.
Everything about Hunter and Joe's brothers' business activities seem incredibly
suspicious to me, on the other hand.
Right! For example, I'm sure that Ivanka Trump got all of those lucrative licensing
deals in China SOLELY because of her amazing financial and business acumen!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Well,cwe know "covid"Joe isn't shy about doing business with them,bright? He said he had
more time with Chinese leaders than any modern president. And, using those chinese
connections,he had a virus made, and crazy Nancy Pelosi helped him spread it on her end of
the country. They used the impeachment, then the antics of the democratic socialists kicked
in, with Nancy calling him fat. And, when he tried to restrict flights from china, they
called him xenophobic and racist. Then distracted him more by inviting people to Chinese
new year! Before the virus, Trump was unstoppable. With ultra low unemployment rates, and
factories going strong, not to mention the legislation"Alzheimer's" Joe got going, causing
at least one man twenty years in prison for stealing a shovel! No one really considered
Biden to be a serious rival to trump then once they got the virus going, they used the
lowering of the presidents ratings and the virtual emptying of every other candidates, plus
the virus allowed them to get that mail in voting going, which is easier to tamper with
than electronic voting machines. Did you notice,with all the super sick people,we had the
highest turnout in history? Before you say it can't be true, another nugget to chew:right
before the election, about 90% of the bad things"Dirty" Joe did just know kinda "vanished
from social media!! We all know, if it shows up there, it never goes away, right? Wrong
when the democratic socialists control them...so in honoring Joe's greatest accomplishment,
I give to you....the JOVID virus...it's kinda...catchy, eh?but we need to shout out loud,
so he can hear, that everyone knows what he did last year! JOVID! JOVID! Put your hands in
the air like you just don't care and, with half the country hating this Biden clown we
should be as loud as Metallica in a phone booth!! Don't let them get away with it!!!!
Unlike Joe Biden's grifting clan, Trump's offspring had successful enterprises well
before their father entered into politics. And yes, in China and a number of international
countries also. Like their father, and unlike the Biden's, the Trump family didn't strike
it rich from political office. In fact, President Trump donated his entire presidential
salary of $400k/yr to charities all four years. Imagine Joe Biden doing that.
It is a sad state we find ourselves in today. Democrats whine about "white privilege"
against people who had nothing to do with slavery and in fact lost ancestors fighting it.
Meanwhile in a more real and present instance of privilege at the expense of other humans,
current vaccinations against Covid19 were developed using cell lines derived from aborted
human children. To my knowledge not a single vaccine is being offered that does not rest on
this heinous recipe.
I have seen classic hoarding psychology, where someone who has accumulated a solid chunk
of unencumbered liquid wealth, stocks or bonds or gold, overvalued it compared to everything
else in the world. For example, suppose a 30 year old worker has accumulated a $40,000 nut.
That will be his treasure, even though he could barely live on it for a year and it wouldn't
carry him through a major medical emergency. He is often willing to sacrifice a lot of
personal, family, and social quality of life to preserve and increase his nut, and in many
cases will also become quite predatory, and political reaction comes with that. And sometimes
he invests it successfully and makes it into a higher class, but often enough his investment
fails and his life is wasted.
There's behavioural finance research that suggests we overvalue something that we own
relative to when we don't. I think it was all focussed on goods or property, but the
rationale would extend to investments too.
Managers of branches of national franchise businesses like McDonald's dependent on cheap
labor too. They are encouraged to identify with the company though unless they move up in the
organization I think they get wise. A very close friend of mine was a Starbucks manager for a
decade or so, and he was eligible to move up to middle manager but found that the New Age
company man zombification required was inhuman and for him impossible.
He cashed out and started his own, better coffee shop, but had to take on too much debt
and is not accumulating much net worth. He things of it as a challenging, rewarding, well
paid job. (H has testified at the legislature in favor of a $15 minimum wage.)
I don't recall W's attempts to privatize Social Security, but I certainly remember Bill
Clinton's. The impeachment scandal prevented him from achieving his goal: Alexander Cockburn
wrote a piece entitled 'How Monica Lewinsky Saved Social Security. '
"One possibility is that investment activities itself–with its focus on material
gain, risk taking, winning and losing–triggers emotions and modes of reasoning that
influence views on issues beyond traditional market activity."
It seems to me that this suggestion raises a deeper issue. Some have argued that the
ultimate success of capitalism (financial, industrial or both) is due to having transformed
human nature such that everyone living within it becomes an excellent calculator of gains and
loss, pleasure and pain.
Is it possible that such a long process of socialization to capitalist logic makes us all
( in many areas of our lives) capitalist calculating machines?
And if so, how could such a system be dramatically changed?
I suspect the catalyst for change would be a substantial market crash that takes the usual
warning:
" Stocks can go down in value as
well as up."
And adds:
"Stocks can also tank down the
pan!"
At that point, the previously unthinkable can rear it's (ugly for some) head!
Good article. I like to call this 'buy in'. Once someone has a stake in stock markets and
the finance industry, e.g. most commonly through their pension (which is becoming mandatory
in many countries, through forced auto-enrolment), the effect described in this article is
triggered.
The antidote to all of this is pretty simple: The ethics of investing.
It's extremely easy to find and point out ethical problems with investments. Ask someone
what pension fund and plan they are invested in, find the pdf listing the individual
companies invested in, and then Google them for ethical issues (usually you don't need to
– you'll already know the bad ones by name).
Then point out the ethical issues to the person, and watch them have a meltdown while they
try to fob off concerns about ethics as passé and childish.
The problem is though, this doesn't provide people with a solution/alternative that is
ethical, so the above is not a perfect antidote to 'buy-in'. People still need to retire at
some point, and those who accumulate money well enough to b able to put money away for
retirement, still want to know what they should do for a sustainable retirement.
I have no idea what to do, myself. I can't depend on political/economic-policy change to
sort this for me. So at some point I'm probably going to have to have a look at how to invest
ethically, even though I feel it is probably impossible.
Last week, a large number of small-time investors drove up the price of GameStop's (GME)
stock a
historic 1,784 percent . But this was no mere spike in some obscure stock. The stock's
price spiked in part as a result of efforts by "an army of smaller investors who have been
rallying on Reddit and elsewhere online to support GameStop's stock and beat back the
professionals." These professionals were hedge fund managers who had shorted GameStop's stock.
In other words, hedge funders were betting billions that GameStop's stock would go down. But
the price went up instead, meaning hedge funds like Melvin Capital (and Citron Research) took
"a significant loss," possibly totaling
$70 billion.
There surely were plenty of insiders on both sides of this deal. Given the complexity of
various schemes employed by seasoned investors, it seems it is very unlikely that this is just
a simple matter of little Davids taking on Wall Street Goliaths.
But it also looks like that's not all that was going on. Had this only been just another
scheme by some Wall Street insiders against some other Wall Street insiders the story would
probably have ended there.
But that's not what happened. Rather, it appears that, for many of the smaller investors who
were involved, much of this "short squeeze" was conducted for the purposes of throwing a monkey
wrench in the plans of Wall Street hedge funds which exist within the rarified world of
billionaires and their friends.
Pro–Wall Street Fearmongering
The reactions to the event from media pundits and other commentators were telling in that
there was clearly fear and outrage over the fact that business as usual on Wall Street wasn't
being enforced. Predictably, much of the reaction to the Reddit rebellion was to label it a
"fiasco," " insanity
," and something sure to leave a "
trail of destruction ." The important thing was to use words designed to make it all look
like the threat to hedge funds represents some sort of grave threat to the overall economy. Jim
Lebenthal at CNBC, for example,
declared the "short-squeeze fiasco is a threat to the proper functioning of financial
markets."
The fearmongering went beyond even the usual places we hear about financial news. On The
View , for example, Meghan McCain delivered the sort of status quo
–defending bromides we've come to expect from her. She insisted the GameStop affair could
spiral into an economy-killing disaster because
If the stock ends up plunging because of this, because of GameStop and Wall Street loses
billions, at a certain point, it will impact stocks like Apple and Disney and stocks that a
lot of average Americans do invest in, and if that happens, average Americans will end up
losing even more money.
Her comment doesn't rally make any sense, and she doesn't seem to have even a rudimentary
understanding of what happened. But her comment delivered the important point: namely, that
anything that causes volatility in the market could be a disaster for every American household.
Translation: and we should all be very, very afraid if something isn't done to keep these
Reddit people --
whom she compared to the Capitol "insurrectionists" -- under control.
Of course, in a functioning and relatively unhampered market, unusual, unexpected things
happen all the time. Entrepreneurial actors do things the incumbent firms and "experts" hadn't
counted on. This leads to "instability" and big swings in prices. This is actual capitalism,
and it doesn't mean the marketplace isn't functioning properly. In fact, it probably means the
marketplace is dynamic and responsive to consumers and other market participants.
But that's not something Wall Street insiders or their pals in Washington like in the modern
era. Although Wall Streeters love to portray themselves as capitalist captains of industry, the
fact is they have very little interest in real, competitive capitalism.
Rather, we live in the era of "too big to fail" (TBTF), when market freedom means nothing
and preserving the portfolios of powerful Wall Street institutions is what really
matters.
Decades of "Too Big to Fail"
It's based on the idea that Wall Street is just too important to the whole economy, and
Washington must intervene to make sure rich guys on Wall Street stay rich. David Stockman
explains this philosophy:
[It is] the notion that the "threat of systemic risk" and a cascading contagion of losses
form the failure of any big Wall Street institution would be so calamitous that it warranted
an exemption from free market discipline.
This goes back at least to the 1994 Mexican bailout -- which was really a bailout of
investors, not of Mexico -- which solidified the process of normalizing huge transfers of
wealth from taxpayers and dollar holders to the Wall Street elite. By then, the "Greenspan put"
was already in place, with the central bank forever poised to embrace more easy money in
pursuit of propping up stock prices. Then came the bailouts of 2008 and the covd-19 avalanche
of easy money -- all of which lopsidedly benefited Wall Street over the rest of the
economy.
This "exemption from free market discipline" is what Wall Street is all about these days.
The financial sector has become accustomed to enjoying bailouts, easy money, and the resulting
financialization which puts ever greater amounts of the US economy into the hands of Wall
Street money managers. The sector is now built on corporate welfare, not "free markets." No
matter what happens, Wall Street expects the deck to be stacked in its favor.
This is why "volatility" has become a bad word, and "stability" is now the name of the game.
It's why Lebenthal thinks anything out of the ordinary is a threat to the "proper functioning
of financial markets." If some free market innovation and inventiveness actually takes place in
some small corner of the marketplace, well, then we're all expected to get very upset.
That's the way Wall Street likes it. ay_arrow 1
Kayman 8 hours ago
The marketing slogan "Too Big Too Fail" conveniently presumed Wall Street was more
important than the Real Economy. A fatal presumption.
Wall Street is a Parasite, backstopped by the Fed, who, in turn, are backstopped by the
Nation. A crumbling nation, where the Fed strangles lending/savings intermediation, and saves
the blood suckers by bleeding the dying core of America.
wmbz 8 hours ago
"The sector is now built on corporate welfare, not "free markets."
This is NOT a new thing. Corporate welfare has been in play for a long, long time. I am
amazed how long it has taken otherwise "smart" people to grasp this fact.
The only difference is, it is out in the glaring sunlight for all to see. TPTB are damn
proud of it!
junction 7 hours ago (Edited)
Except for the involvement of WallStreetBets in temporarily blocking the hedge fund bear
raid on GameStop using "naked" shorts, it is still business as usual on Wall Street. No one
at the SEC does anything but collect a salary, issue press releases and go to lunch as the
Mafia crime families. . . oops, hedge funds run "bust out" operations on businesses. The
lapdog financial press cheered on the hedge funds as they demolished American businesses. The
same gutter journalists who are not yet linking micro-manager Bezos giving up total control
of Amazon right after his cloud service illegally de-platformed Parler for violation of
bogus. made-up community standards. But then, bigger things are afoot. Bolshevik president
Biden just approved deploying B-1 bomber to Norway for the first time. Nuclear bomb carrying
B-1 bombers. Anything to distract people from how rotten things are.
Cognitive rationalist 7 hours ago
Banking financial sector: private profits for me, public losses for thee
gladitsover 8 hours ago remove link
"..the table is tilted folks. The game is rigged.."
George Carlin
Lokiban 8 hours ago
I think it was all about showing to those unawares how corrupt and rigged Wall street
truly is and they have gotten the message out bigtime.
The only question to be asked is who became the proverbial bagholder when average people saw
their 'Bitcoin-Tulipmania' chance to get out with amazing profits and with that breaking the
promise to continue pumping gme till it hits $1500.
One has always to be carefull if these kind of actions are true populism going against the
controllers or is it controllers playing their hideous games again for a reason, like the
great reset.
Greed has never been a good advisor in these times, easy sheoplemoney. It works all the
time..
After the Trump Justice Department
sued Yale following the results of a 2-year Civil Rights investigation which found
"long-standing and ongoing" race-based discrimination, the Biden DOJ just dismissed the case
without explanation .
... ... ...
The Trump DOJ had argued that the Ivy League university had violated federal civil rights
law for "at least 50 years," by favoring Black and Hispanic students over Whites and Asians,
according to
The Hill .
The legal battle represented one of the Trump administration's moves to challenge
affirmative action programs aimed at increasing diversity on campus, which some conservatives
consider unfair and illegal.
Yale, which staunchly defended its admission practices, praised the DOJ's decision to drop
the case in a statement, saying it was "gratified" by the decision. -
The Hill
"Our admissions process has allowed Yale College to assemble an unparalleled student body,
which is distinguished by its academic excellence and diversity," argued the university. "Yale
has steadfastly maintained that its process complies fully with Supreme Court precedent, and we
are confident that the Justice Department will agree."
The Trump administration notably instituted several measures to prevent universities from
considering race as a factor during admissions, even joining a similar lawsuit against Harvard
University.
There is a massive threat to our capital markets, the free market in general, and fair
dealings overall. And no, it's not China. It's a homegrown threat that everyone has been afraid
to talk about.
Until now.
That fear has now turned into rage.
Hordes of new retail investors are banding together to take on Wall Street. They are not
willing to sit back and watch naked short sellers, funded by big banks, manipulate stocks, harm
companies, and fleece shareholders.
The battle that launched this week over GameStop between retail investors and Wall
Street-backed naked short sellers is the beginning of a war that could change everything.
It's a global problem, but it poses the greatest threat to Canadian capital markets, where
naked short selling -- the process of selling shares you don't own, thereby creating
counterfeit or 'phantom' shares -- survives and remains under the regulatory radar because
Broker-Dealers do not have to report failing trades until they exceed 10 days.
This is an egregious act against capital markets, and it's caused billions of dollars in
damage.
Make no mistake about the enormity of this threat: Both foreign and domestic schemers have
attacked Canada in an effort to bring down the stock prices of its publicly listed
companies.
In Canada alone, hundreds of billions of dollars have been vaporized from pension funds and
regular, everyday Canadians because of this, according to Texas-based lawyer James W.
Christian. Christian and his firm Christian Smith & Jewell LLP are heavy hitters in
litigation related to stock manipulation and have prosecuted over 20 cases involving naked
short selling and spoofing in the last 20 years.
"Hundreds of billions have been stolen from everyday Canadians and Americans and pension
funds alike, and this has jeopardized the integrity of Canada's capital markets and the
integral process of capital creation for entrepreneurs and job creation for the economy,"
Christian told Oilprice.com.
The Dangerous Naked Short-Selling MO
In order to [legally] sell a stock short, traders must first locate and secure a borrow
against the shares they intend to sell. A broker who enters such a trade must have assurance
that his client will make settlement.
While "long" sales mean the seller owns the stock, short sales can be either
"covered" or "naked" . A covered short means that the short seller has
already "borrowed" or has located or arranged to borrow the shares when the short sale is made.
Whereas, a naked short means the short seller is selling shares it doesn't own
and has made no arrangements to buy. The seller cannot cover or "settle" in this instance,
which means they are selling "ghost" or "phantom" shares that simply do not exist without their
action.
When you have the ability to sell an unlimited number of non-existent phantom shares in a
publicly-traded company, you then have the power to destroy and manipulate the share price at
your own will.
And big banks and financial institutions are turning a blind eye to some of the accounts
that routinely participate in these illegal transactions because of the large fees they collect
from them. These institutions are actively facilitating the destruction of shareholder value in
return for short term windfalls in the form of trading fees. They are a major part of the
problem and are complicit in aiding these accounts to create counterfeit shares.
The funds behind this are hyper sophisticated and know all the rules and tricks needed to
exploit the regulators to buy themselves time to cover their short positions. According to
multiple accounts from traders, lawyers, and businesses who have become victims of the worst of
the worst in this game, short-sellers sometimes manage to stay naked for months on end, in
clear violation of even the most relaxed securities laws.
The short-sellers and funds who participate in this manipulation almost always finance
undisclosed "short reports" which they research & prepare in advance, before paying
well-known short-selling groups to publish and market their reports (often without any form of
disclosure) to broad audiences in order to further push the stock down artificially. There's no
doubt that these reports are intended to create maximum fear amongst retail investors and to
push them to sell their shares as quickly as possible.
That is market manipulation. Plain and simple.
Their MO is to short weak, vulnerable companies by putting out negative reports that drive
down their share price as much as possible. This ensures that the shorted company in question
no longer has the ability to obtain financing, putting them at the mercy of the same funds that
were just shorting them. After cratering the shorted company's share price, the funds then
start offering these companies financing usually through convertibles with a warrant attachment
as a hedge (or potential future cover) against their short; and the companies take the offers
because they have no choice left. Rinse and Repeat.
In addition to the foregoing madness, brokers are often complicit in these sorts of crimes
through their booking of client shares as "long" when they are in fact "short". This is where
the practice moves from a regulatory gray area to conduct worthy of prison time.
Naked short selling was officially labeled illegal in the U.S. and Europe after the
2008/2009 financial crisis.
Making it illegal didn't stop it from happening, however, because some of the more creative
traders have discovered convenient gaps between paper and electronic trading systems, and they
have taken advantage of those gaps to short stocks.
Still, it gets even more sinister.
According to Christian, "global working groups" coordinate their attacks on specifically
targeted companies in a "Mafia-like" strategy.
Journalists are paid off, along with social media influencers and third-party research
houses that are funded by what amounts to a conspiracy. Together, they collaborate to spread
lies and negative narratives to destroy a stock.
At its most illegal, there is an insider-trading element that should enrage regulators. The
MO is to infiltrate a company through disgruntled insiders or lawyers close to the company.
These sources are used to obtain insider information that is then leaked to damage the
company.
Often, these illegal transactions involve paying off "informants", journalists, influencers,
and "researchers" are difficult to trace because they are made from offshore accounts that are
shut down once the deed is done.
Likewise, the "shorts" disguised as longs can be difficult to trace when the perpetrators
have direct market access to trading systems. These trades are usually undetected until the
trades fail or miss settlement. At that point, the account will move the position to another
broker-dealer and start the process all over again.
The collusion widens when brokers and financial institutions become complicit in
purposefully mislabeling "shorts" as "longs", sweeping the illegal transactions under the rug
and off of regulatory radar.
"Spoofing" and "layering" have also become pervasive techniques to avoid regulator
attention. Spoofing, as the name suggests, involves short sellers creating fake selling
pressure on their targeted stocks to drive prices lower. They accomplish this by submitting
fake offerings in "layers" at different prices to create a mirage.
Finally, these bad actors manage to skirt the settlement system, which is supposed to
"clear" on what is called a T+2 basis . That
means that any failed trades must be bought or dealt with within 3 days. In other words, if you
buy on Monday (your "T" or transaction day), it has to be settled by Wednesday.
Unfortunately, Canadian regulators have a hard time keeping up with this system, and failed
trades are often left outstanding for much longer periods than T+2. These failing trades are
constantly being traded to reset the settlement clock and move the failing trade to the back of
the line. The failures of a centralized system
According to Christian, it can be T+12 days before a failed trade is even brought to the
attention of the IIROC (the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada)
Prime Brokers and Banks are Complicit
This is one of Wall Street's biggest profit center and fines levied against them are merely
a minor cost of doing business.
Some banks are getting rich off of these naked short sellers. The profits off this kind of
lending are tantalizing, indeed. Brokers are lending stocks they don't own for massive profit
and sizable bonuses.
This layer of what many have now called a "criminal organization" is the toughest for
regulators to deal with, regardless of the illegal nature of these activities.
Prime brokers lend cash account shares that are absolutely not allowed to be lent. They lend
them to short-sellers in order to facilitate them in settling their naked shorts.
It's not that the regulators are in the dark on this. They are, in fact, handing out fines,
left and right -- both for illegal lending and for mismarking "shorts" and "longs" to evade
regulatory scrutiny. The problem is that these fines pale in comparison to the profits earned
through these activities.
And banks in Canada in particular are basically writing the rules themselves, recently
making it easier (and legal) to lend out cash account shares.
Nor do law firms have clean hands. They help short sellers bankrupt targeted companies
through court proceedings, a process that eventually leads to the disappearance of evidence of
naked shorts on the bank books.
"How much has been stolen through this fraudulent system globally is anyone's guess," says
Christian, "but the number begins with a 'T' (trillions)."
The list of fines for enabling and engaging in manipulative activity that destroys
companies' stock prices may seem to carry big numbers from the retail investor's perspective,
but they are not even close to being significant enough to deter such actions:
- The SEC charged Citigroup's principal U.S. broker-deal subsidiary in 2011 with misleading
investors about a $1 billion collateralized debt obligation (CDO) tied to the U.S. housing
market. Citigroup had bet against investors as the housing market showed signs of distress. The
CDO defaulted only months later, causing severe losses for investors and a profit of $160
million (just in fees and trading profits). Citigroup paid $285 million to settle these SEC
charges.
- In 2016, Goldman, Sachs & Co. agreed to pay $15 million to settle SEC charges that
its securities lending practices violated federal regulations. To wit: The SEC found that
Goldman Sachs was mismarking logs and allowed customers to engage in short selling without
determining whether the securities could reasonably be borrowed at settlement.
- In 2013, a Charles Schwab subsidiary was found liable by the SEC for a naked short-selling
scheme and fined
$8.2 million .
- The SEC charged two Merrill Lynch entities in 2015 with using "inaccurate data in the
course of executing short sale orders", fining them $11 million.
- And most recently, Canadian Cormark Securities Inc and two others came under the SEC's
radar. On December 21, SEC instituted cease-and-desist orders against
Cormark. It also settled charges against Cormark and two other Canada-based broker deals for
"providing incorrect order-making information that caused an executing broker's repeated
violations of Regulation SHO". According to the SEC, Cormark and ITG Canada caused more than
200 sale orders from a single hedge fund, to the tune of more than $660 million between August
2016 and October 2017, to be mismarked as "long" when they were, in fact, "short" -- a clear
violation of Regulation SHO. Cormark agreed to pay a penalty of $800,000 , while ITG Canada -- one of
the other broker-dealers charged -- agreed to pay a penalty of $200,000. Charging and fining
Cormark is only the tip of the iceberg. The real question is on whose behalf was Cormark making
the naked short sells?
- In August 2020, Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank) was fined
$127 million over civil and criminal allegations in connection with its role in a massive
price-manipulation scheme.
According to one Toronto-based Canadian trader who spoke to Oilprice.com on condition of
anonymity, "traders are the gatekeeper for the capital markets and they're not doing a very
good job because it's lucrative to turn a blind eye." This game is set to end in the near
future, and it is only a matter of time.
"These traders are breaking a variety of regulations, and they are taking this risk on
because of the size of the account," he said. "They have a responsibility to turn these
trades down. Whoever is doing this is breaking regulations [for the short seller] and they know
he is not going to be able to make a settlement. As a gatekeeper, it is their regulatory
responsibility to turn these trades away. Instead, they are breaking the law willfully and with
full knowledge of what they are doing."
"If you control the settlement system, you can do whatever you want," the source
said. "The compliance officers have no teeth because the banks are making big money. They
over-lend the stocks; they lend from cash account shares to cover some of these fails for
instance, if there are 20 million shares they sold 'long', they can cover by borrowing from
cash account shares."
The Naked Truth
In what he calls our "ominous financial reality", Tom C.W. Lin, attorney at law, details how
"millions of dollars can vanish in seconds, rogue actors can halt trading of billion-dollar
companies, and trillion-dollar financial markets can be distorted with a simple click or a few
lines of code".
Every investor and every institution is at risk, writes Lin.
The naked truth is this: Investors stand no chance in the face of naked short sellers. It's
a game rigged in the favor of a sophisticated short cartel and Wall Street giants.
Now, with online trading making it easier to democratize trading, there are calls for
regulators to make moves against these bad actors to ensure that North America's capital
markets remain protected, and retail investors are treated fairly.
The recent GameStop saga is retail fighting back against the shorting powers, and it's a
wonderful thing to see - but is it a futile punch or the start of something bigger? The
positive take away from the events the past week is that the term "short selling" has been
introduced to the public and will surely gather more scrutiny.
Washington is gearing up to get involved. That means that we can expect the full power of
Washington, not just the regulators, to be thrown behind protecting the retail investors from
insidious short sellers and the bankers and prime brokers who are profiting beyond belief from
these manipulative schemes.
The pressure is mounting in Canada, too, where laxer rules have been a huge boon for
manipulators. The US short cartel has preyed upon the Canadian markets for decades as they know
the regulators rarely take action. It is truly the wild west.
Just over a year ago,
McMillan published a lengthy report on the issue from the Canadian perspective, concluding
that there are significant weaknesses in the regulatory regime.
While covered short-selling itself has undeniable benefits in providing liquidity and
facilitating price discovery, and while the Canadian regulators' hands-off approach has
attracted many people to its capital markets, there are significant weaknesses that threaten to
bring the whole house of cards down.
McMillan also noted that "the number of short campaigns in Canada is utterly
disproportionate to the size of our capital markets when compared to the United States, the
European Union, and Australia".
Taking Wall Street's side in this battle, Bloomberg notes that Wall Street
has survived "numerous other attacks" over the centuries, "but the GameStop uprising could mark
the end of an era for the public short", suggesting that these actors are "long-vilified folks
who try to root out corporate wrongdoing".
Bloomberg even attempts to victimize Andrew Left's Citron Research, which -- amid all the
chaos -- has just announced that it has exited the short-selling game after two decades.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Short sellers, particularly the naked variety, are
not helping police the markets and route out bad companies, as Bloomberg suggests. Naked short
sellers are not motivated by moral and ethical reasons, but by profit alone. They attack good,
but weak and vulnerable companies. They are not the saviors of capital markets, but the
destroyers. Andrew Left may be a "casualty", but he is not a victim. Nor likely are the hedge
funds with whom he has been working.
In a petition initiated by Change.org, the petitioners urge the SEC and FINRA to
investigate Left and Citron Research, noting: "While information Citron Research publishes are
carefully selected and distributed in ways that do not break the law at first sight, the SEC
and FINRA have overlooked the fact that Left and Citron gains are a result of distributing
catalysts in an anticipation of substantial price changes due to public response in either
panic, encouragement, or simply a catalyst action wave ride. Their job as a company is to
create the most amount of panic shortly after taking a trading position so they and their
clients can make the most amount of financial gains at the expense of regular investors."
On January 25 th , the
Capital Markets Modernization Taskforce published its final report for Ontario's Minister
of Finance, noting that while naked short selling has been illegal in the United States since
2008, it remains a legal loophole in Canada. The task force is recommending that the Ministry
ban this practice that allows for the short-selling of tradable assets without first borrowing
the security.
The National Coalition Against Naked Short Selling - Failing to Deliver Securities (NCANS),
which takes pains to emphasize that is not in any way against short-selling, notes: "Naked
short-selling transfers the risk exposure and the hedging expense of the derivatives market
makers onto the backs of equity investors, without any corresponding benefit to them. This is
fundamentally unfair, and must stop."
Across North America, the issue is about to reach a fever pitch over GameStop. For once,
regular retail investors have a voice to use against Wall Street. And for once, Washington
appears to be listening. The House and Senate both have hearings
scheduled over the GameStop saga.
Paradoxically, the same company that basically started the retail investor coup -- zero-fee
trading app Robinhood -- is now under fire for pulling the rug out from under the same
democratic movement.
After retail investors joined forces against Wall Street short-sellers to push GameStop
stock from $20 to a high of over $480 in less than a week, Robinhood made the very unpopular
move of instituting
a ban on buying for retail investors. Under the rules, Wall Street could still buy and
sell, but retail investors could only sell. This new band of investors -- which includes pretty
much all of Robinhood's clientele -- are up in arms, with customers now suing. They won't go
away, and they have Washington's ear and Twitter and Reddit's social media power. This is
shaping up to be an uprising.
What happens with GameStop next could end up dictating a new form of capital markets
democracy that levels the playing field and punishes the Mafia-like elements of Wall Street
that have been fleecing investors and destroying companies for years.
Retail investors want to clean up capital markets, and they just might be powerful enough to
do it now. That's a serious wake-up call for both naked short sellers and the investing
public.
"... Today's cultural dominance in much of the South and chunks of the Midwest by boobtoob preachers, Dominationists and the highly heretical oxymoronical "Christian" Zioni$ts can be seen as the afterbirth of cultural Calvinism. Calvinism is Talmudic in its essence and squats at the nexus of what they like to call "Judeo-Christian Civilization". ..."
The author Jafee is confused on Bentham, because Bentham was confused himself, or was a Jewish agent of mammon.
The highlighted terms accord with Benthamian Utilitarianism -- the greatest human happiness of the greatest human number.[1]
Much (but surely not all) pertinent history suggests that Bentham's thinking influenced the construction of the Preamble
The English philosopher Jeremey Bentham (1748-1832) was a defender of usury, which is the opposite of happiness for the greatest
human number.
In 1787 Jeremey Bentham wrote "In Defence of Usury." Bentham was the son of a rich lawyer, and a lawyer himself, not an economist,
which is why he was confused. Bentham created the present mis-definition of usury which prevails to today, so he was very damaging.
"The taking of grater interest than the law allows, or the taking of greater interest than is usual."
Bentham ignored hundreds of years of the Catholic Scholastics work on usury, and also ignored Aristotle. Actually Bentham attacked
Aristotle in order to spread his B.S. Bentham's father was Jewish, and Bentham also ignored the fairly strong Old Testament admonitions
against usury.
Bentham spread the same erroneous B.S. that Calvin did, and both men did enormous damage, and whether by design or confusion
are NOT for the common good. Their connections to our (((friends))) is suspicious.
A Persian Daric is a gold coin. Bentham said this: Though all money in nature is barren, though a Daric would not beget another
Daric yet for a Daric which a man borrowed he might get a ram and couple of ewes and the ewes would probably not be barren (pages
98 to 101 of his screed)
Aristotle and the Catholic Schoolmen clearly showed that it was the Ewes that were fertile, not the coins.
Bentham or Calvin could not read with comprehension and twisted words into new meanings. This twisted language persists in
the brains of modern humans as confusion.
As if every Daric is going to buy an Ewe in order to reproduce.
By 1850 John Whipple wrote "The Importance of Usury Laws – An answer to Jeremey Bentham."
"The purpose of money is to facilitate exchange. It was never intended as an article of trade, as an article possessing an
inherent value in itself, and further than as representative or test of the value of all other articles."
It undoubtedly admits of private ownership, but of an ownership that is not absolute, like the product of individual industry,
but qualified and limited by the special use for which it was designed.
And
The power of money over every other article, arises out of the artificial character given to it by the STATE , AND NOT
OUT OF THE QUALITIES OF THE MATERIAL WHICH IT IS COMPOSED.
Bentham also argued that anti-usury laws were due to prejudice against Jews. Whipple was not frightened by the Jew trick of
anti-semitism claims. Whipple said this in reply, "The real truth is this feeling which he calls prejudice is the result of the
moral instinct of mankind."
Whipple wasn't afraid of calling out the Jew.
In other words, Bentham did not have the moral instinct of mankind, but instead was a usurer, hiding behind his utilitarianism
doctrine.
My view is that the preamble general welfare clause is direct lineage that comes through Benjamin Franklin and his experiences
in the Philadelphia Colony. Franklin was definitely NOT a usurer, and was not confused on money.
The Preamble of the constitution reflects a Liebnizian metaphysic reflected in the notion of the pursuit of happiness, were
are not talking utilitarianism, but a recognition that man is made in the image of the creator, Imago Dei where happiness
reflects an acknowledgement that we are actually creative beings where happiness is a reflection of such creativity, above mere
acquisition of 'property' as the Confederacy devolved the phrase to "Life, Liberty and Property"
@Mefobills eply distorted by Calvinistic Puritanism and its "Chosen People" mythos.
Much of the religious fervor which dominated the American frontier in the latter decades of the 18th Century and early 19th–they
called it "The Great Awakening" -- was infused with the patriarchal form of religiosity as ignited by Calvinistic tropes and memes.
Today's cultural dominance in much of the South and chunks of the Midwest by boobtoob preachers, Dominationists and the
highly heretical oxymoronical "Christian" Zioni$ts can be seen as the afterbirth of cultural Calvinism. Calvinism is Talmudic
in its essence and squats at the nexus of what they like to call "Judeo-Christian Civilization".
My preference is to employ the more objectively truthful description: the "JudieChristie MagickMindfuck.
@Leonard R. Jaffee Anti-semitism card. Bentham even attacked Aristotle for corrupting Christianity.
In Bentham's book, Bentham associates some of the positive attributes of thrift with money lending. Money lending becomes on
the same plane as thrift in his worldview. An here is the coup-de-gras: Compound interest was forbidden in Bentham's day, and
Bentham urged its legalization.
A compound curve for interest is outside of nature, as the claims on nature grow exponentially. Nature does not grow exponentially.
Nature and labor cannot pay the claims, and society polarizes. Jesus started his mission on the Jubilee year, as Jubilees are
coded in the Bible to prevent polarization.
If Bentham wasn't a Jew, he certainly had the Jewish spirit. Bentham was not for the common good.
This book considers the detrimental changes that have occurred to the institution of the university, as a result of the withdrawal
of state funding and the imposition of neoliberal market reforms on higher education. It argues that universities have lost their
way, and are currently drowning in an impenetrable mush of economic babble, spurious spin-offs of zombie economics, management-speak
and militaristic-corporate jargon. John Smyth provides a trenchant and excoriating analysis of how universities have enveloped themselves
in synthetic and meaningless marketing hype, and explains what this has done to academic work and the culture of universities – specifically,
how it has degraded higher education and exacerbated social inequalities among both staff and students. Finally, the book explores
how we might commence a reclamation. It should be essential reading for students and researchers in the fields of education and sociology,
and anyone interested in the current state of university management.
Quotes
If we are to unmask what is going on within and to universities, then we need to look forensically at the forces at work and
the pathological and dysfunctional effects that are placing academic lives in such jeopardy -- hence my somewhat provocative-sounding
title 'the toxic university 5 .
One of the most succinct explanations of what is animating me in writing this book was put by Lucal (2015) -- echoing arguably
the most significant sociologist ever. Charles Wright Mills (1971 [1959]) in his The sociological imagination -- when she said:
...neoliberalism is a critical public issue influencing apparently private troubles of college [university] students and teachers,
(p. 3)
... ... ...
Pathological Organizational Dysfunction
Just on 40 years ago, for all of my sins, I studied 'organizational theory and 'management behaviour' as part of my doctorate
in educational administration. I cannot remember encountering the term, but in light of mv subsequent four decades of working
in universities around the world, I think I have encountered a good deal of what 'pathological organisational dysfunction" (POD)
means in practice. I regard it is an ensemble term for a range of practices that fall well within the ambit of the 'toxic university
5 . The short explanation is that what I am calling POD has become a syndrome within which the toxic university has
become enveloped in its unquestioning embrace of the tenets of neoliberalism -- marketization, competition, audit culture, and
metrification. In other words. POD has become a major emblematic ingredient of the toxic university, which as Ferrell (2011) points
out looks fairly unproblematic on the surface:
Higher education on the corporate model imagines students as consumers, choosing between knowledge products and brands. It
imagines itself liberating the university from the dictates of the state/tradition/aristocratic self-replication, and putting
it in the hands of its democratic stakeholders. It therefore naturally subscribes to the general management principles and practices
of global corporate culture. These principles -- transparency, accountability, efficiency -- are hard to argue with in principle.
(p. 166 emphasis in original)
What is not revealed in this glossy reading of neoliberalism is the way in which it does its work, or its effects, as Ferrell
(2011) puts it in relation to universities, the way it has 'wrecked something worthwhile" (p. 181).
John Gatto. an award-winning teacher of the year in New York, comes closest to what I mean by POD in his description of'psychopathic
5 organizations. Gatto (2001) says that the term psychopathic, as applied to organizations, while it might conjure
up lurid images of deranged people running amuck, really means something quite different; he invokes the term to refer to people
'without consciences' (p. 303). The way he put it is that:
4.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for anyone working in a UK university today.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 30, 2019
Reviewers of this book seem to conflate the price of, and access to, this book in an ironic context. This isn't fair as this
is very much a book written from a formal academic perspective. In that sense the book is probably priced reasonably.
However, as I don't work in this field I found that I had to read around some of the topics in order to get a deeper understanding
of the issues raised by the book. So one thing I think that author could do is to almost re-write the book in a more "journalistic"
sense and this would make it more accessible to a wider audience.
As it stands, however, this book is right on the money. Reading almost every page brought from me nods of agreement at familiar
practices from university "leaders". This book is therefore absolutely correct in its findings and this then makes it profoundly
depressing as the book describes, in my view, the dismantling of the university system as we know it. Every chapter details things
I have witnessed or heard about from other universities. The "rock star" academics section, usually focusing on "dynamic" researchers,
is the highlight as I know enough people who fit the descriptions given - people who would sell their mothers to get a grant or
get slightly higher up the greasy pole.
The critique of university leadership, marketing functions and financial (mis)management are also spot-on.
Overall, get past the formal academic nature of this book (it is not a book designed for a wide audience, which is a pity)
and it is excellent, timely and deeply depressing.
PHILIP TAYLOR5.0 out of 5 stars
Forensic Analysis of The Toxic Neo-Liberal University Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 19, 2019
A brilliant exposition of the toxic neo-liberal University
"Schools teach to the test, depriving children of a rounded and useful education."
Boy do they. I work in Business/IT training and as the years have rolled on I and every colleague I can think of have noticed
more and more people coming to courses that they are unfit for. Not because they are stupid, but because they have been taught
to be stupid.
So used to being taught to the test that they are afraid to ask questions. Increasingly I get asked "what's the right way to
do...", usually referring to situation in which there is no right way...
I had the great pleasure of watching our new MD describe his first customer-facing project, which was a disaster, but they
"learned" from it. I had to point out to him that I teach the two disciplines involved - businesss analysis and project management
- and if he or his team had attended any of the courses - all of which are free to them - they would have learned about the issues
they would face, because (astonishingly) they are well-known.
I fear that these incurious adult children are at the bottom of Brexit, Trump and many of the other ills that afflict us. Learning
how to do things is difficult and sometimes boring.
Much better to wander in with zero idea of what has already been done and repeat the mistakes of the past. I see the future
as a treadmill where the same mistakes are made repetitively and greeted with as much surprise as if they had never happened before.
This is a good, short book laying out many of the ways that the market has crept up on us and made our lives smaller.
Konczal provides necessary pushback to the neoliberal project, showing just everything that we have lost as the forces of capital
decided that the Great Society, the New Deal, and the Progressive Era were bridges too far against the corporate form. 8 people
found this helpful
Konczal's book is a compact history of how Americans have tried to remove the constraints imposed on them by the market. Konczal
questions the conventional idea that the market is solely a mechanism that expands choices and opportunity. As he shows, markets
can, and have, achieved precisely the opposite outcomes -- restricting choices and preventing people from having options. In many
instances, Americans successfully reclaimed the liberty they had lost to the market by organizing or taking state action. He thus
makes a more general case for ensuring that societal outcomes are more consistent with Berlin's notion of positive liberty. Libertarians
will not appreciate the book's conclusions.
The book starts with the Homestead Act and ends with the decision to terminate virtually free higher education in the 1960s
and 1970s. In between, he covers a lot of historical ground -- the effort to reduce working hours in the 19th century, the Wagner
Act and Social Security during the New Deal, and the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid, among other things. Despite the book's
ambitious scope, you can read it in a sitting, which is quite a feat. Either Konczal is a naturally efficient writer, or he has
a good editor.
There is one topic I would've liked to see treated in more detail -- finance. Konczal gives the best concise summary of the
economic ideas behind the ideological shift toward neoliberalism I have read. Still, the liberalization of finance during the
past 50 years and its farreaching implications receive a cursory discussion. In an interview, Konczal said he wanted to include
more discussion of this topic and something on the gold standard but didn't see how to incorporate it. In my view, it would have
fit quite naturally into the chapter "Free Economy."
But this is a quibble. Overall, the book is both well researched and well written. It sheds light on an important and timely
question -- to what extent should Americans permit themselves to be subject to market-driven outcomes? The book shows that, historically,
Americans have tried to implement changes that enabled them to live freer lives by organizing and taking political action. Not
all those changes were successful but many were.
For a deeper dive into these and related questions, read this book along with Polanyi's "The Great Transformation," Robin's
"The Reactionary Mind," and Slobodian's "The Globalists." 4 people found this helpful
Freedom from the Market remakes our understanding of American politics. By drawing intelligently on forgotten aspects of American
history, Konczal makes it easier for Americans to understand that things they might not believe are possible in America must be,
because they have been. He rescues moments such as the WWII government run daycare centers, or the use of the power of the federal
state to bring through the integration of Southern hospitals, from the enormous condescension of posterity. And notably, although
he doesn't dwell on this point, many of these changes began at moments that seem shittier and more despairing than our own.
So what Konczal is doing is neither to provide a standard linear history, nor yet a policy textbook. Instead, he is claiming
an alternative American tradition, that has not looked to the market as its apotheosis, but instead has sought to free Americans
from its random vagaries. His history explains how Americans have responded collectively to the real and expressed needs of publics,
who have organized to fight for them. And it does so in the plain language that he mentions in passing was necessary to allow
ordinary people to organize and understand who was trying to stop them.
Konczal's fundamental claim is that people who link freedom to markets miss out on much of the story. Equally important is
a notion of freedom <em>from</em> markets, "rooted in public programs that genuinely serve people and checking market dependency."
This notion goes back much further in time than the New Deal. The nineteenth century is sometimes depicted as a reign of laissez-faire,
both by those who admired it and deplored it. Konczal argues instead that there was an emerging sense of public needs - and how
the government might provide for them. For example, this helps us understand the provision of public land through the Homestead
Act and the land grant universities.
The nineteenth century notion of the public was clearly horribly flawed and contradictory - it did not include slaves or Native
Americans. Some, like Horace Greeley ended up fleeing these contradictions into the welcoming arms of free market absolutism.
But within these contradictions lay possibilities that opened up in the twentieth century. Konczal builds, for example on Eric
Schickler's work to argue that as the New Deal began to provide concrete benefits to African Americans, it created a new conduit
between them and the Democratic Party, breaking up the old coalition that had held Jim Crow together.
Konczal explains how change happens - through social movements and the state:
While the Supreme Court can be effective at holding back change and enforcing already existing power structures, it is actually
very weak at creating new reform itself. It controls no funding and is dependent on elite power structures to carry out its
decisions. What really creates change is popular mobilization and legislative changes.
He also draws on historians like Quinn Slobodian, to describe how modern Hayekians have sought to "encase" the market order
in institutions and practices that are hard to overturn. Property rights aren't the foundation of liberty, as both nineteenth
century jurists and twentieth century economists would have it. They are a product of the choices of the state, and as such intensely
political.
This allows Konczal to turn pragmatism against the Hayekians. Hayek's notion of spontaneous order is supposed to be evolutionary.
But if there is a need to to provide collective goods for people that cannot be fulfilled through voluntarism, the Hayekian logic
becomes a brutal constraint on adaptation.
The efforts of Hayekians to enforce binding legal constraints, to cripple the gathering of the collective knowledge that can
guide collective action, to wink at legal doctrines intended to subvert social protections against the market; all these prevent
the kinds of evolutionary change that are necessary to respond to changing circumstances. Konczal makes it clear that Oliver Wendell
Holmes was no left-winger - but his criticisms of the rigid and doctrinaire laissez-faire precepts of his colleagues rings true.
Their "willingness to use a very specific understanding of economics to override law writes a preferential understanding of economics
into the constitution itself." Although Konczal wrote this book before the current crisis, he describes Holmes as mentioning compulsory
vaccination laws as one of the ways in which government interference in private decisions can have general social benefits. The
wretched contortions of libertarians over the last several months, and their consequences for human welfare in states such as
North Dakota illustrate the point, quite brutally.
What Konczal presses for is a very different notion of freedom. This doesn't deny the benefits of markets, but it qualifies
them. In Konczal's words, "markets are great at distributing things based on people's willingness to pay. But there are some goods
that should be distributed by need." Accepting this point entails the necessity of keeping some important areas of life outside
the determining scope of markets. Furthermore, people's needs change over time, as societies and markets change. Konczal's framework
suggests the need for collective choice to figure out the best responses to these changes, and a vibrant democratic politics,
in which the state responds to the expressed needs of mobilized publics as the best way to carry out these choices.
All this makes the book sound more like an exercise in political theory than it is. You need to read the book itself, if you
really to get the good stuff - the stories, the examples, and the overall narrative that Konczal weaves together. <em>Freedom
from the Market</em> has the potential to be a very important book, focusing attention on the contested, messy but crucially important
intersection between social movements and the state. It provides a set of ideas that people on both sides of that divide can learn
from, and a lively alternative foundation to the deracinated technocratic notions of politics, in which good policy would somehow,
magically, be politically self supporting, that has prevailed up until quite recently. Recommended.
Covid-19 exposed some warts of neoliberalism in higher education... They want to keep those lucrative international students
flooding in, after all.
Notable quotes:
"... We align our identities with our institutions and think in very a short-term, metric-based fashion, seeing "success" (for instance) in terms of student recruitment (tuition fees paid in). Moreover, we're encouraged above all to be global in outlook: we look forward to our perennially "busy" international conference seasons and we emphasize the global and the transnational over the merely local or national ..."
"... our identities as academics are unavoidably embedded in a form of neoliberal hyperglobalisation. We rely on unrestricted flows of (wealthy) bodies across borders. ..."
"... We see this form of globalisation, and the benefits that accrue to us and our institutions from it, as a form of moral necessity : something it isn't possible even to argue against in good faith. Hence our loud assent to principles like open borders and always-on mass migration. ..."
"... Our commitment to the global as a form of moral mission has left us completely unprepared for what's currently unfolding. We are utterly unused to considering the material constraints of the economy our livelihoods depend on; that globalisation might come back to bite us; that the very aircraft that carry us across the world to conference destinations and field work sites would one day turn off the spigot of endlessly mobile bodies our careers and identities depend on. ..."
"... In this respect, I think of this post over at Crooked Timber, where John Quiggin (an economist I have a great deal of respect for) simply cannot bring himself to confront the possibility that the open borders dream might be dead. ..."
"... But the fact that the "export education" model was a disastrous wrong turn will take much longer to be accepted, I think, because of the widespread commitment I've been talking about here to the principle of the global as a form of moral necessity. ..."
we've had a Minsky-like process operating on a society-wide basis: as daily risks have declined, most people have blinded
themselves to what risk amounts to and where it might surface in particularly nasty forms. And the more affluent and educated
classes, who disproportionately constitute our decision-makers, have generally been the most removed.
I see something very similar happening in academia. We align our identities with our institutions and think in very a short-term,
metric-based fashion, seeing "success" (for instance) in terms of student recruitment (tuition fees paid in). Moreover, we're
encouraged above all to be global in outlook: we look forward to our perennially "busy" international conference seasons and we
emphasize the global and the transnational over the merely local or national (denigrated as narrow, provincial, and ideologically
suspect).
We like to see ourselves as mobile subjects, bodies in constant motion, our minds Romantically untethered from the confines
of any one nation state.
So our identities as academics are unavoidably embedded in a form of neoliberal hyperglobalisation. We rely on unrestricted
flows of (wealthy) bodies across borders. Our institutions (or many of them) have become dependent on international students
and their superior fee-paying ability compared with merely "domestic students."
We might agree in principle with ideas of a GND,
say, or take an ecocritical approach to a novel or a play, but we're certainly not going to cut back on the number of international
conferences we attend. Indeed, many of us go further.
We see this form of globalisation, and the benefits that accrue to us and our institutions from it, as a form of moral
necessity : something it isn't possible even to argue against in good faith. Hence our loud assent to principles like open borders
and always-on mass migration. We have to keep those lucrative international students flooding in, after all. (Not that we'd
ever put it in terms as crassly material as that; after all, we don't work in university administration .)
Our commitment to the global as a form of moral mission has left us completely unprepared for what's currently unfolding.
We are utterly unused to considering the material constraints of the economy our livelihoods depend on; that globalisation might
come back to bite us; that the very aircraft that carry us across the world to conference destinations and field work sites would
one day turn off the spigot of endlessly mobile bodies our careers and identities depend on.
Hence the reason why a lot of my colleagues are so lost right now. They're so used to living on a purely symbolic (or moral-symbolic)
level that the materiality of this virus and its consequences seems like a crude insult. Many stubbornly hold on to their old
commitments, unwilling to admit that the world might have changed.
In this respect, I think of this post over at
Crooked Timber, where John Quiggin (an economist I have a great deal of respect for) simply cannot bring himself to confront the
possibility that the open borders dream might be dead.
Where we go from here, I have no idea. But the fact that international and Erasmus students might be gone for the foreseeable
future, and the major implications this will have for the financial viability or our universities, seems to be slowly sinking
in.
But the fact that the "export education" model was a disastrous wrong turn will take much longer to be accepted, I think,
because of the widespread commitment I've been talking about here to the principle of the global as a form of moral necessity.
"As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the
citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel." ~Grover Cleveland
(about that other gilded
age)
"There is fraud at the heart of Wall Street -- deliberate intellectual, business, and political deception. Charles Ferguson is in
hot pursuit.
Inside
Job
shook
up the cozy world of academic finance.
Predator
Nation
should
stir prosecutors into action. And if we fail to reform our political system, you can say goodbye to American democracy." --
Simon
Johnson
,
coauthor of
White
House Burning
and
professor at MIT Sloan School of Management
"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of
opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population.
Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged)
industries. These policies are implemented and praised by these groups' willing servants, namely the increasingly
bought-and-paid-for leadership of America's political parties, academia, and lobbying industry.
If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry,
uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also
eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism."
4.0 out of 5 stars
Scary
read. Frightening true! HIGHLY recommend!!
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2017
Verified Purchase
Just finished this page turner. Wow! Talk about an enlightening read.
Scary too and worse, yet it's so spot on. I always knew that most businesses, especially those dealing with
money are crooked, selfish and good for nothing greedy souls. This book proves my point and more. Personally, I
never heard of this book or the author until my brother recommended it to me in passing. It scared the hell out
of him. Naturally, I had to see what book could do that. After reading it, I understand why.
Not only are the financial industries greedy and crooked but so is our governments and both Democrats and
Republicans. The housing crash of 2008 wasn't the beginning of our problems but the culmination of years of
greed, shady deals and lack of accountability for the financial industry. President George W. Bush was
complicit in protecting the finance industry not the people of America. Worse yet was President Barack Obama.
It's all in there: every dirty little detail. If you think your broker, banker or financial advisor has your
best interest at heart, this couldn't show how very wrong you are. Is the book perfect? No. Is the U.S.
Government or any other world government perfect? Hell no. should we be very afraid of how our bankers are?
Yes.
This is a book I enjoyed reading because I already knew about most of it already just by observing and never
trusting anyone anyway. I highly recommend it. I loved the fact that the author wasn't afraid to speak the
truth. That is always refreshing. I look forward to reading more by Charles Ferguson.
Overall, an informative and compelling read. Everyone whether interested in finances or note needs to read this
book. Seriously!
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OMG!
You owe it to yourself to read what is really going on!
5.0 out of 5 stars
OMG!
You owe it to yourself to read what is really going on!
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2014
Verified Purchase
Definitely an eye opener. If I was cynical before, this one pushed me
over the edge. Banks and large corporations in collusion with the government and zero accountability. Our
newspapers, again, did a disservice to the public. It is one thing to talk about the mortgage industry going
under, it is quite another to understand what the banks did to facilitate a world-wide recession with NO
prosecutions. I was particularly appalled that the corporations paid the politicians who voted to remove any
restraints on the banks. Then the banks created derivative markets they knew would fail. Moreover, the bank
made millions of dollars by betting the derivative market would fail. Yet, when the bubble burst, these same
people were standing at the government door (that they paid for) with their hand out for a taxpayer bail-out.
The CEOs were rewarded for their bad behavior with millions of dollars in bonuses and no repercussions for
bilking millions of victims or for causing a world wide downward money spiral.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Long
on diagnosis, short on solution
Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2012
Verified Purchase
As a fan of "Inside Job" I was eager to read Predator Nation, which
minces no words in designating the financial industry as "criminal" abetted by the political establishment,
whether Republican or Democrat. The other reviews here lay out what this book accomplishes, to which I would
only underscore the powerful and no-holds-barred approach of Ferguson to establishing responsibility and
labeling it "criminal" as well as "predatory."
Beyond critique of Wall Street and the political "duopoly," the book widely supports the thesis that something
is terribly wrong in America, a cultural malaise rooted in economic thievery and imbalance empowering the
wealthy, and rendering today's America into the equivalent of what we used to call "a banana republic." Charles
Ferguson pulls no punches in laying out his case here.
But, as another review has pointed out, the ending is disappointing. Charles has laid into Obama as part of the
"duopoly" governing America, meaning diverging only on fractious social issues but essentially united in
matters of finance and government, including war. At one point he labels Obama's weak commentary on controlling
Wall Street "horse [manure]" and then at another point says "he [Obama] screwed us." In his concluding five
page chapter which has an "oh, well" feel to it he tells us "hold your nose and vote for him [Obama], as I
will."
With this and various commentaries we seem to be very long on laying out damages and ascribing responsibility,
but have almost nothing to say on what to do other than repair to the lounge on the Titanic and have another
whiskey, hoping somebody will come along with a bright idea or two at some point. If more energy were put into
finding answers, as with ascribing blame, maybe we could be more hopeful.
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9 people found this helpful
"... "I am also reading the the next focus of the little people investors is the highly manipulated precious metals markets.....I love the smell of burning Wall Street in the morning." ..."
"... Back in the Oughts when the fraudulent mortgages were grossly inflating Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), there were many instances of naked short selling to keep honest REITs down, activities I learned firsthand. We formed a shareholders organization that lobbied the SEC to enforce its laws but to no avail--the regulators were well captured and did zip. ..."
"... There's short selling, and then there's naked short selling. Why do the markets require naked short selling? If those hedge funds already owned the stocks that they are selling short, they would not be in such trouble now. ..."
Early this week a few amateur stock trading nerds decided to promote a stock that was heavily shortened by certain hedge funds.
The idea was to raise the stock price of Game Stop Corp., a vendor for computer games, by having lots of small stock traders to
buy into it. The hedge fund that shortened the stock, and thereby bet on a dropping stock price, would then make huge losses while
the many small buyers would potentially profit.
Instead of greed, this latest bout of speculation, and especially the extraordinary excitement at GameStop, has a different
emotional driver: anger. The people investing today are driven by righteous anger, about generational injustice, about what
they see as the corruption and unfairness of the way banks were bailed out in 2008 without having to pay legal penalties later,
and about lacerating poverty and inequality. This makes it unlike any of the speculative rallies and crashes that have preceded
it.
The movement was successful. The stock price of Game Stop Corp. rose from some $10 to over $400 within just a few days. The
short seller
had
to take cover under a larger firm:
Hedge fund Melvin Capital closed out its short position in GameStop on Tuesday after taking huge losses as a target of the
army of retail investors. Citadel and Point72 have infused close to $3 billion into Gabe Plotkin's hedge fund to shore up its
finances.
I'm shocked! Absolutely shocked to see that the game of finance is rigged!!!!/snark
There have not been market fundamentals since the beginning of financialization in 1971 when money became fiat instead of gold
backed. I find it interesting that it has taken 50 years for the cancer of financialization to fully compromise the host. It will
be interesting to see where this goes from here.
I think the speed of decline of empire is speeding up as noted by the increase in international investment in China.
I am also reading the the next focus of the little people investors is the highly manipulated precious metals markets.....I
love the smell of burning Wall Street in the morning.
"I am also reading the the next focus of the little people investors is the highly manipulated precious metals markets.....I
love the smell of burning Wall Street in the morning."
Is Max Keiser going after the silver market again? I bet he was posting on r/Wallstreetbets to stir things up!
Back in the Oughts when the fraudulent mortgages were grossly inflating Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), there were many
instances of naked short selling to keep honest REITs down, activities I learned firsthand. We formed a shareholders organization
that lobbied the SEC to enforce its laws but to no avail--the regulators were well captured and did zip.
We even ran full pages ads in the NY Times and WaPost to add visibility to our justifiable outrage, which was well proven when
the bubble burst.
But Obama didn't do his job and enforce the law, and the entire mess is far worse now. This episode epitomizes the amazing
amounts of corruption masquerading as well regulated markets and an equitable financial system.
I support Hudson's debt forgiveness for the main reason it will bankrupt the debt holders--the Financial Parasites--who are
also the beneficiaries of the corrupt system; and with their destruction, will allow for the rise of the Public Financial Utility
that will restore law and order to that realm of the economy. Yes, this must be seen as yet another episode of the longstanding
Class War, one of the most brazen ever.
There's short selling, and then there's naked short selling. Why do the markets require naked short selling? If those hedge
funds already owned the stocks that they are selling short, they would not be in such trouble now.
Citadel and Point72 have infused close to $3 billion into Gabe Plotkin's hedge fund to shore up its finances.
-b
How Robinhood was rigged:
Robinhood sells its orderflow to Citadel for execution. Citadel then chiselled the retail investor for pennies per trade by frontrunning (think high freq trading) before execution
of retail order, inflating the price and cheating the customer.
Citadel bailed out Citron, essentially inheriting the short position. Citadel then threatened Robinhood with refusing payment for orderflow
he Great American Middle Class has stood meekly by while the New Nobility stripmined $50
trillion from the middle and working classes. As this RAND report documents, $50 trillion has
been siphoned from labor and the lower 90% of the workforce to the New Nobility and their
technocrat lackeys who own the vast majority of the capital: Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018
.
Why has the Great American Middle Class meekly accepted their new role as debt-serfs and
powerless peasants in a Neofeudal Economy ruled by the New Nobility of Big Tech / monopolies /
cartels / financiers? The basic answer is the New Nobility's PR has been so persuasive and
ubiquitous: soaring inequality and Neofeudalism has nothing to do with us, it's just the
natural result of technology and globalization--forces nobody can resist. Sorry about your
debt-serfdom, but hey, your student loan payment is overdue, so it's the rack for you.
The recent Foreign Affairs article referenced here last week Monopoly
Versus Democracy (paywalled) describes the net result of the economic propaganda that the
stripmining of the working and middle classes was ordained and irresistible: Today, Americans
tend to see grotesque accumulations of wealth and power as normal. That's how far we've
fallen:
"As the journalist Barry Lynn points out in his book
Liberty from All Masters: The New American Autocracy vs. the Will of the People , the
robber barons shared with today's high-tech monopolists a strategy of encouraging people to
see immense inequality as a tragic but unavoidable consequence of capitalism and
technological change. But as Lynn shows, one of the main differences between then and now is
that, compared to today, fewer Americans accepted such rationalizations during the Gilded
Age. Today, Americans tend to see grotesque accumulations of wealth and power as normal. Back
then, a critical mass of Americans refused to do so, and they waged a decades-long fight for
a fair and democratic society." (emphasis added)
The bottom 90% of the U.S. economy has been decapitalized : debt has been substituted for
capital . Capital only flows into the increasingly centralized top tier, which owns and profits
from the rising tide of debt that's been keeping the bottom 90% afloat for the past 20
years.
As I've often observed here, globalization and financialization have richly rewarded the top
0.1% and the top 5% technocrat class that serves the New Nobility's interests. Everyone else
has been been reduced to debt-serfs and peasants who now rely on lotteries and luck to get
ahead: playing the stock market casino or hoping their mortgaged house in an urban sprawl on
the Left or Right coasts doubles in value, even as the entire value proposition for living in a
congested urban sprawl vanishes.
America has no plan to reverse this destructive tide of Neofeudal Pillage. Our leadership's
"plan" is benign neglect : just send a monthly stipend of bread and circuses (the technocrat
term is Universal Basic Income UBI) to all the disempowered, decapitalized households, urban
and rural, so they can stay out of trouble and not bother the New Nobility's pillaging of
America and the planet.
There's a lot of bright and shiny PR about rebuilding infrastructure and the Green New Deal,
but our first question must always be: cui bono , to whose benefit? How much of the spending
will actually be devoted to changing the rising imbalances between the haves and the have-nots,
the ever-richer who profit from rising debt and the ever more decapitalized debt-serfs who are
further impoverished by rising debt?
As I explain in my book
A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet , people don't want to
just get by on UBI , they want an opportunity to acquire capital in all its forms, an
opportunity to contribute to their communities, to make a difference, to earn respect and
pride.
That our "leadership" reckons bread and circuses is what the stripmined bottom 90% want is
beyond pathetic. The middle class has meekly accepted the self-serving claim of the New
Nobility that the $50 trillion transfer of wealth was inevitable and beyond human intervention.
But once the stock market and housing casinos collapse, the last bridge to getting
ahead--high-risk gambling-- will fall into the abyss, and the middle class will have to face
their servitude and powerlessness.
That's how Neofeudal systems collapse: the tax donkeys and debt-serfs finally revolt and
start demanding the $50 trillion river of capital take a new course.
In the last month or so, they have stopped even trying to hide that:
1) the internet is rigged (free speech only for those who say what is approved
narrative),
2) elections are rigged (they openly admit that "all elections have fraud," and the
defending point is that there isn't enough fraud to change the result, or so they say without
investigation);
3) the government is rigged (lots of debate about whether to send a few bucks to people
forced out of work by COVID restrictions, no debate needed on how much to give banks and
defense contractors); and now
4) the markets are rigged (if you figure out a way to beat Wall Street, we simply change
the rules).
Most Americans already knew these things, but felt vaguely conspiratorial in thinking so.
TPTB no longer care what we think or what we know. They are taking down the curtains. They
own this place and if we don't like it and even talk about doing something about it, then
they will label you a terrorist and it's off to Gitmo with you.
Dear Old Hedge 2 hours ago
"That's how Neofeudal systems collapse: the tax donkeys and debt-serfs finally rebel and
start demanding the $50 trillion river of capital take a new course."
Most of the middle class is now run by .Gov employees who are members of big unions. They
will never revolt - they got it to good. Most are Feminazi's who vote Demshevik. &
DFL.
The image above is really their cross and angry husbands who are now powerless.
LetThemEatRand 4 hours ago (Edited)
By design, and the classic model of feudalism. It's why places like present day China or
North Korea have such a huge military and government sector. It's why the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia gives just enough to its citizens that they are comfortable. It's why Rome held
together for as long as it did. Many other examples. Feudalism is the natural order of things
according to history. We have been living through an anomaly that TPTB intend to fix.
NoDebt 3 hours ago
globalization and financialization have richly rewarded the top 0.1% and the top 5%
technocrat class that serves the New Nobility's interests
Like I've said before, "Small number of rich, large number of poor and just enough middle
class to service the rich. As most societies have been throughout most of human history. The
20th century in the US was the anomaly, not the norm."
sgt_doom 1 hour ago remove link
ROFL --- pressure "elected officials" from rigged elections!
You funny . . . .
Whenwas the last time an electsd official responded to me?
Oh yeah, Sen. Canteell about 14 years ago say that she would continue to support the
offshoring of the American medica industry along with the Gates Foundation.
SDShack 13 minutes ago
I've been saying it for YEARS here. New Feudal World Order has been the design all along.
People are finally starting to understand. The solution was always Drone Davos.
chunga 4 hours ago
The battle between capital and labor has been a complete wipeout, made possible by
mountains of pure, solid fraud.
daveO 4 hours ago
It was benign neglect 30 years ago! It's been active destruction since China's admittance
into the WTO with the help of the Clintons.
Mamachief 3 hours ago
David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger.
When Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller met with Zhou Enlai in China in 1973 -- just
after President Richard Nixon had visited China establishing official relations -- an
understanding was reached whereby the U.S. would supply industrial capital and know-how to
China.
BEMUSED-CONFUSED 1 hour ago
And Nixon never realized that he sold out the US.
George Bayou 4 hours ago
Why has the Great American Middle Class meekly accepted their new role as debt-serfs and
powerless peasants in a Neofeudal Economy ruled by the New Nobility of Big Tech /
monopolies / cartels / financiers?
I'll tell you why, people don't realize what goes on behind the scenes because they are so
far removed from it and the big corps and politicians keep it that way.
If you don't know you're getting screwed, then you can't fight it.
austinmilbarge 4 hours ago
Most US citizens are debt slaves. Miss one paycheck and it's lights out. They don't have
time to keep up with how Wall Street cheats.
My Days Are Getting Fewer 2 hours ago
I used to subscribe to the author. No longer do so. Charles, stop writing and get a job or
invest in a business.
The headline is false. The Middle Class will not revolt. And, as a group, it no longer
exists.
I am baffled by the understanding that there are no super-rich people, who give a damn
about the destruction of their Country. My grandchildren and their kids will never enjoy the
fundamental freedoms that I knew growing up in high school in the 1950s and maturing in the
1960s through 2000.
In the last 20 years, everything, that was held sacred in this Country, has been uprooted.
Fraud rules, with decency be damned.
I got more than enough money and 30 more years at best.
Money is not a substitute for freedom.
Only hopeless persons will undertake corrective action.
Cloud9.5 3 hours ago
The middle class works for government. They are cops, teachers, code enforcement officers,
judges. The list goes on and on. The entrepreneur middle class has been put out of
business.
Wayne 2 hours ago
Dear Charles,
I am in the smallest room in the house. Your clickbait book promo is in front of me. Soon,
it shall be behind me.
A few words of advice, if I may (and even if I may not, I'm going to anyhow):
Do not use words you found in a thesaurus in book titles.
teleology
[ˌtelēˈäləjē,
ˌtēlēˈäləjē]
NOUN
philosophy
the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated
causes.
theology
the doctrine of design and purpose in the material world.
Just makes you look like a pompous, officious, condescending ***.
Oh, that's right, you are.
Like Klaus Schwaub's little treatise, COVID-19 The Great Reset , your book is probably not
wroth reading and should not have been written. There is such a thing in this world as
masturbating, but you and Klaus should stroke your little peenees to **** instead of stroking
your egos with the English language.
Nobody actually needs to know what you think about anything. You could make the world a
better place by driving an Uber, growing guavas, or praying.
Thanks for playing, but the pleas for you to stop are growing louder.
"... By Casey Mulligan, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago and former Chief Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Originally published at VoxEU ..."
"... The spread of COVID-19 in the US has prompted extraordinary steps by individuals and institutions to limit infections. Some worry that 'the cure is worse than the disease' and these measures may lead to an increase in deaths of despair. Using data from the US, this column estimates how many non-COVID-19 excess deaths have occurred during the pandemic. Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds the total of official COVID-19 deaths and a normal number of deaths from other causes. Certain characteristics suggest the excess are deaths of despair. Social isolation may be part of the mechanism that turns a pandemic into a wave of deaths of despair; further studies are needed to show if that is the case and how. ..."
Yves here. While this paper does a good job of compiling and analyzing data about Covid
deaths and excess mortality, and speculating about deaths of despair, I find one of its
assumptions to be odd. It sees Covid-related deaths of despair as mainly the result of
isolation. In the US, I would hazard that economic desperation is likely a significant factor.
Think of the people who had successful or at least viable service businesses: hair stylists,
personal trainers, caterers, conference organizers. One friend had a very successful business
training and rehabbing pro and Olympic athletes. They've gone from pretty to very well situated
to frantic about how they will get by.
While Mulligan does mention loss of income in passing in the end, it seems the more
devastating but harder to measure damage is loss of livelihood, thinking that your way of
earning a living might never come back to anything dimly approaching the old normal. Another
catastrophic loss would be the possibility of winding up homeless, particularly for those who'd
never faced that risk before.
By Casey Mulligan, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago and former Chief
Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Originally published at VoxEU
The spread of COVID-19 in the US has prompted extraordinary steps by individuals and
institutions to limit infections. Some worry that 'the cure is worse than the disease' and
these measures may lead to an increase in deaths of despair. Using data from the US, this
column estimates how many non-COVID-19 excess deaths have occurred during the pandemic.
Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds the total of official COVID-19 deaths and a normal
number of deaths from other causes. Certain characteristics suggest the excess are deaths of
despair. Social isolation may be part of the mechanism that turns a pandemic into a wave of
deaths of despair; further studies are needed to show if that is the case and how.
The spread of COVID-19 in the US has prompted extraordinary, although often untested, steps
by individuals and institutions to limit infections. Some have worried that 'the cure is worse
than the disease'. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton mocked such worries as a "pet theory
about the fatal dangers of quarantine". They concluded in the summer of 2020 that "a wave of
deaths of despair is highly unlikely" because, they said, the duration of a pandemic is
measured in months whereas the underlying causes of drug abuse and suicide take many years to
accumulate (Case and Deaton 2020). With the extraordinary social distancing continuing and
mortality data accumulating, now is a good time to estimate the number of deaths of despair and
their incidence.
As a theoretical matter, I am not confident that demand and supply conditions were even
approximately constant as the country went into a pandemic recession. Take the demand and
supply for non-medical opioid use, which before 2020 accounted for the majority of deaths of
despair. 1 I acknowledge that the correlation between opioid fatalities and the
unemployment rate has been only weakly positive (Council of Economic Advisers February 2020,
Ruhm 2019). However, in previous recessions, the income of the unemployed and the nation
generally fell.
In this recession, personal income increased record amounts while the majority of the
unemployed received more income than they did when they were working (Congressional Budget
Office 2020). 2 Whereas alcohol and drug abuse can occur in isolation, many normal,
non-lethal consumption opportunities disappeared as the population socially distanced. Patients
suffering pain may have less access to physical therapy during a pandemic.
On the supply side, social distancing may affect the production of safety. 3 A
person who overdoses on opioids has a better chance of survival if the overdose event is
observed contemporaneously by a person nearby who can administer treatment or call paramedics.
4 Socially distanced physicians may be more willing to grant opioid prescriptions
over the phone rather than insist on an office visit. Although supply interruptions on the
southern border may raise the price of heroin and fentanyl, the market may respond by mixing
heroin with more fentanyl and other additives that make each consumption episode more dangerous
(Mulligan 2020a, Wan and Long 2020).
Mortality is part of the full price of opioid consumption and therefore a breakdown in
safety production may by itself reduce the quantity consumed but nonetheless increase mortality
per capita as long as the demand for opioids is price inelastic. I emphasise that these
theoretical hypotheses about opioid markets in 2020 are not yet tested empirically. My point is
that mortality measurement is needed because the potential for extraordinary changes is
real.
The Multiple Cause of Death Files (National Center for Health Statistics 1999–2018)
contain information from all death certificates in the US and would be especially valuable for
measuring causes of mortality in 2020. However, the public 2020 edition of those files is not
expected until early 2022. For the time being, my recent study (Mulligan 2020b) used the
2015–2018 files to project the normal number of 2020 deaths, absent a pandemic.
'Excess deaths' are defined to be actual deaths minus projected deaths. Included in the
projections, and therefore excluded from excess deaths, are some year-over-year increases in
drug overdoses because they had been trending up in recent years, especially among working-age
men, as illicit fentanyl diffused across the country.
I measure actual COVID-19 deaths and deaths from all causes from a Centres for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) file for 2020 that begins in week five (the week beginning 26
January 2020) and aggregates to week, sex, and eleven age groups. To minimise underreporting, I
only use the data in this file through week 40 (the week ending 3 October). In separate
analyses, I also use medical examiner data from Cook County, Illinois, and San Diego County,
California, which indicate deaths handled by those offices through September (Cook) or June
2020 (San Diego) and whether opioids were involved, and 12-month moving sums of drug overdoses
reported by CDC (2020) through May 2020.
Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds what would have occurred if official COVID-19 deaths
were combined with a normal number of deaths from other causes. The demographic and time
patterns of the non-COVID-19 excess deaths (NCEDs) point to deaths of despair rather than an
undercount of COVID-19 deaths. The flow of NCEDs increased steadily from March to June and then
plateaued. They were disproportionately experienced by working-age men, including men as young
as 15 to 24. The chart below, reproduced from Mulligan (2020b), shows these results for men
aged 15–54. To compare the weekly timing of their excess deaths to a weekly measure of
economic conditions, Figure 1 also includes continued state unemployment claims scaled by a
factor of 25,000, shown together with deaths.
Figure 1 2020 weekly excess deaths by cause (men aged 15–54)
NCEDs are negative for elderly people before March 2020, as they were during the same time
of 2019, due to mild flu seasons. Offsetting these negative NCEDs are about 30,000 positive
NCEDs for the rest of the year, after accounting for an estimated 17,000 undercount of COVID-19
deaths in March and April.
If deaths of despair were the only causes of death with significant net contributions to
NCEDs after February, 30,000 NCEDs would represent at least a 45% increase in deaths of despair
from 2018, which itself was high by historical standards. At the same time, I cannot rule out
the possibility that other non-COVID-19 causes of death or even a bit of COVID-19 undercounting
(beyond my estimates) are contributing to the NCED totals.
One federal and various local measures of mortality from opioid overdose also point to
mortality rates during the pandemic that exceed those of late 2019 and early 2020, which
themselves exceed the rates for 2017 and 2018. These sources are not precise enough to indicate
whether rates of fatal opioid overdose during the pandemic were 10% above the rates from
before, 60% above, or somewhere in between.
Presumably, social isolation is part of the mechanism that turns a pandemic into a wave of
deaths of despair. However, the results so far do not say how many, if any, come from
government stay-at-home orders versus various actions individual households and private
businesses have taken to encourage social distancing. The data in this paper do not reveal how
many deaths of despair are due to changes in 'demand' – such as changes in a person's
income, outlook, or employment situation – versus changes in 'supply' – such as the
production of safety and a changing composition of dangerous recreational substances.
I agree with Yves's counter-argument though I must declare an interest, having done work
on quality of life for 20 years and hope I'm not breaking site rules (given recent reminders
about what is and isn't ok).
The excess deaths (particularly among men) certainly to me seems more consistent with a
collapse in one's ability to do the "valued things in life" and prioritise (to SOME extent)
economic outcomes over relationships. After all, the old trope that men cope less well than
women with retirement is found in happiness, quality of life and other such data.
Whether or not one agrees with me, surely a test as to whether the authors or Yves has the
better explanation for the excess deaths would involve looking at well-being and mortality of
men who retire earlier than they'd like vs that of those whose spouse died earlier than
expected (including the proper control groups).
It would be interesting to find out the following:
1. Did the states with the most generous unemployment benefits (like MA or NJ) have fewer
deaths of despair that the states with much stingier benefits?
2. Did the states which imposed various shutdowns (mainly blue states) have more deaths of
despair than the states which stayed open, like SD or Florida?
My guess is that deaths of despair are too idiosyncratic to blame on Covid lockdowns, but
I am not an expert at all about this.
They could also look for the link with 0% interest on people's saved money and seeing no
f..ing end in sight as the beatings continue. Going down to zero does not make the people
jolly.
It used to be only men who would upon meeting another man, where the first question is
likely 'What do you do for a living?', but with the advent of as many women working, probably
appropriate there too.
Nobody ever asks firstly what your hobby is or what sports team you follow, as the job
query tells you everything about the person in one fell swoop.
There's a lot of people whose jobs were kind of everything in their lives, who had never
gone without work ever, that are now chronically unemployed.
Anybody who has studied suicide readily appreciates that the act is impulsive. Case &
Deaton are probably correct in the limited sense of economic despair derived from
transitioning away from fossil fuels and industrial production to jobs requiring education
unreachable to middle-aged coal miners. However, those deaths were likely derived from easy
access to opioids. Most of those job losses led workers to make disability claims (achy
backs) to extend income. The treatment for achy back is pain killers – oxy-something or
other back then. Those same pills killed the pain of failure. Over time, addiction set in
and, according to Koob & LeMoal's 2008 addiction model, increased consumption becomes
necessary to stay pain-free. Physicians would surely not up dosages indefinitely and that put
addicts on the street literally. All that took time to evolve. But times have changed. Using
your family doc to get you high is no longer an option. So, Mulligan makes sense.
As an internist with boots on the ground – I cannot express enough gratitude that
these kinds of reports are getting out.
As busy as I have been this past year with COVID, the actual patients struggling with
anxiety and depression have just dwarved the actual COVID numbers.
I cannot even begin to tell you the heartbreak of being a provider and having 20-40 year
old young men in your office crying their eyes out. Lots of job loss, lots of income issues,
lots of not being able to pay for things for your kids. All the while being completely unable
to find other work or extra work. It is truly a nightmare for these people. And the attitude
by so many of the lockdown Karens who seem to have no conception of how this is all going
down for these young people has been deeply worrisome to me.
It is really not getting better – if anything slowly getting worse.
I would agree with the article above that loneliness is a problem – this is for the
minority – mainly older people and should not be dismissed.
Loneliness is not the big problem however, in my experience. The big problem is the
economic despair for our young people and the complete loss of socialization for our
teenagers and kids.
US Presidents are really puppets, figureheads, even if during their campaign they pretend
otherwise. As for the elections, every four years in the US, they are nothing but a grand
brainwashing show whose sole purpose is to give the illusion of people power. They could have
presidential elections every 2 years, or even every year, none of that would change the fact
that the US is a plutocratic dictatorship with much less people power than any other
state in the collective West.
In fact, the argument above is just a tiny fig leaf trying to conceal the undeniable fact
that the US are not ruled by a person, but are ruled by a class, in the Marxist sense of this
world. Personally, I call this ruling class the "US Nomenklatura ". And while both Obama and
Trump pretended to want real change, they both lost that chance (assuming they ever wanted this
is the first place, which I doubt) when they did not do what Putin did when he came to office:
crush the Russian oligarchs as a class (some fled abroad, some died, some lost it all, and some
agreed to play by Putin's new rules). Obama, being the vapid and spineless car salesman that
he, is probably never even contemplated any real move against the US Nomenklatura . As
for Trump, being the pompous narcissist that he is, he might have even entertained some
thoughts of showing "who is boss", but that lasted only 1 month, until the US
Nomenklatura forced Trump to fire Flynn (after that, it was all freefall ).
Speaking about rich families who own the world. There is one unique feature of german
oligarchy, they don't change. More than half of the hundred richest families now have already
been rich before ww1. They made the crazy history of last century possible. Please just go
for a second in the perspective they have.
"Where is the line between a successful global business, in-demand services and
consolidation of big data – and attempts to harshly and unilaterally govern society,
replace legitimate democratic institutions, restrict one's natural right to decide for
themselves how to live, what to choose, what stance to express freely?" Putin wondered.
"We've all seen this just now in the US. And everybody understands what I'm talking
about," he added.
The Russian leader was apparently referring to the crackdown by Big Tech corporations like
Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon, mostly on Donald Trump and his supporters, during
the recent presidential election in the US. The companies, which, according to some critics,
sided with Democratic candidate Joe Biden, blocked President Trump's social media accounts over
accusations of inciting violence, with the same being done to many pages of groups and
individuals who'd backed him.
However, one-sided bias claim voiced by some might be an overestimation – the accounts
of Democrats supporters were also subject to restrictions, but on a much smaller scale.
Conservative Twitter-like platform Parler was also forced offline, and now there are calls
to block the Telegram app as well.
These events have shown that Big Tech companies "in some areas have de facto become
rivals to the government," Putin said.
Billions of users spend large parts of their lives on the platforms and, from the point of
view of those companies, their monopolistic position is favorable for organizing economic and
technological processes, the Russian president explained. "But there's a question of how
such monopolism fits the interest of society," he stressed.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
shadow1369 8 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 07:51 AM
This is a great opportunity for Russia to create some Big Tech operators which actually allow
free speech. Russia certainly has the expertise and the means, and cannot be bullied by
western regimes.
Proton1963 shadow1369 1 hour ago 27 Jan, 2021 02:54 PM
Sure.. But only after the Russians can build a drivable car or a decent smart phone or a
laptop.
The West is surely giving Russia a lot of opportunities, through its own arrogance and
stupidity, does not it ? It keeps going backwards in its effort to diminish Russia. And the
same goes for China too.
JOHNCHUCKMAN 7 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 08:45 AM
Putin is a remarkable statesman, and he sets a very high standard for political discourse. I
can't think of any of our Western leaders who speak in these truthful and philosophic terms.
What we hear in the West are slogans or whining or complaining.
Tenakakhan JOHNCHUCKMAN 3 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 01:03 PM
The patriarch of the west has become extremely weak. It seems like our leaders lack any moral
authority to speak truth and common sense for fear of being cancelled. What we see now is the
virtue signaling dregs sponsored by extreme groups leading our nations down the toilet. If a
real war was to break out now we would be cannon fodder.
Hilarous 7 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 09:04 AM
I think there's a simple explanation. Big tech is afraid to lose section 230 of the
communications act, which stipulates that online platforms are not legally responsible for
user content. Trump and some Republicans have accused social media sites of muzzling
conservative voices. They said undoing Section 230 would let people who claim they have been
slighted sue the companies. So Big Tech has a strong interest to remove Trump and run down a
few bad examples to convince people and politics that Section 230 must remain.
Count_Cash 8 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 07:40 AM
In many cases they aren't rivals, but owners of government. Money controls everything in the
west and big tech have it. They have taken control of, or are blackmailing governments. The
Western Liberal Regime straddles both Big Tech and government!
RTaccount Count_Cash 7 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 08:57 AM
Correct. Let us never forget that in America we are ruled by oligarchs just like the rest of
the world, and that our oligarchs are largely hidden. They are our true government, and so it
is meaningless to make this type of distinction.
Yves here. This is another tour de force from Michael Hudson, derived from a paper he presented in early January at the UPRE session
during the annual ASSA meeting. This time he turns from his recent focus on the economically destructive but oligarchy-advancing
practice of sanctifying debt to another favorite topic, the evolution of capitalism. Hudson looks from the early Industrial Revolution
onward and demonstrates that the dominance of financial capital over industrial capital was neither the likely course of events nor
desirable. A major feature of this development is the increasing weight of rentier activities and how they drain income from workers
and more productive sectors.
One of his key conclusions:
The result is a "deep state" supporting a cosmopolitan financial oligarchy. That is the definition of fascism, reversing democratic
government to restore control to the rentier financial and monopoly classes. The beneficiary is the corporate sector, not labor,
whose resentment is turned against foreigners and against designated enemies within.
For Hudson, the deep state enforcers are the IMF and the World Bank (which pressed emerging economies to develop capital markets,
making them more vulnerable to destabilizing hot money flows). He did not mention them in this article but I imagine Hudson would
add domestic law neutering "investor-state dispute settlement" provisions in trade agreements.
Even with its length (get a cup of coffee!), an article that covers so much terrain is bound to simplify a bit. One small quibble:
While Hudson correctly depicts China as hewing strictly and successfully to an industrial capital model, and keeping finance in check,
Hudson overeggs the pudding a bit in saying, "China has kept banking in the public domain." China's regional governments have supported
real-estate development projects, including a non-trivial proportion of ghost cities. often funded by private "wealth management
products". China's "shadow banking sector" which officials
have just estimated at nearly $13 trillion , or 86% of GDP and nearly 30% of banking assets.
Chinese officials say they are about to crack down on them, after many years of looking the other way, plus the occasional bailout
of particular wealth management product issuances gone sour. Similarly, the dominant mobile payment platform player, Alibaba, is
private.
Marx and many of his less radical contemporary reformers saw the historical role of industrial capitalism as being to clear
away the legacy of feudalism – the landlords, bankers and monopolists extracting economic rent without producing real value. But
that reform movement failed. Today, the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector has regained control of government, creating
neo-rentier economies.
The aim of this post-industrial finance capitalism is the oppositeof that of industrial capitalism as known to 19 th
-century economists: It seeks wealth primarily through the extraction of economic rent, not industrial capital formation. Tax favoritism
for real estate, privatization of oil and mineral extraction, banking and infrastructure monopolies add to the cost of living and
doing business. Labor is being exploited increasingly by bank debt, student debt, credit-card debt, while housing and other prices
are inflated on credit, leaving less income to spend on goods and services as economies suffer debt deflation.
Today's New Cold War is a fight to internationalize this rentier capitalism by globally privatizing and financializing
transportation, education, health care, prisons and policing, the post office and communications, and other sectors that formerly
were kept in the public domain of European and American economies so as to keep their costs low and minimize their cost structure.
In the Western economies such privatizations have reversed the drive of industrial capitalism to minimize socially unnecessary
costs of production and distribution. In addition to monopoly prices for privatized services, financial managers are cannibalizing
industry by debt leveraging and high dividend payouts to increase stock prices.
* * *
Today's neo- rentier economies obtain wealth mainly by rent seeking, while financialization capitalizes real estate and
monopoly rent into bank loans, stocks and bonds. Debt leveraging to bid up prices and create capital gains on credit for this "virtual
wealth" has been fueled by central bank Quantitative Easing since 2009.
Financial engineering is replacing industrial engineering. Over 90 percent of recent U.S. corporate income has been earmarked
to raise the companies' stock prices by being paid out as dividends to stockholders or spent on stock buyback programs. Many companies
even borrow to buy up their own shares, raising their debt/equity ratios.
Households and industry are becoming debt-strapped, owing rent and debt service to the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE)
sector. This rentier overhead leaves less wage and profit income available to spend on goods and services, bringing to a close
the 75-year U.S. and European expansion since World War II ended in 1945.
These rentier dynamics are the opposite of what Marx described as industrial capitalism's laws of motion. German banking
was indeed financing heavy industry under Bismarck, in association with the Reichsbank and military. But elsewhere, bank lending
rarely has financed new tangible means of production. What promised to be a democratic and ultimately socialist dynamic has relapsed
back toward feudalism and debt peonage, with the financial class today playing the role that the landlord class did in post-medieval
times.
Marx's View of the Historical Destiny of Capitalism: to Free Economies from Feudalism
The industrial capitalism that Marx described in Volume I of Capital is being dismantled. He saw the historical destiny
of capitalism to be to free economies from the legacy of feudalism: a hereditary warlord class imposing tributary land rent, and
usurious banking. He thought that as industrial capitalism evolved toward more enlightened management, and indeed toward socialism,
it would replace predatory "usurious" finance, cutting away the economically and socially unnecessary rentier income, land
rent and financial interest and related fees for unproductive credit. Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Joseph Proudhon
and their fellow classical economists had analyzed these phenomena, and Marx summarized their discussion in Volumes II and III of
Capital and his parallel Theories of Surplus Value dealing with economic rent and the mathematics of compound interest,
which causes debt to grow exponentially at a higher rate than the rest of the economy.
However, Marx devoted Volume I of Capital to industrial capitalism's most obvious characteristic: the drive to make profits
by investing in means of production to employ wage labor to produce goods and services to sell at a markup over what labor was paid.
Analyzing surplus value by adjusting profit rates to take account of outlays for plant, equipment and materials (the "organic composition
of capital"), Marx described a circular flow in which capitalist employers pay wages to their workers and invest their profits in
plant and equipment with the surplus not paid to employees.
Finance capitalism has eroded this core circulation between labor and industrial capital. Much of the midwestern United States
has been turning into a rust belt. Instead of the financial sector evolving to fund capital investment in manufacturing, industry
is being financialized. Making economic gains financially, primarily by debt leverage, far outstrips making profits by hiring employees
to produce goods and services.
Capitalism's Alliance of Banks with Industry to Promote Democratic Political Reform
The capitalism of Marx's day still contained many survivals from feudalism, most notably a hereditary landlord class living off
the land rents, most of which were spent unproductively on servants and luxuries, not to make a profit. These rents had originated
in a tax. Twenty years after the Norman Conquest, William the Conquer had ordered compilation of the Domesday Book in 1086 to calculate
the yield that could be extracted as taxes from the English land that he and his companions had seized. As a result of King John's
overbearing fiscal demands, the Revolt of the Barons (1215-17) and their Magna Carta enabled the leading warlords to obtain much
of this rent for themselves. Marx explained that industrial capitalism was politically radical in seeking to free itself from the
burden of having to support this privileged landlord class, receiving income with no basis in cost value or enterprise of its own.
Industrialists sought to win markets by cutting costs below those of their competitors. That aim required freeing the entire economy
from the "faux frais" of production, socially unnecessary charges built into the cost of living and doing business. Classical economic
rent was defined as the excess of price above intrinsic cost-value, the latter being ultimately reducible to labor costs. Productive
labor was defined as that employed to create a profit, in contrast to the servants and retainers (coachmen, butlers, cooks, et
al .) on whom landlords spent much of their rent.
The paradigmatic form of economic rent was the ground rent paid to Europe's hereditary aristocracy. As John Stuart Mill explained,
landlords reaped rents (and rising land prices) "in their sleep." Ricardo had pointed out (in Chapter 2 of his 1817 Principles
of Political Economy and Taxation ) a kindred form of differential rent in natural-resource rent stemming from the ability of
mines with high-quality orebodies to sell their lower-cost mineral output at prices set by high-cost mines. Finally, there was monopoly
rent paid to owners at choke points in the economy where they could extract rents without a basis in any cost outlay. Such rents
logically included financial interest, fees and penalties.
Marx saw the capitalist ideal as freeing economies from the landlord class that controlled the House of Lords in Britain, and
similar upper houses of government in other countries. That aim required political reform of Parliament in Britain, ultimately to
replace the House of Lords with the Commons, so as to prevent the landlords from protecting their special interests at the expense
of Britain's industrial economy. The first great battle in this fight against the landed interest was won in 1846 with repeal of
the Corn Laws. The fight to limit landlord power over government culminated in the constitutional crisis of 1909-10, when the Lords
rejected the land tax imposed by the Commons. The crisis was resolved by a ruling that the Lords never again could reject a revenue
bill passed by the House of Commons.
The Banking Sector Lobbies Against the Real Estate Sector, 1815-1846
It may seem ironic today that Britain's banking sector was whole-heartedly behind the first great fight to minimize land-rent.
That alliance occurred after the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, which ended the French blockage against British seaborne trade and
re-opened the British market to lower-priced grain imports. British landlords demanded tariff protection under the Corn Laws – to
raise the price of food, so as to increase the revenue and hence the capitalized rental value of their landholdings – but that has
rendered the economy high-cost. A successful capitalist economy would have to minimize these costs in order to win foreign markets
and indeed, to defend its own home market. The classical idea of a free market was one free from economic rent – from rentier
income in the form of land rent.
This rent – a quasi-tax paid to the heirs of the warlord bands that had conquered Britain in 1066, and the similar Viking bands
that had conquered other European realms – threatened to minimize foreign trade. That was a threat to Europe's banking classes, whose
major market was the funding of commerce by bills of exchange. The banking class arose as Europe's economy was revived by the vast
looting of monetary bullion from Constantinople by the Crusaders. Bankers were permitted a loophole to avoid Christianity's banning
of the charging of interest, by taking their return in the form of agio , a fee for transferring money from one currency to
another, including from one country to another.
Even domestic credit could use the loophole of "dry exchange," charging agio on domestic transactions cloaked as a foreign-currency
transfer, much as modern corporations use "offshore banking centers" today to pretend that they earn their income in tax-avoidance
countries that do not charge an income tax.
If Britain was to become the industrial workshop of the world, it would prove highly beneficial to Ricardo's banking class. (He
was its Parliamentary spokesman; today we would say lobbyist.) Britain would enjoy an international division of labor in which it
exported manufactures and imported food and raw materials from other countries specializing in primary commodities and depending
on Britain for their industrial products. But for this to happen, Britain needed a low price of labor. That meant low food costs,
which at that time were the largest items in the family budgets of wage labor. And that in turn required ending the power of the
landlord class to protect its "free lunch" of land rent, and all recipients of such "unearned income."
It is hard today to imagine industrialists and bankers hand in hand promoting democratic reform against the aristocracy. But that
alliance was needed in the early 19 th century. Of course, democratic reform at that time extended only to the extent
of unseating the landlord class, not protecting the interest of labor. The hollowness of the industrial and banking class's democratic
rhetoric became apparent in Europe's 1848 revolutions, where the vested interests ganged up against extending democracy to the population
at large, once the latter had helped end landlord protection of its rents.
Of course, it was socialists who picked up the political fight after 1848. Marx later reminded a correspondent that the first
plank of the Communist Manifesto was to socialize land rent, but poked fun at the "free market" rent critics who refused to recognize
that rentier-like exploitation existed in the industrial employment of wage labor. Just as landlords obtained land rent in excess
of the cost of producing their crops (or renting out housing), so employers obtained profits by selling the products of wage-labor
at a markup. To Marx, that made industrialists part of the rentier class in principle, although the overall economic system
of industrial capitalism was much different from that of post-feudal rentiers, landlords and bankers.
The Alliance of Banking with Real Estate and Other Rent-Seeking Sectors
With this background of how industrial capitalism was evolving in Marx's day, we can see how overly optimistic he was regarding
the drive by industrialists to strip away all unnecessary costs of production – all charges that added to price without adding to
value. In that sense he was fully in tune with the classical concept of free markets, as markets free from land rent and other
forms of rentier income.
Today's mainstream economics has reversed this concept. In an Orwellian doublethink twist, the vested interests today define a
free market as one "free" for the proliferation of various forms of land rent, even to the point of giving special tax advantages
to absentee real estate investment, the oil and mining industries (natural-resource rent), and most of all to high finance (the accounting
fiction of "carried interest," an obscure term for short-term arbitrage speculation).
Today's world has indeed freed economies from the burden of hereditary ground rent. Almost two-thirds of American families own
their own homes (although the rate of homeownership has been falling steadily since the Great Obama Evictions that were a byproduct
of the junk-mortgage crisis and Obama Bank Bailouts of 2009-16, which lowered homeowner rates from over 68% to 62%). In Europe, home
ownership rates have reached 80% in Scandinavia, and high rates characterize the entire continent. Home ownership – and also the
opportunity to purchase commercial real estate – has indeed become democratized.
But it has been democratized on credit. That is the only way for wage-earners to obtain housing, because otherwise they would
have to spend their entire working life saving enough to buy a home. After World War II ended in 1945, banks provided the credit
to purchase homes (and for speculators to buy commercial properties), by providing mortgage credit to be paid off over the course
of 30 years, the likely working life of the young home buyer.
Real estate is by far the banking sector's largest market. Mortgage lending accounts for about 80 percent of U.S. and British
bank credit. It played only a minor role back in 1815, when banks focused on financing commerce and international trade. Today we
can speak of the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector as the economy's dominant rentier sector. This alliance
of banking with real estate has led banks to become the major lobbyists protecting real estate owners by opposing the land tax that
seemed to be the wave of the future in 1848 in the face of rising advocacy to tax away the land's entire price gains and rent, to
make land the tax base as Adam Smith had urged, instead of taxing labor and consumers or profits. Indeed, when the U.S. income tax
began to be levied in 1914, it fell only on the wealthiest One Percent of Americans, whose taxable income consisted almost entirely
of property and financial claims.
The past century has reversed that tax philosophy. On a national level, real estate has paid almost zero income tax since World
War II, thanks to two giveaways. The first is "fictitious depreciation," sometimes called over-depreciation. Landlords can pretend
that their buildings are losing value by claiming that they are wearing out at fictitiously high rates. (That is why Donald Trump
has said that he loves depreciation.) But by far the largest giveaway is that interest payments are tax deductible. Real estate is
taxed locally, to be sure, but typically at only 1% of assessed valuation, which is less than 7 to 10 percent of the actual land
rent.[1]
The basic reason why banks support tax favoritism for landlords is that whatever the tax collector relinquishes is available to
be paid as interest. Mortgage bankers end up with the vast majority of land rent in the United States. When a property is put up
for sale and homeowners bid against each other to buy it, the equilibrium point is where the winner is willing to pay the full rental
value to the banker to obtain a mortgage. Commercial investors also are willing to pay the entire rental income to obtain a mortgage,
because they are after the "capital" gain – that is, the rise in the land's price.
The policy position of the so-called Ricardian socialists in Britain and their counterparts in France (Proudhon, et al
.) was for the state to collect the land's economic rent as its major source of revenue. But today's "capital" gains occur primarily
in real estate and finance, and are virtually tax-free for landlords. Owners pay no capital-gains tax as real estate prices rise,
or even upon sale if they use their gains to buy another property. And when landlords die, all tax liability is wiped out.
The oil and mining industries likewise are notoriously exempt from income taxation on their natural-resource rents. For a long
time the depletion allowance allowed them tax credit for the oil that was sold off, enabling them to buy new oil-producing properties
(or whatever they wanted) with their supposed asset loss, defined as the value to recover whatever they had emptied out. There was
no real loss, of course. Oil and minerals are provided by nature.
These sectors also make themselves tax exempt on their foreign profits and rents by using "flags of convenience" registered in
offshore banking centers. This ploy enables them to claim to make all their profits in Panama, Liberia or other countries that do
not charge an income tax or even have a currency of their own, but use the U.S. dollar so as to save American companies from any
foreign-exchange risk.
In oil and mining, as with real estate, the banking system has become symbiotic with rent recipients, including companies extracting
monopoly rent. Already in the late 19 th century the banking and insurance sector was recognized as "the mother of trusts,"
financing their creation to extract monopoly rents over and above normal profit rates.
These changes have made rent extraction much more remunerative than industrial profit-seeking – just the opposite of what classical
economists urged and expected to be the most likely trajectory of capitalism. Marx expected the logic of industrial capitalism to
free society from its rentier legacy and to create public infrastructure investment to lower the economy-wide cost of production.
By minimizing labor's expenses that employers had to cover, this public investment would put in place the organizational network
that in due course (sometimes needing a revolution, to be sure) would become a socialist economy.
Although banking developed ostensibly to serve foreign trade by the industrial nations, it became a force-in-itself undermining
industrial capitalism. In Marxist terms, instead of financing the M-C-M' circulation (money invested in capital to produce a profit
and hence yet more money), high finance has abbreviated the process to M-M', making money purely from money and credit, without tangible
capital investment.
The Rentier Squeeze on Budgets: Debt Deflation as a Byproduct of Asset-Price Inflation
Democratization of home ownership meant that housing no longer was owned primarily by absentee owners extracting rent, but by
owner-occupants. As home ownership spread, new buyers came to support the rentier drives to block land taxation – not realizing
that rent that was not taxed would be paid to the banks as interest to absorb the rent-of-location hitherto paid to absentee landlords.
Real estate has risen in price as a result of debt leveraging. The process makes investors, speculators and their bankers wealthy,
but raises the cost of housing (and commercial property) for new buyers, who are obliged to take on more debt in order to obtain
secure housing. That cost is also passed on to renters. And employers ultimately are obliged to pay their labor force enough to pay
these financialized housing costs.
Debt deflation has become the distinguishing feature of today's economies from North America to Europe, imposing austerity as
debt service absorbs a rising share of personal and corporate income, leaving less to spend on goods and services. The economy's
indebted 90 percent find themselves obliged to pay more and more interest and financial fees. The corporate sector, and now also
the state and local government sector, likewise are obliged to pay a rising share of their revenue to creditors.
Investors are willing to pay most of their rental income as interest to the banking sector because they hope to sell their property
at some point for a "capital" gain. Modern finance capitalism focuses on "total returns," defined as current income plus asset-price
gains, above all for land and real estate. Inasmuch as a home or other property is worth however much banks will lend against it,
wealth is created primarily by financial means, by banks lending a rising proportion of the value of assets pledged as collateral.
Chart 10.4: annual changes in GDP and the major components of asset price gains
(nominal, $bn)
The fact that asset-price gains are largely debt-financed explains why economic growth is slowing in the United States and Europe,
even as stock market and real estate prices are inflated on credit. The result is a debt-leveraged economy.
Changes in the value of the economy's land from year to year far exceeds the change in GDP. Wealth is obtained primarily by asset-price
("capital") gains in the valuation of land and real estate, stocks, bonds and creditor loans ("virtual wealth"), not so much by saving
income (wages, profits and rents).The magnitude of these asset-price gains tends to dwarf profits, rental income and wages.
The tendency has been to imagine that rising prices for real estate, stocks and bonds has been making homeowners richer. But this
price rise is fueled by bank credit. A home or other property is worth however much a bank will lend against it – and banks have
lent a larger and larger proportion of the home's value since 1945. For U.S. real estate as a whole, debt has come to exceed equity
for more than a decade now. Rising real estate prices have made banks and speculators rich, but have left homeowners and commercial
real estate debt strapped.
The economy as a whole has suffered. Debt-fueled housing costs in the United States are so high that if all Americans were given
their physical consumer goods for free – their food, clothing and so forth – they still could not compete with workers in China or
most other countries. That is a major reason why the U.S. economy is de-industrializing. So this policy of "creating wealth" by financialization
undercuts the logic of industrial capitalism.
Finance Capital's Fight to Privatize and Monopolize Public Infrastructure
Another reason for deindustrialization is the rising cost of living stemming from conversion of public infrastructure into privatized
monopolies. As the United States and Germany overtook British industrial capitalism, a major key to industrial advantage was recognized
to be public investment in roads, railroads and other transportation, education, public health, communications and other basic infrastructure.
Simon Patten, the first professor of economics at America's first business school, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania,
defined public infrastructure as a "fourth factor of production," in addition to labor, capital and land. But unlike capital, Patten
explained, its aim was not to make a profit. It was to minimize the cost of living and doing business by providing low-price basic
services to make the private sector more competitive.
Unlike the military levies that burdened taxpayers in pre-modern economies, "in an industrial society the object of taxation is
to increase industrial prosperity"by creating infrastructure in the form of canals and railroads, a postal service and public education.
This infrastructure was a "fourth" factor of production.Taxes would be "burdenless," Patten explained, to the extent that they were
invested in public internal improvements, headed by transportation such as the Erie Canal.[2]
The advantage of this public investment is tolower costs instead of letting privatizers impose monopoly rents in the form of access
charges to basic infrastructure. Governments can price the services of these natural monopolies (including credit creation, as we
are seeing today) at cost or offer them freely, helping labor and its employers undersell industrialists in countries lacking such
public enterprise.
In the cities, Patten explained, public transport raises property prices (and hence economic rent) in the outlying periphery,
as the Erie Canal had benefited western farms competing with upstate New York farmers.That principle is evident in today's suburban
neighborhoods relative to city centers.London's Tube extension along the Jubilee Line, and New York City's Second Avenue Subway,
showed that underground and bus transport can be financed publicly by taxing the higher rental value created for sites along such
routes. Paying for capital investment out of such tax levies can provide transportation at subsidized prices, minimizing the economy's
cost structure accordingly. What Joseph Stiglitz popularized as the "Henry George Law" thus more correctly should be known as "Patten's
Law" of burdenless taxation.[3]
Under a regime of "burdenless taxation" the return on public investment does not take the form of profit but aims at lowering
the economy's overall price structure to "promote general prosperity." This means that governments should operate natural monopolies
directly, or at least regulate them. "Parks, sewers and schools improve the health and intelligence of all classes of producers,
and thus enable them to produce more cheaply, and to compete more successfully in other markets."Patten concluded: "If the courts,
post office, parks, gas and water works, street, river and harbor improvements, and other public works do not increase the prosperity
of society they should not be conducted by the State." But this prosperity for the overall economy was not obtained by treating public
enterprises as what today is called a profit center.[4]
In one sense, this can be called "privatizing the profits and socializing the losses." Advocating a mixed economy along these
lines is part of the logic of industrial capitalism seeking to minimize private-sector production and employment costs in order to
maximize profits. Basic social infrastructure is a subsidy to be supplied by the state.
Britain's Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1874-80) reflected this principle: "The health of the people is really
the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend."[5]He sponsored the Public Health Act of 1875,
followed by the Sale of Food and Drugs Act and, the next year, the Education Act. The government would provide these services, not
private employers or private monopoly-seekers.
For a century, public investment helped the United States pursue an Economy of High Wages policy, providing education, food and
health standards to make its labor more productive and thus able to undersell low-wage "pauper" labor. The aim wasto create a positive
feedback between rising wages and increasing labor productivity.
That is in sharp contrast to today's business plan of finance capitalism – to cut wages, and also cut back long-term capital investment,
research and development while privatizing public infrastructure. The neoliberal onslaught by Ronald Reagan in the United States
and Margaret Thatcher in Britain in the 1980s was backed by IMF demands that debtor economies balance their budgets by selling off
such public enterprises and cutting back social spending. Infrastructure services were privatized as natural monopolies, sharply
raising the cost structure of such economies, but creating enormous financial underwriting commissions and stock-market gains for
Wall Street and London.
Privatizing hitherto public monopolies has become one of the most lucrative ways to gain wealth financially. But privatized health
care and medical insurance is paid for by labor and its employers, not by the government as in industrial capitalism. And in the
face of the privatized educational system's rising cost, access to middle-class employment has been financed by student debt. These
privatizations have not helped economies become more affluent or competitive. On an economy-wide level this business plan is a race
to the bottom, but one that benefits financial wealth at the top.
Finance Capitalism Impoverishes Economies While Increasing Their Cost Structure
Classical economic rent is defined as the excess of price over intrinsic cost-value. Capitalizing this rent – whether land rent
or monopoly rent from the privatization described above – into bonds, stocks and bank loans creates "virtual wealth." Finance capitalism's
exponential credit creation increases "virtual" wealth – financial securities and property claims – by managing these securities
and claims in a way that has made them worth more than tangible real wealth.
The major way to gain fortunes is to get asset-price gains ("capital gains") on stocks, bonds and real estate.However, this exponentially
growing debt-leveraged financial overhead polarizes the economy in ways that concentrates ownership of wealth in the hands of creditors,
and owners of rental real estate, stocks and bonds, draining the "real" economy to pay the FIRE sector.
Post-classical economics depicts privatized infrastructure, natural resource development and banking as being part of the industrial
economy, not superimposed on it by a rent-seeking class. But the dynamic of finance-capitalist economies is not for wealth to be
gained mainly by investing in industrial means of production and saving up profits or wages, but by capital gains made primarily
from rent-seeking. These gains are not "capital" as classically understood. They are "finance-capital gains," because they result
from asset-price inflation fueled by debt leveraging.
By inflating its housing prices and a stock market bubble on credit, America's debt leveraging, along with its financializing
and privatizing basic infrastructure, has priced it out of world markets. China and other non-financialized countries have avoided
high health insurance costs, education costs and other services freely or at a low cost as a public utility. Public health and medical
care costs much less abroad, but is attacked in the United States by neoliberals as "socialized medicine," as if financialized health
care would make the U.S. economy more efficient and competitive. Transportation likewise has been financialized and run for profit,
not to lower the cost of living and doing business.
One must conclude that America has chosen to no longer industrialize, but to finance its economy by economic rent – monopoly rent,
from information technology, banking and speculation, and leave industry, research and development to other countries. Even if China
and other Asian countries didn't exist, there is no way that America can regain its export markets or even its internal market with
its current debt overhead and its privatized and financialized education, health care, transportation and other basic infrastructure.
The underlying problem is not competition from China, but neoliberal financialization. Finance-capitalism is not industrial capitalism.
It is a lapse back into debt peonage and a rentier neo-feudalism. Bankers play the role today that landlords played up through
the 19 th century, making fortunes without corresponding value, by capital gains for real estate, stocks and bonds on
credit, by debt leveraging whose carrying charges increase the economy's cost of living and doing business.
Today's New Cold War is a Fight by Finance Capitalism Against Industrial Capitalism
Today's world is being fractured by an economic warfare over what kind of economic system it will have. Industrial capitalism
is losing the fight to finance capitalism, which is turning to be its antithesis just as industrial capitalism was the antithesis
to post-feudal landlordship and predatory banking houses.
In this respect today's New Cold War is a conflict of economic systems. As such, it is being fought against the dynamic of U.S.
industrial capitalism as well as that of China and other economies. Hence, the struggle also is domestic within the United States
and Europe, as well as confrontational against China and Russia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and their moves to de-dollarize their economies
and reject the Washington Consensus and its Dollar Diplomacy. It is a fight by U.S.-centered finance capital to promote neoliberal
doctrine giving special tax privileges to rentier income, untaxing land rent, natural resource rent, monopoly rent and the financial
sector. This aim includes privatizing and financializing basic infrastructure, maximizing its extraction of economic rent instead
of minimizing the cost of living and doing business.
The result is a war to change the character of capitalism as well as that of social democracy. The British Labour Party, European
Social Democrats and the U.S. Democratic Party all have jumped on the neoliberal bandwagon. They are all complicit in the austerity
that has spread from the Mediterranean to America's Midwestern rust belt.
Finance capitalism exploits labor, but via a rentier sector, which also ends up cannibalizing industrial capital. This
drive has become internationalized into a fight against nations that restrict the predatory dynamics of finance capital seeking to
privatize and dismantle government regulatory power. The New Cold War is not merely a war being waged by finance capitalism against
socialism and public ownership of the means of production. In view of the inherent dynamics of industrial capitalism requiring strong
state regulatory and taxing power to check the intrusiveness of finance capital, this post-industrial global conflict is between
socialism evolving out of industrial capitalism, and fascism, defined as a rentier reaction to mobilize government to roll
back social democracy and restore control to the rentier financial and monopoly classes.
The old Cold War was a fight against "Communism." In addition to freeing itself from land rent, interest charges and privately
appropriated industrial profits, socialism favors labor's fight for better wages and working conditions, better public investment
in schools, health care and other social welfare support, better job security, and unemployment insurance. All these reforms would
cut into the profits of employers. Lower profits mean lower stock-market prices, and hence fewer finance-capital gains.
The aim of finance capitalism is not to become a more productive economy by producing goods and selling them at a lower cost than
competitors. What might appear at first sight to be international economic rivalry and jealousy between the United States and China
is thus best seen as a fight between economic systems: that of finance capitalism and that of civilization trying to free itself
from rentier privileges and submission to creditors, with a more social philosophy of government empowered to check private
interests when they act selfishly and injure society at large.
The enemy in this New Cold War is not merely socialist government but government itself, except to the extent that it can be brought
under the control of high finance to promote the neoliberal rentier agenda. This reverses the democratic political revolution
of the 19 th century that replaced the House of Lords and other upper houses controlled by the hereditary aristocracy
with more representative legislators. The aim is to create a corporate state, replacing elected houses of government by central banks
– the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, along with external pressure from the International Monetary Fund and World
Bank.
The result is a "deep state" supporting a cosmopolitan financial oligarchy. That is the definition of fascism, reversing democratic
government to restore control to the rentier financial and monopoly classes. The beneficiary is the corporate sector, not
labor, whose resentment is turned against foreigners and against designated enemies within.
Lacking foreign affluence, the U.S. corporate state promotes employment by a military buildup and public infrastructure spending,
most of which is turned over to insiders to privatize into rent-seeking monopolies and sinecures. In the United States, the military
is being privatized for fighting abroad ( e.g ., Blackwater USA/Academi), and jails are being turned into profit centers using
inexpensive convict labor.
What is ironic is that although China is seeking to decouple from Western finance capitalism, it actually has been doing what
the United States did in its industrial takeoff in the late 19 th and early 20 th century. As a socialist economy,
China has aimed at what industrial capitalism was expected to achieve: freeing its economy from rentier income (landlordship
and usurious banking), largely by a progressive income tax policy falling mainly on rentier income.
Above all, China has kept banking in the public domain. Keeping money and credit creation public instead of privatizing it is
the most important step to keep down the cost of living and business. China has been able to avoid a debt crisis by forgiving debts
instead of closing down indebted enterprises deemed to be in the public interest. In these respects it is socialist China that is
achieving the fate that industrial capitalism initially was expected to achieve in the West.
Summary: Finance Capital as Rent-Seeking
The transformation of academic economic theory under today's finance capitalism has reversed the progressive and indeed radical
thrust of the classical political economy that evolved into Marxism. Post-classical theory depicts the financial and other rentier
sectors as an intrinsic part of the industrial economy. Today's national income and GDP accounting formats are compiled in keeping
with this anti-classical reaction depicting the FIRE sector and its allied rent-seeking sectors as an addition to national income,
not a subtrahend. Interest, rents and monopoly prices all are counted as "earnings" – as if all income is earned as intrinsic parts
of industrial capitalism, not predatory extraction as overhead property and financial claims.
This is the opposite of classical economics. Finance capitalism is a drive to avoid what Marx and indeed the majority of his contemporaries
expected: that industrial capitalism would evolve toward socialism, peacefully or otherwise.
Some Final Observations: Financial Takeover of Industry, Government and Ideology
Almost every economy is a mixed economy – public and private, financial, industrial and rent-seeking. Within these mixed economies
the financial dynamics – debt growing by compound interest, attaching itself primarily to rent-extracting privileges, and therefore
protecting them ideologically, politically and academically. These dynamics are different from those of industrial capitalism, and
indeed undercut the industrial economy by diverting income from it to pay the financial sector and its rentier clients.
One expression of this inherent antagonism is the time frame. Industrial capitalism requires long-term planning to develop a product,
make a marketing plan, and undertake research and development to keep undercutting competitors. The basic dynamic is M-C-M': capital
(money, M) is invested in building factories and other means of production, and employing labor to sell its products (commodities,
C) at a profit (M').
Finance capitalism abbreviates this to a M-M', making money purely financially, by charging interest and making capital gains.
The financial mode of "wealth creation" is measured by the valuations of real estate, stocks and bonds. This valuation was long based
on capitalizing their flow of revenue (rents or profits) at the going rate of interest, but is now based almost entirely on capital
gains as the major source of "total returns."
In taking over industrial companies, financial managers focus on the short run, because their salary and bonuses are based on
current year's performance. The "performance" in question is stock market performance. Stock prices have largely become independent
from sales volume and profits, now that they are enhanced by corporations typically paying out some 92 percent of their revenue in
dividends and stock buybacks.[6]
Even more destructively, private capital has created a new process: M-debt-M'. One recent paper calculates that: "Over 40% of
firms that make payouts also raise capital during the same year, resulting in 31% of aggregate share repurchases and dividends being
externally financed, primarily with debt."[7]This has made the corporate sector financially fragile, above all the airline industry
in the wake of the COVID-19 crises.
Private equity has played a big role in increasing corporate leverage, both through their own actions and by disinhibiting large
public companies in the use of debt. As Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt explained, the large buyout firms, following the playbook
developed in the 1980s, produce their returns from financial engineering and cost cutting (smaller size deals target "growthier"
companies, but while those private equity firms assert that they add value, it may just be that they are skilled at identifying promising
companies and riding a performance wave). Contrary to their marketing, private equity fee structures mean they make money even when
they bankrupt firms. And they have become so powerful that it's hard to get political support to stop them when they hurt large numbers
of citizens though exploitative practices like balance ("surprise")billing. [8]
The classic description of this looting-for-profit practice process is the 1993 paper by George Akerloff and Paul Romer describing
how "firms have an incentive to go broke for profit at society's expense (to loot) instead of to go for broke (to gamble on success).
Bankruptcy for profit will occur if poor accounting, lax regulation, or low penalties for abuse give owners an incentive to pay themselves
more than their firms are worth and then default on their debt obligations."[9]
The fact that "paper gains" from stock prices can be wiped out when financial storms occur, makes financial capitalism less resilient
than the industrial base of tangible capital investment that remains in place. The United States has painted its economy into a corner
by de-industrializing, replacing tangible capital formation with "virtual wealth," that is, financial claims on income and
tangible assets. Since 2009, and especially since the Covid crisis of 2020, its economy has been suffering through what is called
a K-shaped "recovery." The stock and bond markets have reached all-time highs to benefit the wealthiest families, but the "real"
economy of production and consumption, GDP and employment, has declined for the non- rentier sector, that is, the economy
at large.
How do we explain this disparity, if not by recognizing that different dynamics and laws of motion are at work? Gains in wealth
increasingly take the form of a rising valuation of rentier financial and property claims on the real economy's assets
and income, headed by rent-extraction rights, not means of production.
Finance capitalism of this sort can survive only by drawing in exponentially increasing gains from outside the system., either
by central bank money creation (Quantitative Easing) or by financializing foreign economies, privatizing them to replace low-priced
public infrastructure services with rent-seeking monopolies issuing bonds and stocks, largely financed by dollar-based credit seeking
capital gains. The problem with this financial imperialism is that it makes client host economies as high-cost as their U.S. and
other sponsors in the world's financial centers.
All economic systems seek to internationalize themselves and extend their rule throughout the world. Today's revived Cold War
should be understood as a fight between what kind of economic system the world will have. Finance capitalism is fighting against
nations that restrict its intrusive dynamics and sponsorship of privatization and dismantling of public regulatory power. Unlike
industrial capitalism, the rentier aim is not to become a more productive economy by producing goods and selling them at a
lower cost than competitors. Finance capitalism's dynamics are globalist, seeking to use international organizations (the IMF, NATO,
the World Bank and U.S.-designed trade and investment sanctions.) to overrule national governments that are not controlled by the
rentier classes. The aim is to make all economies into finance-capitalist layers of hereditary privilege, imposing austerity
anti-labor policies to squeeze a dollarized surplus.
Industrial capitalism's resistance to this international pressure is necessarily nationalist, because it needs state subsidy and
laws to tax and regulate the FIRE sector. But it is losing the fight to finance capitalism, which is turning to be its nemesis just
as industrial capitalism was the nemesis of post-feudal landlordship and predatory banking. Industrial capitalism requires state
subsidy and infrastructure investment, along with regulatory and taxing power to check the incursion of finance capital. The resulting
global conflict is between socialism (the natural evolution of industrial capitalism) and a pro- rentier fascism, a state-finance-capitalist
reaction against socialism's mobilization of state power to roll back the post-feudal rentier interests.
Underlying today's rivalry felt by the United States against China is thus a clash of economic systems. The real conflict is not
so much "America vs. China," but finance capitalism vs. industrial "state" capitalism/socialism. At stake is whether "the state"
will support financialization benefiting the rentier class or build up the industrial economy and overall prosperity.
Apart from their time frame, the other major contrast between finance capitalism and industrial capitalism is the role of government.
Industrial capitalism wants government to help "socialize the costs" by subsidizing infrastructure services. By lowering the cost
of living (and hence the minimum wage), this leaves more profits to be privatized. Finance capitalism wants to pry these public utilities
away from the public domain and make them privatized rent-yielding assets. That raises the economy's cost structure – and thus is
self-defeating from the vantage point of international competition among industrialists.
That is why the lowest-cost and least financialized economies have overtaken the United States, headed by China. The way that
Asia, Europe and the United States have reacted to the covid-19 crisis highlights the contrast. The pandemic has forced an estimated
70 percent of local neighborhood restaurants to close in the face of major rent and debt arrears. Renters, unemployed homeowners
and commercial real estate investors, as well as numerous consumer sectors are also facing evictions and homelessness, insolvency
and foreclosure or distress sales as economic activity plunges.
Less widely noted is how the pandemic has led the Federal Reserve to subsidize the polarization and monopolization of the U.S.
economy by making credit available at only a fraction of 1 percent to banks, private equity funds and the nation's largest corporations,
helping them gobble up small and medium-sized businesses in distress.
For a decade after the Obama bank-fraud bailout in 2009, the Fed described its purpose as being to keep the banking system liquid
and avoid damage to its bondholders, stockholders and large depositors. The Fed infused the commercial banking system with enough
lending power to support stock and bond prices. Liquidity was injected into the banking system by buying government securities, as
was normal. But after the covid virus hit in March 2020, the Fed began to buy corporate debt for the first time, including junk bonds.
Former FDIC head Sheila Bair and Treasury economist Lawrence Goodman note, the Federal Reserve bought the bonds "of 'fallen angels'
who sank to junk status during the pandemic" as a result of having indulged in over-leveraged borrowing to pay out dividends and
buy their own shares.[10]
Congress considered limiting companies from using the proceeds of the bonds being bought "for outsize executive compensation or
shareholder distributions" at the time it approved the facilities. but made no attempt to deter companies from doing this. Noting
that "Sysco used the money to pay dividends to its shareholders while laying off a third of its workforce a House committee report
found that companies benefiting from the facilities laid off more than one million workers from March to September." Bair and Goodman
conclude that "there's little evidence that the Fed's corporate debt buy-up benefited society." Just the opposite: The Fed's actions
"created a further unfair opportunity for large corporations to get even bigger by purchasing competitors with government-subsidized
credit."
The result, they accuse, is transforming the economy's political shape. "The serial market bailouts by monetary authorities –
first the banking system in 2008, and now the entire business world amid the pandemic" has been "a greater threat [to destroy capitalism]
than Bernie Sanders." The Fed's "super-low interest rates have favored the equity of large companies over their smaller counterparts,"
concentrating control of the economy in the hands of firms with the largest access to such credit.
Smaller companies are "the primary source of job creation and innovation," but do not have access to the almost free credit enjoyed
by banks and their largest customers. As a result, the financial sector remains the mother of trusts, concentrating financial and
corporate wealth by financing a gobbling-up of smaller companies as giant companies to monopolize the debt and bailout market.
The result of this financialized "big fish eat little fish" concentration is a modern-day version of fascism's Corporate State.
Radhika Desai calls it "creditocracy," rule by the institutions in control of credit.[11]It is an economic system in which central
banks take over economic policy from elected political bodies and the Treasury, thereby completing the process of privatizing economy-wide
control.
Give special tax favoritism to the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sectors.
Minimize land rent and housing costs by taxing land rent and other rent-yielding assets, not capital or wages
Shift taxes off land-rent taxation to leave it available to pay as interest to mortgage bankers
Provide public infrastructure at low cost
Privatize infrastructure into monopolies to extract monopoly rent
Reform parliaments to block rent-seeking
Avoid military spending and wars that require running into foreign debt
Block democratic reform, by shifting control to non-elected officials
Use international organization (such as the IMF or NATO) to force neoliberal policy
Concentrate economic and social planning in the political capital.
Shift planning and resource allocation to the financial centers.
Concentrate monetary policy in the national treasury
Shift monetary policy to central banks, representing private commercial banking interests.
Bring prices in line with cost-value
Maximize opportunities for rent seeking via land ownership, credit and monopoly privileges
Banking should be industrialized to finance tangible capital investment
Banks lend against collateral, bidding up asset prices, especially for rent-yielding assets
Recycle corporate revenue is into capital investment in new means of production
Pay out revenue as dividends or use it for stock buybacks to increase stock price gains
The time frame is long-term to develop products and marketing plans: M-C-M'
The time frame is short-term, hit-and-run by financial speculation, M-M'.
Industrial engineering to raise productivity by research and development and new capital investment.
Financial engineering to raise asset prices – by stock buybacks and higher dividend payouts.
Focuses on long-term development of industrial capitalism as a broad economic system.
Short-term hit-and-run objectives, mainly by buying and selling assets.
Economy of High Wages, recognizing that well fed, well-educated labor with leisure is more productive than
low-priced "pauper" labor, and long-term employment
A race to the bottom, burning out employees and replacing them with new hires.
Mechanization of labor treats workers as easily replaceable and hence disposable.
M-C-M' Profits are made by investing in means of production and hiring labor to produce commodities to sell
at a higher price than what it costs to employ labor.
M-M' "Capital" gains made directly by asset-price inflation
Banking is industrialized, to provide credit mainly to invest in new capital formation. This increased credit
tends to bid up commodity prices and hence the living wage.
Increased bank credit to finance the bidding up of housing, stocks and bonds raises the cost of
housing and of buying pension income, leaving less to spend on goods and services.
Supports democracy to the extent that the lower house will back industrial capital in its fight against the
landlord class and other rentiers, whose revenue adds to prices without adding value.
Finance capital joins with "late" industrial capitalism to oppose pro-labor policies. It seeks
to take over government, and especially central banks, to support prices for stocks, bonds, real estate and packaged bank loans
gone bad and threatening banks with insolvency.
Industrial capitalism is inherently nationalistic, requiring government protection and subsidy of industry.
Finance capital is cosmopolitan, seeking to prevent capital controls and impose free trade and
libertarian anti-government policy.
Supports a mixed economy, with government paying for infrastructure to subsidize private industry. Government
works with industry and banking to create a long-term growth plan for prosperity.
Seeks to abolish government authority in all areas, so as to shift the center of planning to Wall
Street and other financial centers.
The aim is to dismantle protection of labor and industry together.
Banking and credit are industrialized.
Industry is financialized, with profits used mainly to increase stock prices via stock buyback
programs and dividend payouts, not new R&D or tangible investment.
Favor industry and labor.
Give special tax favoritism to the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sectors.
__________
[1]I provide the charts in The Bubble and Beyond (Dresden: 2012), Chapters 7 and 8, and Killing the Host (Dresden:
2015).
[2]"The Theory of Dynamic Economics," Essays in Economic Theory ed. Rexford Guy Tugwell (New York: 1924), pp. 96 and 98,
originally in The Publications of the University of Pennsylvania , Political Economy and Public Law Series 3:2 (whole No.
11), 1892, p. 96. Europe's aristocratic governments developed their tax policy "at a time when the state was a mere military organization
for the defense of society from foreign foes, or to gratify national feelings by aggressive wars." Such states had a "passive" economic
development policy, and their tax philosophy was not based on economic efficiency. I provide the details in "Simon Patten on Public
Infrastructure and Economic Rent Capture," American Journal of Economics and Sociology 70 (October 2011), pp. 873-903.
[3]George advocated a land tax, but his opposition to socialism led him to reject the value and price concepts necessary to define
economic rent quantitatively. His defense of bankers and interest rendered his policy recommendations ineffective as he moved to
the libertarian right wing of the political spectrum, opposing government investment but merely taxing the rent taken by privatizers
– the reverse of what Patten and his pro-industrial school of economists were advocating, based on classical value and price theory.
[4]"The Theory of Dynamic Economics," p. 98.
[5]Speech of June 24, 1877. He used Latin and said " Sanitas, Sanitatum " and translated it as "Sanitation, all is sanitation."
It was a pun on a more famous aphorism, " Vanitas, vanitatum ," "Vanity, all is vanity."
[6]William Lazonick, "Profits Without Prosperity:Stock Buybacks Manipulate the Market and Leave Most Americans Worse Off,"
Harvard Business Review , September 2014. And more recently, Lazonick and Jang-Sup Shin, Predatory Value Extraction: How the
Looting of the Business Corporation Became the U.S. Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored (Oxford: 2020).
[7]Joan Farre-Mensa, Roni Michaely, Martin Schmalz, "Financing Payouts,"
Ross School of Business Paper No. 1263
(December 1, 2020), quoted by Matt Stoller,"How to Get Rich Sabotaging Nuclear Weapons Facilities," BIG, January 3, 2021.
[9]George Akerloff and Paul Romer, "Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit,"https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1993/06/1993b_bpea_akerlof_romer_hall_mankiw.pdf
[10]Sheila Bair and Lawrence Goodman, "Corporate Debt 'Relief' Is an Economic Dud," Wall Street Journal , January 7, 2021.
[11]Desai, Radhika. 2020.'The Fate of Capitalism Hangs in the Balance of International Power'. Canadian Dimension, 12 October.
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-fate-of-capitalism-hangs-in-the-balance-of-international-power . See also Geoffrey
Gardiner, Towards True Monetarism (Dulwich: 1993) and The Evolution of Creditary Structure and Controls (London: Palgrave,
2006) and the post-Keynesian group Gang of 8 popularized the term "creditary economics" in the 1990s.
I don't think I'm really on board with this strict separation between finance capital and industrial capital. Marx got a lot
right, but one of many things he got wrong was actually buying into the emancipatory potential of capitalism.
He mistakenly saw
the market and its logic as some sort of quasi-autonomous, internally functioning thing with scientific laws which governed its
motion (this is literal, hence he and Engels talking about "scientific socialism"). He missed that the capitalist marketplace
and money itself were always already political, neither of which have any independent existence from the institutions which create
them.
I believe we have seen a rise in "rentier" capitalism less because it is fundamentally different than industrial capital
and more because the rich and powerful long ago realized that there is no "free market" and that they could construct the market
legally and politically in precisely the way which allows them to maintain and expand their wealth and power.
Marx, for all his
polemics against capitalism was actually too wrapped up in its logic to see this part of it. He didn't really grasp that the supposed
laws of the marketplace could be bent or broken at will be the people with the means to do so (hence, "too big to fail"), thought
the laws of capitalism were something like laws of nature instead of pure fiat made by people.
That's the mistake. At some point the elite just realized that the "free market," far from threatening them was the most effective
way to maintain their control of society.
At least in Capital, I don't see this as Marx's mistake. It is not the dominance of Capital itself that he sees as potentially
emancipatory, but the actual increase in the ability to generate surplus that it creates, which could be deployed to other ends
if the system were surpassed. (And for Marx, it's "progressive" function was already firmly in the past.)
The absolute Hellscape created for the working class, the degradation of the environment, and other disasters he saw as baked
into the system. And this did not depend on whether industrial or finance capital predominated. He certainly would never have
deluded himself with the belief that "the euthanasia of the rentiers" would fix things. That was left to a later economist.
I think that Marx regarded the "laws" of capitalism as different from what you seem to be calling laws.
He was of course in no position to observe the ever-accelerating tinkering with the supposed laws of the system that we've
been witness to for many decades, but what he did see, and what he analyzed in the form of various proposals to eliminate the
"bad" effects of the system while retaining it's essential characteristics he saw as perhaps capable of altering the ways in which
crises manifested but not of avoiding the crises.
This isn't really adequately expressed, but I'm working from my little Lenovo touchscreen and am disinclined to do longer exposition
until I have a keyboard available.
At the end of the 19th C. with capitalism exploiting the environment like never before the reaction in the art world was to
romanticize nature. Dream-scapes of mystical nature. Followed soon by goofball tourism in model-Ts. The industrial revolution
was the economic singularity at the beginning of automation. It gave us the ability to accumulate wealth in a whirlwind. But it
lasted barely a century. At which point nature was no longer beautiful and mystical – it was completely trashed. So this went
hand in glove with a population explosion and capitalism because it required both. Which is now totally counterproductive. In
fact self-destructive. And instead of letting the whole thing implode, bringing essential resources and services to a screeching
halt, we are (apparently) financializing the economy.
M-C-M has become M-debt-M. At least this eliminates the ravaging of the
environment at ever accelerated consumption. What we need, I submit, is M – environment – M. We need to increase our national
and state legislatures by adding a new branch of lawmakers – scientists, now especially environmental scientists, but science
in all its branches. And give science full political authority, along with vested financial interests. Balance sheets can be manipulated;
money can be digitized; but the environment is the only thing that counts.
All this and not a word about the consequences for the world of 'productive' industrial capitalism. The need to produce so-called
goods endlessly and in increasing quantities is destroying the planet yet the author seems to regard it as something to which
a society should aspire. Capitalism itself, with its inherent drive for endless economic growth, is incompatible with a finite
planet. Even some capitalists realise this and suggest, hopelessly, that we must immediately and seriously look for ways to expand
beyond this planet. A piece elsewhere on this site today about Jeffrey Epstein labels him a 'child rapist' in a way that suggests
his activities promoting capitalism were more respectable. 'Capitalist' should carry the same stigma. Or is the extinction of
all complex life – as esteemed climate scientists are telling us we are headed for if we don't stop this growth obsession – a
less wicked end than a sex crime?
We could use more production of solar panels, wind turbines and electric transportation.
We could use an enriched working class with the wherewithal to replace their carbon sourced living standard with a green one.
This is a really good point. Just producing something doesn't produce a net gain for society. I once had this idea that someone
with a better background in economics than I have should write a long essay or a book about how the rise of advertising in the
1950s coincided with the need of industrial capitalists to create demand out of thin air for the products they were producing.
When the actual need for your products doesn't exist, we figured out how to manufacture demand as well. Up to that point, capitalism
had mostly been concerned with the supply side of production but the advent of marketing, advertising, and PR was all about managing
the demand/consumption side as well.
This is another way the rentier/industrial capitalist distinction breaks down. Both are beholden to the same interests.
There was a book called "from the wonderful folks who brought you pearl harbor", which (in a light hearted way) dealt with
madison ave (the series mad men was supposedly taken from this story line) and the creation of "consumers" . in the fifties
The real time version would be george seldes' works multiple books.. and he had a publication called "in fact" which dealt with
the "association of national manufacturers" and how they were controlling the media of the day though advertising.
He was doing stories about the dangers of tobacco and the industry killing of all stories dealing with negative facts about tobacco,
back in the forties and fifties..
A great book was "witness to a century"
It blows my mind that just about everything going on today, has been cooking for about a century and we act like us "figuring
it out" is a big deal . we must be one smart species.
This theme gets a significant amount of space in Baran and Sweezy's "Monopoly Capital (1966), in the chapter on the Sales Effort
in particular, but also scattered elsewhere throughout the book.
au contraire. I say it's described as part and parcel of finance capitalism. The extractive industries create a surplus of
material that must then be sold (analogous is the need to have a war in order to create the need for more bullets), and the extractors
get a massive land rent bonus as the resource is given to them free of charge, and they also benefit from tax advantages and land
appreciation facilitated by the aforementioned finance capitalism . How much of the bezos fortune has been acquired through selling
counterfeit goods touted by fake reviews on the product quality? More junk, sold faster. delivered by an army of gig workers driving
individual polluting cars and the notion that an electric or hybrid bus should be replaced by an army of uber drivers, until they
don;)t need them anymore
From the above "The oil and mining industries likewise are notoriously exempt from income taxation on their natural-resource
rents. For a long time the depletion allowance allowed them tax credit for the oil that was sold off, enabling them to buy new
oil-producing properties (or whatever they wanted) with their supposed asset loss, defined as the value to recover whatever they
had emptied out. There was no real loss, of course. Oil and minerals are provided by nature."
From Buckminster Fuller's last book 'Critical Path' –
" approximately 60 percent of the employed in U.S. America are working at tasks that are not producing any life support .Which
would cost society the least: to carry on as at present, trying politically to create more no-wealth producing jobs, or paying
everybody handsome fellowships to stay at home and save all those million-dollar-each gallons of petroleum?"
Maybe it's time to give the environment a breather from human 'production'. Ecosystems have been loving COVID-19.
I think their exists a confusion as to what constitutes- or is not included in the term – Productive industrial capitalism.
I think the term 'Industrial' evokes images of smoke stacks, endless pollution, misery and environmental degradation and excludes
a positive side that includes polution elimination, contained systems, environmental resoration and blooming, happiness and mission,
higher and more meaningfull fullfillment.
I think the term 'Productive' evokes images of so-called goods as being created endlessly while destroying the planet – whereas
restoration of soils and environment on an industrial scale and the resultant beneficiary of goods produced for the enablement
of biodiversity.
Further, a large component of the term 'productive' having negative connotations is a direct result of Financial capitalism's
take over and, deceptive use of terms and language – they were led by the computer revolutions use of terms and language taken
from long used context and applied to their own narrow doings – See Michael Hudson's -J is for Junk Economics.
This same de-focusing and sly re-working of definitions has left a majority of folks believing that banks use peoples savings
to lend out to people trying to start a business, buy a home, or to business to increase production – and not the reality of most
of it being to boost asset prices and de-regulate any type financial gambling and shicanery – . And what does it say about economics
as science? where economics pretends that itself is self correcting and not entropic like about everything else, will take bad
actors out of the equation of the free market, will produce good corporate citizens, and claims creative destruction without realizing
that destruction applies to only those things previously created.
When has the production of good corporate citizens outweighed the destructive capacity of those produced bad corporate citizens.
There seems to be no distinction between the predatory, destructive and harmful capitalist corporation that only contributes to
overhead, misery and deductive as opposed to productive – that and, those that are productive, useful and positive for all species
and the planet.
Mother nature and this planet does not hold humans in as high esteem as we humans do – if you are religious – I don't think god
does either.
Sorry
Mason is a careful and thoughtful economist, so his take is well worth reading. He points out that interest payments as a percent
of GDP fluctuate with time and Fed-interest rate setting, and in fact are currently back down to roughly the same level as in
1975. I checked some FRED graphs, and this is true for both business interest payments and household interest payments.
He also points out that increases in relative financialization vs. industrialization have generally varied globally, with one
area's increase in one aspect balanced by another area's increase in the other. And while US primary manufacturing has decreased,
companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Google are still "industry", as they produce usable consumer services (mainly logistical and
distributional) that are not "financial". Mason points out that most top fortunes in the US are still made in such "industrial"
realms, not financial.
As Hudson agrees that Marx understood, Mason points out that industrial capitalists still extract "exploitative rent", in the
form of profit extracted from the labor power of workers, via the capitalists' collective monopoly on the means of production.
He feels that both industrial and financial capitalism are largely inseparable and essential (to the extractors) to the extraction
of surplus value from workers.
I'm not sure I fully buy Mason's argument in PB's comment that Amazon, Walmart, et al are "industry". Clearly, they've superseded
Main St as agents to abet consumer culture, and may do so more efficiently (thus adding to GDP), but can this part of the service
industry truly be labelled as "industrial"? It seems to me they're old wine in new bottles, so isn't it a zero sum, at least in
the long run? They've really only made it easier for consumers to increase their indebtedness–it's just a click away instead of
a drive away–so are a more efficient way to abet the FIRE sector more than the industrial sector, especially since so much of
what is on offer is now made offshore.
Further, as JS points out, we need to know how to get to some sort of sustainable economy before the whole thing collapses.
Somehow the financial capitalism vs industrial capitalism conflict has to be replaced, which will require strong government and
far-sighted leaders–both in short supply thanks to Neoliberalism. As many at NC have pointed out, we are now in a race between
nuclear armageddon and climate armageddon. But it's good to know where we are, and how we got here, if we are to find our way
out of our present predicament.
Kilgore,
Good points. Re Walmart, etc., and the label "industrial", Mason's point is simply that those firms aren't "financial", i.e.,
not in the FIRE sector, and hence aren't what Hudson says he's upset with. Yet (claims Mason, I haven't checked), they are the
sort of firms, rather than FIRE, that comprise the dominant chunk of the wealthiest US firms, and of wealth generation in general.
Mason would agree that the problem isn't about one type of capitalism vs. another, but about the whole inhuman, exploitative,
unsustainable capitalist shebang.
One point re FIRE that neither Hudson nor Mason address is Dean Baker's take: that much of what should rightfully be "labor's"
share of GDP doesn't actually instead go to "capitalists" as "profit" OR to rentiers as interest or rent. It simply goes as wages/salaries
to the very highest-paid (and increasingly so) laborers, as opposed to the bottom 90% of laborers. Most top professionals and
managers of firms are not "owners", hence they "work" for a living–but they get paid these days predominatly via wages and salaryies
that have skyrocketed. And FIRE is indeed in this case a major offender, as Dean points out.
While one could argue that these are simply "profits by a different name", the point is that such employees actually have no
"owners" right to the salaries, unlike true owners' rights to (all) profit. They do have a lot of cronyistic, informal power,
however. Baker suggests several ways to regulate and lower their salaries, both for finance (a financial transactions tax), and
for all corporations in general. This would free up money to go to the lower-paid workers and/or customers of these extractive
firms.
Shareholders of public companies do not actually own the company [David Ciepley] and very few have a controlling stake either.
Given the supine boards of most companies the CEOs have effectively complete control and should be considered functionally equivalent
to the "capitalists" of lore. What with their options and so forth they are adept at joining the ranks of "owners" even if they
started as "laborers".
Baker has some good ideas, incremental style, but I don't get a sense he has a big picture like Hudson. Mason quibbles over
details just for the sake of it, it seems to me.
We've regularly referred to the landmark article by Amar Bhide, Efficient Markets, Deficient Governance, which lays out longer
form how US regulations by preferring liquid markets, have created anonymous, transient, arms-length shareholders who do not exercise
control over companies, and due to the need to keep strategically sensitive information confidential, are incapable of supervising
them properly even if they had the power to do so.
The very first sentence of Michael Hudson's post targets: "the landlords, bankers and monopolists extracting economic rent
without producing real value." I believe Amazon, Walmart, et al. fit the category of monopolists extracting economic rent without
producing value. The FIRE sector was prominent but not the only target of Hudson's post. I think Mason works hard to mince Hudson's
words -- to no useful end. "He[Mason] feels that both industrial and financial capitalism are largely inseparable and essential
(to the extractors) to the extraction of surplus value from workers." I believe firms that make physical products, like automobiles
or light bulbs, and select top management from their engineering and production staff have proved very different in their operations
than the same firms run by top management selected from their financial staff.
Regarding "Deep States" and such, their enforcers, IMF, WB etc:
A fascinating history of shifts in the structure and functioning of the Japanese economy -- essentially from serving the population
to serving the speculators -- promoted by a subverted Japanese Central Bank, facilitated and encouraged by the IMF is to be found
in this documentary based on Richard Werner's " Princes of the Yen ":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY
Don't get confused between making money and creating wealth.
When you equate making money with creating wealth, people try and make money in the easiest way possible, which doesn't actually
create any wealth.
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned" income.
The American have lost sight of what real wealth creation is, and are just focussed on making money.
You might as well do that in the easiest way possible.
It looks like a parasitic rentier capitalism because that is what it is.
Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy into a financial crisis.
They will load your economy up with their debt products until you get a financial crisis.
On a BBC documentary, comparing 1929 to 2008, it said the last time US bankers made as much money as they did before 2008 was
in the 1920s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6
At 18 mins.
The bankers loaded the US economy up with their debt products until they got financial crises in 1929 and 2008.
As you head towards the financial crisis, the economy booms due to the money creation of bank loans.
The financial crisis appears to come out of a clear blue sky when you use an economics that doesn't consider debt, like neoclassical
economics.
Once you have a firm grip on what wealth creation and money really are; it all becomes clear.
Banks – What is the idea?
The idea is that banks lend into business and industry to increase the productive capacity of the economy.
Business and industry don't have to wait until they have the money to expand. They can borrow the money and use it to expand today,
and then pay that money back in the future.
The economy can then grow more rapidly than it would without banks.
Debt grows with GDP and there are no problems.
The banks create money and use it to create real wealth.
The interesting point about China would seem to be that, having seen the results that Financialisation has produced in the
West, they are determined to avoid it.
Of course it might be worth adding that it required overturning the lessons of the '30s and comprehensive deregulation for us
to end up where we are, and I cannot see the People's Bank of China ignoring their own analysis of (Western) capitalism to allow
a similar fate to befall their own system. Debt has place and role to play, but ruling the system, as today, is certainly not
it.
In economics they have obviously heeded their lessons well. It's the social side that needs more attention.
"... In reforming the US financial industry, you would need to separate savings and trading banks from investment banks. The 1932 Glass-Steagall legislation and the act based on it did service in that respect up until the late 1990s when it was repealed by the Clinton government. In some countries (Japan being a notable example), the postal service performs savings bank functions. ..."
What in your opinion would be the proper approach [for the Outlaw US Empire to engage
China]? I ask that seriously.
Assuming my reengineering your query is correct, I provided an answer well prior to the
2016 election--Give up on Neoliberalism, the pursuit of Empire and Zero-sumism; go back to
obeying the UN Charter and US Constitution while following the latter's instructions located
in the Preamble; and join with normal nations to help others develop via a global BRI as a
partner with China. Given current political realities, that's just not going to happen.
Instead, I propose the following:
Throw the "vested interests" overboard and work in a Win-Win manner for humanity like
China, its Eurasian Bloc partners, and other like-minded nations. Fundamentally, the pursuit
of Empire and the #1 policy goal of attaining Full Spectrum Domination must be renounced
forever with corresponding adjustments made to the federal government--one of those being an
intense auditing of the entire national defense structure and arrest of those who've
defrauded it for decades. Second, Repeal the Federal Reserve Act and make banking a public
utility, and at the same time arrest the fraudulent banks's and Wall Street firms's people,
seize their assets, and reincorporate the mess into the Treasury Department. Third, repeal
the 1947 National Security Act and all subsequent acts that are incompatible with the ideal
of freedom--Yes, that includes the Patriot Act and such. Fourth, eliminate the Electoral
College via a Constitutional amendment that also makes all elections publicly financed,
mandates a finite amount of free media coverage, removes restrictions on requirements for
appearing on a ballot, and makes "Democracy's Gold Standard" the law of the land. Eliminate
the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and all other armed agencies not directly
concerned with safeguarding the public welfare against the designs of Corporations, which was
the original regulatory rationale adopted in the late 1890s and 1900s. Use existing
Anti-Trust legislation to break up corporations with oligopolistic power. Legislate Social
Media and all other natural monopolies to be public utilities, that would also include public
health. Eliminate the Death Penalty except for Treason and committing an act of corruption
while holding public office at any level of government. Seriously consider removing all
regulatory agencies from the Executive and placing them within a Fourth Branch, The
Regulatory Branch, which would be non-partisan and electoral for 8 years while eliminating
the "Revolving Door." Alter the system of taxation to eliminate any possibility of attaining
a "Free Lunch" while paying particular attention to Capital Gains instead of payroll
income.
It's very likely I omitted a few items, but IMO the above are the most important. Clearly,
the current political paradigm would need drastic alteration for the above, although I doubt
any of the above would be objectionable to a majority of the public once reasons were
provided--which is to say, none of it's really radical since most of what's being rejected
was reactionary to begin with. Doing all that would turn the clock back 120+ years in many
cases prior to the time when nascent Neoliberals captured the federal government and began
their alterations in 1913. It's very interesting to note the biggest political force against
Wilsonian Democracy as it was euphemized was Teddy Roosevelt and his Square Deal for the
American Proletariat. Yet ironically, he made it possible for Wilson to win the election, and
WW1 would have altered his program in some never to be known manner.
Thanks for asking your question dan of steele as I haven't put any of that together for
quite awhile. Until the "vested interests" are removed, however, nothing's going to change
for the better, including relations with China, making their removal the required first
step.
In reforming the US financial industry, you would need to separate savings and trading
banks from investment banks. The 1932 Glass-Steagall legislation and the act based on it did
service in that respect up until the late 1990s when it was repealed by the Clinton
government. In some countries (Japan being a notable example), the postal service performs
savings bank functions.
The system of taxation to be based on land taxation over income taxation.
Stock market transactions to be subject to a transaction fee charged to sellers that is a
percentage of the profit they make on selling stocks. For that matter, stock exchanges should
be public utilities subject to regulation.
... Tokyo Stock Exchange
The third-largest stock exchange in the world is also the largest to not be
publicly-traded. Though the Tokyo Stock Exchange is organized as a joint stock corporation,
those shares are closely held by member firms like banks and brokerages. By contrast, the
smaller Osaka Stock Exchange is publicly-traded, which perhaps befits long-held Japanese
stereotypes about Osaka being more entrepreneurial and less hidebound than Tokyo ...
...Shanghai Stock Exchange
This is the largest stock exchange in the world still owned and controlled by a
government. [My emphasis - Jen.] The Shanghai exchange is operated as a non-profit
entity by the China Securities Regulatory Commission and is arguably one of the most
restrictive of the major exchanges in terms of listing and trading criteria ...
...The Bottom Line
Running an exchange is a great business; it is effectively a monopoly. Those who own
exchanges can require companies to pay listing fees, traders to pay for market access and
investors to pay transaction fees. It is not altogether surprising, then, that there is so
much activity in this space. In addition to the aforementioned major mergers, the Singapore
Exchange is trying to acquire the Australian Stock Exchange, while Brazil's BM&F
Bovespa (once state-owned and now publicly-traded) is looking to expand through acquisition
as well.
While these transactions are interesting to a point, they do not generally help the
individual investor. Unfortunately, trading stocks listed on foreign exchanges is still
difficult (and expensive) for U.S. investors and none of these mergers will change that. Of
course, it is up to the brokerages to offer these services and for investors to demand
them. (Find out how the third-largest stock exchange in North America came to be. Check out
History Of The Toronto Stock Exchange.)
In the meantime, it looks like there is an unmistakable trend in the market of stock
markets towards greater global integration and fewer small independent operators...
Needless to say Beijing must be in no hurry not to relinquish control and regulation of
the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
In reforming the US financial industry, you would need to separate savings and trading
banks from investment banks. The 1932 Glass-Steagall legislation and the act based on it
did service in that respect up until the late 1990s when it was repealed by the Clinton
government. In some countries (Japan being a notable example), the postal service performs
savings bank functions.
My proposition is that cash is the ownership of the common wealth - that the state creates
and manages it. Others use it for a transaction tax on each use. Keep it simple and non
negotiable.
Glaring inequities can be remediated with a close monitored reimbursement system that is
transparent and under continuous audit.
Every account transfer for whatever reason is taxed . If you withdraw cash you pay tax
similar to an ATM fee. etc.
Complicated concession systems are avoided as they immediately invite scammers to skate
around the rigmarole. Yes there will be minor unfairness issues but that sure beats the major
unfairness issues we have in place now. Illegal money laundering requires multiple moves
across accounts and diverse banks to obfuscate the nature of the transactors etc. That would
generate further taxation on those tricks and perhaps reveal the trail.
Yes there will be double tax. But if transaction tax is set at a low rate to not screw the
low income people then it will get their support as they will see that the higher cash users
will be paying more for the privilege. Sliding scales can be configured in such systems but
avoidance is made incredibly difficult.
As psychohistorian often says : its the global private finance banks that we must seize
control of.
The globalists found just the economics they were looking for.
The USP of neoclassical economics – It concentrates wealth.
Let's use it for globalisation.
Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48, observed what the capital accumulation of
neoclassical economics did to the US economy in the 1920s. "a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion
of currently produced wealth. This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking
purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves the kind of
effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital
accumulation in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were
concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by
borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped"
This is what it's supposed to be like.
A few people have all the money and everyone else gets by on debt.
McFaul says that "Biden's team should come up with new ways to grow these ties [with
ordinary Russians] even over Putin's objections. In the long run, forging and sustaining
links with Russian society will undermine anti-American propaganda as well as American
stereotypes about Russia."
To this, McFaul adds that, "The new administration should make it easier for Russians to
study in and travel to the United States," and urges European states to do the same.
My take on this is very simple: the West cannot even absorb their own youth anymore. What
makes them think they can absorb Russia's?
Besides, it's not so simple an operation to attract young people to your country to study.
The logistics are very complicated, and it requires a lot of resources not even counting the
promise of jobs within your own country (in the case of STEM students). Even the brain drain
from countries with large populations such as China and India don't surpass much above the
low to mid six digits. And those programs take time to gain traction - decades in most cases.
And all of this already taking into account the fact that your country still has to be an
attractive place.
Discontent already exists in Americans with Indian STEM from H1B1 visa program. As the
excess population rises, so will resistance to new influx of immigrants - specially
high-skilled ones. This will snowball to a stage where Americans become second-class citizens
in their own country (as you would have to guarantee the jobs for the foreigners in order to
sweeten the deal).
How will the USA regain its advantage in this world?
I was looking back at some earlier reports to gain an insight into the means by which the
USA gave the game away and the means that might restore its place in the economic world. It
has allowed itself to be completely captive to global private finance AND ownership of the
keys to its salvation. If it dfoes not nationalise its key industries then it can rest
assured of its doom. IMO it is now almost impossible for it to nationalise a pizza parlour
let alone an education or engineering sector.
If the USA is to survive the oncoming collapse and break free of its apocalyptic war
agenda, then certain realities WILL have to occur. These realities include (but are not
limited to):
1) Regaining its lost industrial potential, with an emphasis on the machine tool sector
which the west once enjoyed as a world leader
2) Regaining the lost scientific and technological capacities which the USA once had
when it still valued productive thinking under the days of JFK and NASA
3) Regaining a grasp of education which values productive citizens over consumer
subjects
4) Regaining control over national credit under federal banking, dirigisme and other
long-term investment practices that rely on regulating Wall Street speculation and other
unproductive forms of banking.
How might these vital capacities be regained?....
The USA is incapable of nationalising its education sector and is incapable
systemically of having the patience to await the benefits. It will continue to sustain an
education sector that is designed to transfer $$$ in taxation directly to private corporation
pockets and to do so by reducing the the number of salary earners between the input $ and the
$ that end in private corporation pockets. The private corporations will continue to perfect
the swindle of returning the least possible effort in return for those $$$.
Ditto for defence spending and every other sector.
The USAi is hoist by its own petard and has a dull brained president surrounded by
ideological obsessives, cultural paranoiacs, a narcissistic Congress and Senate. It will not
be capable of restoring its real economy and will continue to imagine itself as a world
leader. It will berate and negate and cancel all unorthodox thought from those that favour
nation building.
The rest of the world's nations had better take note. Clearly many have.
The Will to Believe: Americans and their Divine Masters Edward Curtin
"Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of
days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style."
Albert Camus, The Fall
Propagandists are smart people. They begin their devious machinations with the premise that
people need to believe in something rather than remaining suspended in doubt or forced to
accept the existential courage of despair that leaves them temporarily lost and without answers
or masters, suffering from free-floating anxiety.
Propagandists are like Mr. Death. They know people are afraid of death and aloneness and so
use that fear to manipulate them into believing their cover stories for comfort.
Propagandists are like the Candy Man, handing out fictive life savers to the shipwrecked
desperadoes willing to grasp on to anything even if it has a big hole in its center.
Propagandists take this need for belief and use it to create different scenarios that they
develop into full-scale social theater pieces that will give the public various options to
believe, all of which are meant to satisfy the public's yearning for something rather than
nothing but which conceal the truth.
Facts don't matter with these offerings since they are completely illusory narratives.
These staged plays usually contain their opposites; one can choose what has already been
chosen for one, even seemingly contradictory scripts with opposing roles. Seemingly is the
relevant word, for the opposites are not opposites but counterparts, flip sides of the same
coin. But each choice is a choice of belief that satisfies the need to believe no matter how
unbelievable. It's the coin that's counterfeit.
For the propagandists, facts are fictions used to entice the audience into double-binds so
entrancing that there is no exit. Or so they hope.
The French sociologist Jacques Ellul put it this way in his classic book Propaganda: The
Formation of Men's Attitudes:
For no citizen will believe he is unable to have opinions. Public opinion surveys always
reveal that people have opinions even on the most complicated questions, except for a small
minority (usually the most informed and those who have reflected most).
The majority prefers expressing stupidities to not expressing any opinion: this gives them
the feeling of participation. For they need simple thoughts, elementary explanations, a 'key'
that will permit them to take a position, and even ready-made opinions.
As most people have the desire and at the same time the incapacity to participate [except to
vote for and support pre-selected candidates], they are ready to accept a propaganda that will
permit them to participate, and which hides their incapacity beneath explanations, judgments,
and news, enabling them to satisfy their desire without eliminating their incompetence .He
realizes that he depends on decisions over which he has no control, and that realization drives
him to despair.
Man cannot stay in this situation too long. He needs an ideological veil to cover the harsh
reality, some consolation, a raison d'être, a sense of values. And only propaganda offers
him a remedy for a basically intolerable situation.
Thus the need to choose a master, a prefabricated demigod. It is why the American presidents
are presented and accepted by their followers as minor divinities. Yes, it is a civil religion,
and yes, people will vehemently deny that they revere these figureheads.
But those denials ring false, as recent history and the pageantry associated with the
installation of these demigods will attest.
Take the last three presidents, for example.
Barack Obama was considered, by his followers and many others, like a prayer come true, a
black messiah come to redeem the country from its racist past and evil war-making deeds of his
Muslim-hating, war-mongering predecessor George W. Bush.
That Obama then waged war on seven Muslim countries didn't matter to his congregation. Not
in the slightest. They revered him as strongly as they had denounced Bush, the black-hatted
white demon to their white-hatted black god, for the western movie template underlies these
political theater pieces. Obama was a dream come true and the dream factory went into
overdrive. As the priestess Madonna prophesied with Like A Prayer in 1989:
Just like a dream
You are not what you seem
Just like a prayer, no choice
Your voice can take me there
Then the orange-halo-headed Trump was paraded in. To his followers he was the savior who
would re-redeem the country from the devilish divinity Obama, the false prophet. He would drain
the swamp. Desperate middle-Americans revered this NYC real-estate tycoon and reality TV star
who for years was nothing but a running joke among those who actually knew who he was. It
didn't matter to his congregation. Not in the slightest.
That he gave to the rich and screwed the middle-class and the poor, increased the military
budget, waged secretive wars via drones and private mercenaries didn't matter a bit. He was a
religious figure.
To Hillary Clinton's and Obama's acolytes, he was Satan himself, and for four years the
anti-pageant play was presented by the corporate mainstream media to exorbitant box office
receipts and ratings. God and Satan fought in the ring for the ultimate fighting
championship.
Now Joseph Biden – just as Ronald Reagan, another acting president, had the coffee
brewing for "Morning in America" – is greeted by the same media filmmakers as the latest
savior, an aging but still virile demi-god who will usher in "a new day" in America.
The pageantry surrounding his recent virtual inaugural, like all inaugurals, was a religious
ceremony choreographed within an ironic circle of 20,000-armed palace guards and barbed wire
fencing protecting the erection of the new king, one who, like Oedipus in Sophocles' tragedy,
is presented as the savior who will defeat the viral plague attacking the new Thebes.
Unlike Oedipus, however, one can be assured that Biden will not seek to discover the
murderer of Laius (JFK), the former king, whose assassination resulted in the plague
devastating the country. Oedipus's search for the truth didn't end well, and Biden's long
insider career bodes well for no truth-seeking.
And like his predecessors' inaugural ceremonies, this one featured cultural idols such as
Hunger Games Lady Gaga, Madonna 2.0, promoting herself as befits idols, and Bruce Springsteen
offering his evenings "small prayer for our country" – Land of Hopes and Dreams
:
Grab your ticket and your suitcase
Thunder's rollin' down this track
Well, you don't know where you're goin' now
But you know you won't be back .
I said this train
Dreams will not be thwarted
This train
Faith will be rewarded
No, we won't be back, unless you think Biden's slogan – "Build Back Better" –
which is also the slogan of the world's rulings elites, means what it says. Perhaps then your
faith will be rewarded.
I'll go with George Carlin when he said that to believe in the American Dream you have to be
asleep.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/kJ4SSvVbhLw
My faith is that the corporate mass media hypnotists who work for the owners of the country
will continue to pump out their religious spectacles and that the various congregations will
support their masters as always. The will to believe runs very deep and hand-in-glove with the
propaganda. Life's hard and it's tough to be without a master.
"Men don't become slaves out of mere calculating self-interest," writes Ernest Becker
in The Denial of Death , "the slavishness is in the soul, as Gorky
complained."
Propagandists' ability to mesmerize the faithful has increase exponentially as the
technological life has increased and been promoted as de rigueur. This on-line life is
propagated as a new religion whose embrace is said to be inevitable and whose faith one must
accept as the missionaries for its miraculous nature spread the word far and wide.
U$ presidents are idolized, and demonized, depending on which target audience one belongs to
within the left-right controlled oppositions of Demokracy, Inc.'s partisan political theater.
Obomber, for instance, was a savior of sorts for some, an anti-Amerikkkan socialist for others,
and neither for many who couldn't care less for such charades. And besides the elementary
good-cop/bad-cop routines of the catch-22 positions to which the "bewildered herd" (Walter
Lippman) is consigned, there's the more 'nuanced' commentary constantly riding the coattails of
figureheads of state, all within acceptable boundaries of course, reserved for the talking
heads and other managerial class gatekeepers tasked with the "manufacture of consent"
(ibid).
The purposes of propaganda are multiple and complex, beyond the simple indoctrination of
true believers, involving not just programmed obedience but divide-and-rule strategy to move
confused and conflicted masses in directions obscured by the false consciousness of ideology.
Likewise the psychology of manipulation, which exploits more than existentialist themes of
dread and death, like desires for pleasure instrumental in promoting "commodity fetishism"
(Marx) and a capitalist way of living conducive to consumerism's answer to problems of
overproduction.
Such considerations hardly scratch the surface of the density and darkness of 'human nature'
and its malleability. What's too often forgotten still, however, in any more elaborate critique
of what we may be made to think (or think we think) is what we are made to do. To recall Marx
again, it's not consciousness so much which determines our existence but our existence as
social beings which determines our consciousness. That we mistake ourselves primarily for
thinking things, as Cartesian mechanics put it, perpetuates the illusion of what is largely an
effect being the principal cause of who we are, to the point of reducing our being to our
thinking (cogito, ergo sum, etc.).
Propaganda is constructed upon an infrastructure of behavioral conditioning and social
engineering, from schools to workplaces to markets, which has come to cumulatively bear down
upon us in 'advanced' industrial systems, organizing human relations according to the model of
a megamachine. In this respect, the panic porn of the p(l)andemic, let alone presidential
politricks, wouldn't work without basic Pavlovian/Skinnerian reinforcements, like lockdown's
suspension of freedom of assembly choking freedom of speech and medical martial law mandating
depersonalized maskeardes and 'social distancing' rituals of fear. And such dystopian nightmare
as that of the present rests upon generations already having lived under occupation to what
Foucalt and others have detailed as the carceral and total institutions of modernity.
If we are to successfully counter the propaganda narratives chosen for us, and their sense
of powerlessness, whether of 'no exit' (Sartre) or 'no alternative' (Thatcher), for passive
audiences to spectacle, we'll have to dig deeper in our lives than what we think or believe.
We'll have to reconfigure who we have become by what we do, building for ourselves at communal
levels of society where values and virtues become matters of habit counter-hegemonic ways of
living and a new world beyond the old, reclaiming and renewing in social practice embodied
traditions of freedom belonging to a more human history than that of the Machine which now
threatens to extinguish our species being. Jan 24, 2021 9:55 PM
Propagandists are like guns for hire. They just provide a service for a fee, they don't ask
questions about exactly what they're doing and why. They certainly aren't bothered by notions
such 'freedom' because as key enablers of whatever regime they're working for they are
automatically in a privleged position.
I have been engaged in conversation with a couple of Jehova's Wittnesses recently. Like a
lot of religeous people they mean well but from an objective perspective they're peddling
exactly the same pablum that you get from political types. It has probably never occured to
them that their notions of the 'coming Kingdom' that's (always) just around the corner sound a
lot like the rhetoric surrounding MAGA. In fact, now we have 'cast out' the Messiah (causing a
lot of trauma and soul searching among the faithful as the predicted events surrounding the
inaugration failed to materialize) they're now literally talking in terms of a Second Coming.
There really isn't a whole lot of daylight between a typical religious cult and a personality
cult like Trump -- both overlook the obvious, both are based on false premeses and both have a
devout following that can rationalize any failure or any shortcoming by the Messiah.
I think that I can speak for many Americans in saying that what I sincerely wish for is not
some saviour but just that politics can become boring again. The purpose of government is to
promote the welfare of the people and provide for collective security, a necessary function but
not one that should be front and center all the time. Unfortunately we've allowed government to
be 'captured' for individual gain -- always a risk but in today's ethics free envronment now a
serious danger -- so now there's an expectation that our support should somehow be directly
rewarded (I vote for 'X' so 'X' owes me what's important to me). This isn't what government is
about, its like I said to the JW crew when they're talking about the Kingdom of Heaven
"Benevloent rule is one thing but does it keep the lights on and the drains clear?".
paul , Jan 24, 2021 8:09 PM
Biden is the most lacklustre and most corrupt president in US history. His Cabinet is 100%
kosher. Expect an onslaught on the 1st and 2nd Amendments, "MAGA terrorists" in general, with
plenty of false flags and gay ops to grease the skids.
Mark R. Elsis , Jan 24, 2021 8:03 PM
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the
masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen
mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our
country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested,
largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our
democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner
if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our
daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our
ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand
the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which
control the public mind."
Edward Bernays Jan 24, 2021 7:14 PM
Trumpo siphoned off half of his election donations. He only spent half of the $1.26
billion raised. $600 million plus was siphoned off by Trump/ Kushner from the shell company
they set up. He never fought to win seriously in the election. It was all a sham. He may have
looted as much as $1 billion from his PACs.
Sunface , Jan 24, 2021 7:07 PM
Trump terrified the Elite and the swamp including the Globalis totalatariansin Genva and
City of London. They used all the means at their disposal to try and destroy him.
Ghe sustained relentless attack on him from day one and it is still ongoing. It clearly shows
their fear of him.
They lied, created false evidence, attemped impeacment which failed.
Then the final act was stealing the vote. Manipulation of the system. Even their nutcase they
have put in power admitted it when he admitted his team has created "the most extensive and
inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics." He didn't lie for
once in his life.
They Dems and socialist lefts used every trick in the book against the legal system and even
captured the Supreme Court. They then threatend the members of the republican party to desert
him at the last moment or face their skeletons in the cupboards.
He will return, he is not finished. Mark my words.
ConstantWarning , Jan 24, 2021 8:04 PM Reply to
Sunface
If they had to go to all that trouble for do long against a man who had no previous
experience in politics, they aren't that 'elite' are they.
Trump will Return! Is that not religious belief in returning of the messiah, that in four
years will be even more senile or dead than senile and dead Biden is today. Unbelievable.
Americans are monkey trained to believe lying promises of politicians and are accepting
lying explanations of their continued failure continuously placated with more lying about
future promises instead of being harsh judges, demanding from politicians immediate
accountability, efficiency and effectiveness of their political actions in delivering on
their promises or they are out of political scene forever. No coming or returning to Jesus
moments for failed corrupted politicians is what democracy is all about.
In fact correct treatment of politicians like disposable bathroom tissue, as they rightly
deserve, is a foundations of bourgeois liberal democratic political framework. The American
mentality of Worshiping politicians from Washington to JFK, to Obama, to Trump is by itself a
fundamental subversion of democracy. The facts, deeds, policies economic development for
benefit of people not promises what must be a sole criterium of voter attitude to all
political figures not emotional attachment, as we do not attach emotions to soiled stinky
bathroom tissue.
Imagine a fact that presented as new, greenhorn idealistic "Socialist" politician
suposedly fighting for people, AOC turned into shrew corrupted political operator when after
her total failure of implementing her electoral pledges GND, MfA etc., she was campaigning in
2020 on a slogan that "because I failed once I should be allowed to try again to fail again
in next and next and next term as US representative, while herself advanced from shitty
bartender job to belong to top 1% incomes in the US fighting for "socialism" for poor from
comfortable place.
She and many other politicians impudently demand to be rewarded for they utter corruption
and failure to live up to their promises and expectations they raised. But failed AOC still
was reelected because her constituents love and believe in her while enemies see her not as
corrupted politician a hypocrite who run of GND and then begged Dem senators not to vote for
her own bill, but as a communist evil mobilizing army of hatred reacting like Pavlov dogs.
There could be no democracy among dogs only dictature.
Trump made all sorts of promises but followed Obama policies. Obama followed Bush policies
even if Dems called Bush evil war criminal. Trump did almost nothing what he promised and
almost everything he told us he hated, following exactly what Hillary was running on in 2016.
Trump presided over collapsing of mainstream economy. With some reluctance but finally
embraced COVID sham that made America into failed totalitarian state enabling new reset into
neo-feudalism while like predecessors made US oligarchy even richer and more powerful than
Obama ever did.
These are facts anything else is just religious belief in politicians, con artists vetted
by ruling elite.
Wayne Vanderploeg , Jan 24, 2021 9:52 PM Reply to
Kalen
Yes and no. You had me then you lost me. Obama and Trump are nowhere close to being alike.
Remember Obama cut his political teeth in one of the most corrupt counties in one of the most
corrupt states in the Union. He and his wife also lived and still live in the most racist
part of Chicago. It always works both ways. Believe me. There was and is a lot of it. Lock
you doors and don't stare, we were told. Geeze.
I am talking about policies that are continuing and alike at least from Clinton to Trump
not about what kind of people those stooges of oligarchy are; good or bad. SS men were
extraordinary fathers loved children and families and still followed policies of killing
children other than their own what US is doing worldwide and at home.
Politicians must not be revered heroes but humble servants of people regardless of
character good or evil. That is why American politics was infantilized, elections turned into
meaningless to constituents political concerns popularity, likability contest. That must end
or no real change is possible.
Jeffrey Strahl , Jan 24, 2021 10:49 PM Reply to
Sunface
Trump did not pardon Assange and Edward Snowden, did he? Trump gave fast track approval to
Big Pharma's digital "vaccines," didn't he? Trump never allowed the release of the JFK papers
which was scheduled in October '17, did he? Trump signed the declaration of emergency which
enabled the states to call lockdowns, didn't he? You seriously need to wake up, sir, and you
probably need something stronger than coffee.
paul , Jan 24, 2021 5:28 PM
With Schumer bleating about Erections, "Trump Incited The Erection!!!"after the attack on
the Capitol Puppet House, what is actually going on? What should we expect in the near
future?
Conditions have worsened immeasurably for the vast majority of Americans in the 4 years of
Trumpo's Reign. Austerity, QE for Wall Street, Covid, Urban Mayhem.
On the plus side, the MSM is hated, loathed, despised and ridiculed as never before.
Interestingly, America/ Israel, Trump/ Netanyahu, form a mirror image of one another.
Ungovernable, deadlock.
Epicurious , Jan 25, 2021 1:08 AM
I've enjoyed this author's previous article however for this one, with all due respect I'm
not prepared to accept his "propaganda". According to Wiki-something "Propaganda is
communication that is primarily used to influence an audience and further an agenda, which
may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts in order to encourage a
particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language in order to produce an emotional
rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented" That being the
case then are not all articles on this blog or others mainly propaganda, trying to influence
and further the authors agenda/message? As with any writings people need to critically assess
such, to question the premise and verify the alleged facts provided. It's like reading a
graduate student's thesis in which (s)he does not provide an antithesis.
This thought provoking article mentions "That he (Trump) gave to the rich and screwed the
middle-class and the poor, increased the military budget, waged secretive wars via drones and
private mercenaries didn't matter a bit". A statement which seems to go against the pre-Covid
public record. During Trump's tenure, average salaries increased markedly plus black
unemployment went significantly down, plus, plus, plus. The public record, assuming it is
correct and I have no evidence to doubt such, refutes your argument. I'd like you to provide
evidence that supports your argument. I have an open mind which needs more facts before
deciding.
Harry Rogers , Jan 25, 2021 12:00 AM
Well Edwin you certainly are skilful at "hitting the nail on the head" as they say and
your eloquent monologues are well worth reading.
Having never worked in government one can surmise that even the little man or woman who
issues drivers license must have a feeling of POWER. I capitalise that word for a purpose.
Good old Freddy Nietzsche nailed it also in his wonderful "Will to Power".
Look at the police worldwide whose uniforms now just imitate some "black" force that
appears when an old lady protests in London. They are there don't you know to protect the
public. Would you give a 22 year old a sub machine gun, a black uniform and a helmet?
The only reason they issue uniforms to people is to give them a sense of power. White in
hospitals means they are the "good guys". Remember the British soldiers who were forced to
wear red to disguise their blood when they were stabbed or shot?
It's all simply about power. Consider the real unadulterated power that the media has!
Consider the enormous power the little people in government departments yield in passport
offices, building permits, taxation offices. Take away the power and what happens ??
" Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give
him power." Lincoln
discobomb , Jan 24, 2021 10:51 PM
The reality is that people are not born human – they must become human
through inner work and experience. This is what human culture was supposed to be about.
Homo pseudo-sapien s is largely a hairless ape with some peculiar mutations- and
most apes are pack animals where the guy with the biggest stick rules. People who do not do
the inner work usually cannot escape this biological conditioning and will require a leader
to tell them what to do and what to think.
America is an entirely artificial society created by freemasons and jesuits, using slaves
and the dregs of Europe (settlers) for manpower .so it was never going to be pretty.
A phrase runs through my head a lot lately. It is a quote attributed to Ralph Waldo
Emerson with regard to slavery "The voluptuousness of the total control of another human
being .."
niko , Jan 24, 2021 10:22 PM
U$ presidents are idolized, and demonized, depending on which target audience one belongs
to within the left-right controlled oppositions of Demokracy, Inc.'s partisan political
theater. Obomber, for instance, was a savior of sorts for some, an anti-Amerikkkan socialist
for others, and neither for many who couldn't care less for such charades. And besides the
elementary good-cop/bad-cop routines of the catch-22 positions to which the "bewildered herd"
(Walter Lippman) is consigned, there's the more 'nuanced' commentary constantly riding the
coattails of figureheads of state, all within acceptable boundaries of course, reserved for
the talking heads and other managerial class gatekeepers tasked with the "manufacture of
consent" (ibid).
The purposes of propaganda are multiple and complex, beyond the simple indoctrination of
true believers, involving not just programmed obedience but divide-and-rule strategy to move
confused and conflicted masses in directions obscured by the false consciousness of ideology.
Likewise the psychology of manipulation, which exploits more than existentialist themes of
dread and death, like desires for pleasure instrumental in promoting "commodity fetishism"
(Marx) and a capitalist way of living conducive to consumerism's answer to problems of
overproduction.
Such considerations hardly scratch the surface of the density and darkness of 'human
nature' and its malleability. What's too often forgotten still, however, in any more
elaborate critique of what we may be made to think (or think we think) is what we are made to
do. To recall Marx again, it's not consciousness so much which determines our existence but
our existence as social beings which determines our consciousness. That we mistake ourselves
primarily for thinking things, as Cartesian mechanics put it, perpetuates the illusion of
what is largely an effect being the principal cause of who we are, to the point of reducing
our being to our thinking (cogito, ergo sum, etc.).
Propaganda is constructed upon an infrastructure of behavioral conditioning and social
engineering, from schools to workplaces to markets, which has come to cumulatively bear down
upon us in 'advanced' industrial systems, organizing human relations according to the model
of a megamachine. In this respect, the panic porn of the p(l)andemic, let alone presidential
politricks, wouldn't work without basic Pavlovian/Skinnerian reinforcements, like lockdown's
suspension of freedom of assembly choking freedom of speech and medical martial law mandating
depersonalized maskeardes and 'social distancing' rituals of fear. And such dystopian
nightmare as that of the present rests upon generations already having lived under occupation
to what Foucalt and others have detailed as the carceral and total institutions of
modernity.
If we are to successfully counter the propaganda narratives chosen for us, and their sense
of powerlessness, whether of 'no exit' (Sartre) or 'no alternative' (Thatcher), for passive
audiences to spectacle, we'll have to dig deeper in our lives than what we think or believe.
We'll have to reconfigure who we have become by what we do, building for ourselves at
communal levels of society where values and virtues become matters of habit counter-hegemonic
ways of living and a new world beyond the old, reclaiming and renewing in social practice
embodied traditions of freedom belonging to a more human history than that of the Machine
which now threatens to extinguish our species being.
Harry Rogers , Jan 25, 2021 12:07 AM Reply to
niko
Well written Niko. Perhaps the answer is "I don't care " ??
Martin Usher , Jan 24, 2021 9:55 PM
Propagandists are like guns for hire. They just provide a service for a fee, they don't
ask questions about exactly what they're doing and why. They certainly aren't bothered by
notions such 'freedom' because as key enablers of whatever regime they're working for they
are automatically in a privleged position.
I have been engaged in conversation with a couple of Jehova's Wittnesses recently. Like a
lot of religeous people they mean well but from an objective perspective they're peddling
exactly the same pablum that you get from political types. It has probably never occured to
them that their notions of the 'coming Kingdom' that's (always) just around the corner sound
a lot like the rhetoric surrounding MAGA. In fact, now we have 'cast out' the Messiah
(causing a lot of trauma and soul searching among the faithful as the predicted events
surrounding the inaugration failed to materialize) they're now literally talking in terms of
a Second Coming. There really isn't a whole lot of daylight between a typical religious cult
and a personality cult like Trump -- both overlook the obvious, both are based on false
premeses and both have a devout following that can rationalize any failure or any shortcoming
by the Messiah.
I think that I can speak for many Americans in saying that what I sincerely wish for is
not some saviour but just that politics can become boring again. The purpose of government is
to promote the welfare of the people and provide for collective security, a necessary
function but not one that should be front and center all the time. Unfortunately we've
allowed government to be 'captured' for individual gain -- always a risk but in today's
ethics free envronment now a serious danger -- so now there's an expectation that our support
should somehow be directly rewarded (I vote for 'X' so 'X' owes me what's important to me).
This isn't what government is about, its like I said to the JW crew when they're talking
about the Kingdom of Heaven "Benevloent rule is one thing but does it keep the lights on and
the drains clear?".
Jeffrey Strahl , Jan 24, 2021 8:11 PM
"Build back better" is the Great Reset's repeated slogan.
Despite the state of the world, I cannot really tell what it is that has collapsed and
needs to be rebuilt. The economy was crumbling before vid. And the BBB drones are clearly not
talking about our freedoms being restored. Build back better? Come on, things are not good
but the current situation is hardly like Germany after WWII. Hang on, perhaps the BBB drones
are thinking about what is going to happen. 🤔
Bigger, Better Bucks (for them, not us) is the slogan of the Great Setup.
paul , Jan 24, 2021 8:09 PM
Biden is the most lacklustre and most corrupt president in US history. His Cabinet is 100%
kosher. Expect an onslaught on the 1st and 2nd Amendments, "MAGA terrorists" in general, with
plenty of false flags and gay ops to grease the skids.
Mark R. Elsis , Jan 24, 2021 8:03 PM
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the
masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen
mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our
country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested,
largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our
democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner
if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our
daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our
ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand
the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which
control the public mind."
Edward Bernays
paul , Jan 24, 2021 7:14 PM
Trumpo siphoned off half of his election donations. He only spent half of the $1.26
billion raised. $600 million plus was siphoned off by Trump/ Kushner from the shell company
they set up. He never fought to win seriously in the election. It was all a sham. He may have
looted as much as $1 billion from his PACs.
Sunface , Jan 24, 2021 7:07 PM
Trump terrified the Elite and the swamp including the Globalis totalatariansin Genva and
City of London. They used all the means at their disposal to try and destroy him.
Ghe sustained relentless attack on him from day one and it is still ongoing. It clearly shows
their fear of him.
They lied, created false evidence, attemped impeacment which failed.
Then the final act was stealing the vote. Manipulation of the system. Even their nutcase they
have put in power admitted it when he admitted his team has created "the most extensive and
inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics." He didn't lie for
once in his life.
They Dems and socialist lefts used every trick in the book against the legal system and even
captured the Supreme Court. They then threatend the members of the republican party to desert
him at the last moment or face their skeletons in the cupboards.
He will return, he is not finished. Mark my words.
ConstantWarning , Jan 24, 2021 8:04 PM Reply to
Sunface
If they had to go to all that trouble for do long against a man who had no previous
experience in politics, they aren't that 'elite' are they.
Trump will Return! Is that not religious belief in returning of the messiah, that in four
years will be even more senile or dead than senile and dead Biden is today. Unbelievable.
Americans are monkey trained to believe lying promises of politicians and are accepting
lying explanations of their continued failure continuously placated with more lying about
future promises instead of being harsh judges, demanding from politicians immediate
accountability, efficiency and effectiveness of their political actions in delivering on
their promises or they are out of political scene forever. No coming or returning to Jesus
moments for failed corrupted politicians is what democracy is all about.
In fact correct treatment of politicians like disposable bathroom tissue, as they rightly
deserve, is a foundations of bourgeois liberal democratic political framework. The American
mentality of Worshiping politicians from Washington to JFK, to Obama, to Trump is by itself a
fundamental subversion of democracy. The facts, deeds, policies economic development for
benefit of people not promises what must be a sole criterium of voter attitude to all
political figures not emotional attachment, as we do not attach emotions to soiled stinky
bathroom tissue.
Imagine a fact that presented as new, greenhorn idealistic "Socialist" politician
suposedly fighting for people, AOC turned into shrew corrupted political operator when after
her total failure of implementing her electoral pledges GND, MfA etc., she was campaigning in
2020 on a slogan that "because I failed once I should be allowed to try again to fail again
in next and next and next term as US representative, while herself advanced from shitty
bartender job to belong to top 1% incomes in the US fighting for "socialism" for poor from
comfortable place.
She and many other politicians impudently demand to be rewarded for they utter corruption
and failure to live up to their promises and expectations they raised. But failed AOC still
was reelected because her constituents love and believe in her while enemies see her not as
corrupted politician a hypocrite who run of GND and then begged Dem senators not to vote for
her own bill, but as a communist evil mobilizing army of hatred reacting like Pavlov dogs.
There could be no democracy among dogs only dictature.
Trump made all sorts of promises but followed Obama policies. Obama followed Bush policies
even if Dems called Bush evil war criminal. Trump did almost nothing what he promised and
almost everything he told us he hated, following exactly what Hillary was running on in 2016.
Trump presided over collapsing of mainstream economy. With some reluctance but finally
embraced COVID sham that made America into failed totalitarian state enabling new reset into
neo-feudalism while like predecessors made US oligarchy even richer and more powerful than
Obama ever did.
These are facts anything else is just religious belief in politicians, con artists vetted
by ruling elite.
Wayne Vanderploeg , Jan 24, 2021 9:52 PM Reply to
Kalen
Yes and no. You had me then you lost me. Obama and Trump are nowhere close to being alike.
Remember Obama cut his political teeth in one of the most corrupt counties in one of the most
corrupt states in the Union. He and his wife also lived and still live in the most racist
part of Chicago. It always works both ways. Believe me. There was and is a lot of it. Lock
you doors and don't stare, we were told. Geeze.
I am talking about policies that are continuing and alike at least from Clinton to Trump
not about what kind of people those stooges of oligarchy are; good or bad. SS men were
extraordinary fathers loved children and families and still followed policies of killing
children other than their own what US is doing worldwide and at home.
Politicians must not be revered heroes but humble servants of people regardless of
character good or evil. That is why American politics was infantilized, elections turned into
meaningless to constituents political concerns popularity, likability contest. That must end
or no real change is possible.
Jeffrey Strahl , Jan 24, 2021 10:49 PM Reply to
Sunface
Trump did not pardon Assange and Edward Snowden, did he? Trump gave fast track approval to
Big Pharma's digital "vaccines," didn't he? Trump never allowed the release of the JFK papers
which was scheduled in October '17, did he? Trump signed the declaration of emergency which
enabled the states to call lockdowns, didn't he? You seriously need to wake up, sir, and you
probably need something stronger than coffee.
discobomb , Jan 24, 2021 10:57 PM Reply to
Sunface
Your words are marked.
He better be wearing a red cape and have beams coming out of His head.
paul , Jan 24, 2021 5:28 PM
With Schumer bleating about Erections, "Trump Incited The Erection!!!"after the attack on
the Capitol Puppet House, what is actually going on? What should we expect in the near
future?
Conditions have worsened immeasurably for the vast majority of Americans in the 4 years of
Trumpo's Reign. Austerity, QE for Wall Street, Covid, Urban Mayhem.
On the plus side, the MSM is hated, loathed, despised and ridiculed as never before.
Interestingly, America/ Israel, Trump/ Netanyahu, form a mirror image of one another.
Ungovernable, deadlock.
mikael , Jan 24, 2021 4:31 PM
I woundered for an while how to sum up all this witch have happened this past year and
what then to expect.
Some additional coments, the present insane level of propaganda will escalate, its alreay
talk about an 3 wave, and how we are going to die in massive numbers, etc and then the
"heroic" fight done by the vaccine Comp to fight this waves after waves, witch of course
requires new vaccines, and in my home country, Norway they have gone total retard, and now
not once have they talked about PCR etc, there is nothing alowed to disturb the perspetion
witch is the the same as everywhere else, but continues to escalate the hype, every day the
MSM is packed with scare porn and now, we are facing total lockdown, even Sweden have bowed
down to this insane propaganda, I used to travel to Sweden for shopping but thats now
closed.
Then we have to economic aspects, I refer to the video, right now, there are some countrys
whom is capable to make their own desitions, but for how long, when the economy is set to
plunge, it will have consequencess, and when the year passes, the pressure will mount, thats
where the IMFs comes inn, the WB, ECB, FeD, BIS, and with it, conditions, and then the trap
is set, and I belive we will see that this year already, regarding the Great Reset, to
enslave us all and nations binded to the pole.
Because of the total destruction of smal ind to bisenissess, and so on, that will also
escalate and leave millions unemployed and that, will alsoe come with conditions, like
vaccines, no jab, no job nor well fare, etc, etc.
And then we comes to what is the worst, the number of the beast. I dont think the camps
etc, is for infected, once the vaccine is roling out they will focus on us that refuses to be
vaccinated, and do not cary an Vaxxpass, refused jobs, refused to shop, denied travel, etc,
and then we will be either left to our selfs, starving to death, because we are enemys of
humanity, domestic terrorists, etc, and confinded to certain areas, and not alowed to go
anywhere else, that is what I see coming, yeah, it took just 80 years to once again have
people waring an sign, maybe an yellow star, huh, or an banana.
The end result is what is their goal, to eradicate any kind of opposition and whipe the earth
of humans whom is capable to resist and think for them selfs.
Never, never ever underestemate the level of evil this humans are capable of, remeber they
have already killed millions, dispilayed mor millions, lied to billions and stolen
trollions.
Watch this video and do notice whats said.
And thanks again H. Maria
Amen to it all.
Vaya con Dios.
peace
JuraCalling , Jan 24, 2021 3:36 PM
"Propagandists' ability to mesmerize the faithful has increase exponentially as the
technological life has increased and been promoted as de rigueur."
You missed the real point.
Propagandists may well mesmerise the faithful. But the real genius was creating the
faithful to mesmerise in the first place.
MBJ , Jan 24, 2021 3:21 PM
False opposites and genuine difference are not mutually exusive. It is the elasticity and
nature of the differences that matter. The pantomime script will be rewritten according to
the audience, yet the paradigm elastic must not break because it holds the audience togehter.
Take a look at the script of your own national pamtomine. What issues are to be found there?
Then note the topics that are absent, or at best whispered and muffled. Some, if not all, of
those concerns will be beyond the pantomine paradigm.
It is the role of the script writters to maintain enough slack in the pantomine to
incorporate different sides. This is not as easy as many assume. There is always a danger
that the pantomine does not engage the audience. They note the absenses that matter to them.
Then two things could happen: they stop attending the show or they try to get on the stage.
As appealing as the latter sounds, there is the risk that they find themselves incorporated
into the show, providing oving some extra elasticity or, forgive the pun, allowing some
buttons to become undone.
Norm , Jan 24, 2021 2:48 PM
[W]ithout God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
Personal experience says Camus is certainly right about that!
However, the problem is -- no matter how much, in my most trying times, I absolutely
beg for God to exist -- it is still a sledgehammer on my head that the weight of
evidence says BOTH (1) there is no (anthropomorphic) God (a la Abraham) AND (2) no human --
or any other thing -- is a God. Resolve that , Camus!
So, certainly not Trump (eyes roll, mouth laughs), nor Bernie (eyes roll
again, mouth pukes)!
My "religion" (and long experience) tells me that all power is -- by definition --
evil . All humans who take it upon themselves to exert unnatural and inhuman abilities
over others. So much for living in this world.
wardropper , Jan 24, 2021 4:35 PM Reply to
JuraCalling
Thank heaven, it is indeed.
Of course it's hard to use love in a selfish way, since as soon as you do that it isn't love
any more
Which is why 'the powerful' tend to have no comprehension of what love even is. It is the
opposite of what they worship.
I'd go even further, having in mind that "the love of money is the root of all
evil", and not the money itself.
Even Jesus basically accepted that Caesar would have his money inasfar as he might be
entitled to it. ("Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's "
Similarly, the desire for power is the evil here.
The automatic power that comes from knowing what you are talking about, or having an
exceptional talent, isn't evil in itself, and it's only when you start using such abilities
to undermine somebody else, or imagine you are some kind of 'elite', that you're headed in an
evil direction.
The falsity of the Abrahamic god does not mean there is no divinity that actually cares
for you . If you dedicate your life to discovering for yourself if this is true you will
be free to live with some sanity, and to die in peace. The god(dess) is manifest in nature,
which is the planet we live on, and it/he/she is beautiful and intelligent beyond our
capacity to understand. https://app.sigle.io/almondson.id.blockstack
wardropper , Jan 24, 2021 2:35 PM
Frankly, I don't think anybody really believes any of this any more.
Uppermost in most people's minds is a sense of powerlessness in the face of the whole of
Washington and its stinking exceptionalism.
They are not really fooled by the next 'messiah' who presumes to capture their hopes and
dreams.
They just can't see any alternative.
To me, the answer lies mainly in how we can work upon ourselves in such a way as not to
become what we hate – not to sink to the level of our enemy, the MSM.
We know ourselves better than others know us, and we have plenty of opportunity to do
something with that knowledge.
Which is why the ubiquitous mechanization of our lives is a real threat to us.
The enemy knows that the only place where he has no power is in each individual's
self-consciousness, but that doesn't stop him trying to undermine and destroy that crucial
and precious gift that all human beings worthy of the name possess.
If we all do what we can in that field, I believe we have the power to leave the enemy
behind, choking in the dust, where he belongs.
That goal could be summed up as "individuals who freely cooperate with each other", instead
of the obvious goal of the MSM, which is the reverse: "The group which undermines individual
freedom".
The MSM hate self-consciousness – even to the point of having built up over the
decades a fiction that the "self-conscious" person is socially maladjusted in some way,
because they don't fit into 'the group'.
But, if we think about it, self-consciousness is actually the next step on the evolutionary
ladder – whether the MSM likes it or not – and, if we take that step and become
active within our own consciousness, we really need never fear such an enemy again.
Z=Anon , Jan 24, 2021 1:47 PM
Propaganda yes, but there are real issues to be addressed and real battles to be fought
whatever the pantomime around us is.
Like with Obama, the political capital that Biden has will be fully spent by the time the
next coronation comes around, and he or his replacement will be hated. The Deep state want
socialism to be totally discredited by this fake-left party, continuing the work of 60 years
of discrediting and systematically training the American people to detest their own champions
and representatives.
By the time Biden is finished, the people will be screaming out for the far-right, the
party of God, Guns, small government, 'liberty', nationalism and naked Corporate exploitation
& deregulation.
The crown Jewell's of the left: equality, social justice, and freedom of expression,
accumulated over a hundred years of struggle will be transferred, with some slight tweets,
over to become the 'virtues' of the Corporatist elites and the Corporate Fascist state, as
there did in some small way under Trump.
We see it already today where the corporatist fascists claiming freedom of speech as one of
their most cherished values, despite their history of censorship and except when it effects
corporate profits, the military budgets or surveillance interests of course, or leads to
unions representation, then censorship is an issue of national importance.
Like the slim-bag, Farage, during Brexit, oh how kind and caring the far-right will be,
during these coming 4 years, how high minded principled and modest. The free market
corporatists, low tax, low intervention deregulation, corporate businessman which have
wrecked and destroyed the USA will be the 'victim' of discrimination, the 'victims' of
marxist suppression as their profits rocket under a Biden regime.
Biden can discreet the left and enhance the attractiveness of the far right just in time
for the next election, all at the same time as pushing the interests of the super wealthy
Washington elites, in the background, as Trump did. What a dream arrangement. Heads and the
Washington elites win, Or tails, the Washington Elites win.
Biden's election is the opportunity for the CIA to finally bury the left, as they make
Biden's government taunt and torture the average joe with 'left wing' flavoured ideas, dreamt
up specifically to contaminate socialism & piss in the punch bowl of real socialism.
Often attacking the regular joe, or real left wingers, using anonymous, aggressive, abusive
tweets or comments generated by the CIA's national rudder, their vast shill machine,
brandishing absurd ideas and attacking on ordinary people for how they live their lives or
what they say.
They hope by the time they are done the vocabulary of socialism will be dead, equality and
social justice seen as evil chants. This is the task of the Biden administration, trash the
left as Obama had done and continue to serve the super rich as Trump had done.
The left will be regarded as tyrannical, oppressive, censors and crushers of the spirit and
free speech. The far right as the white knights rescuing the average joe from Marxist bum
rape. This pantomime cannot go on forever, the music will stop and there is only one chair.
So who will win?
It will be the political flavour that best serves the empire, the military and political
elites and extracts most wealth from the population. They will be the victors in the weird
farce as all the time the water rises on the good ship America and all are kept distracted
from the growing holes below the water line and before she finally goes end-up and sinks to
the bottom of the sea.
The democrats first act was to hand back power to the republicans, to create the illusion
of political handcuff's which they in reality applied to their own wrists, as insurance
against the very remote possibility that true socialists political & economic policies
might rise to the top in their own party, spired by the totally collapsed economy, where real
starvation, homelessness and desperation will abound.
It is up to the left to disown Biden and his fabricated dark Disneyland-left of hate and
to push true socialist values of social justice & freedom from elite oppressors, workers
rights, freedom to organise and freedom to speak against power & oppression must be grown
in a parallel system as they always have historically, as the elites go to war with the
American people.
Gezzah Potts , Jan 24, 2021 1:21 PM
Thanks Edward. I haven't voted for at least 24 years, I don't watch any TV news, and I
haven't bought a newspaper for 16 years. And about the best thing I ever read by Chomsky (and
Edward Herman) was Manufacturing Consent. A long time before I woke up to what Chomsky
actually was. And yes, I've also read the article 'Left Gatekeepers'.
What has really been rammed home for me this past year has been the absolute moral and
ethical bankruptcy of the so called 'media organisations' in relation to their relentless
fear porn coverage of the scamdemic. Criminal is almost too polite a word.
Yet so many have willingly swallowed this propaganda without question. And a lot of these
same people; literally enveloped in paranoia, have become little Hitler's to the point of
screaming at complete strangers in shops or snitching on neighbours.
Oh, and I don't watch any vacuous junk out of Hollywood either. However speaking of films,
I've just ordered a copy of V for Vendetta. Long overdue I watched it. I have a feeling I'll
have a strong sense of deja vu whilst doing so. And who knows, I may even learn a thing or
two
el Gallinazo , Jan 24, 2021 1:41 PM Reply to
Gezzah Potts
I would think that the brilliant German film, The Lives of Others, would be even
more appropriate than V for Vendetta for what our Owners hope to have in store for
us.
Gezzah Potts , Jan 24, 2021 10:04 PM Reply to
el Gallinazo
Yes, I've watched The Lives of Others twice, and it's one of the most powerful, and
chilling films I've seen in the last 20 years El.
wardropper , Jan 24, 2021 2:59 PM Reply to
Gezzah Potts
The success of these ghouls can only be attributed to the way in which they have
systematically built up – over a long time – an isolated society of their own,
which has no contact with normal people.
That is bound to lead to their undoing, but there could be an appalling amount of suffering
for all of us before that happens.
May Hem , Jan 25, 2021 5:29 AM Reply to
wardropper
At some stage they will be in conflict with one another, each one fighting to have more
than the others. When? Don't know. Perhaps their conflicts have already begun? Their extreme
form of capitalism feeds upon and consumes itself.
George Mc , Jan 24, 2021 12:47 PM
As far as I'm aware, there hasn't been any rule about wearing masks outside and yet I
noticed the majority doing so. Is this something that follows on from almost every political
figure wearing a mask outside when they appear on camera?
@Levtraro to travel. It
will be a perk for them – a reward for being good servants. I can even forsee that
airlines will refit their fleets, stripping out coach class altogether, as the people who buy
the cheap seats won't be flying anymore anyway. A lot of industries will down-size so as to
only serve the quality customers.
And rich people are buying up land – lots of it. They are becoming what they already
deem themselves to be: an aristocracy, and a hereditary one at that.
Neo-liberal GloboCap is morping into neo-feudalism. They'll own everthing, and they'll be
happy. You'll own nothing and you'll be happy (or else).
I disagree. Current GloboCap elites and elites thoughout history have needed large
populations to look down to and to harvest for all they can yield. It is not good enough to
have all that you want when all others also have all that they want.
It is not nice enough to travel in your own or rented Gulf Stream or First Class or
Business Class when economy seats are non-existent. It is not good enough that a machine
calls you Sir instead of a real lowly human.
Real respect, admiration and adulation, could never be replaced by programmed respect,
admiration and adulation.
McFaul cautions against what he refers to as "Putin's ideological project" as a
threat to the neoliberal international order. Yet he is reluctant to recognize that the
neoliberal international order is an American ideological project for the post-Cold War
era.
After the Cold War, neoliberal ideologues advanced what was seemingly a benign proposition
– suggesting that neoliberal democracy should be at the center of security strategies.
However, by linking neoliberal norms to US leadership, neoliberalism became both a
constitutional principle and an international hegemonic norm.
NATO is presented as a community of neoliberal values – without mentioning that its
second largest member, Turkey, is more conservative and authoritarian than Russia – and
Moscow does not, therefore, have any legitimate reasons to oppose expansionism unless it fears
democracy. If Russia reacts negatively to military encirclement, it is condemned as an enemy of
democracy, and NATO has a moral responsibility to revert to its original mission as a military
bloc containing Russia.
Case in point: there was nobody in Moscow advocating for the reunification with Crimea until
the West supported the coup in Ukraine. Yet, as Western "fact checkers" and McFaul
inform us, there was a "democratic revolution" and not a coup. Committed to his
ideological prism, McFaul suggests that Russia acted out of a fear of having a democracy on its
borders, as it would give hope to Russians and thus threaten the Kremlin. McFaul's ideological
lens masks conflicting national security interests, and it fails to explain why Russia does not
mind democratic neighbors in the east, such as South Korea and Japan, with whom it enjoys good
relations.
Defending the peoples
States aspiring for global hegemony have systemic incentives to embrace ideologies that
endow them with the right to defend other peoples. The French National Convention declared in
1792 that France would "come to the aid of all peoples who are seeking to recover their
liberty," and the Bolsheviks proclaimed in 1917 "the duty to render assistance, armed,
if necessary, to the fighting proletariat of the other countries."
The American neoliberal international order similarly aims to liberate the people of the
world with "democracy promotion" and "humanitarian interventionism" when it
conveniently advances US primacy. The American ideological project infers that democracy is
advanced by US interference in the domestic affairs of Russia, while democracy is under attack
if Russia interferes in the domestic affairs of US. The neoliberal international system is one
of sovereign inequality to advance global primacy.
McFaul does not consider himself a Russophobe, as believes his attacks against Russia are
merely motivated by the objective of liberating Russians from their government, which is why he
advocates that Biden "distinguish between Russia and Russians – between Putin and the
Russian people." This has been the modus operandi for regime change since the end of the
Cold War – the US supposedly does not attack countries to advance its interests, it only
altruistically assists foreign peoples in rival states against their leaders such as Slobodan
Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin etc.
McFaul and other neoliberal ideologues still refer to NATO as a "defensive alliance,"
which does not make much sense after the attacks on Yugoslavia in 1999 or Libya in 2011.
However, under the auspices of neoliberal internationalism, NATO is defensive, as it defends
the people of the world. Russia, therefore, doesn't have rational reasons for opposing the
neoliberal international order.
McFaul condemns alleged efforts by Russia to interfere in the domestic affairs of the US,
before outlining his strategies for interfering in the domestic affairs of Russia. McFaul
blames Russian paranoia for shutting down American "non-governmental organizations" that
are funded by the US government and staffed by people linked to the US security apparatus. He
goes on to explain that the US government must counter this by establishing new
"non-government organizations" to educate the Russian public about the evils of their
government.
The dangerous appeal of ideologues
Ideologues have always been dangerous to international security. Ideologies of human freedom
tend to promise perpetual peace. Yet, instead of transcending power politics, the ideals of
human freedom are linked directly to hegemonic power by the self-proclaimed defender of the
ideology. When ideologues firmly believe that the difference between the current volatile world
and utopia can be bridged by defeating its opponents, it legitimizes radical power
politics.
Consequently, there is no sense of irony among the McFauls of the world as US security
strategy is committed to global dominance, while berating Russia for "revisionism."
Raymond Aaron once wrote: "Idealistic diplomacy slips too often into fanaticism; it divides
states into good and evil, into peace-loving and bellicose. It envisions a permanent peace by
the punishment of the latter and the triumph of the former. The idealist, believing he has
broken with power politics, exaggerates its crimes."
If you like this story, share it with a friend!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Ghanima223 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:36 AM
In short, the tables have turned since the end of the Cold War. It is no longer communist
ideologues that try to export revolution and chaos while the western world would promote
stability and free markets. Now it's western ideologues that are trying to export revolutions
and chaos while clamping down on free markets with Russia, as ironically as it sounds, being
a force for stability and a strong proponent for the free exchange of goods and services
around the world. The west will lose just as the USSR has lost.
US_did_911 Ghanima223 1 day ago 23 Jan, 2021 01:01 AM
The Dollar is the only fake reason that still keeps US afloat. The moment that goes, it loss
will be a lot worse then of USSR.
US_did_911 Ghanima223 1 day ago 23 Jan, 2021 12:58 AM
That happened not exactly after the end of the cold war. It was about even for a decade after
that. The real u-turn happened after the 9/11 false flag disaster.
Amvet 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 10:00 AM
Foreign dangers are necessary to keep the attention of the American people away from the 20
ton elephant in the room--the fact that 9/11 was not a foreign attack. Should any of the main
stream media suddenly turn honest and report this in detail, things will get interesting.
King_Penda 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:11 AM
I wouldn't worry too much. At the same time Biden will be purging the US military of any men
of capability and replacing them trans and political appointments. The traditional areas
where the military recruited it's grunts are falling as they are waking up to the hostility
of the state to their culture and way of life. The US military will end up a rump of queerss,
off work due to stress or perceived persecution and fat doughballs sat in warehouses
performing drone strikes on goats.
Fjack1415 King_Penda 1 day ago 23 Jan, 2021 01:20 PM
Yes, you point to a paradox. While the globalists are using the US as their military arm for
global domination, they are at the same time destroying the country that supports that
military. Perhaps the US military will be maintained by dint of its being the only employer
for millions of unemployed young men in the American heartland, doughballs or not.
Ghanima223 King_Penda 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:39 AM
Ideologues will always be more concerned with having political reliable military leadership
as opposed to actually qualified leaders. It took the Russians 2 decades to purge their own
military of this filth of incompetent 'yes' men within their military.
UKCitizen 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:09 AM
'The Liberal International Order' - yes, that seems a fair description. Led by what might be
termed 'liberal fundamentalists'.
far_cough 1 day ago 23 Jan, 2021 07:01 AM
the military industrial complex and the various deep state agencies along with the major
corporations need russia as an adversary so that they can milk the american people and the
people of the western world of their money, rights, freedoms, etc etc...
roby007 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:54 AM
I'm sure Biden will pursue "peaceful, productive coexistence" just as his friend Obama did,
with drones and bombs.
Paul Citro 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:16 AM
I hope that Russian leaders fully realize that they are dealing with a country that is the
equivalent of psychotic.
Fjack1415 Paul Citro 1 day ago 23 Jan, 2021 01:26 PM
True, the ruling party and MSM mouthpieces and their readers and followers are now truly
INSANE. Beyond redemption. Staggering in the depth and power of the subversion of so many
people, including many with high IQs (like my ex girlfriend and housemate in the US).
Anastasia Deko 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 10:57 AM
US security strategy is committed to global dominance
Absolutely. Biden has filled up his admin with "progressive realists," which
when it comes to foreign policy, is just a euphuism for neocons and their lust for world
empire. So expect an unleashing of forces in the coming two years that will finally humble
America's war machine.
tyke2939 Anastasia Deko 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 01:07 PM
They are desperate for a war with someone but it must be someone they can beat convincingly.
It certainly will not be Russia or China and I suspect Iran will be a huge battle even with
Israel s backing. More than likely they will invade some country like Venezuela as Syria has
Russia covering its back. What a dilemma who to fight.
9/11 Truther Anastasia Deko 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 11:24 AM
The "American war machine" has been humbled from Saigon, Vietnam 1975 to Kabul, Afghanistan.
Salmigoni 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:25 AM
They are not really liberals. They are blood thirsty parasitic neoconservative fascist war
mongers working for the Pentagon contractors. General Eisenhower warned us about these evil
people. A lot of Americans still do not get it.
Joe Biden will ram through warped liberal social experiments masquerading as credible,
time-tested programs designed to stabilize the nation.
It was a stark image never before seen in Washington, DC, and one that bodes ill for the
future prospects of the country. A locked down capital ringed in barbed wire, with 25,000
troops encompassing the Capitol building, provided a surreal backdrop to Joe Biden's
inauguration as the 46 th POTUS.
The excuse Democrats have provided for turning the 'citadel of democracy' into a maximum
security prison is not due to a growing distrust with the electoral process. Nor was it blamed
on the spectacle of the mainstream media and Big Tech silencing the voices of exactly one half
of the U.S. electorate – up to and including that of the now former president, Donald J.
Trump. No, to suggest such irrational things would attract howls of 'conspiracy theory' from
the liberal gallery.
Thankfully, we have Silicon Valley fact checkers and corporate media commentators to lead us
to the valley of truth, which informs us that all those Trump "insurgents" who invaded the
Capitol building on January 6 th were motivated by pure evil intentions rooted in
racism, sedition and white supremacist ideology. And as Hillary Clinton suggested during an
off-the-rails interview with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Trump and his motley crew of
deplorables may have taken their marching orders from none other than Vladimir Putin himself.
Who needs fiction writers these days when we have the Democratic Party?
Conservatives need to come to grips with the realization that they are not dealing with
rational people who will be willing to engage in cool-headed discussion and debate. Despite a
full sweep of the political landscape, the left remains consumed by a collective fit of rage,
hysteria and raw emotion that shows no sign of abating. Why? Partly due to political immaturity
in the ranks, and partly because 'victory' for the left no longer means victory at the polls;
these fanatics, for that is really what they are, will not rest easy until the political
opposition is shorn of its voice and representation. In other words, when it is completely and
unequivocally obliterated. And given the political proclivities of Big Tech and Big Media,
those dreams are dangerously within reach. Unless the right is able to essentially build its
own internet architecture to bypass the left's censorship machine, they will eventually go the
way of the dinosaurs as a political force.
In the meantime, Joe Biden, or whoever will be pulling his strings, will ram through warped
liberal social experiments masquerading as credible, time-tested programs designed to stabilize
the nation. Of course they are nothing of the sort. These are globalist-backed policies –
such as defunding the police, opening the border, vilifying the right as 'racist,' and
sexualizing the minds of elementary-age children – designed to utterly destabilize the
nation and all of its core institutions, including not least of all the nuclear family. Anyone
who speaks out against these reckless initiatives will be struck down by the harshest cancel
culture cult ever known to man. In fact, 'domestic terrorism' legislation is already drafted
that, if passed by Congress, will go far at stifling any dissenting voices from the right.
The very first line of the proposed legislation , entitled
'Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2020,' which was conveniently prepared just weeks before
the Capitol riots erupted, states that "White supremacists and other far-right-wing extremists
are the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States " Buried deep in
the text is a single line devoted to Antifa, and nothing whatsoever about Black Lives Matter,
yet these groups were responsible for torching and looting a swath of destruction across the
United States following the death of George Floyd during an arrest by a while police
officer.
Days before Biden's ironclad inauguration, the media was out in full force propagating the
notion of a connection between right-wing Trump supporters and – wait for it –
terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda.
"I did see a similar dynamic in the evolution of al-Qaida in Iraq, where a whole
generation of angry Arab youth with very poor prospects followed a powerful leader who
promised to take them back in time to a better place, and he led them to embrace an ideology
that justified their violence," Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former head of
Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and the commander of all U.S. and allied troops in
Afghanistan, said in an interview. "This is now happening in America." So there you have it,
straight from the horse's mouth: the 'deplorable' right in the United States is almost on par
with the same guys who carried out the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Needless to say, with such outrageous comments making the rounds, there was little chance of
a balanced message from Joe Biden's inaugural
speech with regards to the myriad problems now stalking America. Indeed, the address was
top heavy with warmed-over clichés about "unity," as well as references to racism and
inequality.
After four years of groundless rhetoric about "racist Trump supporters" (yet no other
conservative president has been so successful at attracting members of the Black
and Latino community to the Republican standard than Donald Trump), it was only natural
that Biden would allude to "a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism
that we must confront and we will defeat." Coming just days after the riots at the Capitol
building by Trump supporters, which the hapless mainstream media has been at great pains to
label a "racist" event, the message made it amply clear for whom the bell tolls.
Once again, at this dangerous crossroads in American history, any hope for a true bipartisan
breakthrough is doomed to failure, and more so now as the radical neoliberal wing of the
Democratic Party is demanding the most outrageous social, cultural and political overhaul the
nation has ever witnessed. No true conservative will ever abide by these changes.
At the same time, the voice and demonstrations of the right is not only being brutally
vanquished, it is actually being assimilated under the banner of "domestic terrorism." This
marks the widest chasm between the two primary political parties in the United States, which,
unless quickly bridged, will end in imminent disaster for the American experiment in
democracy.
@James
Speaks rn. I'm not fine with assuming that the end product will automatically produce
merit beyond what meritocracy is today – brown-nosing. True merit is you have
demonstrated you can do it.
The last 40+ years have seen an endless stream of "bright boys" graduating university with
MBAs, getting involved in the management structure as "change agents", screwing up the
business for 5 years then "taking another opportunity" to screw up a different company.
Prof. Henry Mintzberg calls them the wrong people, at the wrong time, for the wrong
reason, because they don't have a clue how the real world works. But hey, they are high IQ
people, so they must have merit.
@Curmudgeon
r medicine and sophisticated writing. The issue is that these individual were poorly educated
– first and foremost in the "greed is good" school of the America. After sipping deeply
of this dead-end, destructive ethical framework, these individuals were then carefully
trained on how to extract value from an economy/a company rather than add value.
High IQ is still desperately needed for progress and to maintain civilisation. But put to
ill-use, high IQ individuals can wreak commensurately wreak greater havoc.
Analogies could be made to guns, armies, cars. All of them can be put to exceptionally
ill-use. Few would argue that a modern nation can live without automobiles or some kind of
armed defence force.
By 8 January 2021, Mitch McConnell had determined he would not permit the Senate to try
Trump until 19 January 2021 or later. He ruled that the Senate could not convene for special
session unless all 100 Senators formally agreed; he maintained that ruling consistently,
through 19 January 2021. By 10 January 2021, House majority Whip James Clyburn suggested the
House may not deliver articles of impeachment to the Senate until after Biden has been in
Office 100 days.
Not until today, 20 January 2021, did Pelosi deliver articles of impeachment to the Senate.
The same day, McConnell said: (a) the Senate will receive the House managers at noon ET
Thursday, 21 January, when the managers will present and exhibit the articles; (b) at 2:00 PM
21 January, Chief Justice John Roberts will be escorted into the Senate chamber and swear in
all senators; (c) the impeachment articles' trial will begin Tuesday, 26 January.
Until 20 or 21 January, the Senate majority would remain Republican; and a GOP-majority
Senate would not only acquit Trump but also impeach, strongly, the articles of impeachment. So,
why did Mitch McConnell block early Senate trial? Two possible intersecting reasons:
has
said Trump fed the "mob" lies to provoke the mob to use violence to prevent Congress's
certification of Biden's election.] (b) If trial occurs (as it will) when the Democrats
control the Senate, a conviction might seem a Democrat-framed lynching -- not the GOP's
traitorous assassination of Trump's "populism" and his political career.
I do not suggest such reasons are wise, logical, or even rational, but possibly real.
McConnell is a crafty, dissembling, unscrupulous pseudo-aristocrat, but no Socrates or
Aristotle.
"Liberal" and "moderate" Democrats, never-Trump Republicans,"The Squad, " the "Deep State"
-- the nation's whole jumble of psychopathic and otherwise-psychically-ill "Elite," "woke,"
anti-"White"/anti-male/anti-meritocracy/sexually-deviant members -- all share one mantra :
Trump and populism are evil, inimical to "Democracy" and the "culture," "morality," and "public
interests" of the U.S. Populism must be extinguished. Never again may Trump "hold and enjoy any
Office or honor, Trust or Profit under the United States" [U.S. Constitution Article I § 3
clause 7].
Why ought anyone care?
I voted twice for Trump, the second time (2020) merely because he was the lesser evil. In
2016, Trump promised more than a few moves that would have bettered the nation, e.g.
,
Trump meant and honored some promises -- at least partly. But others -- (a), (b), (f), (h),
(i), and (k) -- were bad jokes. His Israel policy was evil. He railed against growing
impairment of free speech. But his concern was mostly his own freedom of expression; and he
failed to do anything substantial toward restoring the general public's freedom of speech. He
continued, and worsened, Obama's persecution of Julian Assange and Bradley ["Chelsea"] Manning.
Edward Snowden remains exiled. Trump has pardoned or commuted sentence of tens of nefarious
criminals, but not Assange, Manning, or Snowden.
Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, George W Bush, and Obama supported the
illegal "state" called Israel. But Trump lifted Israel-support, and, concomitantly, anti-Iran
policy to insane levels. Trump's Israel-related domestic policy included design of blocking or
impeding first-amendment-protected speech and assembly that opposes Israel's genocidal
persecution of Palestinians. Trump rendered formal equation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism
and sought to outlaw the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement.
So, why ought we care whether, after Trump is not President, the Senate tries the articles
of impeachment of Trump and rules that Trump shall not "hold and enjoy any Office or honor,
Trust or Profit under the United States"? Why ought we care even whether simply the Senate
tries the articles of impeachment but acquits Trump?
Trump's 2016 election suggested a true populist might become President -- not a closet
"Elite," but one who would resist the Elites and the Deep State, not surround himself with
snakes of the swamp. If the Senate tries Trump and rules that Trump shall not "hold and enjoy
any Office or honor, Trust or Profit under the United States" because Trump and his supporters
exercised their First Amendment freedom of speaking and assembling to support populism and
protest a corrupt election, speech and assembly freedoms will cease and near-certainly no
capable, electable populist will run for the Presidency.
But that consideration is subsumed in another, greater, more vital, fundamental
concern. We have a federal Constitution. Every federal legislator and judge promises, by oath,
not to act contrary to that Constitution. Every federal judge must promise this: "I solemnly
swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right
to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform
all the duties incumbent upon me under the Constitution and laws of the United States."
...You live in a totalitarian state with arbitrary power.
Your government has three branches: CIA, CIA, and CIA. They infest every other corner of
your government with spies. Until you can accept this you will be an irrelevant muppet
writing bullshit.
... ... ...
4. Every jew ever involved in health care fraud over the past 100 years
If you might be a Trump supporter, just stop. Trump was an incompetent fraud. And Biden
(well his handlers really), will be very competent and will soon make you feel the sting of
systemic punishment.
Everyone can claim some African ancestry. Suggest you get familiar with the process real
quick
Back in 1987, as a young political science major, my constitutional law professor made us
attend a lecture by a visiting scholar on the 200th anniversary of the Constitutional
Convention. I cannot remember who the lecturer was, but I do recall one phrase he used that
has stuck in my mind ever since: the Constitution only works if we have a "constitutional
frame of mind." In other words, the Constitution reflected the culture and the attitudes of
its authors. Today, elites in both parties could give a damn about the Constitution. They
simply ignore the Constitution when it suits them -- or, conversely, use it as a club to
bludgeon their enemies when it suits them.
Today we are reduced to parsing the language of the Constitution because nobody is really
committed to the upholding the culture and the attitudes that informed it when it was
written. Therefore it has become meaningless.
The president must dance to the tune of the bankers and assorted oligarchs who actually
control the US. They enjoy confusing the common people with changing rhetoric and theater,
but at the end of the day, the president is little more than a figurehead, and the policies
remain largely the same. Many do not realize that the Obama administration deported some
2,750,000 illegals.. Under Trump it was only 935,000. Foreign wars? Police brutality? the
rich getting richer? Prison industrial complex? decimation of the middle class? endless
currency debasement? these things are consistent regardless, because they represent the
interests of the actual rulers. The red candidate throws a bone to the "conservatives", the
blue candidate throws a bone to the socialists, but the policy makers continue from one
administration to the next. The last president who tried to stand up to the powers that be
was JFK . and look what they did to him.
Tucker Carlson said Monday or Tuesday night on his show that McConnell warned Trump not to
pardon Assange, and he held the impeachment over Trump's head.
Swampington has gone rogue. I have a feeling that during much of Trump's presidency the
threat of impeachment loomed large, and maybe worse.
Look at Sessions, recusing himself and cowering in the corner. Barr comes in and does
diddly squat. The Durham investigation was a very long joke.
Two years of the Mueller Commission (when everybody in the know knew it was a pack of
lies), spying, leaking, abuse of the FISA Court, Kavanaugh, impeachment over Ukraine, Covid,
Antifa, BLM, stolen election ..never-ending chaos.
These corrupt clowns will do whatever the hell they please. They are the law now. If they
do end up following the law, it will only be because the destruction they've caused already
will be deemed to be enough.
With the federal judiciary's corrupt or cowardly treatment of legitimate
election-result challenges, the federal judiciary has shown it has abnegated its
constitutional duty and will incline to commit impeachable offenses to avoid resisting the
Elites' and the Deep State's subjugation of the People. The Supreme Court has shown that
five or more pseudo-aristocrat judges (two Democrats, three or more Republicans) align with
the Elites and the Deep State. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is correct. The People are
suffering a revolution wrought by the "Establishment" (of the Elites and the Deep
State).
I would say that they are more cowardly than corrupt.
They know that if they supported Trump's legitimate (good evidence) questioning of the
election result, they would personally be in big trouble, so the Supreme Court is really not
a Supreme Court at all – it's a piece of establishment window dressing – same as
the rest of the hollowed out US Democratic institutions.
Real power in the US lies with the ZioGlob deep state and their MSM, the military
(whichever way they turn), and the 72 million US gun owners (whatever they decide to do).
There's also the aspect of real military power outside the US (Russia and China) that could
be brought to bear, and would be potentially decisive. Accepted that some of these are
TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It) scenarios but that seems to be how it is.
Genuine Democracy isn't coming back to the US any time soon.
@Beavertales at, do you really think Trump will discuss anything that went on in private?
He is not the type to write a memoir.
And some of the most bizarre decisions he made while POTUS were as a result of "advice"
from his favourite daughter Ivanka and her repellant husband. Ann Coulter has an article
where she lists the boneheaded decisions Trump made on "advice" from the two incompetent
rich-kids..
This short video is very indicative of the stupidity of Ivanka: she is so stupid, that she
can't even see the contempt these politicians have for her, and sticks around like a bad
smell:
[French Government Posts Video Of Ivanka Trump At G-20 Summit | NBC News]
McConnell must, not maybe, must be the first person to go if the Republican Senate has any
chance of surviving in a way that serves conservative interests. He has been positively of
Zero support to president Trumps four years in office, only giving lip service to the
interests of the issues the presidents supporters wanted addressed.. For four long years,
McConnell was an expert at bringing every advance, or potential advance in conservative
interests to naught. He however, had no problemo at all in taking advantage of President
Trumps popularity with conservative voters, when his re-election was in doubt. Maybe his
middle name should be Mitt.
@anonymous ChiComs -- from whence In Laws $ all arises . McConnell shows the country is
totally sold out to the ChiComs and in fact "governed" by them -- the rest of Congrassholes
are about the same with various "spies" working them, having sex with them, and screwing us
-- the USA is an occupied country via IsraHell and the Chinese Communists -- very, very bad
days are ahead and most in the USA are moron mask wearers who actually believe the filthy
pieces of cloth do something for their "health" contrary to all actual 41 Medical Studies to
date which state the opposite -- truly Maskholing was an IQ test and the country failed to
reach even the level of "Moron". Easy to steal an election when dealing with Maskhole Morons.
Sad all are being pulled down by them .
@Aardvark you are charged by the Feds you will be railroaded, innocence means zero once
you are charged and all the "Judge" cares about is getting you to plead guilty and move the
case, you will be grossly overcharged to force this to happen and the Judge will glare at you
and let you know he hates you if you go forward -- unless you are a Leftist Political hack or
"activist" then you will be cut loose and probably never even charged ."justice" Roberts is
the "model" -- his rulings in Obamacare etc. show he has no care for the actual "law" at all
-- all the other Federal "judges" follow his example .The best thing that could happen to the
USA is for the end of the Federal Courts, DOJ, and FBI -- all are Enemies Of The People --
get involved with them and find out.
@FoSquare The works of Plato and Aristotle have had much influence on the modern view of
the "sophist" as a greedy instructor who uses rhetorical sleight-of-hand and ambiguities of
language in order to deceive, or to support fallacious reasoning. In this view, the sophist
is not concerned with truth and justice, but instead seeks power.
Societies that value truth but recognize the difficulties involved in discovering it also
put value on freedom of expression. Those interested in power for its own sake, not so much.
Unfortunately the power mongers always have the advantage of moral certainty. For them Alinsky
and the Protocols are the only bibles.
@Anon olling 90% of the mass media of mindfuckery, mesmerization and mass megalomania and
finally, the CIA financed and directed "Social Media", the greatest enemy of our First
Amendment rights;;; those nefarious forces nearing absolute control over the federal regime in
the Di$trict of Corruption have now fully succeeded in driving the last nail into the coffin of
the Constitution AND the Bill of Rights, the enabling precondition for establishment of the
federal system.
Behind the scenes, roaring and howling with fits of schadenfreude laughter; the ultimate
shotcallers, those OWNER$ of the Federal Reserve and most other major international banking
institutions, are rubbing their greasy palm$ with total glee by having pulled off the greatest
heist in world history.
Former President Trump is playing his final scene today, making ready to hand over the
lead part of a government like reality show to the mentally infirm Joe Biden. Biden, with
history of pathological lying and a trail of crimes and associations with other crimes had no
actual chance of winning a real election, but real elections are now only part of America's
history. Trumped & Dumped: The Psychological Operation Scrambles to Survive | Jack Mullen
https://blog.thegovernmentrag.com/2021/01/21/trumped-dumped-psychological-operation-enters-phase-two/
@Old and Grumpy wn individual of blackmail able importance -- was discovered in one of
Ep$tein's logs).
Anyone notice how the Joint Chiefs of $taff for the U$ armed forces put out a notice to all
military personnel that they must not participate in acts of sedition prior to the coronation
of the Kamal's Foote/Biding administration.? Since the days of their attempted Operation
Northwoods false flag scheme to attack Cuba, which was vetoed by JFK (among his other sins
against the Deepe$t $tate); the proof was already in the pudding that the JC$ is dirty and our
military is compromised by their chains of command from the top-down -- which is the way the
enemies of We The People choose to employ their nefarious control system over one and all --
excepting, of course, the Elite$ themselves.
@Mefobills of savvy self-promoter and foil for Hillary. That would explain a lot,
especially Hillary's (and the Democrats) absolute hatred of Trump and his supporters. That his
shtick worked is testament to both his talent for self-promotion and our dislike of Hillary.
Guess she miscalculated
In any case, it became obvious that either the fix was in, when he refused to back Flynn and
appointed swamp creatures to fill his administrations' posts, or Trump was a fool. But that's
not to say he wasn't useful in exposing the media and deep state's contempt, hatred and fear of
us -- deplorables all -- by personifying it in their attacks on him.
The question that matters now, for populists, is how do we avoid the leadership trap?
For the most part, our entire legal profession has been taken over by an overeducated,
inexperienced crowd of people who are not able to deal in "Letter" and "Spirit" of law. They're
prisoners of the letter of the law because their only background is of the spoken and written
word.
There was and is no great "American democracy" to be restored after Trump. As the
mainstream political scientists Martin Gilens (Princeton) and Benjamin Page (Northwestern) had
shown six years into Barack Obama's presidency, the nation had for many decades become
"an oligarchy" where wealthy "elites" and their corporations "rule" and
"ordinary citizens have virtually no
influence over what their government does."
That was clear during Obama's corporatist "Hope" and "Change" presidency,
which gave Americans what commentator William Greider memorably called "a blunt lesson about
power, who has it and who doesn't." Americans, Greider wrote , "watched
Washington rush to rescue the very financial interests that caused the catastrophe. They
learned that government has plenty of money to spend when the right people want it. 'Where's my
bailout,' became the rueful punch line at lunch counters and construction sites
nationwide." Then Americans beheld Obama embrace "entitlement reform" (nice-sounding
cover for attacking Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits) and pass a health
insurance reform (the so-called Affordable Care Act) that only the big insurance and drug
companies could love.
The Biden team has no more intention of acting sincerely on the Democratic Party's standard
manipulative populist-sounding campaign rhetoric in the wake of the Trump nightmare and the
2020-21 Covid-19 Recession than did the Obama White House in the wake of the George W. Bush
nightmare and the 2007-08 Great Recession.
Biden's cabinet picks are loaded with neoliberal center-right operatives
inherited from the fake-progressive Obama administration. They hail from the same Wall
Street backgrounds and corporate and imperial think tanks that
staffed the George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama
administrations.
The "diversity" that CNN and MSNBC applaud in Biden's cabinet and agency picks is all
about the race, ethnicity, and gender of his elections. It does not extend to ideology to
include genuinely progressive Democrats in the mold of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez. Under the faux-transformative cloak of identity, these are ruling-class
personnel trained and doctrinally committed to oppose the decent, humane, progressive,
social-democratic, and environmentally sane policies favored by the nation's silenced progressive
majority -- Single Payer health insurance, seriously progressive taxation, the abolition of
parasitic student debt, free public college, a doubling of the federal minimum wage, the
re-legalization of union organizing, and a planet-saving Green New Deal. As liberals fawn over
the many female, nonwhite, and gay people holding top positions, the Biden administration will
be a monument to the persistent rule of the nation's un-elected and interrelated dictatorships
of money and empire.
This follows in accord with the near-octogenarian Biden's promise to super-wealthy campaign
donors at a posh Manhattan hotel last year. Pledging not to "demonize anybody who has made
money," Biden told a gathering of tuxedo-wearing financial parasites that the rich were not
to blame for the nation's savage inequalities (so extreme that the top tenth of the upper US
One Percent had more wealth than the nation's bottom 90 percent by the end of the Obama years).
"Nothing will fundamentally change" and nobody's wealth or income would have to be
reduced if he became president, Biden
said . "I need you badly," he added.
njab 18 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 08:58 AM
What exactly is "left"? The author doesn't talk about being "anti-war" for example. And
frankly, some of the "left" policies, especially related to LGBQXYZ, I find abhorrent. What
is needed is neither "left" nor "right" but something that benefits the MAJORITY of the
population and not just a few fringe groups.
Ohhho HypoxiaMasks 12 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 03:11 PM
Americans is the most confused nation on Earth! They confuse plutocracy with democracy,
propaganda with news, debt with wealth, individualism with freedom, corruption with
influencing, bullying with leading, war with peace and looting with help!
ColdFacts 1justssayn 4 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 11:22 PM
trump is fake anti-establishment, he had 4 years and did not pardon Assange or Snowden, did
not expose corrupt elites, he did not declassify anything "interesting", even now with
exposed election fraud all he did was to file some pseudo lawsuits which were dismissed by
corrupt establishment owned courts.
rubyvolt 16 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 10:41 AM
'MuriKKKa is run by those who OWN it. Their muscle is the US military. Its fodder, the
citizens. The PEOPLE of this nation have no say and can't get into the streets as most of us
have been so poisoned and brainwashed that independent thought is not possible.
jjikss 13 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 02:03 PM
There is no such thing as "democratic empire". You either believe that majority decides or
you believe that power decides. America is undoubtedly an empire ( over 600 offshore military
bases), so the democracy part is just a form of " double think" that comes straight from
George Orwell's vision.
Vikiiing 19 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 08:08 AM
The election process could be fixed to be fair but neither party wants that. US elections
could be modelled after any scandanavian system to get rid of corruption, but there's big
money to be made keeping it corrupt.
DeadRassputin 8 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 07:05 PM
The working class elected Trump as an outsider in the hope he could curb the corruption that
was becoming apparent in the Federal Government. Second term they tried to elect him again,
however the career politicians were having none of that. MSM propaganda blitz plus social
media censorship added to unverifiable mail in ballots, and rigged counting machines sealed
the deal.
Khanlenin DeadRassputin 7 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 07:42 PM
Even though he never stopped stuffing millions into the pockets of the super rich, he did
offer some improvement to the economic conditions of the working classes which had been
stagnating since the 1970's Obama and Clinton had made sure any improvements in productivity
and technology were all going to benefit the top financial elites. Having an unstable ego, he
kept throwing grenades at everything he didn't understand. In the case of Iranian government
officials, the grenades were real
Khanlenin DeadRassputin 7 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 07:42 PM
Even though he never stopped stuffing millions into the pockets of the super rich, he did
offer some improvement to the economic conditions of the working classes which had been
stagnating since the 1970's Obama and Clinton had made sure any improvements in productivity
and technology were all going to benefit the top financial elites. Having an unstable ego, he
kept throwing grenades at everything he didn't understand. In the case of Iranian government
officials, the grenades were real
Joaquin Montano 12 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 02:54 PM
"There's no great 'American democracy' to be restored after Trump, ..." We used to say
"America is the best democracy money can buy". Not even that anymore. It is so disfunctional
it isn't worth the money ...
westernman 13 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 02:29 PM
Some 40 trillion dollars that the rich are stashing away in offshore fictitious bank accounts
if taxed even at 1% will more than pay for all social services like single payer health
insurance, student loan forgiveness, free college education and much much more. Correct Obama
was a faux progressive, he would take one step forward and two back. I agree that Biden seems
to be painting a diverse race cabinet portfolio but skin color is no guarantee at all of pro
working people ideologies.
Hasse1 14 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 12:59 PM
In reality (with hard evidence) Trump is NO different from his predecessors. In fact, if you
compared him with other U.S. presidents, Trump was less violent and caused the death of less
people than Clinton, Bush, Obama or Biden. Just to mention the latest few.
Khanlenin Bill Spence 6 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 08:57 PM
"general welfare" or "the welfare of the generals" You're correct. When ordinary citizens
opposed the invasion of Iraq, they showed that they did not have the expertise needed to make
the decisions in the best interest of the welfare of the generals (or Standard Oil).
czerenkob 13 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 01:40 PM
In the USA democracy is talked about, but not practiced.
SheepNotHuman 9 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 06:14 PM
Democracy a dreamy concept for children only. There is no such thing as Democracy when money
buys the elections and votes remain secretive. America was never a Democracy, from day one
it's a fraud. The first president old George Washington was a blood relative of the UK Royals
and his 50 secret society brothers set up America for 200 + years of fraud. Guess what, the
royals still run things folks. We on the other hand will only be remembered as man or woman
if we turn a blind eye to truth and care nothing for honesty. Some less than human! Now as
people catch on to the facts that they have been played their whole life long while they
pretend and live in the matrix the Deep State must act to clean us out. It's called Agenda
2030 schemed up by the evil WEF. Don't get tested and don't get vaccinated. Now my awakened
ones it's your turn!
shadow1369 15 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 11:48 AM
The US haas been mythologising its nature from day one, all is fraud and pretence there.
Ohhho 14 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 01:15 PM
All of it is just a bunch of nonsense by a naive American. All that "great republic" and
"democracy" garbage! Their dear POTUSes are just puppets to the Global financial oligarchy
that "bought them all and in the darkness bound them"! So they underestimated Trump and let
him slip by, big deal! Everything is back to normal baby, hallelujah!
athineos Ohhho 13 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 01:50 PM
Correct! US has been an Oligarchy since it's Founding when the theft and rape of the land of
the INDIGENOUS AMERICAN PEOPLE by the European Colonizers was being undertaken to benefit the
few as always. Now it has moved into its advanced cancerous stage where the middle class will
be completely assimilated into the poor class to bring about the New Feudal era of the NEW
WORLD ORDER.
Sovietski 10 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 05:18 PM
Biden's sole election slogan/promise has been: "I'm not Trump" He's a millionaire and
4-decade career political dinosaur. Of course nothing will change!
The_Chosenites 14 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 01:03 PM
Biden will spend most of his time as the Donald did. It will be Biden the Blind lead around
by his Israelis guide dog Bibi. Biden will be consumed with middle east policy and defeating
the enemies of Israel, allowing Israels continued expansionist policies. The American people
may have lost the election but there is always a clear winner!
IslandT 3 hours ago 20 Dec, 2020 11:45 PM
Trump administration is a complete failure, when Trump comes to power he has basically
started war on so many fronts and attacks so many swamp people which is the main reason why
so many top level people hate him and causes him to lost the presidency! The swamp in US
senate is simply too deep and there is nothing Trump can do about it, when he leaves the
office, the swamp people will come back and continue their party, those generals or officials
Trump puts on the important positions will be overthrew by Joe Biden, those rules that set by
Trump will also get overwritten by Joe Biden, basically it is a complete waste of time for
Trump to do all those unproductive works. Also the Mexican-US border wall will also be
stopped under Biden as well. If both the democrat and republican not realize they need to
change then there is nothing much a President can do to change the entire situation. US is in
the ending stage of it's empire and we will see de dollarisation after Trump steps down,
think about this, what will happen if other nations want US to buy their currency with the US
gold reserves so the American can buy their raw material or finished product? How much gold
reserves does the US actually has and how much money does the US owns the foreign countries
and how much gold does the us has to pay to foreign nations if de dollarisation actually
happen? Do you people realize that Mike Pompeo has just turned into Swamp people as well,
there goes the last hope for the American!
The USA is now the proverbial Whale in a Swimming Pool: it is big, powerful and impressive
- but can't hide its moves anymore and has little to none margin for any maneuver.
The American Center-wing is ossifying, or, in Cold Warrior terminology (Arthur
Schlesinger Jr.), is losing its "vitality". It is entering a stage where it must "burn the
village in order to save it".
... it seems the answer is that Germany plays the role in Europe that the US plays in the
world and both are satisfied with that role even though neo-liberalism, austerity and
war-mongering are leading us to inhumanity and disaster.
Like i said before elsewhere Biden would capitalize on what Trump has put forth and take
the infamy and blame for instead of moving in the opposite directions of whatever Trump
criticized for in foreign policy. That means be it trade war with China, renege on climate
deals, strong arming NATO and EU countries, or giving everything Israel wants nothing stop
Biden from maintaining what has been put in place.
At most they'll just make excuse on why they had to maintain the policies they themselves
criticized Trump for without changing direction.
He said Joe Biden's strong conviction was that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is a "bad idea"
and that the administration would use "every persuasive tool" to convince partners,
including Germany, to discard the project.
That is pretty much a declaration of war against countries in Europe. Stay
away,
America's
disarray is its own woes, not other countries' opportunity The Financial Times lives in
a world where the USA doesn't have more than 2,000 operational nukes, doesn't control the
financial system (SWIFT), doesn't issue the universal fiat currency (Dollar Standard),
doesn't have a big fucking navy, doesn't enjoy absolute ideological hegemony etc. etc.
...Tronald's foreign policy has been a disaster, even if he has supposedly not sparked a
new war. Let's not talk about all the secret operations, multiplied drone attacks, state
terrorist assassinations, etc. And the new administration is now continuing this...
They've stopped thinking, become utterly predictable.
They just go through the motions. They know that they can't win-achieve their long held
objectives-but they can't stop repeating themselves, including their past errors. They are
not allowed to. The US ruling caste-servants of the ruling class- are only allowed to
operate within very narrow boundaries. They aren't allowed to take radical measures when
faced with new crises- they are confined within ever diminishing political circles. The
duopoly has become an obvious One Party system. And its politics are those of the Gilded
Age-150 years old and still going strong.
The only solution to America's problems is defeat so complete that it cannot be denied
even by the least perceptive. Anyone with money to spare should be buying popcorn
futures.
...Biden is an elderly figurehead. Trump's mistake was being openly bullying and vulgar
instead of underhanded. Already, the EU ( as cowardly vassals ) are falling into line on
Iran and Russia.
...Paul Craig Roberts is correct. There has not been a regime change, there has been a
revolution and treating policies of this "president" as if he is more than a figurehead
being run by oligarchs is foolish in the extreme.
They've stopped thinking, become utterly predictable.
One could say this about the American people who have been herded into two camps so that
the Center can rule. Here's an example: One of Biden's first executive actions is to
include undocumented residents in the Census. This will please the Left immensely and
outrage the Right. But the Census is conducted every 10 years and it was completed in 2020.
So Biden's action is actually meaningless. How many people will actual notice this? Very
few.
It is funny/sad to see the Post Trump Stress Disorder victims are already rationalizing
and making excuses for the war that the establishment drones they voted for will be
starting, and those drones are not even sworn in to office yet. They know that they voted
for war yet their plastic, Hollywood "identities" are so intertwined with their assumed
self-evident moral superiority that they are compelled to defend the evil they are
responsible for even before it is committed. For them, doing nothing crudely is far worse
than murdering millions accompanied by lofty and emotive platitudes.
Meet the Filthy Rich War Hawks That Make up Biden's New Foreign Policy Team
"I expect the prevailing direction of U.S. foreign policy over these last decades to
continue: more lawless bombing and killing multiple countries under the cover of "limited
engagement," – Biden Biographer Branko Marcetic
by Alan Macleod November 13th, 2020
https://www.mintpressnews.com/filthy-rich-war-hawks-make-joe-biden-foreign-policy-team/273039/
Neera Tanden – Reduce US Deficits by Raiding the Economies of Countries We Have
Destroyed:
Neera Tanden, Biden's Pick for Budget Office: Now Is Not the Time To 'Worry About Raising
Deficits and Debt'
by Robby Soave https://reason.com/2020/11/30/neera-tanden-biden-omb-debt-deficit/
She once suggested that if Americans care about the deficit so much, maybe we should make
Libya pay for it.
| 11/30/2020
( Ariana Ruiz/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom )
Trump ripped the mask off US foreign policy and exposed it for what it is - ugly Zionism
and outrageous Jewish supremacy. Trump did many foreign policy changes previous incumbents
and their handlers wanted to do but were constrained by the optics and international
opinion.
I agree the Biden administration will continue the same tired old foreign policy, only
with the mask back on. Of course the media won't notice the similarities, but the public
will. No matter how fervently the managers tinker with the edges it is events that drive
changes and change people.
I just listened to President Biden's speech. It was a good one, even a great one. Thinking
about what Plato means by the 'noble lie' it was a noble speech, and there wasn't much of a
lie about it.
b finished the posting with
"
While Trump had continued the wars the U.S. waged when he came into office he did not start
any new ones. Since Joe Biden first entered the Senate 47 years ago he has cheered on every
war the U.S. has since waged. It would be astonishing to find four years from now that he
did not start any new ones.
"
Prepare to be astonished. Biden isn't going to start any new wars for the same reason
that Trump didn't......MAD
Humanity has been in the MAD phase of the civilization war we are in since the Obama era
push back in Syria.
Biden's chest beating will not be as "impressive" as Trump's but the trajectory is the
same.
The new chief says to tighten the circle of wagons, but those accused of besieging the
Outlaw US Empire's wagon train stopped attacking and moved on long ago. Meanwhile,
supplying the wagon train continues to take resources away from dealing with very real
domestic problems. The upshot is China will continue to pull away and increase its lead
geoeconomically, and together with Russia will continue to solidify and strengthen the
Eurasian Bloc. Very soon, the EU is going to be faced with a very stark choice--to join the
Eurasian Bloc and thus stave-off economic atrophy or continue to allow its brand of
Neoliberal Parasites to eat and risk rupture, perhaps not in 2021 but before 2030.
The key is that the false narrative that was initiated in 1945 and bolstered in 1979
continues to be treated as gospel despite its path to certain ruin. I noted there were no
questions asked about the international call for a Bretton Woods 2.0 that would end dollar
hegemony and Petrodollar recycling, while removing the one source of coercion behind its
illegal sanctions.
The only possible target of opportunity I see is Venezuela as the frack-patch is about
to fold-up shop and fuel prices cause domestic inflation to soar -- Here in Oregon, gas
prices have gone up 50cents/gal since the first of the year--25%. The oil being the obvious
target now the the lower-48 has definitely peaked.
@ 32 juliania... you are the eternal optimist! there is something admirable about that!..
however you have to contend with a lot of cynical people who think like it's business as
well, as b's post notes..... you might not like to hear this, but nothing is going to
change under biden... big wheels set in motion and biden is not interested in the least in
changing any of it... neither was trump as some of his fanbots are coming to see too...
political speeches are just so much b.s... juliania - as the saying goes, talk is cheap, it
is actions that count.... watch peoples actions, not their talk... biden can talk a good
line, but that has nothing to do with his actions... top of the day to you!
@34 Invading Venezuela and 'taking the oil' won't be easy though there is a possibility
Colombia will help out. Which means the total disruption of South America. More economical
to just buy the stuff.
"It is funny/sad to see the Post Trump Stress Disorder victims are already rationalizing
and making excuses for the war that the establishment drones they voted for will be
starting, and those drones are not even sworn in to office yet. They know that they voted
for war yet their plastic, Hollywood "identities" are so intertwined with their assumed
self-evident moral superiority that they are compelled to defend the evil they are
responsible for even before it is committed. For them, doing nothing crudely is far worse
than murdering millions accompanied by lofty and emotive platitudes."
Posted by: William Gruff | Jan 20 2021 16:16 utc | 26
Tnx for expressing this in a much nicer and polite way then i would have written. And
yes, yes it is sad/amusing to watch NPC`s turn into pretzels to explain away their
cognitive dissonans ,utter foolishness and stupidity.
The plan now, on the part of the Swamp, is to declare every Trump supporter a terrorist and
an insurrectionist.
But we did not tear down statues of American heroes.
Antifa and BLM did that. We did not attack the police and call for them to be defunded or
fried like bacon. Antifa and BLM did that.
We did not burn and loot the business centers of dozens of America's major cities. Antifa
and BLM did that.
And what have Republican leaders done? They condemn you, anyone who dares to continue to
express support for Donald Trump, as a domestic terrorist. And when there was ample cause to
call out the real terrorists–Antifa and BLM–many of the Republican leaders cowered
and kept silent.
"... No examination of Neoliberalism's utter failure to deliver benefits to the masses while expropriating the wealth they produced for delivery to the class of Financial Parasites. At least the writers at Global Times get it right: ..."
Global
Times reports on an essay published by the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung (Check it out b or other German barflies) deeming " China's system, although
'authoritarian,' is 'very successful .'" [My Emphasis]
"It explained that as long as a society can reach the following goals - improving social
welfare, increasing consumption choices, safeguarding domestic security, promoting education,
and providing good healthcare - people will support and trust the system even if their
influence in the decision-making process is limited. Such can 'in part ensure the legitimacy'
of the social system....
"But the authors' introspection stopped from digging problems as they tried to shift blame
to the rise of populism in the US."
No examination of Neoliberalism's utter failure to deliver benefits to the masses
while expropriating the wealth they produced for delivery to the class of Financial
Parasites. At least the writers at Global Times get it right:
"Populism, which helped crown Donald Trump, is being blamed today. Yet it all started
from the widening gap between rich and poor. When German scholars use the US populist
government as a scapegoat, they overlooked the real question - without addressing the
growing inequality in a Western system, will there be a second Trump in the future?" [My
Emphasis]
The fatal thrust is delivered in the two closing paragraphs but still omit naming the
actual culprit, which is the ideology of Neoliberalism:
"The article raised the support and trust of people when it comes to judgment over the
legitimacy of a society. In this regard, data speak louder than words. According to a poll
conducted in 2020 by US-based global public relations and marketing consultancy firm Edelman,
95 percent of Chinese trust their government while the US government only saw an approval of
48 percent .
"What other excuses will the Western world have to question the legitimacy of the Chinese
system? If the West, especially the US, the beacon of democracy, actually senses the crisis
and does not wish to lose the competition, it should stop burying its head in the sand." [My
Emphasis]
The problem isn't heads being buried in sand; rather, it's the design of the ideology to
exploit and degrade a nation's masses so they're left with relatively nothing compared to the
nation's Financial Parasites, all so the latter will always have their Free Unearned
Lunch.
"Neoliberalism and imperialism do not care about the pseudo-fights between the two
parties or the cable TV bickering of the day. They do not like the far left or the far right.
They do not like extremism of any kind. They do not support Communism and they do not support
neo-Nazism or some fascist revolution. They care only about one thing: disempowering and
crushing anyone who dissents from and threatens their hegemony. They care about stopping
dissidents. All the weapons they build and institutions they assemble -- the FBI, the DOJ,
the CIA, the NSA, oligarchical power -- exist for that sole and exclusive purpose, to fortify
their power by rewarding those who accede to their pieties and crushing those who do
not."
the democrats are led by a bunch of international sociopaths, pariahs, billionaire
psychopaths, paranoid schizos, think tank imbeciles, and endless-war mongers - all of this
fully enabled by a sycophantic a**-kissing and biased press which also has lost its common
sense and collective mind. very sad!!!
I particularly like glenn Greenwald's take on some of this insanity...
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
Remember when Mueller spent 18 months and millions of dollars armed with a team of
prosecutors and subpoena power, then closed his investigation after arresting *zero*
Americans for conspiring with Russia?
Let's do it again! Anything to distract from how rotted neoliberalism is:
LOL. In that above clip, Hillary Clinton explicitly suggests that Trump was plotting with
Putin on the day of the Capitol Riots, as if Putin directed it.
These people are the *last* ones with any moral standing to rant about conspiracy theories
& disinformation.
Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar last month took a hard look at rent and rent-seeking at
the Henry George School of Social Science.
Michael Hudson: Well, I'm honored to be here on the same show with Pepe and discuss our
mutual concern. And I think you have to frame the whole issue that China is thriving, and the
West has reached the end of the whole 75-year expansion it had since 1945.
So, there was an illusion that America is de-industrializing because of competition from
China. And the reality is there is no way that America can re-industrialize and regain its
export markets with the way that it's organized today, financialized and privatized and if
China didn't exist. You'd still have the Rust Belt rusting out. You'd still have American
industry not being able to compete abroad simply because the cost structure is so high in the
United States.
Michael Hudson. (Wikimedia Commons)
The wealth is no longer made here by industrializing. It's made financially, mainly by
making capital gains. Rising prices for real estate or for stocks and for bonds. In the last
nine months, since the coronavirus came here, the top 1 percent of the U.S. economy grew by $1
trillion. It's been a windfall for the 1 percent. The stock market is way up, the bond market
is up, the real estate market is up while the rest of the economy is going down. Despite the
tariffs that Trump put on, Chinese imports, trade with China is going up because we're just not
producing materials.
America doesn't make its own shoes. It doesn't make some nuts and bolts or fasteners, it
doesn't make industrial things anymore because if money is to be made off an industrial company
it's to buy and sell the company, not to make loans to increase the company's production. New
York City, where I live, used to be an industrial city and, the industrial buildings, the
mercantile buildings have all been gentrified into high-priced real estate and the result is
that Americans have to pay so much money on education, rent, medical care that if they got all
of their physical needs, their food, their clothing, all the goods and services for nothing,
they still couldn't compete with foreign labor because of all of the costs that they have to
pay that are essentially called rent-seeking.
Housing in the United States now absorbs about 40 percent of the average worker's paycheck.
There's 15 percent taken off the top of paychecks for pensions, Social Security and for
Medicare. Further medical insurance adds more to the paycheck, income taxes and sales taxes add
about another 10 percent. Then you have student loans and bank debt. So basically, the American
worker can only spend about one third of his or her income on buying the goods and services
they produce. All the rest goes into the FIRE sector -- the finance, insurance and real estate
sector -- and other monopolies.
And essentially, we became what's called a rent-seeking economy, not a productive economy.
So, when people in Washington talk about American capitalism versus Chinese socialism this is
confusing the issue. What kind of capitalism are we talking about?
America used to have industrial capitalism in the 19th century. That's how it got richer
originally but now it's moved away from industrial capitalism towards finance capitalism. And
what that means is that essentially the mixed economy that made America rich -- where the
government would invest in education and infrastructure and transportation and provide these at
low costs so that the employers didn't have to pay labor to afford high costs -- all of this
has been transformed over the last hundred years.
And we've moved away from the whole ethic of what was industrial capitalism. Before, the
idea of capitalism in the 19th century from Adam Smith to Ricardo, to John Stuart Mill to Marx
was very clear and Marx stated it quite clearly; capitalism was revolutionary. It was to get
rid of the landlord class. It was to get rid of the rentier class. It was to get rid of the
banking class essentially, and just bear all the costs that were unnecessary for production,
because how did England and America and Germany gain their markets?
"We've moved away from the whole ethic of what was industrial capitalism."
They gained their markets basically by the government picking up a lot of the costs of the
economy. The government in America provided low-cost education, not student debt. It provided
transportation at subsidized prices. It provided basic infrastructure at low cost. And so,
government infrastructure was considered a fourth factor of production.
And if you read what the business schools in the late 19th century taught like Simon Patten
at the Wharton School, it's very much like socialism. In fact, it's very much like what China
is doing. And in fact, China is following in the last 30 or 40 years pretty much the same way
of getting rich that America followed.
It had its government fund basic infrastructure. It provides low-cost education. It invests
in high-speed railroads and airports, in the building of cities. So, the government bears most
of the costs and, that means that employers don't have to pay workers enough to pay a student
loan debt. They don't have to pay workers enough to pay enormous rent such as you have in the
United States. They don't have to pay workers to save for a pension fund, to pay the pension
later on. And most of all the Chinese economy doesn't really have to pay a banking class
because banking is the most important public utility of all. Banking is what China has kept in
the hands of government and Chinese banks don't lend for the same reasons that American banks
lend.
Shanghai's Pudong district from The Bund. (CC0, Wikimedia Commons)
(When I said that China can pay lower wages than the U.S., what I meant was that China
provides as public services many things that American workers have to pay out of their own
pockets – such as health care, free education, subsidized education, and above all, much
lower debt service.
When workers have to go into debt in order to live, they need much higher wages to keep
solvent. When they have to pay for their own health insurance, they have to earn more. The same
is true of education and student debt. So much of what Americans seem to be earning -- more
than workers in other countries -- goes right through their hands to the FIRE sector. So, what
seems to be "low wages" in China go a lot further than higher wages in the United States.)
Eighty percent of American bank loans are mortgage loans to real estate and the effect of
loosening loan standards and increasing the market for real estate is to push up the cost of
living, push up the cost of housing. So, Americans have to pay more and more money for their
housing whether they're renters or they're buyers, in which case the rent is for paying
mortgage interest.
So, all of this cost structure has been built into the economy. China's been able pretty
much, to avoid all of this, because its objective in banking is not to make a profit and
interest, not to make capital gains and speculation. It creates money to fund actual means of
production to build factories, to build research and development, to build transportation
facilities, to build infrastructure. Banks in America don't lend for that kind of thing.
"So, you have a diametric opposite philosophy of how to develop between the United States
and China."
They only lend against collateral that's already in place because they won't make a loan if
it's not backed by collateral. Well, China creates money through its public banks to create
capital, to create the means of production. So, you have a diametric opposite philosophy of how
to develop between the United States and China.
The United States has decided not to gain wealth by actually investing in means of
production and producing goods and services, but in financial ways. China is gaining wealth the
old-fashioned way, by producing it. And whether you call this, industrial capitalism or a state
capitalism or a state socialism or Marxism, it basically follows the same logic of real
economics, the real economy, not the financial overhead. So, you have China operating as a real
economy, increasing its production, becoming the workshop of the world as England used to be
called and America trying to draw in foreign resources, live off of foreign resources, live by
trying to make money by investing in the Chinese stock market or now, moving investment banks
into China and making loans to China not actual industrial capitalism ways.
"China is gaining wealth the old-fashioned way, by producing it."
So, you could say that America has gone beyond industrial capitalism, and they call it the
post-industrial society, but you could call it the neo-feudal society. You could call it the
neo-rentier society, or you could call it debt peonage but it's not industrial capitalism.
And in that sense, there's no rivalry between China and America. These are different systems
going their own way and I better let Pepe pick it up from there.
Pepe Escobar : Okay. Thank you, Michael, this is brilliant. And you did it in less than 15
minutes. You told the whole story in 15 minutes. Well, my journalistic instinct is immediately
to start questions to Michael. So, this is exactly what I'm gonna do now. I think it is much
better to basically illustrate some points of what Michael just said, comparing the American
system, which is finance capitalism essentially, with industrial capitalism that is in effect
in China. Let me try to start with a very concrete and straight to the point question,
Michael.
Okay. let's says that more or less, if we want to summarize it, basically they try to tax
the nonproductive rentier class. So, this would be the Chinese way to distribute wealth, right?
Sifting through the Chinese economic literature, there is a very interesting concept, which is
relatively new (correct me if I am wrong, Michael) in China, which they call stable investment.
So stable investment, according to the Chinese would be to issue special bonds as extra capital
in fact, to be invested in infrastructure building all across China, and they choose these
projects in what they call weak areas and weak links. So probably in some of the inner
provinces, or probably in some parts of Tibet or Xinjiang for instance. So, this is a way to
invest in the real economy and in real government investment projects.
Right? So, my question in fact, is does this system create extra local debt, coming directly
from this financing from Beijing? Is this a good recipe for sustainable development, the
Chinese way and the recipe that they could expand to other parts of the Global South?
Michael: Well, this is a big problem that they're discussing right now. The localities,
especially rural China, (and China is still largely rural) only cover about half of their
working budget from taxation. So, they have a problem. How are they going to get the balance of
the money? Well, there is no official revenue sharing between the federal government and its
state banks and the localities.
So, the localities can't simply go to central government and say, give us more money. The
government lets the localities be very independent. And it is sort of the "let a hundred
flowers bloom" concept. And so, they've let each locality just go the long way, but the
localities have run a big deficit.
What do they do? Well in the United States they would issue bonds on which New York is about
to default. But in China, the easiest way for the localities to make money, is unfortunately
they will do something like Chicago did. They will sell their tax rights for the next 75 years
for current money now.
So, a real estate developer will come in and say; look we will give you the next 75 years of
tax on this land, because we want to build projects on this (a set of buildings). So, what this
means is that now the cities have given away all their source of rent.
Chicago's Water Tower
and Water Tower Place. (CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Let me show you the problem by what Indiana and Chicago did. Chicago also was very much like
China's countryside cities. So, it sold parking meters and its sidewalks to a whole series of
Wall Street investors, including the Abu Dhabi Investment Fund for seventy-five years. And that
meant that for 75 years, this Wall Street consortium got to control the parking meters.
So, they put up the parking meters all over Chicago, raised the price of parking, raised the
cost of driving to Chicago. And if Chicago would have a parade and interrupt parking, then
Chicago has to pay the Abu Dhabi fund and Wall Street company what it would have made anyway.
And this became such an awful disaster that finally Wall Street had to reverse the deal and
undo it because it was giving privatization a bad name here. The same thing happened in
Indiana.
High School marching band in Chicago's 2008 Bud Billiken Parade. (Curtis Morrow, CC
BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Indiana was running a deficit and it decided to sell its roads to a Wall Street investment
firm to make a toll road. The toll on the Indiana turnpike was so high that drivers began to
take over the side roads. That's the problem if you sell future tax revenues in advance.
Now what China and the localities there are discussing is that we've already given the real
estate tax at very low estimates to the commercial developers, so what do we do? Well, I've
given them my advice. I'm a professor of economics at the Peking University, School of Marxist
studies and I've had discussions with the Central Committee. I also have an official position
at Wuhan University. There, we're discussing how China can put an added tax for all of the
valuable land, that's gone up. How can it be done to let the cities collect this tax? Our claim
is that the cities, in selling these tax rights for 75 years, have sold what in Britain would
be called ground rent (i.e. what's paid to the landed aristocracy).
Over and above that there's the market rent. So, China should pass a market-rent tax over
and above the ground rent tax to reflect the current value. And there they're thinking of,
well, do we say that this is a capital gain on the land? Well, it's not really a capital gain
until you sell the land, but it's value. It's the valuation of the capital. And they're looking
at whether they should just say this is the market rent tax over and above the flat tax that
has been paid in advance, or it's a land tax on the capital gain for land.
Now, all of this requires that there be a land map of the whole country. And they are just
beginning to create such a land map as a basis for how you calculate how much the rent there
is.
What I found in China is something very strange. A few years ago, in Beijing, they had the
first, International Marxist conference where I was the main speaker and I was talking about
Marx's discussion of the history of rent theory in Volume II and Volume III of Capital
where Marx discusses all of the classical economics that led up to his view; Adam Smith,
Ricardo, Malthus, John Stuart Mill, and Marx's theory of surplus value was really the first
history of economic thought that was written, although it wasn't published until after he died.
Well, you could see that there was a little bit of discomfort with some of the Marxists at the
conference. And so, they invited for the next time my colleague David Harvey to come and talk
about Marxism in the West.
Well, David gave both the leading and the closing speech of the conference and said, you've
got to go beyond volume I of Capital . Volume I was what Marx wrote as his addition to
classical economics, saying that there was exploitation in industrial employment of labor as
well as rent seeking and then he said, now that I've done my introduction here, let me talk
about how capitalism works in Volumes II and III. Volumes II and III are all about rent and
finance and David Harvey has published a book on Volume III of Capital and his message
to Peking University and the second Marxist conference was – you've got to read Volume
II, and III.
Well, you can see that, there's a discussion now over what is Marxism and a friend and
colleague at PKU said Marxism is a Chinese word; It's the Chinese word for politics. That made
everything clear to me. Now I get it! I've been asked by the Academy of Social Sciences in
China to create a syllabus of the history of rent theory and value theory. And essentially in
order to have an idea of how you calculate rent, how do you make a national income analysis
where you show rent, you have to have a theory of value and price and rent is the excess of
price over the actual cost value. Well, for that you need a concept of cost of production and
that's what classical economics is all about. Post-classical economics denied all of this. The
whole idea of classical economics is that not all income is earned.
Landlords don't earn their income for making rent in their sleep as John Stuart Mill said.
Banks don't earn their income by just sitting there and letting debts accrue and interest
compounding and doubling. The classical economists separated actual unearned income from the
production and consumption economy.
Well, around the late 19th century in America, you had economists fighting against not only
Marx, but also even against Henry George, who at that time, was urging a land tax in New York.
And so, at Columbia University, John Bates Clark developed a whole theory that everybody earns
whatever they can get. That there was no such thing as unearned income and that has become the
basis for American national income statistics and thought ever since. So, if you look at
today's GDP figures for the United States, they have a figure for 8 percent of the GDP for the
homeowners' rent. But homeowners wouldn't pay themselves if they had to rent the apartment to
themselves, then you'll have interest at about 12 percent of GDP.
And I thought, well how can interest be so steady? What happens to all of the late fees;
that 29 percent that credit card companies charge? I called up the national income people in
Washington, when I was there. And they said well, late fees and penalties are considered
financial services.
And so, this is what you call a service economy. Well, there's no service in charging a late
fee, but they add all of the late fees. When people can't pay their debts and they owe more and
more, all of that is considered an addition to GDP. When housing becomes more expensive and
prices American labor out of the market, that's called an increase in GDP.
This is not how a country that wants to develop is going to create a national income
account. So, there's a long discussion in China about, just to answer your question, how do you
create an account to distinguish between what's the necessary cost to production and what's an
unnecessary production cost and how do we avoid doing what the United States did. So again, no
rivalry. The United States is an object lesson for China on what to avoid, not only in
industrializing the economy, but in creating a picture of the economy as if everybody earns
everything and there's no exploitation, no earned income, nobody makes money in their sleep and
there's no 1 percent. Well, that's what's really at issue and why the whole world is splitting
apart as you and I are discussing in what we're writing.
"When people can't pay their debts and they owe more and more, all of that is considered an
addition to GDP."
Pepe: Thank you, Michael. Thank you very much. So just to sum it all up, can we say that
Beijing's strategy is to save especially provincial areas from leasing their land, their
infrastructure for 60 years or 75 years? As you just mentioned, can we say that the fulcrum of
their national strategy is what you define as the market rent tax? Is this the No. 1 mechanism
that they are developing?
Michael: Ideally, they want to keep rents as low as possible because rent is a cost of
living and a cost of doing business. They don't have banks that are lending to inflate the real
estate market.
However, in almost every Western country -- the U.S., Germany England -- the value of stocks
and bonds and the value of real estate is just about exactly the same. But for China, the value
of real estate is way, way larger than the value of stocks.
And the reason is not because the Chinese Central bank, the Bank of China lends for real
estate; it's because they lend to intermediaries and the intermediaries have financed a lot of
housing purchases in China. And, this is really the problem for if they levy a land tax, then
you're going to make a lot of these financial intermediaries go bust.
That's what I'm advocating, and I don't think that's a bad thing. These financial
intermediaries shouldn't exist, and this same issue came up in 2009 in the United States. You
had the leading American bank being the most crooked and internally corrupt bank in the
country, Citibank making junk mortgage, and it was broke.
Sheila Bair in 2016. (Matt
Spangler for Washington College, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Its entire net worth was wiped out as a result of its fraudulent junk mortgages. Well,
Sheila Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) wanted to close it
down and take it over. Essentially that would have made it into a public bank and that would be
a wonderful thing. She said, look Citibank shouldn't be doing what it's doing. And she wrote
all this up in an autobiography. And, she was overruled by President Obama and Tim Geithner
saying, but wait a minute, those are our campaign contributors. So, they were loyal to the
campaign contributors, but not the voters; and they didn't close Citibank down.
And the result is that the Federal Reserve ended up creating about $7 trillion of
quantitative easing to bail out the banks. The homeowners weren't bailed out. Ten million
American families lost their homes as a result of junk mortgages in excess of what the property
was actually worth.
All of this was left on the books, foreclosed and sold to a private capital companies like
Blackstone. And the result is that home ownership in America declined from 68 percent of the
population down to about 61 percent. Well, right where the Obama administration left off,
you're about to have the Biden administration begin in January with an estimated 5 million
Americans losing their homes. They're going to be evicted because they've been unemployed
during the pandemic. They've been working in restaurants or gyms or other industries that have
been shut down because of the pandemic. They're going to be evicted and many homeowners and,
low-income homeowners have been unable to pay their mortgages.
There's going to be a wave of foreclosures. The question is, who's going to bear the cost?
Should it be 15 million American families who lose their homes just so the banks won't lose
money? Or should we let the banks that have made all of the growth since 2008? Ninety five
percent of American GDP of the population has seen its wealth go down. All the wealth has been
accumulating for the 5 percent in statistics. Now the question is should this 5 percent that's
got all the wealth lose or should the 95 percent lose?
Worker installs security panels over
windows after police evict woman from her foreclosed home in South Minneapolis, 2009. (Tony
Webster, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The Biden administration says the 95 percent should lose basically. And you're going to see
a wave of closures so that the question in China should be that, these intermediate banks
(they're not really banks they are sort of like payday loan lenders), should they come in and,
bear the loss or should Chinese localities and the people bear the loss? Somebody has to lose
when you're charging, you're collecting the land's rent that was paid to the creditors, and
either the creditors have to lose or, the tax collector loses and that's the conflict that
exists in every society of the world today. And, in the West, the idea is the tax collectors
should lose and whatever the tax collector relinquishes should be free for the banks to
collect. In China obviously, they don't want that to happen and they don't want to see a
financial class developing along US lines.
Pepe: Michael, there's a quick question in all this, which is the official position by
Beijing in terms of helping the localities. Their official position is that there won't be any
bailouts of local debt. How do they plan to do that?
Michael: What they're discussing, how are you not going to do it? They think they sort of
let localities go their own way. And they think, well you know which ones are going to succeed,
and which ones aren't, they didn't want to have a one-size-fits all central planning. They
wanted to have flexibility. Well, now they have flexibility. And when you have many different
"let a hundred flowers bloom," not all the flowers are going to bloom at the same rate.
And the question is, if they don't bail out the cities, how are the cities going to operate?
Certainly, China has never let markets steer the economy, the government steers the markets.
That's what socialism is as opposed to finance capitalism. So, the question is, you can let
localities go broke and yet you're not going to destroy any of the physical assets of the
localities, and all of this is going to be in place. The question is how are you going to
arrange the flow of income to all of these roads and buildings and land that's in place? How do
you create a system? Essentially, they're saying well, if we're industrial engineers, how do we
just plan things? Forget credit, forget property claims, forget the rentier claims. How are we
just going to design an economy that operates most efficiently? And that's what they're working
on now to resolve this situation because it's gotten fairly critical.
Pepe: Yes, especially in the countryside. Well, I think, a very good metaphor in terms of
comparing both systems are investment in infrastructure. You travel to China a lot so, you've
seen. You'll travel through high-speed rail. You'll see those fantastic airports, in Pudong or
the new airport in Beijing. And then you'll take the Acela to go from Washington to New York
City, which is something that I used to do years ago. And the comparison is striking. Isn't
it?
Or if you go to France, for instance, when France started development of the TGV, which in
terms of a national infrastructure network, is one of the best networks on the planet. And the
French started doing this 30 years ago, even more. Is there , it's not in terms of way out, but
if we analyze the minutia, it's obvious that following the American finance utilization system,
we could never have something remotely similar happening in United States in terms of building
infrastructure.
So, do you see any realistic bypass mechanism in terms of improving American infrastructure,
especially in the big cities?
TGV 2N2 Lyria train at Paris' Gare de Lyon station. (CC BY-SA
4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Michael: No, and there are two reasons for that. No. 1, let's take a look at the long-term
railroads. The railroads go through the center of town or even in the countryside, all along
the railroads, the railroads brought business and all the businesses had been located as close
to the railroad tracks as they could. Factories with sightings off the railroad, hotels and
especially right through the middle of town where you have the railway gates going up and down.
In order to make a high-speed rail as in China, you need a dedicated roadway without trucks and
cars, imagine a car going through a railway gate at 350 miles an hour.
So, when I would go from Beijing to Tianjin, here's the high-speed rail, there's one highway
on one side, one highway on the other side. There'll be underpasses. But there it goes straight
now. How can you suppose you would have a straight Acela line from Washington up to Boston when
all along the line, there's all this real estate right along the line that has been built up?
There's no way you can get a dedicated roadway without having to tear down all of this real
estate that's on either side and the cost of making the current owners whole would be
prohibitive. And anywhere you would go, that's not in the center of the city, you would also
have to have the problem that there's already private property there.
And there's no legal, constitutional way for such a physical investment to be made. China
was able to make this investment because it was still largely rural. It wasn't as built up
along the railways. It didn't have any particular area that was built up right where the
railroad already was.
President Donald Trump visiting China in 2017. (PAS China via
Wikimedia Commons)
So certainly, any high-speed rail could not go where the current railways would be, and
they'd have to go on somebody's land. And, there's also, what do you do if you want to get to
New York and Long Island from New Jersey?
Sixty years ago, when I went into Wall Street, the cost of getting and transporting goods
from California to Newark, New Jersey, was as large as from Newark right across the Hudson
River to New York, not only because of the mafia and control of the local labor unions, but
because of the tunnels. Right now, the tunnels from New Jersey to New York are broke, they are
leaking, the subways in New York City, which continually break down because there was a
hurricane a few years ago and the switches were made in the 1940s. The switches are 80 years
old. They had water damage and the trains have to go at a crawl. But the city and state,
because it is not collecting the real estate tax and other taxes and because ridership fell on
the subways to about 20 percent, the city's broke. They're talking about 70 percent of city
services being cut back. They're talking about cutting back the subways to 40 percent capacity,
meaning everybody will have to get in -- when there's still a virus and not many people are
wearing masks, and there was no means of enforcing masks here.
Blue Xs mark social
distancing on the platform of a New York City subway station, May 2020. (Marc A. Hermann, MTA,
Wikimedia Commons)
So, there's no way that you can rebuild the infrastructure because, for one thing the
banking system here has subsidized for a hundred years junk economics saying you have to
balance the budget. If the government creates credit it's inflationary as if when banks create
credit, it's not inflationary. Well, the monetary effect is the same, no matter who creates the
money. And so, Biden has already said that President Trump ran a big deficit, we're going to
run a bunch of surpluses or a budget balance. And he was advocating that all along. Essentially
Biden is saying we have to increase unemployment by 20 percent, lower wages by 20 percent,
shrink the economy by about 10 percent in order to, in order for the banks not to lose
money.
"You're going to price the American economy even further out of business because they say
that public investment is socialism."
And, we're going to privatize but we are going to do it by selling the hospitals, the
schools, the parks, the transportation to finance, to Wall Street finance capital groups. And
so, you can imagine what's going to happen if the Wall Street groups buy the infrastructure.
They'll do what happened to Chicago when it sold all the parking meters, they'll say, OK,
instead of 25 cents an hour, it's now charged $3 an hour. Instead of a $2 for the subway, let's
make it $8.
You're going to price the American economy even further out of business because they say
that public investment is socialism. Well, it's not socialism. It's industrial capitalism. It's
industrialization, that's basic economics. The idea of what, and how an economy works is so
twisted academically that it's the antithesis of what Adam Smith, John Stewart Mill and Marx
all talked about. For them a free- market economy was an economy free of rentiers. Free of
rent, it didn't have any rent seeking. But now for the Americans, a free-market economy is free
for the rentiers, free for the landlord, free for the banks to make a killing. And that is
basically the class war back in business with a vengeance. That blocks and is preventing any
kind infrastructure recovery. I don't see how it can possibly take place.
Pepe: Well, based on what you just described, there is a process of turning the United
States into a giant Brazil. In fact, this is what the Brazilian Finance Minister Paulo Guedes,
a Pinochetista, as you know Michael, has been doing with the Brazilian economy for the past two
years, privatizing everything and selling everything to big Brazilian interests and with lots
of Wall Street interests involved as well. So, this is a recipe that goes all across the Global
South as well. And it's fully copied all across the Global South with no way out now.
Michael: Yes, and this is promoted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
And when I was brought down to Brazil to meet with the council of economic advisers under Lula,
[Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil], they said, well the whole
problem is that Lula's been obliged to let the banks do the planning.
So, basically free markets and libertarianism is adopting central planning, but with central
planning by the banks. America is a much more centrally planned economy than China. China is
letting a hundred flowers bloom; America has concentrated the planning and the resource
allocation in Wall Street. And that's the central planning that is much more corrosive than any
government planning, could be. Now the irony is that China's sending its students to America to
study economics. And, most of the Chinese I had talked to say, well we went to America to take
economics courses because that gives us a prestige here in China.
I'm working now, with Chinese groups trying to develop a "reality economics" to be taught in
China as different from American economics.
"America has concentrated the planning and the resource allocation in Wall Street. And
that's the central planning that is much more corrosive than any government planning, could
be."
Pepe: Exactly, because of what they study at Beijing University, Renmin or Tsinghua
is not exactly what they would study in big American universities. Probably what they study
in the U.S. is what not to do in China. When they go back to China, what they won't be doing.
It's an object lesson for what to avoid.
Michael, I'd like to go back to what the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South
Africa] had been discussing in the 2000s when Lula was still president of Brazil and many of
his ideas deeply impressed, especially Hu Jintao at the time, which is bypassing the U.S.
dollar. Well, at the moment obviously we're still at 87 percent of international transactions
still in U.S. dollars. So, we are very far away from it, but if you have a truly sovereign
economy, which is the case of China, which we can say is the case of Russia to a certain extent
and obviously in a completely different framework, Iran. Iran is a completely sovereign,
independent economy from the West. The only way to try to develop different mechanisms to not
fall into the rentier mind space would be to bypass the U.S. dollar.
Occupy Wall Street
picket of HSBC, midtown Manhattan; Feb. 14, 2013. (Michael Fleshman Via Flickr)
Michael: Yes, for many reasons. For one thing the United States can simply print the dollars
and lend to other countries and then say, now you have to pay us interest. Well, Russia doesn't
need American dollars. It can print its own rubles to provide labor. There's no need for a
foreign currency at all for domestic spending, the only reason you would have to borrow a
foreign currency is to balance your exchange rate, or to finance a trade deficit. But China
doesn't have a trade deficit. And in fact, if China were to work to accept more dollars,
Americans would love to buy into the Chinese market and make a profit there, but that would
push up China's exchange rate and that would make it more difficult for her to make its exports
because the exchange rate would come up not because it's exporting more but because it's
letting American dollars come in and push it up.
Well, fortunately, President Trump as if he works for the Chinese National Committee, said,
look, we don't want to really hurt China by pushing up its currency and we want to keep it
competitive. So, I'm going to prevent American companies from lending money to China, I'm going
to isolate it and so he's helping them protect their economy. And in Russia he said, look
Russia really needs to feed itself. And, there's a real danger that when the Democrats come in,
there are a lot of anti-Russians in the Biden administration. They may go to war. They may do
to Russia what they tried to do to China in the '50s. Stop exporting food and grain. And only
Canada was able to break the embargo. So, we're going to impose sanctions on Russia. So
immediately, what happened is Russia very quickly became the largest grain exporter in the
world. And instead of importing cheese from the Baltics, it created its own cheese industry.
So, Trump said look, I know that Russians followed the American idea of not having protective
tariffs, they need protective tariffs. They're not doing it. We're going to help them out by
just not importing from them and really helping them.
Pepe: Yeah. Michael, what do you think Black Rock wants from the Chinese? You know that they
are making a few inroads at the highest levels? Of course, I'm sure you're aware of that. And
also, JP Morgan, Citybank, etc. What do they really want?
Michael: They'd like to be able to create dollars to begin to buy and make loans to real
estate; let companies grow, let the real estate market grow and make capital gains.
The way people get wealthy today isn't by making an income, it's been by making a capital
gain. Total returns are current income plus the capital gains. As for capital gains each year;
the land value gains alone are larger than the whole GDP growth from year to year. So that's
where the money is, that's where the wealth is. So, they are after speculative capital gains,
they would like to push money into the Chinese stock market and real estate market. See the
prices go up and then inflate the prices by buying in and then sell out at the high price. Pull
the money out, get a capital gain and let the economy crash, I mean that's the business
plan.
Pepe: Exactly. But Beijing will never allow that.
Michael: Well, here's the problem right now, they know that Biden is pushing militarily
aggressive people in his cabinet. There's one kind of overhead that China is really trying to
avoid and that's the military overhead because if you spend money on the military, you can't
spend it on the real economy. They're very worried about the military and they say, how do we
deter the Biden administration from actually trying a military adventure in the South China Sea
or elsewhere? They said well, fortunately America is multi-layered. They don't think of America
as a group. They realize there's a layer and they say, who's going to represent our
interests?
"There's one kind of overhead that China is really trying to avoid and that's the military
overhead because if you spend money on the military, you can't spend it on the real
economy."
Well, Blackstone and Wall Street are going to represent their interests. Then I think one of
the, Chinese officials last week gave a big speech on this very thing, saying look, our best
hope in stopping America's military adventurism in China is to have Wall Street acting as our
support because after all, Wall Street is the main campaign contributor and the president works
for the campaign contributors.
The politician works for the campaign contributors. They're in it for the money! So
fortunately, we have Wall Street on our side, we've got control of the political system and
they're not there to go to war so that helps explain why a month ago they let wholly-owned U.S.
banks and bankers in. On the one hand, they don't like the idea of somebody outside the
government creating credit for reasons that the economy doesn't need. If they needed it, the
Bank of China would do it. They have no need for foreign currency to come in to make loans in
domestic currency, out of China.
The only reason that they could do it is No. 1, it helps meet the World Trade Organization's
principles and, No. 2, especially during this formative few months of the Biden administration,
it helps to have Wall Street saying; we can make a fortune in China, go easy on them and that
essentially counters the military hawks in Washington.
Pepe: So, do you foresee a scenario when Black Rock starts wreaking havoc in the Shanghai
stock exchange for instance?
Wall Street, Nov. 21, 2009. (Dave Center, Flickr)
Michael: It would love to do that. It would love to move things up and down. The money's
made by companies with the stock market going up and down; the zigzag. So of course, it wants
to do a predatory zigzag. The question is whether China will impose a tax to stop this, all
sorts of financial transactions. That's what's under discussion now. They know exactly what
Black Rock wants to do because they have some very savvy billionaire Chinese advisers that are
quite good. I can tell you stories, but I better not.
Pepe: Okay. If it's not okay to tell it all, tell us part of the story then.
Michael: The American banks have been cultivating leading Chinese people by providing them
enough money to make money here, that they think that, okay they will now try to make money in
the same way in China and we can join in. It's a conflict of systems again, between the finance
capital system and industrial socialism. You don't get any of this discussion in the U.S.
press, which is why I read what you write because in the U.S. press, the neocons talk about the
fake idea of Greek history and fake idea of the Thucydides' problem of a country jealous of
another country's development.
There's no jealousy between America and China. They're different, they have their own way.
We are going to destroy them. And if you look at the analogy that the Americans draw -- and
this is how the Pentagon thinks -- with the war between Athens and Sparta. It's hard to tell,
which is which. Here you have Athens, a democracy backing other democracies and having the
military support of the democracies and the military in these democracies all had to pay Athens
protection money for the military support and that's the money that Athens got to ostensibly
support its navy and protection that built up all of the Athenian public buildings and
everything else. So, that's a democracy exploiting its allies, to enrich itself via the
military. Then you have Sparta, which was funding all of the oligarchies, and it was helping
the oligarchies overthrow democracies. Well, that was America too. So, America is both sides of
the Thucydides war if the democracy is exploiting the fellow democracies and is the supporter
of oligarchies in Brazil, Latin America, Africa and everyone else.
So, you could say the Thucydides problem was between two sides, two aspects of America and
has nothing to do with China at all except, for the fact that the whole war was a war between
economic systems. They're acting as if somehow if only China did not export to us, we could be
re-industrialized and somehow export to Europe and the Third World.
And as you and I have described, it's over. We painted ourselves into such a debt corner
that without writing down the debts, we're in the same position that the Eurozone is in.
There's so much money that goes to the creditors to the top 1 percent or 5 percent that there
is no money for capital investment, there is no money for growth. And, since 1980 as you know,
real wages in America have been stable. All the growth has been in property owners and
predators and the FIRE sector, the rest of the economy is in stagnation. And now the
coronavirus has simply acted as a catalyst to make it very clear that the game is over; it's
time to move away from the homeowner economy to rentier economy, time for Blackstone to be the
landlord. America wants to recreate the British landlord class and essentially what we're
seeing now is like the Norman invasion of England taking over the land and the infrastructure.
That's what Blackstone would love to do in China.
"There's so much money that goes to the creditors to the top 1 percent or 5 percent that
there is no money for capital investment, there is no money for growth."
Pepe: Wow. I'm afraid that they may have a lot of leeway by some members of the Beijing
leadership now, because as you know very well, it's not a consensus in the political arena.
Michael: We're talking about Volume II and III of Capital .
Pepe: Exactly. But you know, you were talking about debt. Coming back to that, in fact I
just checked this morning, apparently global debt as it stands today is $277 trillion, which is
something like 365 percent of global GDP. What does that mean in practice?
Michael: Yeah, well fortunately this is discussed in the 19th century and there was a word
for that -- fictitious capital -- it's a debt that can't be paid, but you'll keep it on the
books anyway. And every country has this. You could say the question now, and The Financial
Times just had an article a few days ago that China's claims on Third World countries on
the Belt and Road Initiative is fictitious capital, because how can it collect?
Well, China's already thought of that. It doesn't want money. It wants the raw materials. It
wants to be paid in real things. But a debt that can't be paid, can only be paid either by
foreclosing on the debtors or by writing down the debts and obviously a debt that can't be paid
won't be paid.
"Fictitious capital -- it's a debt that can't be paid, but you'll keep it on the books
anyway. And every country has this."
And so, you have not only Marx using the word fictitious capital. At the other end of the
spectrum, you had Henry George talking about fictive capital. In other words, these are
property claims that have no real capital behind them. There's no capital that makes profit.
That's just a property claim for payment or a rentier claim for payment.
So, the question is, can you make money somehow without having any production at all,
without having wages, without having profits, without any capital? Can you just have asset
grabbing and buying-and-selling assets? And as long as you have the Federal Reserve in America,
come in, Trump's $10 trillion Covid program gave $2 trillion to the population at large with
these $1,200 checks, that my wife and I got, and $8 trillion all just to buy stocks and bonds.
None of this was to build infrastructure. None of this $8 trillion was to build a single
factory. None of this 8 trillion was to employee a single worker. It was all just to support
the prices of stocks and bonds, and to keep the illusion that the economy had not stopped
growing. Well, it's growing for the 5 percent. So, it's all become fictitious. And if you look
at the GDP as I said, it's fictitious.
Pepe: And the most extraordinary thing is none of that is discussed in American media.
There's not a single word about what you would have been describing.
Michael: It's not even discussed in academia. Our graduates at the university of Missouri at
Kansas City, we're all trained in Modern Monetary Theory. And as hired professors they have to
be able to publish in the refereed journals and the refereed journals are all essentially
controlled by the Chicago School. So, you have a censorship of the kind of ideas that we're
talking about. You can't get it into the economic journals, so you can't get it into the
economics curriculum. So, where on earth are you going to get it? If you didn't have the
internet you wouldn't be discussing at all. Most of my books sell mainly in China, more than in
all the other countries put together so I can discuss these things there. I stopped publishing
in orthodox journals so many years ago because it's talking to the deaf.
"None of this $8 trillion was to build a single factory, employee, a single worker."
Pepe: Absolutely. Yeah. Can I ask you a question about Russia, Michael? There is a raging,
debate in Russia for many years now between let's say the Eurasianists and the Atlanticists. It
involves of course, economic policy under Putin, industrial capitalism Russian style. The
Eurasianists basically say that the central problem with Russia is how the Russian central bank
is basically affiliated with all the mechanisms that you know so well, that it is an
Atlanticist Trojan Horse inside the Russian economy. How do you see it?
Michael: Russia was brainwashed by the West when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 . First
of all, the IMF announced in advance that there was a big meeting in Houston with the IMF and
the World Bank. And the IMF published all of its report saying, first you don't want inflation
in Russia so let's wipe out all of the Russian savings with hyperinflation, which they did.
They then said, well now to cure the hyperinflation the Russian central bank needs a stable
currency and you need a backup for the currency. You will need to back it with U.S.
dollars.
"Russia was brainwashed by the West when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991."
So, from the early 1990s, as you know, labor was going unpaid. The Russian central bank
could have created the rubles to pay the domestic labor and to keep the factories in place.
But, the IMF advisers from Harvard said, no you'll have to borrow U.S. dollars. I met with
people from the Hermitage Fund and the Renaissance Fund and others. We had meetings and I met
with the investors. Russia was paying 100 percent interest for years to leading American
financial institutions for money that it didn't need and could have created itself. Russia was
so dispirited with Stalinism that, essentially, it thought the opposite of Stalinism must be
what they have in America.
They thought that America was going to tell it how America got rich, but America didn't want
to tell Russia how it got rich, but instead wanted to make money off Russia. They didn't get
it. They trusted the Americans. They really didn't understand that, industrial capitalism that
Marx described had metamorphosized into finance capitalism and was completely different.
And that's because Russia didn't charge rent, it didn't charge interest. I gave three
speeches before the Duma, urging it to impose a land tax. Some of the people I noticed, Ed
Dodson was there with us and we were all trying to convince Russia, don't let this land be
privatized. If you let it be privatized, then you're going to have such high rents and housing
costs in Russia that you're not going to be able to essentially compete for an industrial
growth. Well, the politician who brought us there, Viatcheslav Zolensky was sort of maneuvered
out of the election by the American advisers.
The Americans put billions of dollars in to essentially finance American propagandists to
destroy Russia, mainly from the Harvard Institute of International Development. And
essentially, they were a bunch of gangsters and the prosecutors in Boston were about to
prosecute them.
The attorney general of Boston was going to bring a big case for Harvard against the looting
of Russia and the corruption of Russia. And I was asked to organize and to bring a number of
Russian politicians and industrialists over to say how this destroyed everything. Well, Harvard
settled out of court and essentially that made the perpetrators the leading university people
up there. (I'm associated with Harvard Anthropology Department, not the Economics
Department.)
So, we never had a chance to bring my witnesses, and have our report on what happened, but I
published for the Russian Academy of Sciences a long study of how all of this destruction of
Russia was laid out in advance at the Houston meetings by the IMF. America went to the leading
bureaucrats and said; look, we can make you rich why don't you register the factories in your
own name, and if you're registered in your own name, you know, then you'll own it. And then you
can cash out. You can essentially sell, but obviously you can't sell to the Russians because
the IMF has just wiped out all of their savings.
You can only cash out by selling to the West. And so, the Russian stock market became the
leading stock market in the world from 1994 with the Norilsk Nickel and the seven bankers in
the bank loans for shares deal through 1997. And, I had worked for a firm Scutter Stevens and,
the head adviser, a former student of mine didn't want to invest in Russia because she said,
this is just a rip off, it's going to crash. She was fired for not investing. They said look,
we know that's going to crash. That's the whole idea it's going to crash. We can make a mint
off it before the crash. And then when it crashes, we can make another mint by selling short
and then all over again . Well, the problem is that the system that was put in with the
privatization that's occurred, how do you have Russia's wealth used to develop its own industry
and its own economy like China was doing. Well, China has rules for all of this, but Russia
doesn't have rules, it's really all centralized, it's President Putin that keeps it this
way.
President Vladimir Putin meeting with German business executives, Nov. 1, 2018. (The
Kremlin)
Well, this was the great fear of the West. When you had Mikhail Gorbachev beginning to plan
to do pretty much what is done today, to restrain private capital, the IMF said hold off. We're
not going to make any loans to stabilize the Russian currency until you remove Mr.
Primakov.
The U.S. said we won't deal with Russia until you remove him. So, he was pushed out and he
was probably the smartest guy at the time there. So, they thought [President Vladimir] Putin
was going to be sort of the patsy. And he almost single-handedly, holding the oligarchs in and
saying, look, you can keep your money as long as you do exactly what the government would do.
You can keep the gains as long as you're serving the public interest.
But none of this resulted into a legal system, a tax system, and a system where the
government actually does get most of the benefits. Russia could have emerged in 1990 as one the
most competitive economies in Eurasia by giving all of the houses to its people instead of
giving Norilsk Nickel and the oil companies to Yukos. It could have given everybody their own
house and their own apartment, the same thing in the Baltics. And instead it didn't give the
land out to the people. And Russians were paying 3 percent of their income for housing in 1990.
And rent is the largest element in every household's budget.
"Russia could have emerged in 1990 as one the most competitive economies in Eurasia by
giving all of the houses to its people."
So, Russia could have had low-price labor. It could have financed all of its capital
investment for the government by taxing, collecting the rising rental value. Instead, Russian
real estate was privatized on credit and it was even worse in the Baltics.
In Latvia, where I was research director for the Riga Graduate School of Law, Latvia
borrowed primarily from Swedish banks. And so, in order to buy a house, you had to borrow from
Swedish banks. And they said, well, we're not going to lend in the Latvian currency because it
can go down. So, you have a choice; Swiss Francs or German Marks or U.S. Dollars. And so, all
of this rent was paid in foreign currency. There came an outflow that essentially drained all
the Baltic economies. Latvia lost 20 percent of its population. Estonia and Lithuania followed
suit.
And of course, the worst hit by neo-liberalism was Russia. As you know, President Putin said
that neo-liberalism cost Russia more of its population than World War II. And you know that to
destroy a country, you don't need an army anymore. All you have to do is teach it American
economics.
Pepe: Yes, I remember well, I arrived in Russia in the winter of 91 coming from China. So, I
transited from the Chinese miracle. In fact, a few days after Deng Xiaoping's famous Southern
tour when he went to Guangzhou and Shenzhen. And that was the kick for the 1990s boom, in fact
a few years before the handover, and then I took the Trans-Siberian and I arrived in Moscow a
few days after the end, in fact, a few weeks after the end of the Soviet Union.
But yeah, I remember the Americans arrived almost at the exact minute, wasn't it, Michael? I
think they already were there in the spring of 1992. If I'm not mistaken.
Michael: The Houston meeting was in 1990. But all before that already in, 1988 and 1989,
there was a huge outflow of embezzlement money via Latvia. The assistant dean of the university
who ended up creating Nordex, essentially the money was all flying out because Ventspils in
Latvia, was where Russian oil was exported and it was all fake invoicing. So, the Russian
kleptocrats basically made their money off false export invoicing, ostensibly selling it for
one price and having the rest paid abroad and, this was all organized through Latvia and the
man who did it later moved to Israel and finally gave a billion dollars back to Russia so that
he went on to live safely for the rest of his life in Israel.
Pepe: Well, the crash of the ruble in 1998 was what, roughly one year after the crash of the
baht and the whole Asian financial crisis, no? It was interlinked of course, but let me see if
I have a question for you, in fact, I'm just thinking out loud now. If the economies of
Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, the case of South Korea and Russia, were more integrated at
the time as they are trying to integrate now, do you think that the Asian financial crisis
would have been preventable in 1997?
Michael: Well, look at what happened in Malaysia with Mohammad Mahathir. Malaysia avoided
it. So of course, it was preventable, and they had the capital controls. All you would have
needed was to do what Malaysia did. But you needed an economic theory for that.
And essentially the current mode of warfare is to conquer the brains of a country to shape
how people think and how they perceive the economy. And if you can twist their view into an
unreality economics, where they think that you're there to help them not to take money out of
them, then you've got them hooked. That was what happened in Asia. Asia thought it was getting
rich off the dollars inflows and then the IMF and all the creditors pulled the plug, crash the
industry. And now that all of a sudden you had a crash, they bought up Korean industry and
other South Asian industries at giveaway prices.
That's what you do. You lend the money; you pull the plug. You then let them go under and
you pick up the pieces . That's what Blackstone did after the Obama depression began, when
Obama saved the banks, not the constituency, the mortgage borrowers. Essentially that's
Blackstone's modus operandi to pick up distressed prices at a bankruptcy sale, but you
need to lend money and then crash it in order to make that work.
Pepe: Michael, I think we have only five minutes left. So, I would expect you to go on a
relatively long answer and I'm really dying for it. It's about debt, it about the debt trap.
And it's about the New Silk Roads, the Belt and Road Initiative, because I think rounding up
our discussion and coming back to the theme of debt and global debt.
The No. 1 criticism apart from the demonization of China that you hear from American media
and a few American academics as well against the Belt and Road is that it's creating a debt
trap for Southeast Asian nations, Central Asian nations and nations in Africa, etc . Obviously,
I expect you to debunk that, but the framework is there is no other global development project
as extensive and as complex as Belt and Road, which as you know very well was initially dreamed
up by the Ministry of Commerce. Then they sold it more or less to Xi Jinping who got the
geopolitical stamp on it, announcing it, simultaneously, (which was a stroke of genius) in
Central Asia in Astana and then in Southeast Asia in Jakarta. So, he was announcing the
overland corridors through the heartland and the Maritime Silk Road at the same time.
At the time people didn't see the reach and depth of all that. And now of course, finally
the Trump administration woke up and saw what was in play, not only across Eurasia but reaching
Africa and even selected parts of Latin America as well. And obviously the only sort of
criticism, and it's not even a fact-based criticism, that I've seen about the Belt and Road is
it's creating a debt trap because as you know Laos is indebted, Sri Lanka is indebted,
Kyrgyzstan is indebted etc. So, how do you view Belt and Road within the large framework of the
West and China, East Asia and Eurasia relations? And how would you debunk misconceptions
created, especially in the U S that this is a debt trap.
Six proposed corridors of Belt and
Road Initiative, showing Italy inside circle, on maritime blue route. (Lommes, CC BY-SA 4.0,
Wikimedia Commons)
Michael: There are two points to answer there. The first is how the Belt and Road began. And
as you pointed out, the Belt and Road began, when China said, what is it we need to grow and
how do we grow within our neighboring countries so we don't have to depend upon the West, and
we don't have to depend on sea trade that can be shut down? How do we get to roads instead of
seas in a way that we can integrate our economy with the neighboring economies so that there
can be mutual growth?
So, this was done pretty much on industrial engineering grounds. Here's where you need the
roads and the railroads. And then how do we finance it? Well, The Financial Times
article, last week, said didn't the Chinese know that [with past] railroad development, they've
all gone broke? The Panama Canal went broke, you know, the first few times there were European
railway investment in Latin America in the 19th century, that all went broke.
Well, what they don't get is China's aim was not to make a profit off the railroads. The
railroads were built to be part of the economy. They don't want to make profit. It was to make
the real economy grow, not to make profits for the owners of the railroad stocks. The Western
press can't imagine that you're building a railroad without trying to make money out of it.
Then you get to the debt issue. Countries only have a debt crisis if their debt is in a
foreign currency. The first way that the United States gained power was to fight against its
allies. The great enemy of America was England and it made the British block their currency in
the 1940s. And so, India and other countries, that had all these currencies holdings in
sterling, were able to convert it all into dollars.
The whole move of the U.S. was to denominate world debt in dollars. So that No. 1, U.S.
banks would end up with the interest in financing the debt. And No. 2, the United States could,
by using the debt leverage, control domestic politics.
Well, as you're seeing right now in Argentina, for instance, Argentina is broke because it
owes foreign-dollar debt. When I started the first Third World bond fund in 1990 at Scutter
Stevens, Brazil and China and Argentina were paying 45 percent interest per year, 45 percent
per year in dollars debt. Yet we tried to sell them in America. No American would buy. We went
to Europe, no European buy this debt. And so, we worked with Merrill Lynch and Merrill Lynch
was able to make an offshore fund in the Dutch West Indies and all of the debt was sold to the
Brazilian ruling class in the central bank and the Argentinian bankers in the ruling class, we
thought oh, that's wonderful.
We know that they're going to pay the foreign Yankee Dollars debt because the Yankee Dollars
debt is owed to themselves. They're the Yankees! They're the client oligarchy. And you know,
from Brazil client oligarchy is, you know, they're cosmopolitan, that's the word. So, the
problem is that on the Belt and Road, how did these other countries pay the debt to China?
Well, the key there again is the de-dollarization, and one way to solve it is since we're
trying to get finance out of the picture, we're doing something very much like, Japan did with
Canada in the 1960s. It made loans to develop Canadian copper mines taking its payment, not in
Canadian dollars, that would have pushed up the yen's exchange rate, but in copper.
So, China says, you know you don't have to pay currency for this debt. We didn't build a
railroad to make a profit and you want, we can print all the currency we want. We don't need to
make a profit. We made the Belt and Road because it's part of our geopolitical attempt to
create what we need to be prosperous and have a prosperous region. So, these are
self-reinforcing mutual gain. Well, so that's what the West doesn't get -- mutual gain? Are we
talking anthropology? What do you mean mutual? This is capitalism! So, the West doesn't
understand what the original aim of the Belt and Road was, and it wasn't to make a profitable
railroad to enable people to buy and sell railway stocks. And it wasn't to make toll roads to
sell off to Goldman Sachs, you know. We're dealing with two different economic systems, and
it's very hard for one system to understand the other system because of the tunnel vision that
you get when you get a degree in economics.
"We're dealing with two different economic systems, and it's very hard for one system to
understand the other system because of the tunnel vision that you get when you get a degree in
economics."
Pepe: Belt and Road loans are long-term and at very low interest and they are renegotiable.
They are renegotiating with the Pakistanis all the time for instance.
Michael: China's intention is not to repeat an Asia crisis of 1997. It doesn't gain anything
by forcing a crisis because it's not trying to come in and buying property at a discount at a
distressed sale. It has no desire to create a distressed sale. So obviously, the idea is the
capacity to pay. Now, this whole argument occurred in the 1920s, between [John Maynard] Keynes
and his opponents that wanted to collect German reparations and, Keynes made it very clear.
What is the capacity to pay? It's the ability to export and the ability to obtain foreign
currency. Well, China's not looking for foreign currency. It is looking for economic returns
but the return is to the whole society, the return isn't from a railroad. The return is for the
entire economy because it's looking at the economy as a system.
The way that neoliberalism works, it divides the economy in parts, and it makes every part
trying to make a gain, and if you do that, then you don't have any infrastructure that's
lowering the cost for the other parts. You have every part fighting for itself. You don't look
at in terms of a system the way China's looking at it. That's the great advantage of Marxism,
you'll look at the system, not just the parts.
Pepe: Exactly and this is at the heart of the Chinese concept of a community with a shared
future for mankind, which is the approximate translation from Mandarin. So, we compare
community with a shared future for mankind, which is, let's say the driving force between the
idea of Belt and Road, expanded across Eurasia, Africa and Latin America as well with our good
old friends', "greed is good" concept from the eighties, which is still ruling America
apparently.
Michael: And the corollary is that non-greed is bad.
Pepe: Exactly and non-greed is evil.
Michael: I see. I think we ran out of time. I do. I don't know if Alanna wants to step in to
wrap it up.
Michael: There may be somebody who has a question.
Pepe: Somebody has a question? That'll be fantastic.
Alanna: There is a question from Ed Dodson. He wanted to know why there are these ghost
cities in China? And who's financing all this real estate that's developed, but nobody's living
there? We've all been hearing about that. So, what is happening with that?
Michael: Okay. China had most of its population living in the countryside and it made many
deals with Chinese landholders who have land rights, and they said, if you will give up your
land right to the community, we will give you free apartment in the city that you could rent
out.
So, China has been building apartments in cities and trading these basically in exchange to
support what used to be called a rural exodus. China doesn't need as many farmers on the land
as it now has, and the question is how are you going to get them into cities? So, China began
building these cities and many of these apartments are owned by people who've got them in
exchange for trading their land rights. The deals are part of the rural reconstruction
program.
Alanna: Do you think it was a good deal? Vacant apartments everywhere.
Pepe: You don't have ghost cities in Xinjiang for instance, Xinjiang is under-populated,
it's mostly desert. And it's extremely sensitive to relocate people to Xinjiang. So basically,
they concentrated on expanding Urumqi. When you arrive in Urumqi it is like almost like
arriving in, Guangzhou. It's enormous. It's a huge generic city in the middle of the desert.
And it's also a high-tech Mecca, which is something that very few people in the West know. And
is the direct link between the eastern seaboard via Belt and Road to Central Asia.
Pepe
Escobar at the Khunjerab pass, China-Pak border, on New Silk Road overdrive.
Last year I was on an amazing trip. I went to the three borders, the Tajik-Xinjiang border,
Kyrgiz-Xinjiang border and the Kazakh-Xinjiang border, which is three borders in one. It's a
fascinating area to explore and specially to talk to the local populations, the Kyrgiz, the
Kazakhs and the Tajiks. How do they see the Belt and Road directly affecting their lives from
now on? So, you don't see something spectacular for instance, in the Xinjiang – Kazakh
boarder, there is one border for the trucks, lots of them like in Europe, crossing from all
points, from Central Asia to China and bringing Chinese merchandise to Central Asia.
There's the train border, which is a very simple two tracks and the pedestrian border, which
is very funny because you have people arriving in buses from all parts of Central Asia. They
stop on the Kazakh border. They take a shuttle, they clear customs for one day, they go to a
series of shopping malls on the Chinese side of the border. They buy like crazy, shop till it
drops, I don't know for 12 hours? And then they cross back the same day because the visa is for
one day. They step on their buses and they go back.
So, for the moment it's sort of a pedestrian form of Belt and Road, but in the future, we're
going to have high-speed rail. We're going to have, well the pipelines are already there as
Michael knows, but it's fascinating to see on the spot. You see the closer integration; you see
for instance Uyghurs traveling back and forth. You know, Uyghurs that have families in
Kyrgizstan for instance, I met some Uyghurs in Kyrgyzstan who do the back-and-forth all the
time. And they said, there's no problem. They are seen as businessmen so there's no
interference. There are no concentration camps involved, you know, but you have to go to these
places to see how it works on the ground and with Covid, that's the problem for us journalists
who travel, because for one year we cannot go anywhere and Xinjiang was on my travel list this
year, Afghanistan as well, Mongolia.
These are all parts of Belt and Road or future parts of Belt and Road, like Afghanistan. The
Chinese and the Russians as well; they want to bring Afghanistan in a peace process organized
by Asians themselves without the United States, within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,
because they want Afghanistan to be part of the intersection of Belt and Road and Eurasian
Economic Union. This is something Michael knows very well. You don't see this kind of
discussions in the American media for instance, integration of Eurasia on the ground, how it's
actually happening.
Michael : That's called cognitive dissonance.
Alanna: To try to understand it gets you cognitive dissonance.
Pepe: Oh yeah, of course. And obviously you are a Chinese agent, a Russian agent. And so, I
hear that all the time. Well, in our jobs we hear that all the time. Especially, unfortunately
from our American friends.
Alanna: Okay. I know you have other things to do. This has been fabulous. I want to thank
you so much, both of you, uh, with so easy to get attendance for this webinar. There were 20
people in five minutes enrolled and in two days we were at capacity. So, I know there are many
more people who would love to hear you talk another time, whenever you two are so willing. And
I think you both got much out of your first conversation in person. Everybody listening knows
these two wonderful gentlemen, they have written more than 10 books, and they have traveled all
over the world. They are on the top of geopolitical and geoeconomic analysis, and they are
caring, loving people. So, you can see that these are the people we need to be listening to and
understanding all around the world.
So, thank you so much. Ibrahima Drame from the Henry George School is now going to say
goodbye to you and will wrap this up. Thank you again.
Pepe: Michael it was a huge pleasure. Really, it was fantastic. Really nice, we're on the
same website. So, let's have a second version of this.
Ibrahima: So, let's have a second version of this two months from now. Thank you very much
for participating and I really hope you liked this event. And, we also want to ask for your
support by making a tax-deductible donation to the Henry George School. I believe I shared the
link on the chat. Thank you. And see you soon.
Pepe: Thank you very much. Thanks Michael. Bye!
Michael Hudson is an American economist professor of economics at the university of
Missouri Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. He's a
former Wall Street analyst political consultant commentator and journalist. He identifies
himself as a classical economist. Michael is the author of J is for Junk Economics, Killing
the Host, The Bubble and Beyond, Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire,
Trade Development and Foreign Debt and The Myth of Aid , among others. His books have
been published translated into Japanese, Chinese, German, Spanish and Russian.
Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and
columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he's lived
and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok.
He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the
wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is
Dissolving into Liquid War;Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge . He was
contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy.
His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030 . Pepe is also associated with
the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris
and Bangkok.
"... In a two-Party dictatorship, the important truths are kept away from being publicized on either side, Eric Zuesse writes. ..."
"... Mission accomplished ..."
"... Nice work, Mr. Putin. ..."
"... According to a US intelligence community report, Russia's chief goal in interfering in the 2016 election in support of Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton was to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process." Four years on, there have been two impeachments and an insurrection against the US legislature. Millions believe Trump's lies that he was illegally ejected from power, and doubt Biden's legitimacy. ..."
"... Conspiracy theorists have seats in Congress. There are serious questions about whether one of the country's great political parties is now anti-democratic. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed weaknesses in a federal system that grants vast power to the states. And America's self-appointed role as an exceptional nation and beacon of democracy is in the gutter. ..."
"... Most of the disorienting events of the last few years can be blamed directly on Trump and his particular skill at tearing at the social, racial and political divides that are just below the nation's surface. So the ex-KGB man in the Kremlin hardly deserves all the credit. But Russia, China and other autocratic nations are gaining much from Washington's agony. They're already using it to promote their own closed and totalitarian societies as models of comparative order and efficiency -- and to beat back brave local voices calling for democracy and human rights. ..."
"... In an effective declaration of victory for Russia's espionage offensive against the US more than four years ago, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian Parliament, slid home the knife. "Following the events that unfolded after the presidential elections, it is meaningless to refer to America as the example of democracy," he said. ..."
"... "We are on the verge of reevaluating the standards that are being promoted by the United States of America, that is exporting its vision of democracy and political systems around the world. Those in our country who love to cite their example as leading will also have to reconsider their views." ..."
In a two-Party dictatorship, the important truths are kept away from being publicized on
either side, Eric Zuesse writes.
Throughout history, aristocrats, and their flaks such as their 'news'-media, cast blame
downward, away from themselves who collectively control the government, and onto, instead, some
minority or other mass group, who can't even plan or function together so as to be
able to control the government.
The U.S. has a two-Party aristocracy, as is clear from the "Open Secrets" list of the 100
biggest political donors in the 2020 U.S. Presidential and congressional campaigns, the
"2020 Top Donors to Outside Spending Groups" . Those are only these individuals' publicly
acknowledged expenditures, none of the dark political money, which, of course, is donated
secretly. At the top there, of the donors' lists, is Sheldon Adelson (who just died, on January
11th in California, and was buried in Israel), who spent far more than anyone in all of U.S.
history had ever spent in any campaign cycle, $215 million, which amount far exceeded even
the $82 million that he had spent in 2016,
which in 2016 was second only to Thomas Steyer's $92 million (the previous all-time highest
amount donated in any campaign year). Adelson gave exclusively to Republicans, whereas Steyer
gave exclusively to Democrats. Steyer in 2020 gave $67 million, which -- though he was running
for President in 2020, and hadn't been running in 2016 -- was only 73% of his 2016 donations,
in that year, when he had been the nation's top political donor. He was only the 5th-biggest
donor in 2020, instead of #1.
The second-biggest donor in 2020 was the liberal Republican Michael Bloomberg, who ran in
the Democratic Presidential primaries in order to defeat the only progressive in that contest,
who was Bernie Sanders. Bloomberg spent $151 million of his own funds for that purpose. In
2016, he had spent
$24 million in order to help Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders, and then try to beat
Donald Trump.
The third-biggest in 2020 was Timothy Mellon, the son of Paul Mellon and grandson of
Andrew Mellon .
Timothy Mellon gave $70 million, all to Republicans.
In 2020, the top ten donors, collectively, spent $776 million to own their chunk of the U.S.
Government. The second group of ten (#s 11-20) donated only $187 million; and, so, the top
twenty together donated $963 million, just shy of $1 trillion. All 80 of the other top-100
donors, together, gave around $370 million, so that the total from all 100 was around
one-and-a-third trillion dollars. 47 gave to Republicans; 53 gave to Democrats.
The smallest publicly acknowledged donor among the top 100, Foster Friess , gave $2.4 million, all to
Republicans.
Most of these 100 donors are among America's approximately 700 billionaires; and, even the
ones who aren't are serving and doing business with the billionaires, and therefore are to some
extent dependent upon having good relations with them, not being enemies of any
billionaire. All of these 100 are, obviously, also dependent upon the governmental decisions
that the public officials whom they have purchased will be making, not only regarding
regulations and laws, but also regarding foreign policies. For example, Friess merged his
company into Affiliated Management Group, which "is a global asset management firm"
that "has grown to approximately $730 billion." Virtually all of the top 100 political
donors are internationally invested, and their personal wealth is therefore affected by
American foreign policies, in ways that the personal wealth of the rest of the population is
not.
When the U.S. invades a foreign country, or issues sanctions against a foreign country, it
benefits some American investors, not only in corporations such as Lockheed Martin and
ExxonMobil, but even in some foreign-headquartered corporations. America's spending around half of the entire world's military expenses
gives an enormous competitive boost to America's billionaires, which is paid for by all U.S.
taxpayers. It takes away money that would otherwise go toward the rest of the U.S. population
-- people who might even become crippled or killed by their military service for the benefit of
America's billionaires. Marketing this military service to thepublic, as "national defense" --
even at a time when no nation has invaded or even threatened to invade America after
1945 -- is good PR for America's wealthiest families, regardless of whether it's of any benefit
whatsoever to other Americans. Because of the success of this PR for the military, Americans
consider the U.S. military to
be America's best institution -- far higher than any other part of the U.S. Government or
any non-governmental institution, such as churches, the press, or the medical system. The U.S.
Department of Defense is, also, by far, the
most corrupt of all Departments of the U.S. federal Government . This fact is carefully
hidden from the U.S. public, so as to keep the public admiring the military.
Billionaires use their media, and their scholars, to point the finger of blame, for the
problems that the public does know about, anywhere else than against themselves; and, though
the billionaires have political differences amongst themselves, they are unified against the
public, so as to continue the gravy train that they all are on.
In order for the aristocracy not to be blamed for the many problems that they cause upon the
public, their first trick is to blame some minority or some other vulnerable mass within the
public. Or else to blame some 'enemy' country. But if and when such a strategy fails, then,
they and their media blame the middle class or "bourgeoisie," in order to fool the leftists,
and also they blame the "communists" and the poor, in order to fool the rightists. That's a
two-pronged PR strategy -- one to the left, and the other to the right. Since the aristocracy
is always, itself, fundamentally conservative, they would naturally rather blame the leftists
as being "communists," than to blame the middle class and poor, because to do the latter would
place the public's ideological focus on economic class, which then would threaten to expose the
billionaires themselves as being the actual economic "elite" who are the public's real enemy
(and as being the elite against which the propaganda should instead be focused). Blaming the
middle class and poor might work amongst their fellow-aristocrats, but if tried amongst the
public, it would present the danger of backfiring. Consequently, there is a return to the days
of Joseph R. McCarthy, but this time without communism. Thus, here is how the White House
correspondent for a Democratic Party 'news'-site, CNN, closed his 'news'-analysis, on January
14th, under the headline "Washington's
agony is a win for autocrats and strongmen" :
Mission accomplished
Nice work, Mr. Putin.
According to a US intelligence community report, Russia's chief goal in interfering in
the 2016 election in support of Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton was to "undermine public
faith in the US democratic process." Four years on, there have been two impeachments and an
insurrection against the US legislature. Millions believe Trump's lies that he was illegally
ejected from power, and doubt Biden's legitimacy.
Conspiracy theorists have seats in Congress. There are serious questions about whether
one of the country's great political parties is now anti-democratic. The Covid-19 pandemic
exposed weaknesses in a federal system that grants vast power to the states. And America's
self-appointed role as an exceptional nation and beacon of democracy is in the gutter.
Most of the disorienting events of the last few years can be blamed directly on Trump
and his particular skill at tearing at the social, racial and political divides that are just
below the nation's surface. So the ex-KGB man in the Kremlin hardly deserves all the credit.
But Russia, China and other autocratic nations are gaining much from Washington's agony.
They're already using it to promote their own closed and totalitarian societies as models of
comparative order and efficiency -- and to beat back brave local voices calling for democracy
and human rights.
In an effective declaration of victory for Russia's espionage offensive against the US
more than four years ago, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian
Parliament, slid home the knife. "Following the events that unfolded after the presidential
elections, it is meaningless to refer to America as the example of democracy," he
said.
"We are on the verge of reevaluating the standards that are being promoted by the United
States of America, that is exporting its vision of democracy and political systems around the
world. Those in our country who love to cite their example as leading will also have to
reconsider their views."
That's propaganda from "leftist" (i.e., Democratic Party) billionaires. A good example of an
independent American journalist who has been fooled by Republican Party billionaires to blame
some amorphous mass of "leftists" is Sara A. Carter's 12 January 2021 youtube "Rudy Giuliani talks big
tech censorship" , blaming America's problems on "the government," or "the bureacracy,"
and, of course, especially on Democrats. At 10:15 there, she said "My mother fled from
Cuba." Carter, as a conservative, is so obsessed with her visceral hatred of "communism," that
she interpreted America's dictatorship as being communists, instead of as being billionaires --
of both Parties: actually, fascists. In a two-Party fascist dictatorship , she fears the leftists. This is typical of
propagandists on the conservative side. But propagandists on the liberal side (such as the CNN
correspondent exemplified) are no better, just different.
Both propaganda-operations cast blame away from the real culprits.
In a two-Party dictatorship, the important truths are kept away from being publicized on
either side. What the public sees and hears, instead, is political theater, merely
tailored to different audiences.
"... One one hand, this is truly an absolute disaster, because when the US ruling Nomenklatura agrees to drop any past pretenses of objectivity, or even decency, things will definitely get ugly. On the other hand, however, this immense "coming out" of the US Nomenklatura is, of course, unsustainable (just look at history, every time these folks thought that they had crushed the "plebes", the latter ended up rising and showing their supposed "masters" to the door; this will happen here too). ..."
"... Trump really destroyed the USA externally, in terms of world politics. The Dems have done the same thing, only internally. For example, Trump is the one who most arrogantly ignored the rule of law in international affairs, but it was the Dems who destroyed the rule of law inside the USA. It was Trump who with his antics and narcissistic threats urbi et orbi who destroyed any credibility left for the USA as a country (or even of the the AngloZionist Empire as a whole), but it was the Dems who really decided to sabotage the very political system which allowed them to seize power in the first place. ..."
"... What comes next is the illegal rule of an illegitimate regime which came to power by violence (BLM, Antifa, Capitol false flag). This will be a Soviet-style gerontocracy with senile figureheads pretending to be in power (think Biden vs Chernenko here). Looking at the old, Obama-era, names which are circulated now for future Cabinet positions, we can bet on two things: the new rulers will be as evil as they will be grossly incompetent, mostly due to their crass lack of education (even Nuland and Psaki are back, it appears!). The Biden admin will be similar to the rule of Kerensky in "democratic" Russia: chaos, violence, lots and lots of speeches and total social and economic chaos. The next crucial, and even frightening, question now is: what will replace this US version of a Kerensky regime? ..."
"... "domestic terrorism" will, once again, become the boogeyman we will be told to fear. And, as all good boys and girls know, the best way to deal with such a horrible "domestic terrorism" threat is to dismantle the First and Second Amendments of the Constitution. Having corrupt kangaroo courts on all levels, from the small claims level to the Supreme court, will greatly help in this endeavor... ..."
...the US liberals decided that this vote was a slap in their face which, of course, is
quite correct (I still believe that most votes for Trump where not votes for Trump, but votes
against Hillary); it was, so to speak, a gigantic "f**k you!" from the revolting serfs against
their masters. And class consciousness told the US Nomenklatura that this was an
anti-masters pogrom , a US " Jacquerie " if you wish. This "revolt
of the serfs" had to be put down, immediately, and it was: Trump caved to the Neocons in less
than a month (when he betrayed General Flynn) and ever since the US Nomenklatura has
been using Trump as a disposable President who would do all the crazy nonsense
imaginable to please Israel, and who would then be disposed off. And yet it is now quite clear
that the US "deplorables" voted for the "wrong" candidate again! Hence the need for a (very
poorly concealed) "election steal" followed by a "test of loyalty" (you better side with us, or
else ) which eventually resulted in the situation we have today.
What is that situation exactly?
Simply put, this time the USNomenklaturahas truly achieved total
power. Not only do they control all three of the official branches of government, they now
also fully control the 4th one, the "media space", courtesy of the US tech giants which now are
openly silencing anybody who disagrees with the One And Only Official Truth As Represented By
The Propaganda Outlets. This is the very first time in recent US history that a small cabal of
"deep insiders" have achieved such total control of all the real instruments of power. The bad
news is that they know that they are a small minority and they realize that they need to act
fast to secure their hold on power. But for that they needed a pretext.
It is hardly surprising that after successfully pulling off the 9/11 false flag
operation, the USNomenklaturahad no problems whatsoever pulling off the
"Capitol" false flag.
Think about it: the legally organized and scheduled protest of Trump supporters was
announced at least a week before it had to take place. How hard was it for those in charge of
security to make sure that the protesters stay in one specific location? At the very least,
those in charge of security could have done what Lukashenko eventually did in Mink: place
military and police forces around all the important symbolic buildings and monuments and say
"you are welcome to protest, but don't even think of trying to take over any government
property" (that approach worked much better than beating up protesters, which Lukashenko
initially had tried). Yet what we saw was the exact opposite: in DC protesters were invited
across police lines by cops. Not only that, but even those protesters which did enter the
Capitol were, apparently, not violent enough, so it had to be one of the cops to shoot an
unarmed and clearly non-dangerous woman, thereby providing the "sacrificial victim" needed to
justify the hysterics about "violence" and "rule of law".
And the worst part is that it worked, even Trump ended up condemning the "violence" and
denouncing those who, according to Trump, did not represent the people.
The hard truth is much simpler: the "stop the steal" protestors did not commit any real
violence! Yes, they broke some furniture, had some fights with cops (who initially were
inviting people in, only to then violently turn against them with batons, pepper sprays and
flash-bang grenades). Some reports say that one cop was hit by a fire extinguisher. If true,
that would be a case of assault with a deadly weapon (under US law any object capable of being
used to kill can be considered a deadly weapon when used for that purpose). But considering the
nonstop hysteria about guns, the NRA and "armed militias", this was clearly not a planned
murder. Finally, a few people died, apparently from natural causes, possibly made worse by the
people trampling over each other. In other words, the Trump supporters did not kill anybody
deliberately, at most they can be accused of creating the circumstances which resulted in
manslaughter. That was not murder. Not even close. Want to see what a planned murder looks
like? Just look at the footage of the Ashli Babbitt murder by some kind of armed official. That
is real murder, and it was committed by a armed official. So which side is most guilty of
violating laws and regulations?
Furthermore, no moral value can be respected unless it is universally and equally applied.
Which, considering that the US deep state has engaged in a full year of wanton mass violence
against hundreds of innocent US citizens makes it unbelievably hypocritical for the US liberals
to denounce "the mob" now. Frankly, the way I see it, all the US liberals should now "take a
knee" before the pro-Trump protestors and declare that this was a "mostly peaceful" event
which, objectively speaking, it was .
Won't happen. I know.
What will happen next is going to be a vicious crackdown on free speech in all its
forms . In fact, and just to use a Marxist notion, what comes next is class warfare
.
We have all seen Pelosi and the rest of them demanding that Trump either be removed by Pence
and the Cabinet (25th A.), or they will unleash another impeachment. First, if impeached, Trump
won't be able to run in 2024 (which the liberals fully realize is a major risk for them). But
even more important, is to humiliate him, make him pay, show him once and for all "who is
boss"! These people thrive on revenge and victory is never enough to appease them, they simply
hate anybody who dares oppose them and they want to make an example of any and every serf who
dares to disobey them. That is why they always send "messages", no matter how inchoate: they
want to bully all the deplorables on the planet into total subservience.
But they won't stop with just Trump. Oh no! They will also go after all those serfs who
dared defy this Nomenklatura and who objected to the wholesale repudiation of the US
Constitution. For example, in a truly Orwellian move, the NY State Bar now wants to disbar
Giuliani for acting as Trump's lawyer (not a joke, check here ). Which,
considering that Trump already lost several lawyers to such tactics should not come as a
surprise to anybody: apparently, in the "new 2021 Woke-USA", some are more entitled to legal
representation than others.
Don't expect the ACLU to protest, by the way – equal protection under the law is not a
topic of interest to them. Here are a few screenshots take off their website , so see for yourself.
Clearly, the priority for the folks at the ACLU is to destroy Trump and anybody daring to
take up his defense.
One one hand, this is truly an absolute disaster, because when the US ruling
Nomenklatura agrees to drop any past pretenses of objectivity, or even decency, things
will definitely get ugly. On the other hand, however, this immense "coming out" of the US
Nomenklatura is, of course, unsustainable (just look at history, every time these folks
thought that they had crushed the "plebes", the latter ended up rising and showing their
supposed "masters" to the door; this will happen here too).
Last, but not least, let's keep another crucial thing in mind: even if you absolutely hate
Trump, you really should realize that it is not just "the vote" which was stolen, it was the
entire US Constitutional order . While we often focus on the SCOTUS, we should not remember
the many lower courts which showed a total absence of courage or dignity and which caved in to
the hysterical demands of the US Nomenklatura . It is impossible to have a country under
the rule of law when the courts shy away from their obligation to uphold the said rule of law
and, instead, place political expediency above the letter and spirit of the law.
Furthermore, when concepts such as "legal" and "illegal" lose any objective meaning, how can
any action be considered illegal or punishable?
Here is, just as an example, the Oath of Office taken by all Supreme Court Justices:
(emphasis added)
"I, [NAME], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect
to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich , and that I will
faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [TITLE]
under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."
And this is what each member of the US Armed Forces swears: (emphasis added)
"I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend
the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic ; that
I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the
President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to
regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God)."
It does not take a genius to figure out that the SCOTUS is now in the hands of a small cabal
of people who clearly are "domestic enemies" of the US Constitution.
Finally, here is what the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence states: (emphasis
added)
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,–That
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish it , and to institute new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long
established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a
long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
I don't think that there is any need to further beat this dead horse and I will simply
summarize it as so:
The regime which will soon replace the Trump Administration is an illegal occupation
government, with strong ties to foreign interests (and I don't mean China or Russia here!),
which all those who served in the US military have taken an oath to oppose; this is precisely
the kind of occupation regime which the Founding Fathers foresaw in their Declaration of
Independence . Furthermore, the rule of law has clearly collapsed, at least on the
federal level, this should give the states more freedom of movement to resist the decrees of
this new regime (at least those states still willing and able to resist, I think of TX and FL
here). The leaders of this US Nomenklatura understand this, at least on some level, and we
should expect no decency from them; neither should we expect any mercy. Revenge is what
fuels these ideology- and hate-filled people who loathe and fear all the rest of humanity
because nobody is willing to worship them as our "lords and masters ". But this is also
the beginning of their end.
Conclusion: now we are all Palestinians!
True, no "mob" won on the Capitol, unless we refer to the (disgraced, hated and useless)
Congress as "the mob". And, of course, neither did "the people" or the protesters. The only
real winner in this entire operation was the US deep state and the US Nomenklatura . But
they did not win any war, only the opening battle of a war which will be much longer than what
they imagine in their ignorance.
I have said it many times, Trump really destroyed the USA externally, in terms of world
politics. The Dems have done the same thing, only internally. For example, Trump is the one who
most arrogantly ignored the rule of law in international affairs, but it was the Dems who
destroyed the rule of law inside the USA. It was Trump who with his antics and narcissistic
threats urbi et orbi who destroyed any credibility left for the USA as a country (or
even of the the AngloZionist Empire as a whole), but it was the Dems who really decided to
sabotage the very political system which allowed them to seize power in the first
place.
What comes next is the illegal rule of an illegitimate regime which came to power by
violence (BLM, Antifa, Capitol false flag). This will be a Soviet-style gerontocracy with
senile figureheads pretending to be in power (think Biden vs Chernenko here). Looking at the
old, Obama-era, names which are circulated now for future Cabinet positions, we can bet on two
things: the new rulers will be as evil as they will be grossly incompetent, mostly due to their
crass lack of education (even Nuland and Psaki are back, it appears!). The Biden admin will be
similar to the rule of Kerensky in "democratic" Russia: chaos, violence, lots and lots of
speeches and total social and economic chaos. The next crucial, and even frightening, question
now is: what will replace this US version of a Kerensky regime?
It is way too early to reply to this question, but we should at least begin to think about
it, lest we be completely caught off guard.
But until then, "domestic terrorism" will, once again, become the boogeyman we will be
told to fear. And, as all good boys and girls know, the best way to deal with such a horrible
"domestic terrorism" threat is to dismantle the First and Second Amendments of the
Constitution. Having corrupt kangaroo courts on all levels, from the small claims level to the
Supreme court, will greatly help in this endeavor...
"Americans have been brainwashed into calling things they don't like, or don't understand,
as "Socialist" or even "Marxist". The sad reality is that most Americans sincerely believe
that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are "socialists", and when they see modern
movies ridiculously filled with "minorities" and gender fluid freaks – this is a case
of "cultural Marxism" (a totally meaningless term, by the way!). This is all utter nonsense,
neither Marxism nor Socialism have anything to do with BLM, Antifa, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck
Schumer (in fact, Marxism places a premium on real law and order!)."
"class" has been declared heretical and it has been replaced by identity politics
– the best way for a ruling class to (a) hide behind a fake illusion of pluralism and
(b) to divide the people and rule over them
It's a neat bait and switch scheme, identity being substituted for class. Billionaires can
now be hailed as people's champions by instituting 'gender-fluid' toilets and forcing their
peons to kneel. Who knows how much force they'll be willing to use against the deplorables
but probably it would know no limit. The shock and awe unleashed against foreign countries
could now be instituted domestically with things like the Phoenix Program being tried here,
among other things. Anything but relinquish power.
The old war-lovers are coming back in. Although he was considered belligerent the new regime
will be worse. War is probably part of the future agenda. Solidifying it's grip upon the
domestic population may be the precursor to embarking upon an unpopular and certain to be
costly war against Iran or perhaps even some clash with Russia.
From the I Ching: "Large ambitions coupled with meager talent will seldom escape
disaster."
The fervid machinations of the current crop of "self"-glorifying wannabes will not, as The
Saker reminds us here, be any exception to the rule, either. They're hardly the first bunch
of feckless opportunists to take a run at "full spectrum dominance" .aiming to trap Life
Herownself within the suffocating CONfines of their own little nut'shell.
The rampant insanity symptomatic of their virulent "self"-sickness, as it runs its
inevitable course, looks like being somewhat more than usually trying for the rest of us,
though .given all the electro-mechanical and institutional enhancement available to them, for
intensifying the degenerative effects of their folly. At the same time, our best response
will be just what we all know is always organically and in all Ways imperative for our Kind,
anyhow. All our precious attention is best devoted to taking care of the Earth and each
other. Our unconditional affection is best lavished on this Living Creation, all our
Relations, and The Great Spirit whose gift it is.
"... The last scene in the video shows that the violent protest and takeover was about more than just the election. After trashing media equipment, one man says, "We gotta change it. They fucking abuse us. They laugh at us. They steal our money." ..."
T he U.S. Justice Department has reversed an earlier assertion in court by prosecutors that
protestors who broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 had plans to "capture and assassinate
elected officials."
Instead, the head of the DOJ investigation into the Capitol siege
admitted that federal prosecutors filed a misleading statement before a federal judge in
Arizona that was intended to prevent Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, from being released on
bail.
The DOJ said that though there were calls to kill officials during the two-hour takeover of
the Capitol, no evidence has been discovered yet to prove any serious effort to carry out such
a plan.
"There is no direct evidence at this point of kill-capture teams and assassination," Michael
Sherwin, the Washington DC federal district attorney running the investigation of the attack,
told reporters, Agence France-Presse reported. Sherwin said it may be "appropriate" to raise it
at trial, but at this point it could "mislead the court."
The original story of intentions to kill officials has entered the media discourse and is
likely to remain a Democratic talking point despite the DOJ reversal. The only major media
outlets that
reported the new story is NBC News and The
Washington Post . It has not appeared in The New York Times or on CNN's
website, for instance.
Having saturated the public with days of lurid tales of intentions to hang Vice President
Mike Pence and abduct House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it will be hard to shake such beliefs without
reporting the DOJ's reversal with the same intensity.
The original statement filed in court said: "Strong evidence, including Chansley's own words
and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and
assassinate elected officials of the United States government."
There has been no suggestion that the prosecutors in Arizona who made the false claim are
being investigated for misleading the court.
The 'Coup'
Riot police at Capitol, Jan. 21, 2017 for Trump's inauguration. (Lorie Shaull/Wikimedia
Commons)
The admission dramatically changes the story, repeated as Democratic Party talking points,
and undermines the unquestioned certainty that what took place was an attempted coup against
the United States government. The new DOJ stance might also weaken efforts to charge Capitol
rioters and intruders with "seditious conspiracy" charges for allegedly attempting to overthrow
the government.
Consortium News has been among the few media outlets to
question the coup narrative from the start.
Even if there were such murderous intentions it would not have amounted to a coup attempt
without the backing of the military or paramilitaries, and without taking over the airport and
radio and TV stations. These days it would probably mean taking over social media companies
too. The U.S. government and media structures are vaster and more powerful than just the
legislature.
Even if the protestors had intended and succeeded in hanging Vice President Mike Pence
(presuming the gallows erected outside the Capitol was sturdy enough), and even if they had
taken Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and others hostage would Donald Trump have
said, "Okay, they didn't certify Biden, I'm still president!"?
No branch of government would have supported Trump in that case and the surviving members of
Congress would have met elsewhere to certify Joe Biden as president.
New Video Inside Capitol
Chansley, the far-right, bare-chested activist with fur headdress and Viking horns, became
the symbol of the brief takeover of the Capitol by Trump supporters. He was arrested and faces
a six-count federal indictment,
charged with:
Civil disorder Obstruction of an official proceeding Entering and
remaining in a restricted building Disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building
Violent entry and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building Parading, demonstrating, or
picketing in a Capitol Building
He is not charged with insurrection or sedition to overthrow the government.
Jacob Chandsley/ Qananon Shaman. (TheUnseen011101/Wikimedia Commons)
In a new video released on Sunday by The New Yorker, Chansley is seen grunting
primordial chants while playing to a photographer a few feet in front of him in a Senate
balcony. Later he seats himself in Pence's Senate chair.
After a single Capitol police officer pleads with the intruders to leave, Chansley leads the
group in prayer and then files out with the others, but not before scrawling on a piece of
paper on Pence's desk: "It's only a matter of time, justice is coming."
Before Chansley sat in it, the video
shows one of the protest leaders, dressed in military gear, demanding that the others not
occupy the vice president's chair. He says: "It's not our chair. I love you brothers, but we
cannot be disrespectful. It's a PR war, okay? You have to understand it's an IO war. We can't
lose the IO war. We're better than that. It's an Information Operation."
The video shows a couple of dozen protestors rifling through senators' desks looking for, in
the words of one, "something we can fucking use against these scumbags" and taking photos of
documents. At one point they thought they found evidence in Senator Ted Cruz's desk that he was
going to betray them on certification, but read further and realized he would not.
The film is interspersed with very violent scenes of police in riot gear trying to prevent
protestors from entering the Capitol.
The last scene in the video shows that the violent protest and takeover was about more
than just the election. After trashing media equipment, one man says, "We gotta change it. They
fucking abuse us. They laugh at us. They steal our money."
As journalist Chris Hedges said last Thursday, one can decry their
politics, the racism among many, and their tactics, but their pain is real in a system that has
shrunk the middle class and debased workers.
What happened at the Capitol cannot be condoned. But unless Congress defies its oligarchic
backers and serves the interests of average Americans, who also fund them, a real insurrection
may be inevitable. Instead of the reforms to defuse that and bring more economic justice, we
are witnessing a crackdown that will only further inflame the country.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief ofConsortium Newsand a former UN
correspondent forThe Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe,
and numerous other newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for theSunday
Timesof London and began his professional career as a stringer forThe
New York Times.He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter
@unjoe .
rosemerry , January 18, 2021 at 13:15
It is interesting that both sides of the House and Senate manage almost all the time to
arrange that other countries they have decided are enemies or rivals have real "coups" and
takeovers helped by the mighty US . Iraq, Syria,Libya,Venezuela are just a few of the recent
examples, but they are not "USA USA" so they do not count.
rosemerry , January 18, 2021 at 13:07
No surprise that the "paper of record" NYT did not bother to mention this legal angle. The
descriptions I have seen in European papers and in the Sycophant aka the Guardian hardly vary
at all and scream the alleged danger to the poor Congress members.
Anne , January 18, 2021 at 14:25
Nor NPR .Indeed they didn't bother to mention the 1954 shootings in the US Capitol (House)
until AFTER the BBC World Service had and then a week later
Tim S. , January 18, 2021 at 12:54
Anyone who has watched the video filmed by the arch-instigator's would-be-journalist
sidekick can see for themselves that these were not even serious rioters, much less coup
plotters, who were surprised as everybody else about being allowed into the Capitol
building.
And despite some toy guns and one man with the slogan on the back of his jacket "God, guns,
and Trump), it is obvious from their panicky reactions when a woman was killed that they felt
deep down that this was all fun and games. She was trying to break down an interior door,
starting with the window, but when an agent inside pointed a pistol at her, she ignored it.
When he finally shot her, they all start yelling "She's been shot!" and react rather like a
bunch of bystanders.
Does that sound like a gang planning to kill some Congressmen and taken others
hostage?
Jonny James , January 18, 2021 at 11:48
Yes, once again the mainstream narrative stinks, and the fresh air is here on CN. That's
why we don't breathe the miasma of the corporate media.
The Divide and Rule strategies of the ruling classes are working nicely. We can't have the
"99%" get together to work against "the interests of Goldman Sachs" (Hedges). That is not
allowed. The rub is that both the so-called right and so-called left work for the interests
of Goldman Sachs.
I remember very clearly how brutally the peaceful Occupy protests were smashed. The
violent cops used armored vehicles and other military equipment, massive amounts of tear gas,
flash-bang grenades, drones, surveillance etc. etc. , Scott Horton was nearly killed by a
tear-gas canister fired directly at his head. You are not allowed to work against the
interests of the real owners of this country. As George Carlin once said, "they own the f-in
place".
Anne , January 18, 2021 at 14:35
I have yet to hear NPR mention anything about the woman who was shot dead (no weapon on
her) let alone who shot and killed her that she was ex-mil (thus trained to invade, destroy,
devastate, slaughter peoples, cultures, societies far, far, from these shores what you train
for and then deploy will eventually come back home and bite
John Drake , January 18, 2021 at 13:37
Agreed, I find the minimizing of this event truly putrid. What is it about an enraged
crowd, chanting "stop the steal" breaking into a building full of legislators , assaulting,
injuring police and scaring the ..t out of said elected legislators that is not an attempt to
overthrow, interfere, interrupt, prevent a key governmental process? This a governmental
process whose outcome they wanted to alter keeping the Orange Menace in power. A flight of
ridiculous fancy, no doubt, but still attitude, behavior and intent count.
Just because it doesn't rise to the level of well known coups orchestrated by
professionals (CIA): Honduras, Guatemala, Chile, Iran and hundreds more; doesn't mean it
doesn't belong in the same family of nasty socio/political events. Can we compromise and call
it a mini attempted coup or maybe mini coup-lite? Anyway the perpetrators and their enablers
need to major consequences; especially those officials that violated their oath of
office.
By 2016 the concept of "liberal democracy," once bright with promise, had dulled into a
neoliberal politics that was neither liberal nor democratic. The Democratic Party's turn toward
market-driven policies, the bipartisan dismantling of the public sphere, the inflight marriage
of Wall Street and Silicon Valley in the cockpit of globalization -- these interventions
constituted the long con of neoliberal governance, which enriched a small minority of Americans
while ravaging most of the rest.
Jackson Lears is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers,
Editor in Chief of Raritan, and the author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern
America, 1877–1920, among other books. (January 2021)
Democracy is in trouble, and everyone is casting about for someone to blame. Donald Trump's
grotesque incapacity to govern has made him an easy target, but the difficulties with democracy
are subtler, wider, and deeper. One clue to their complexity is a blog post that appeared on
the liberal website Daily Kos a month after Trump's election in 2016. "Be Happy for Coal
Miners Losing Their Health Insurance," the headline blared. "They're Getting Exactly What They
Voted For."
The dismissal is curt and callous: clearly, Trump's victory provoked some of his opponents
to double down on their hostility toward his supporters. But the blog post also shows -- more
broadly -- that being a liberal Democrat no longer means what it once meant. Sympathy for the
working class has, for many, curdled into contempt. By 2016 the concept of "liberal democracy,"
once bright with promise, had dulled into a neoliberal politics that was neither liberal nor
democratic. The Democratic Party's turn toward market-driven policies, the bipartisan
dismantling of the public sphere, the inflight marriage of Wall Street and Silicon Valley in
the cockpit of globalization -- these interventions constituted the long con of neoliberal
governance, which enriched a small minority of Americans while ravaging most of the rest.
In 2020 the Democrats made little attempt to distance themselves from that calamitous
inheritance. As early as 2019, Joe Biden himself made clear to the donor class that "nothing
would fundamentally change" if he were elected and reassured the medical-industrial complex by
dismissing any discussion of single-payer health care. But he has made no substantial attempt
to reassure the millions of Americans who have lost jobs or homes or health care in recent
months. One might never have known, by following his campaign, that the US was facing the most
serious and protracted economic depression since the 1930s. So it should come as no surprise
that Trump maintained his support among rural and less educated voters and even improved it
among African-Americans and Latinos. Despite Trump's bungling, many ordinary Americans may have
sensed indifference if not outright hostility emanating toward them from his Democratic
opponents. And they would not have been mistaken. The Democratic Party leadership has become
estranged from its historic base.
The spectacle of liberals jeering at coal miners reveals seismic changes in our larger
public discourse. The miners were "getting exactly what they voted for" -- exactly what they
deserved, in other words. The belief that people get what they deserve is rooted in the secular
individualist outlook that has legitimated inequality in the United States for centuries, ever
since the Protestant ethic began turning into the spirit of capitalism. Yet visions of a nation
of autonomous strivers always coexisted with older ideals of community and solidarity -- and
those ideals resurfaced in the Great Depression to become the basis, however limited and
imperfect, of midcentury social democracy. During the last four decades, the autonomous
striving self has returned to the center of the success ethic, but featured in a new narrative
that has focused less on plodding diligence and more on talent, brains, and credentialed
expertise.
I see this article is quite relevant to another one on a different blog that I have been
fruitlessly attempting to comment upon. It keeps getting disappeared immediately and not even
sent to moderation where normally all submissions first go. Have had that trouble two days
running on two different articles about i) the impending crackdowns on free speech and ii)
the planned purge of Republican officeholders by the triumphalist Clinton/Obama/Biden mob.
I'll go with my remarks on the coming attempt at a purge since it is closer to the Saker's
treatment of the Nomenklatura (cognate to "nomenclature" specifying ordered classes of
things, including people or their offices, in English) or in American street language simply
identifying who is a "made man," i.e., an untouchable in the mafia. Yeah, the Dem hierarchy
are sure feeling they are all made men (and women) following the set to in the Capitol which
they most possibly facilitated and have certainly exploited to the limit.
46 Follow RT on Outgoing US
President Donald Trump has delivered his "parting gift" to the Moscow-led Nord Stream 2 gas
pipeline, with newly announced sanctions targeting a pipe-laying vessel and companies involved
in the multinational project.
The specialist ship concerned, named, 'Fortuna,' and oil tanker 'Maksim Gorky', as well as
two Russian firms, KVT-Rus and Rustanker, were blacklisted on Tuesday under CAATSA (Countering
America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) as part of Washington's economic war on Moscow.
The same legislation had been previously used by the US to target numerous Russian officials
and enterprises.
Russian energy giant Gazprom warned its investors earlier on Tuesday that Nord Stream 2
could be suspended or even canceled if more US restrictions are introduced.
However, Moscow has assured its partners that it intends to complete the project despite
"harsh pressure on the part of Washington," according to Kremlin press secretary Dmitry
Peskov. Reacting to the new package of sanctions on Tuesday, Peskov called them
"unlawful."
Meanwhile, the EU said it is in no rush to join the Washington-led sanction war on Nord
Stream 2. EU foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, said that the bloc is not going to resist
the construction of the project.
"Because we're talking about a private project, we can't hamper the operations of those
companies if the German government agrees to it," Borrell said Tuesday.
Nord Stream 2 is an offshore gas pipeline, linking Russia and Germany with aim of providing
cheaper energy to Central European customers. Under the agreement between Moscow and Berlin, it
was to be launched in mid-2020, but the construction has been delayed due to strong opposition
from Washington.
The US, which is hoping to sell its Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to Europe, has hit the
project with several rounds of sanctions over scarcely credible claims that it could undermine
European energy security. Critics say the real intent is to force EU members to buy from
American companies.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
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Fatback33 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:20 AM
The group that owns Washington makes the foreign policy. That policy is not for the benefit
of the people.
DukeLeo Fatback33 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:06 PM
That is correct. The private banks and corporations in the US are very upset about Nord
Stream - 2, as they want Europe to buy US gas at double price. Washington thus introduces
additional political gangsterism in the shape of new unilateral sanctions which have no merit
in international law.
noremedy 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:22 AM
Is the U.S. so stupid that they do not realize that they are isolating themselves? Russia has
developed SPFS, China CIPS, together with Iran, China and Russia are further developing a
payment transfer system. Once in place and functioning this system will replace the western
SWIFT system for international payment transfers. It will be the death knell for the US
dollar. 327 million Americans are no match for the rest of the billions of the world's
population. The next decade will see the total debasement of the US monetary system and the
fall from power of the decaying and crumbling in every way U.S.A.
Hanonymouse noremedy 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:37 PM
They don't care. They have the most advanced military in the world. Might makes right, even
today.
Shelbouy 3 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 12:25 PM
Russia currently supplies over 50% of the natural gas consumed by The EU. Germany and Italy
are the largest importers of Russian natural gas. What is the issue of sanctions stemming
from and why are the Americans doing this? A no brainer question I suppose. It's to make more
money than the other supplier, and exert political pressure and demand obedience from its
lackey. Germany.
David R. Evans Shelbouy 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:58 PM
Russia and Iran challenge perpetual US wars for Israel's Oded Yinon Plan. Washington is
Israel-controlled territory.
Jewel Gyn 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:34 AM
Sanctions work both ways. With the outgoing Trump administration desperately laying mines for
Biden, we await how sleepy Joe is going to mend strayed ties with EU.
Count_Cash 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:20 AM
The US mafia state continues with the same practices. The dog is barking but the caravan is
going. The counter productiveness of sanctions always shows through in the end! I am sure
with active efforts of Germany and Russia against US mafia oppression that a blowback will be
felt by the US over time!
Dachaguy 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:24 AM
This is an act of war against Germany. NATO should respond and act against the aggressor,
America.
xyz47 Dachaguy 42 minutes ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:20 PM
NATO is run by the US...
lovethy Dachaguy 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:04 PM
NATO has no separate existence. It's the USA's arm of aggression, suppression and domination.
Germany after WWII is an occupied country of USA. Thousand of armed personnel stationed in
Germany enforcing that occupation.
Chaz Dadkhah 3 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 12:19 PM
Further proof that Trump is no friend of Russia and is in a rush to punish them while he
still has power. If it was the swamp telling him to do that, like his supporters suggest,
then they would have waited till their man Biden came in to power in less than 24 hours to do
it. Wake up!
Mac Kio 3 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 12:34 PM
USA hates fair competition. USA ignores all WTO rules.
Russkiy09 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:33 PM
By whining and not completing in the face of US, Russia is losing credibility. They should
not have delayed to mobilize the pipe laying vessel and other equipment for one whole year.
They should have mobilized in three months and finished by now. Same happens when Jewtin does
not shoot down Zio air force bombing Syria everyday. But best option should have been to tell
European vassals that "if you can, take our gas. But we will charge the highest amount and
sell as much as we want, exclude Russophobic Baltic countries and Poland and neo-vassal
Ukraine. Pay us not in your ponzi paper money but real goods and services or precious metals
or other commodities or our own currency Ruble." I so wish I could be the President of
Russia. Russians deserve to be as wealthy as the Swiss or SIngapore etc., not what they are
getting. Their leaders should stand up for their interest. And stop empowering the greedy
merchantalist Chinese and brotherhood Erdogan.
BlackIntel 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:27 PM
America i captured by private interest; this project threatens American private companies
hence the government is forced to protect capitalism. This is illegal
Ohhho 3 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 12:15 PM
That project was a mistake from the start: Russia should distance itself from the Evil
empire, EU included! Stop wasting time and resources on trying to please the haters and
keeping them more competitive with cheaper Russian natural gas: focus on real partners and
potential allies elsewhere!
butterfly123 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:58 PM
I have said it before that part of the problem is at the door of the policy-makers and
politicians in Russia. Pipeline project didn't spring up in the minds of politicians in
Russia one morning, presumably. There should have been foresight, detailed planning, and
opportunity creation for firms in Russia to acquire the skill-set and resources to advance
this project. Not doing so has come to bite Russia hard and painful. Lessons learnt I hope Mr
President!
jakro 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:37 AM
Good news. The swamp is getting deeper and bigger.
hermaflorissen 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:49 AM
Trump finally severed my expectations for the past 4 years. He should indeed perish.
ariadnatheo 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:06 PM
That is one Trump measure that will not be overturned by the Senile One. They will need to
amplify the RussiaRussiaRussia barking and scratching to divert attention from their dealings
with China
Neville52 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:01 PM
Its time the other nations of the world turned their backs on the US. Its too risky if you
are an international corporation to suddenly have large portions of your income cancelled due
to some crazy politician in the US
5th Eye 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:03 PM
From empire to the collapse of empire, US follows UK to the letters. Soon it will be
irrelevant. The only thing that remains for UK is the language. Probably hotdog for the US.
VonnDuff1 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:10 PM
The USA Congress and its corrupt foreign policy dictates work to the detriment of Europe and
Russia, while providing no tangible benefits to US states or citizens. So globalist demands
wrapped in the stars & stripes, should be laughed at, by all freedom loving nations.
Biden is clearly an enforcer for a faction of what we might call the permanent
establishment, the hidden real government that runs on automatic imperial pilot regardless
who is nominal US President.
That "permanent establishment" is currently becoming "dis-established" everywhere in the
world. It sees with horror that its grip on the entire world is crumbling.
It does only what it has always tried in such cases -- war, war, war. Only of late, those
wars -- war against Russia over Ukraine, war against Assad's Syria, an attempted war against
Erdogan in Turkey, a war against the growing economic muscle in the world of China -- have
been impotent flops.
Biden, a dutiful servant of those interests, carries the flag of war to where he is sent,
much like the character in Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks.
It is an Oligarchy of bond holders. I'm using the word bond as an stand-in for debt
instruments, or any sort of claim on productivity. Bond/Bondage/Debt are all closely related
concepts.
The entire Western World is inter-connected double-entry balance sheets.
One side of the balance sheet is "assets" and the other is "liabilities." One person's
liability is another persons asset.
It is best to view the western world as a balance sheet, especially as private bank credit
is the dominant money type of the west. Private banking and debt spreading has metastasized
like a cancer, and is now consuming the host. Debt instruments and finance paper are being
serviced in the finance sector with QE and 'CARES' act shenanigan's, which pays these finance
"assets."
If you want to call the bond holders in finance and elsewhere as a nomenklatura, go ahead
– but it obscures reality. These people are a class, a class of usurers, who are
"taking" wealth in sordid ways by gaming the system.
All through history, plutocracy has arisen out of the population because debts were not
annulled, or land was enclosed.
Oligarchs of various types are harvesting the world through various means, including the
growth of debt claims. These claims grow exponentially, and outside of nature's ability to
pay. The derivative bubble wants to be paid. What cannot go on, will not.
The balance sheet is not really balanced, one side (the debt instrument holder) is making
exponential claims on debtors.
I have, for some time, been mis-naming the Nomenklatura as the Politburo, with the commune
being the many tentacled international banking cartel. It's the same crowd that funded the
original Bolsheviks.
IMO they are only "Neo" by virtue of the old ones having died, but I'm not going to split
hairs. We all know it is those whose loyalty is to a shitty little country on the
Mediterranean.
"... Although there may not be tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds from his bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same. ..."
"... it is important to put aside the notion that fascism is a purely right-wing phenomenon, complete with a chauvinistic demagogue haranguing a frenzied crowd. The new dictator on the block is not some fanatical Fuhrer, but rather Silicon Valley, the fountainhead of technological advancement and the formidable fortress of liberal ideology. In other words, fascism is an ideology that moves fluidly along the political spectrum, although some say the ideology grew out of European progressivism. ..."
"... Liberal Fascism ..."
"... Many years earlier, the late political theorist Hannah Arendt described the Nazi Party (which stands for, lest we forget, the 'National SOCIALIST German Workers' Party') as nothing more than "the breakdown of all German and European traditions, the good as well as the bad basing itself on the intoxication of destruction as an actual experience." That sounds like a pretty accurate description of the cancel culture mentality that has now gripped the 'progressive' left with an almost demonic possession. ..."
"... We are living Orwell's 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech and what's left is only there for a chosen few. ..."
"... Big Tech began its slide towards marked fascist tendencies thanks to one of the greatest hoaxes ever foisted upon the American public, known as Russiagate. One after another, Silicon Valley overlords were called before Congressional committees to explain "how and why Russian operatives were given free rein to tamper with 2016 U.S. election," in favor of the populist Donald Trump, no less. ..."
"... Strangely, violence has never shocked the progressive left, so long as the violence supported its agenda. ..."
"... While all forms of 'cancel culture' (which seems to be part of a move to build American society along the lines of the Chinese 'social credit system,' which rewards those who toe the party line, and punishes those who fall out of favor) are egregious and counterintuitive to American values, perhaps the most astonishing was the cancellation of Republican Senator Josh Hawley's book deal with Simon and Shuster. ..."
"... In conclusion, it would be a huge mistake for the Democrats to believe that they are safe from the same sort of corporate and government behavior that has now dramatically silenced the conservative voice across the nation. The United States has entered dangerous unchartered waters, and by all indications it would appear that the American people have inherited a 'soft' form of fascism. ..."
Although there may not be tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds from his
bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same.
Most Americans can probably still remember a time when U.S. companies were in business with
one goal in mind – providing a product or service for profit. It was a noble idea, the
bedrock of capitalism, in which everyone stood to gain in the process.
Today, the monopolistic powers now enjoyed by a handful of mighty corporations, which are no
longer shy about declaring their political bent, have tempted them to wade into the deep end of
the political pool with deleterious effects on democracy. Indeed, corporate power wedded to
government is nothing less than fascism.
In presenting such a case, it is important to put aside the notion that fascism is a
purely right-wing phenomenon, complete with a chauvinistic demagogue haranguing a frenzied
crowd. The new dictator on the block is not some fanatical Fuhrer, but rather Silicon Valley,
the fountainhead of technological advancement and the formidable fortress of liberal ideology.
In other words, fascism is an ideology that moves fluidly along the political spectrum,
although some say the ideology grew out of European progressivism.
Jonah Goldberg argued in his 2008 book, Liberal Fascism , that even before World
War II "fascism was widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many liberal and
left-wing adherents in Europe and the United States." Many years earlier, the late
political theorist Hannah Arendt described the Nazi Party (which stands for, lest we forget,
the 'National SOCIALIST German Workers' Party') as nothing more than "the breakdown of all
German and European traditions, the good as well as the bad basing itself on the intoxication
of destruction as an actual experience." That sounds like a pretty accurate description of the
cancel culture mentality that has now gripped the 'progressive' left with an almost demonic
possession.
It should be shocking to Republicans and Democrats alike that the Commander-in-Chief of the
United States is banished from all of the main social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook
and YouTube – denying him the ability to communicate with his 75 million constituents, or
one half of the electorate. This is real and unprecedented violence being committed against the
body politic and far more worrisome than any breach of federal property, as loathsome as such
an act may be.
The Capitol building is, after all, ultimately a mere symbol of our freedoms and liberties,
whereas the rights laid down in the U.S. Constitution – the First Amendment not least of
all – are fragile and coming under sustained assault every single day. Why does the left
refuse to show the same concern for an aging piece of parchment, arguably the greatest
political document ever written, as it does for a piece of architecture? The answer to that
riddle is becoming increasingly obvious.
We are living Orwell's 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big
tech and what's left is only there for a chosen few.
Big Tech began its slide towards marked fascist tendencies thanks to one of the greatest
hoaxes ever foisted upon the American public, known as Russiagate. One after another, Silicon
Valley overlords were called before Congressional committees to
explain "how and why Russian operatives were given free rein to tamper with 2016 U.S.
election," in favor of the populist Donald Trump, no less.
After this made for television 'dressing down', the Big Tech executives at Google, Facebook,
Twitter and others got busy reconfiguring their software algorithms in such a way that
thousands of internet creators suddenly lost not only a lifetime of hard work and their
sustenance, but their voice as well. This is the moment that Big Tech and the Democrats began
to really march in lockstep. A new dark age of 'McCarthyism' had settled upon the nation, which
gave the left unlimited powers for blocking user accounts they deemed "suspicious," which meant
anyone on the right. Now, getting 'shadow banned,' demonetized and outright banned from these
platforms has become the new dystopian reality for those with a conservative message to convey.
And the fact that the story of 'Russian collusion' was finally exposed as a dirty little lie
did nothing to loosen the corporate screws.
Incidentally, as a very large footnote to this story, Big Tech and Big Business have not
dished out the same amount of medieval-style punishment to other violators of the public peace.
The most obvious example comes courtesy of Black Lives Matter, the Soros-funded social-justice
movement that has wreaked havoc across a broad swath of the heartland following the death of
George Floyd during an arrest by a white police officer.
Both BLM and Trump supporters believe they have a very large grudge to bear. The former
believes they are being unfairly targeted by police due to the color of their skin, while the
latter believes they are not getting fair treatment by the mainstream media due to 'Trump
Derangement Syndrome', and possibly also due in part to their skin color. But at this point the
similarities between BLM and Trump voters come to a screeching halt.
Taking it as gospel that America suffers from 'systemic racism' (it doesn't, although that
is not to say that pockets of racism against all colors and creeds doesn't exist), dozens of
corporations jumped on the woke bandwagon to express their support for Black Lives Matter at
the very same time the latter's members were looting and burning neighborhoods across the
nation. Strangely, violence has never shocked the progressive left, so long as the violence
supported its agenda.
Here are just some of the ways the corporate world responded to charges that America was a
racist cauldron ready to blow, as reported by The Washington Post: "Jamie Dimon, chief
executive of JPMorgan Chase, knelt
alongside employees during his visit to a Chase branch. Bank of America
pledged $1 billion to fight racial inequality in America. Tech companies have
invested big dollars in Black Lives Matter, the Center for Policing Equity, Colin
Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp and other entities engaged in racial justice efforts " And
the list goes on and on.
Of course, private corporations are free to express their solidarity with whatever group
they wish. The problem, however, is that these monopolistic monstrosities have an overwhelming
tendency to pledge allegiance to liberal, progressive values, as opposed to maybe steering
clear of politics altogether. Nowhere was Corporate America's political agenda more obvious
than in the aftermath of the siege of the Capitol building on January 6, which led to the death
of five people.
Corporate America missed a very good opportunity to keep quiet and remain neutral with
regards to an issue of incredible partisan significance. Instead, it unleashed a salvo of
attacks on Trump supporters, even denying them access to basic services.
Aside from the most obvious and alarming 'disappearing act,' that of POTUS being removed
from the major social media platforms, were countless lesser names caught up in the
'purge.'
One such person is conservative commentator and former baseball star Curt Schilling, who
says that AIG terminated his insurance policy over his "social media profile," which was
sympathetic to Donald Trump,
according to Summit News.
"We will be just fine, but wanted to let Americans know that @AIGinsurance canceled our
insurance due to my "Social Media profile," tweeted Schilling.
"The agent told us it was a decision made by and with their PR department in conjunction
with management," he added.
While all forms of 'cancel culture' (which seems to be part of a move to build American
society along the lines of the Chinese 'social credit system,' which rewards those who toe the
party line, and punishes those who fall out of favor) are egregious and counterintuitive to
American values, perhaps the most astonishing was the cancellation of Republican Senator Josh
Hawley's book deal with Simon and Shuster.
"We did not come to this decision lightly," Simon & Schuster said in a statement over
Twitter. "As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and
viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens,
and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat."
The so-called "threat" was a photograph of Hawley raising a fist to the crowd that had
assembled outside of the Capitol building before it had breached the security perimeter. It
seems that corporations may now serve as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to how
Americans behave in public. Is it a crime that Hawley acknowledged a crowd of supporters who
were at the time behind the gates of the Capitol building? Apparently it is.
By the way, the name of the Hawley's book? 'The Tyranny of Big Tech'. How's that for
irony?
In conclusion, it would be a huge mistake for the Democrats to believe that they are
safe from the same sort of corporate and government behavior that has now dramatically silenced
the conservative voice across the nation. The United States has entered dangerous unchartered
waters, and by all indications it would appear that the American people have inherited a 'soft'
form of fascism.
Although there may not be troops and tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds
from his bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same: the brutal elimination of
one half of the American population from all of the due protections provided by the U.S.
Constitution due to an unholy alliance between corporate and government power, which is the
very definition of fascism. Democrats, you may very well be next, so enjoy your victory while
you still can.
I am strongly against balkanization of the country. The example of the USSR shows where it
leads -- misery of common pople and dramatic drop of the standard of living, while new gand of
ruthless oligarchs emerge from the ruins.
Pushing the Trump-inspired populist movement underground may only cause it to resort to more
drastic measures. As the leftist libertarian reporter Glenn Greenwald observes ,
"these people know they are scorned and looked down upon... and the more you humiliate
and make them feel powerless, the more you take away their ability to organize and express
that rage, it's gonna find an outlet in more destructive ways."
As a former professor at a top-ranking university, I favored a Trump re-election, not
because I support Trump so much as abhor what the opposition represents and is proving itself
to be. In response to the social media threat to expression, I have inaugurated a new group on
Telegram called 'Thought Criminals'. There, fellow 'thought deviationists' like me are able to
express views that are effectively proscribed on mainstream social media platforms. No one
among us advocates violence or the overthrow of the government. None of us is 'racist'. We
advocate only the rights enshrined in the US Constitution.
But some groups, no doubt, are intent on violence. Yet the violent extremists consist mostly
of Antifa and related 'activists', who will unfortunately trick Trump supporters into another
error during the inauguration, like some appeared to do when involved
in the Capitol siege. It's not as if violent extremists among the Trump base were always there,
ready to pounce on any opportunity to express their "racist," "white nationalist"
views.
Rather, as the rising party has already demonstrated, these people stand to lose the most
under a Biden-Harris regime, whose Big Tech and mainstream media allies act as governmental
enforcement apparatuses.
Trump supporters have been hated and demonized simply for wanting to live without being
reprimanded and punished for their whiteness, their middle-Americanness, or their values. They
face an anti-white, anti-native, anti-middle-America extremism that is set to silence and crush
them into submission.
These and others will form a new underground under the prevailing ideological and political
hegemony. This banishment of millions, and not Trump, is why the nation will fall apart, if
indeed it does.
JJ_Rousseau 5 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 02:58 PM
The best thing that could happen is for USA to "balkanize". For the rest of the world, and
for Americans too. The founding fathers intentionally put restraints on the federal
government's power to prevent the situation we now face. Both parties (actually the duopoly)
are guilty of breaching the constitution, on so many levels we have lost count
Ronj14848 JJ_Rousseau 1 hour ago 15 Jan, 2021 07:23 PM
The USA have more American in uniform outside America than civilian Americans inside America.
You bleed yourself dry trying to be the boss of the world.
chert JJ_Rousseau 3 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 04:52 PM
Right, states should have more power than the federal government. Case in point: North Dakota
is trying to pass a law to sue Facebook and Twitter for those who have been censored on those
platforms. But federal law under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act will supersede
because federal law wins.
apothqowejh 4 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 04:17 PM
As an American, I can't say a reckoning hasn't been overdue. The myopia in this country, and
the tolerance for evil, was bound to rebound. From a refusal to honestly look at 9/11, a
refusal to accept responsibility for Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and a host of other
insanely brutal blunders, to an acceptance of such horrors as the USAPatriot Act and the
COVID scam, everyday Americans have obliviously sleepwalked into a totalitarian dystopia.
Tyranny abroad inevitably leads to tyranny at home, and we have well-earned it by refusing to
vote for peace and non-interventionism; for limited government, for responsible spending. Now
our votes no longer matter, and we are caught helpless in the whirlwind of our own
destruction.
newagerage apothqowejh 4 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 04:33 PM
The CIA, NSA, Pentagon... all these corporations lead to disaster as the employees have to
keep causing trouble to justify their jobs and spend, spend like crazy, the Army and
intelligence agencies spending the hard worked money from Silicon Valley and other sectors.
The country just doesn't make sense, first outsource jobs to China and then when they see
that Chinese people are smarter than them outsource those to India? are Indians idiots? I
don't think so... both countries will rule the World by the end of the century. And the most
important of all... where is your public education system? you can live without a proper
health system, China does, but without a decent public education system? most Americans don't
know where Portugal or Belgium is placed, no matter black or white...
ceshawn 6 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 02:31 PM
Trump didn't do this. The irrational reaction to Trump did this. It started with the
now-fully mythological Russia-gate nonsense (that started with an almost ridiculously made up
FISA warrant application). Continued through constant over-the-top challenges by Democrats of
Trump following Obama-era laws (separation of children and adults for illegal border
crossings) and the clear obstruction used by opponents during his entire Presidency. Trump
was a disaster, Biden will be a nightmare (or a complete liar), but the left shouldn't be
complaining when the reaction to their candidate is equally as disturbing as their reaction
to the right (and yes, the circus that was the "raid" at the Capitol is just as bad as the
intel community doing shady things against a sitting President).
Ronj14848 ceshawn 1 hour ago 15 Jan, 2021 07:27 PM
Trump didnt start new wars......but he has created a situation that foriegn wars will spring
from his actions. He has created hate for a country that during the second world war was a
much loved country.
billy brown ceshawn 4 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 03:36 PM
What could the 'rioters' do? We aren't going to let them poison us anymore. This election
will not be stolen and the new patriot act isn't going to get passed quietly. They are going
to have to crush us or allow a partition of the country
ceshawn 5 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 02:36 PM
If I were Russia or China, I would be watching carefully. Biden almost HAS to go after Russia
over the Crimean disaster of Obama and China will be his easy-out enemy if things are
complicated otherwise. North Korea will somehow become a big deal again as well. Let those
missiles fly, because the incoming administration has a proven track record of blowing up
innocent women and children for "funsies" (drone strikes on "suspected" terrorists...oh and
their families) without any form of due process or care for the safety of collateral damage.
Ronj14848 ceshawn 58 minutes ago 15 Jan, 2021 07:36 PM
True...the media support the military industrial complex. Their friends own the miltary
industrial complex . See who they support politically and avoid them like the plague.
Ronnie Spelbos ceshawn 2 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 06:04 PM
if I was Russia or an Eastern European nation I would offer asylum to white heterosexual men
and their families who want to leave the US. Take advantage of the brain capital and work
ethic of this group. The US is no country for white men.
Ohhho 6 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 01:41 PM
The Evil empire felt vulnerable so it lashed out with vengeance! None if it helps to fix the
issues behind the problem so I expect to see more of it in the near future!
TheFishh Ohhho 5 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 03:32 PM
There are literally just a few things the US can do to rebound as a decent country, but the
establishment doesn't want to make those moves. They rather see everything collapse than see
their wealth and power decreased by any amount.
OneHorseGuy 6 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 02:17 PM
"79% of Americans think the US is falling apart" those not accounted for are possibly
homeless or illiterate and don't have the opportunity of putting their view forward.
Ronnie Spelbos OneHorseGuy 2 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 06:02 PM
102% think the US is falling apart - cites Dominion.
newswithoutbord OneHorseGuy 6 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 02:31 PM
Spot on, mate!
RTaccount 6 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 02:22 PM
There will be no peace, no unity, and no prosperity. And there shouldn't be.
TheFishh RTaccount 4 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 03:38 PM
The US regimes past and present have worn out their bag of tricks. A magician is a con-man.
And the only way they can entertain and spellbind the crowd with their routines is if
everyone just ignores the sleight of hand. But people are starting to call the US out for the
tricks it is pulling, and that's where the magician's career ends.
omyomy RTaccount 5 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 02:54 PM
We the sane people know who is picking a fight. No matter what the propaganda outlets decree.
Tor Gjesdal 6 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 02:18 PM
79%,sure? OK. Very soon 85% of Westerners will understand their Countries are heading for
failures. They have been deceived for way too long.
Twenty Tor Gjesdal 5 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 03:23 PM
The alternative to western governments is dictators, one party rule. Yes, most western
governmental concepts are idealistic, but we wouldn't trade for anything else because we know
better.
JIMI JAMES Tor Gjesdal 6 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 02:31 PM
0 covid cases,i dont think so.
soumalinna1 4 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 03:36 PM
Correct. America will never be the same again. Democrats and CNN destroyed a once great
nation.
Ronnie Spelbos soumalinna1 2 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 06:06 PM
The 1965 Immigration Act destroyed the US. A country too diverse with little in common was
always bound the fall apart.
Drayk soumalinna1 3 hours ago 15 Jan, 2021 04:42 PM
In their efforts to expunge the Trump movement from memory let alone existence, these
neo-Stalinists are hellbent on nullifying constitutionally guaranteed rights – freedom of
speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to bear arms are under assault.
In place of the Bill of Rights, they would impose a Bill of Don'ts:
Don't say what we don't want to hear.
Don't gather where we don't allow, especially if you are a 'deplorable'.
Don't bother petitioning for grievances, because we don't care. Don't own weapons and don't
defend yourself when you or your property are attacked, even as the police are defunded.
Don't tell us about your right to privacy because our right to surveil you supersedes
it.
Don't tell us you have the right to confront the witnesses aligned against you, or see the
evidence alleged against you, or to present evidence and witnesses in your own defense. That's
your white privilege speaking, and we will not tolerate hate speech.
Don't expect us to be bound by due process or the rule of law. Feelings and desired outcomes
trump facts and rules, both of which are tools of oppression, relics of the fascist
patriarchy.
Don't object, or we will cancel you entirely from these Disunited States of Woketopia.
And first and foremost, don't dare have the temerity to question election results that have
handed us uncontested power.
Only authoritarians sanction this state of affairs. The harm they will do, as they neglect
and inflict further pain on the Republic, will be immeasurable. The nation is failing, not
merely because it is divided, but because a contingent has rejected its foundational
principles. That contingent is now in control.
For anybody who listened to state hearings in one or more state if is clear that there was widespread fraud. And its importance
is much larger then the question who won the elections
Notable quotes:
"... Multiple methods of attack on the election outcome have been prepared, all methods well planned, tried and perfected in the string of color revolutions around the World. Because those attacking Trump are the same as those who have been doing the "regime changes" in the vulnerable countries over the past 30 years. ..."
"... The playbook/manual is fully symmetrical – it always addresses both possible outcomes – if their side does not manage to steal the election then they incite an insurrection and oust the winner (the Viktor Yanukovych outcome). ..."
"... It is funny how few people appear to understand that Hunter's laptop was not just a suppressed election decider then an important reason for Biden's suitability – the insurance of ensurance, the media ready Kompromat. ..."
"... Finally, it is very important to keep in mind that none of what transpired would have been possible in a healthy country ..."
"... Maybe it was hostility towards Trump's supporters rather than hostility towards Trump. Trump is a reliable pro-immigration ultra-Zionist rabidly pro-LGBT liberal. The views of a large proportion of Trump's supporters are diametrically opposed to Trump's own views, but his supporters aren't smart enough to figure that out. ..."
"... whatever else Trump may be, he's no white nationalist. But again his supporters can't figure stuff like that out. ..."
"... In extreme situations, it's more important to win than to play by the rules. – This is the moral reasoning **** of the fraudsters. The basic equation they applied is so simple that it hurts (and therefore: worked perfectly well – in all of the West) ..."
"... In the Art of Winning Elections it did not take a genius to develop this solution – the lowest number of night-suitcases (filled with ballots) for the highest number of elector votes . ..."
"... In my mind the election was already unfair when you have the entire MSM and the Internet social media companies rooting for one candidate while attacking the other and banning/censoring the voices of his supporters under various pretexts. Both candidates and their supporters, should have been given equal exposure but I don't know how that could be achieved in practice. ..."
"... At a minimum the circumstantial evidence of vote counts being stopped in swing states along with gerrymandered rules was highly suspicious. To claim a mandate on such a close election while losing house seats is absurd but the Republicans bungling the Georgia Senate run off over $2K checks and a sycophantic MSM ensures they will. ..."
"... We are to believe Biden won 507 counties, the least EVER, but won the most votes ever. Trump won 74 million votes, beating Obama's 69 million in 2008, the previous all-time high. Trump won over 2500 counties. ..."
"... Strange that all these presidential elections are always neck and neck. Just because there are two parties does not mean that election after election the vote will boil down to one or two "swing states" and a few thousand votes. Statistically, it just doesn't make sense. ..."
"... This is strong evidence, if not proof, that these elections are scripted from beginning to end ..."
"... The convenient thing about postal votes is that they make it possible to wait until the opponent's votes are all in and counted – then send in just enough postal votes to tip the balance. It's rather like an auction in which one bidder gets only the one bid, and then a rival can offer $1 more. ..."
"... Well said. I'm sure that it's no coincidence that DJT has been involved with televised wrestling over the years. Every great contest requires a memorable "heel" to engage the spectators. In televised snooker in the UK, final matches often are over best of 35 frames. It's unusual for them not to go to the last ball of the final frame. Got to have a little drama. ..."
"... The point is, it is the average intellect, moral and civic weight of the involved constituencies that allows or doesn't allow what shouldn't be allowed in a real democracy. You don't have actual democracy below a lower threshold of intellect and moral and civic worth of all the main involved parties. ..."
"... When you consider Donald Trump's grotesque antics, his entirely unpresidential behavior, evident falsehoods and blatantly corrupt actions – together with the systematic media blitz taking every opportunity to show him in the worst possible light; it is quite astounding that he received as many votes as he did. Far, far more than could be accounted for by simply ascribing them to his 'deplorables'. ..."
"... I think Trump's greatest legacy will be that he ripped away the curtain and the masks fell and we all got to see just how nefarious and rigged the system is, from federal judges to our intelligence community to the FBI/DOJ to Congress to the media ..."
"... Dominion machines can do anything! They can assign a weight of 1.5 per single vote to one candidate, and .75 per vote to the other, and can adjust as necessary. They can assign batches of "adjudicated" ballots to the candidate of your choice. They can just switch votes from one candidate to the other in increments of several thousand, let's subtract 29,000 votes from candidate a and add them to b's column. They can allow access by a third party to the administrator's identity and password so the third party can enter and participate directly in tabulation of the votes. ..."
"... They won the election the old way: they stole it fair and square. ..."
"... If you like your bourgeois job and want to keep it, you will support the narrative. ..."
"... All of the comments on here that analyze DJT's strengths and weaknesses miss the point. I personally think he made some very poor choices; but, to inappropriately paraphrase Carville, it's the fraud, stupid. ..."
"... Occam's Razor should be applied- instead of the nonsense of Chavez having an interest in voting software; voting machines being manipulated; truckloads of paper ballots being moved across state lines- my favorite; etc. ..."
"... t would be very easy to have individuals in a nursing home or even an adult day care center for mentally (dementia) incapacitated adults sign ballots. There are numerous day care centers in New York City, federally funded, where individuals could be coaxed to sign ballots. Just say Trump will close the day care center -- especially where interpreters must be provided because the individuals cannot understand English due to varying stages of mental incapacity. ..."
"... I wonder how many people have watched the twenty hours or so of state legislature hearings related to the election. Can people just not be bothered? These were historic hearings of huge importance, but I assume they didn't get much coverage in the MSM. I think most of them were livestreamed only by small right-wing networks. ..."
"... What were the results of the 2016 election? Billary received 65 million to Trumps 62 million. Gotcha. So we have roughly 127 million who showed up to vote that time. (Wonder how many of those were legit.) So ONLY 4 years later, Joe "I Look Like I'm Drugged" Biden ALLEGEDLY received 80 million and Trump received 74 million. Okay, that is a turnout of 154 million votes. So if I believe in this fairy tale, I was supposed to believe that in ONLY 4 years the vote count increased by an alleged 27 million. Hell, a lot of our most populous states do not even have that many people. ..."
"... Laws don't say a little bit of fraud is OK, because the fraud committed on or by a business didn't cause bankruptcy. Either there was fraud, or there wasn't. ..."
"... That several courts refused to hear cases for lack of standing, is patently ridiculous. If a candidate has no standing, who does? In an election, everybody has standing because they are affected by the result, and by virtue of Citizens United , corporations do as well. ..."
"... Watch this recent interview of Chris Hedges by Jimmy Dore about the root causes of our current woes. Hedges speaks off the cuff in words that sound as polished, powerful and precise as the language in tracts considered to be classics. His Pulitzer clearly was not found in a Cracker Jack box. ..."
Before the election I polled all my friends who would win. The majority of both left and right oriented said that it would
be Trump. I said, yes Trump would win a fair election, but he will lose on who is counting. Multiple methods of attack on
the election outcome have been prepared, all methods well planned, tried and perfected in the string of color revolutions around
the World. Because those attacking Trump are the same as those who have been doing the "regime changes" in the vulnerable countries
over the past 30 years. Trump never had a grain of chance against this mighty machinery. Corrupt local governors and blackmailed
and co-opted all levels of judiciary, targeted lawlessness, threats and examples of violence and future civil war if the other
side wins, censorship, eviction of election observers, night-time suitcases of ballots, one-sided main sewerage media.
All pure déjà vu – this is exactly how the color revolutions work – the art of winning elections. The US bombers arrive
only if the "peaceful transition of power" (aka the stealing of election and post-election) fails. In the color revolution manual,
there is also a chapter on prevention of resistance to the stolen election – thus the msm and congress screeching like castrated
pigs against Trump's imaginary incitement of insurrection (pure psychological projection). I was always sure that Trump is too
much of a cheap demagogue and hot air filled balloon to be able to initiate a real insurrection.
The playbook/manual is fully symmetrical – it always addresses both possible outcomes – if their side does not manage to steal
the election then they incite an insurrection and oust the winner (the Viktor Yanukovych outcome).
... ... ...
In political terms, in the 2016 election a quasi-populist candidate slipped through. This will never happen again because state
laws will be enacted with built-in mail voting and electronic voting machines. Competent or incompetent populists will never get
through again. This will ensure that the choice will always be only between the approved, controllable candidates with plenty
of skeletons in wardrobes and dirty laptops in their closets. It is funny how few people appear to understand that Hunter's laptop
was not just a suppressed election decider then an important reason for Biden's suitability – the insurance of ensurance, the
media ready Kompromat.
Finally, it is very important to keep in mind that none of what transpired would have been possible in a healthy country
: election of Trump without enough Kompromat to have to invent the dumbest Putin's puppet meme and the consequent exposure
of the manipulative Deep State, the sulfuric acid for the brain MSM and the high-techs fakers. These are all the Hegels' seeds
of destruction in action.
One thing to ask is why was this huge effort made to oust Trump?
Maybe it was hostility towards Trump's supporters rather than hostility towards Trump. Trump is a reliable pro-immigration
ultra-Zionist rabidly pro-LGBT liberal. The views of a large proportion of Trump's supporters are diametrically opposed to Trump's
own views, but his supporters aren't smart enough to figure that out.
In extreme situations, it's more important to win than to play by the rules. – This is the moral reasoning **** of the
fraudsters. The basic equation they applied is so simple that it hurts (and therefore: worked perfectly well – in all of the West):
Trump = Hitler.
**** If I might go with Sigmund Freud here, I'd say: – Their rationalizations instead of "their moral reasoning".
I prefer this model, and it's not being discussed: Someone was making BIG money off of those programs and policies leftover
from Obama. Trade with China? Care to mention one BIG company who peddles Chinese wares? Maybe two or three of them, perhaps?
"Follow the money", is what Deep Throat told Woodward. If we do that with our darling Deep State? Just ask yourself, who stood
to benefit from four years of Hillary, pray tell? There's your answer.
The Deep State regime stole this election in exactly the same states where Trump successfully campaigned in 2016 to win against
Clinton. In the Art of Winning Elections it did not take a genius to develop this solution – the lowest number of night-suitcases
(filled with ballots) for the highest number of elector votes .
Thanks for a balanced assessment. In my mind the election was already unfair when you have the entire MSM and the Internet
social media companies rooting for one candidate while attacking the other and banning/censoring the voices of his supporters
under various pretexts. Both candidates and their supporters, should have been given equal exposure but I don't know how that
could be achieved in practice.
Trump was severely hamstrung by the role played by the MSM and the social media. In a real democracy this state of affairs
should not be allowed: where the rich and powerful who control the media have an unequal say and overwhelming influence compared
to the ordinary voters.
Now we have Ruby Freeman, heretofore only on video rolling out suitcases in Fulton County, now on AUDIO discussing her $100
an hour election heist gig and the "Secretary of State" is mentioned at 2:02 by her boss Ralph Jones:
There is a small element of illogic in the numbers part of the argument, namely in using 2 different metrics to make that argument.
(I agree with the corruption part of the argument covered by Glenn Greenwald. It's censorship in action).
As I've done before, I'll reiterate, I'm no fan of Biden or Trump. In fact I'm worried about the war cabinet Biden already
seems to be assembling just as I still worry about the crazed maniac Pompeo for the next few days left in the current administration.
But here's the point and it is a very subtle one: to say it was a tight race and only 1 in 7,000 Americans had to change their
vote is a bit misleading. In the absurd Electoral College, winner take all the state system (which is far more scandalous in my
view), we take one state at a time. If we accept the vote count, Biden won over 7,000,000 more votes more than Trump, a margin
of victory of 4.4%. Not very close.
Therefore, if it were a one person one vote nationwide system, 2.2% would have to change their minds, meaning 1 out of every
45 Americans.
But it's a state by state margin that we're after. Thus more to the point would be to take each individual state and its margin.
So if we took Georgia as one example, the margin of Biden's lead was 11,779 votes out of 4,935,487 votes cast for Biden and Trump
(we disregard all the third party votes in this argument). 5,890 voters would have to "change their minds". Out of the Biden/Trump
overall vote, that's 1 out of 838 Georgian voters.
To apply a different system, overall US vote count, to one state, Georgia, is using which system you prefer to come up with
an illusionary 1 out of 7000 Americans, not applying the same metric down the line. It's a separate state by state system, not
a nationwide vote. You have to stay consistent to be accurate in this method of argumentation.
Very technical, yes. What about mail-in voting? What is the evidence that this is by definition rigged or manipulated? Mailed
ballots have a paper trail like in-person ballots. Presumably someone could steal your ballot from your home and vote on your
behalf, but this can be traced and found out. At least one state, Washington, doesn't even have in-person voting at all. Does
that mean all of their votes are fraudulent?
What about voter suppression? Shouldn't that be factored in? That seems to happen a lot more often in red states than blue
states. What about Trumps attempts to sabotage the US Postal System? Doesn't that bother anybody who supports him? What about
his refusal to commit to the results prior to Election Day? (He did the same in 2016 by the way). This only added to his
opponents concern about his dictatorial tendencies.
Finally, in all the arguments I've seen anywhere, I haven't seen anyone lay out which states use those ridiculous electronic
voting machines which leave no paper trail. That should be the other real scandal and those should be immediately banned in every
state. Get rid of those and the Electoral College and we might have a fair system.
Oh, and get rid of a system that is eternally dominated by 2 parties as well, whether through run off elections or even better,
proportional representation. The latter that would be truly more democratic.
why was this huge effort made to oust Trump? What did they want him to do that he wouldn't do? Was he an impediment to the
increase of control over the average person? Did not want to start up another action against Syria? Would not attack Iran without
having a coalition of NATO countries lined up? Was against total outsourcing to China? Not confrontational enough against Russia?
Perhaps he gave the deplorables dangerous ideas about them having some rights. If that question could be answered then we'd
know what is coming.
He humiliated the upper echelons of society so thoroughly via his 2016 campaign and victory.
@anon Because Trump
inflames white nationalism, which is anathema to the Jews.
There is evidence that Trump himself is a Jew, and a fanatic Zionist at that, so his self-serving incitement of white nationalism
(whose causes he did little to implement, unlike his steady support for every imaginable Israeli cause, tbe more outrageous the better,
short of war with the "usable" nukes he had had developed for the purpose, that Russia warned him away from) was especially galling
to the top Jews such as the Rothschilds for whom Israel is nothing sentimental, just one more piece in their chess game for world
power.
And thank you for this site which is a beacon of free speech and dissent against our vile, corrupt, incompetent ruling class.
In all the post election rancor little attention has been brought to how razor thin the margin actually was. And with you being
a vociferous critic of Trumps boorish antics and insane foreign policy the candor on this issue is appreciated.
At a minimum the circumstantial evidence of vote counts being stopped in swing states along with gerrymandered rules was highly
suspicious. To claim a mandate on such a close election while losing house seats is absurd but the Republicans bungling the Georgia
Senate run off over $2K checks and a sycophantic MSM ensures they will.
And after abetting barbaric violence and anarchy for months the Democrats will now use trespassing in their "Sacred Temple"
to unleash a crackdown by the national security state and unprecedented censorship and social-credit run by woke-corporate oligarchs.
Interestingly (And as many predicted) it appears they will reopen the economy and declare "victory" over Covid shortly after
Bidens inauguration. Clearly the bizarre excesses of the lockdowns and dynamiting of the economy were calculated to undermine
Trump and consolidate wealth and power from the start.
The question is what exactly this "new normal" will be and how far they're willing to go in order to purge the Trumpists and
populist right. It will be easy to garner support for the latter but if the daily disruptions and financial shocks continue the
system will collapse.
A new, large scale war would be a useful distraction but it's hard to imagine the U.S sustaining one in its current state much
less against capable adversaries like China and Russia.
Then again, arrogant, idiotic, catastrophic policy blunders are the defining feature of this ruling class for the last 30 years
so I wouldn't put it past them given the madness we've seen already.
In effect, America's media and tech giants formed a united front to steal the election and somehow drag the crippled Biden/Harris
ticket across the finish line.
adjustment
via a plastic bag put over their heads. If they were lucky.
There was no real contest. Because? A. Control of the mainstream media was so one sided. And that is where we are at now here
in USA. Imagine, a standing President of the USA has been banned and censored by all the "American" mainstream media giants. Actually,
you do not have to imagine. It just happened: Big Tech and MSM has openly torpedoed the First Amendment and US Constitution. So
we know where they are coming from. It's also kind of disappointing how most of our "representatives" are dealing with this.
The only cause other than himself on which Trump has been consistent is serving Israel. One of the only two major policies
of Obama's that he didn't reverse was support of Israel, though he took it to yet another level. The other one was
increasing military spendings. Obama never cut military spending. My money is on Biden never doing it either, and also
that he will take support of Israel to yet another level. I hope I'm wrong.
On the election night I was listening to two of our New Zealand reporters who were reporting the incoming results. I remember
quite clearly after results had been coming in for a while they remarked: "well that's it another four years of the same". That
were their exact words. That must have been before the postal votes came in, which suddenly changed the picture completely to
Biden's advantage. Postal votes I believe were introduced for the first time in 2020 because of the Corona pandemic. It's believed
that postal votes can be more easily tampered with. Postal votes are expected to remain during future elections I believe.
We are to believe Biden won 507 counties, the least EVER, but won the most votes ever. Trump won 74 million votes, beating Obama's 69 million in 2008, the previous all-time high. Trump won over 2500 counties.
Clarice Feldman at the Americanthinker.com noted that many residences
had multiple votes from the current occupants plus previous occupants (apartment complexes) in this election, because old voter
rolls aren't purged in a timely manner. The same addy might have 3 previous residents voting, plus the same individual voters
legitimately voting at their new addresses.
My advice for whites is this .we will probably be getting in new wars for neocons now, so you might wanna think twice before
signing up for the military. You may find your twenties being used up in multiple deployments in foreign miserable places.
Strange that all these presidential
elections are always neck and neck. Just because there are two parties does not mean that election after election the vote will
boil down to one or two "swing states" and a few thousand votes. Statistically, it just doesn't make sense.
Of course the media loves these nail-biter elections because it drives up their viewership. Every election we get the same
old farcical "debates", scandals and continual ridiculous sound bites. This is strong evidence, if not proof,
that these elections are scripted from beginning to end, even up to and including the "march to the Capitol" and the
ensuing "insurrection".
Exactly. "Spin". He also appears to be entirely ignorant of the fact that the constitution states that each states electors,
and the procedure for choosing them, must be accomplished via the state[s] legislatures, and that in all 6[?] swing states that
recorded early morning, miraculous turn-around votes from Trump to Biden, that that particular constitutional procedure had been
entirely , and very conveniently, ignored:
The Lobby wants Syria by any means, up to a direct confrontation with the Russian Federation. The Jewish hatred for Iran is boundless
(same for Russia – take note, Americans). Zionists care not about human lives.
"I don't know or care anything about Dominion voting machines, whether they are controlled by Venezuelan Marxists, Chinese
Communists, or Martians. But the most blatant election-theft was accomplished in absolutely plain sight".
Cui bono? Obviously the main group profiting from the fraudulent election was the Democratic Party and its supporters. So why drag in foreign governments? Most of them are all too well aware that it's very dangerous to attract the attention of
the USA for good or bad. Like trying to save a drowning whale.
So their sensible strategy is to stand back at a safe distance and watch the monster perish in its own poisons, hoping it doesn't
lash out and harm them in its dying struggles.
The convenient thing about postal votes is that they make it possible to wait until the opponent's votes are all in and counted
– then send in just enough postal votes to tip the balance. It's rather like an auction in which one bidder gets only the one
bid, and then a rival can offer $1 more.
Ridiculous if you want a fair election. But nobody who matters wants or expects anything of that kind. A proper political machine
gets everything cut and dried well in advance.
Trump was unpredictable and, to a degree, uncontrollable. He had to go.
Well said. I'm sure that it's no coincidence that DJT has been involved with televised wrestling over the years. Every great contest requires
a memorable "heel" to engage the spectators. In televised snooker in the UK, final matches often are over best of 35 frames. It's unusual for them not to go to the last
ball of the final frame. Got to have a little drama.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch the rancher counts the silver dollars.
...If ego or narcissism can explain it, so be it. I'll go with insane or suffering from dementia. Any 'drain the swamp' or 'fix
the system', MAGA or "build back better" argument would appeal only to retards. Re-visit Carroll Quigly's succinct description
of political parties in the USA in Tragedy and Hope, pages 1247-1248 (hardcover) or Google same.
I'm beginning to believe that a different species is holding sway and we are the proverbial Eloi.
The point is, it is the average intellect, moral and civic weight of the involved constituencies that allows or doesn't allow
what shouldn't be allowed in a real democracy.
You don't have actual democracy below a lower threshold of intellect and moral and civic worth of all the main involved
parties.
We could in other words say: there will be as much real democracy as is desired by the average citizen, where to desire it
is not to blandly say "I agree with democracy".
It is funny how few people appear to understand that Hunter's laptop was not just a suppressed election decider then an
important reason for Biden's suitability
Yes, few people understand that all regime-approved candidates are people able to be blackmailed for a precise reason, and
not at all by chance. What about Hegel though?
@obvious Globalist
NWO creeps stole the election, they spent 4 years trying to overthrow the 2016 election by coups aided and abetted by the Globalist
Mainslime Media, FBI etc. -- you missed all that of course? .
They also PUBlICLY previewed, as they did the COVID Agenda, stealing
the election a couple months before, gamed and planned it in various outcomes .Anyone who can't see what is up is either willfully
ignorant, lying, or "stupid" as you say.
No decent person is in favor of the Agenda of Harris/Biden serving the NWO "Great
Reset" to crush the Peons -- you must see yourself as above the coming carnage -- I have news for you -- your not.
We'll know we're in an actual civil war when different branches of the military, or units within a branch are fighting each
other or when the police are fighting the military. Don't hold your breath of course because every cop and soldier in America is a traitor and they're all on the same team.
What I still find unfathomable is the fact that the steal was so obvious: so in your face but yet the big media, big tech,
federal and state law enforcements, spooks, judges, big GOP politicians etc still behave like nothing ever happened. Trump and
his supporters are now labeled domestic terrorists and lawfare is about to be unleashed on them. It's surreal.
Had the Orange heeded his MAGA base rather than his (((rat-in-law))) he'd still be President. There was certainly
election fraud; enough of the betrayed base stayed home to make it effective. Trump was a p -- y all four years and got what
he deserved. He was always a stop-gap time-buying non-solution...
...issues can no longer be discussed openly, the reliability of elections in the USA is the most important issue that faces us. The
people will accept an honest winner in a serious election. Nothing is as cleansing to our natural divisions as the result of a
well-contested election, in the knowledge that, in a reasonable interval, the same offices will be up for new contests.
Nothing is as damaging to our peace of mind as knowing that one side won fairly, but was robbed of governing. I thank Ron Unz for writing and publishing such a reasonably argued essay on the matter. It is the gold standard for 2020 election
analyses.
This is sad people. Was talking to a friend and even his 80 something year old mother commented on how decrepit Sleazy Joe
looks and walks. I was watching him deliver "his speech" last night and the guy had a hard time reading a few sentences off the
teleprompter without stammering and stuttering.
After an embarrassing and truly cringe worthy "speech" Biden is seen walking off. The dude can barely walk...
For eighty million who cast their ballots for the old geezer, it's mostly out of economic necessity; however, for the seventy
plus million people who are Trump supporters, it's a fight for their country and more importantly, culture.
Brought to you by the same people who gave us the Weimar Republic, only twice as vicious and vindictive this time because they
know what they did wrong last time -- they weren't vicious and vindictive enough.
When you consider Donald Trump's grotesque antics, his entirely unpresidential behavior, evident falsehoods and blatantly corrupt
actions – together with the systematic media blitz taking every opportunity to show him in the worst possible light; it is quite
astounding that he received as many votes as he did. Far, far more than could be accounted for by simply ascribing them to his
'deplorables'.
And, even if Biden did, in fact, just manage to win – presenting himself as a force of reason, stability and sanity – a great
mass of voters sensed something in him that they distrusted even more than in Trump. That was a stunning rejection – of almost
the same magnitude as Hillary's in 2016!
You're right, and Ron Unz is right. Had Trump retained his white male voters of 2016, the Democrats likely couldn't have pulled
off the steal. But in the end Donald Trump was a mere salesmen selling a con.
...If you had told people in France in 1785 or Russia in 1913 that within a few short years about a quarter of their population
would be slaughtered in revolutionary turmoil and many more displaced, they would have dismissively laughed in your face believing
– as do we – that their civilizations were far too advanced for such nonsense.
Let us hope such a horrific fate is not in store for all of us as the Great Reset is imposed on us all given how western civilization
has clearly failed to the point where some sort of profound, substantive reform is inevitable.
Given that the foundation of this Reset comprises so much ill-will, deception, theft and coercion, it is unlikely that this
new paradigm will benefit the millions of people it will soon dominate.
Another
can of worms, there would be additional Congressional hearings over it, etc. At the time Trump was still in the middle of the
Muller investigation. That special prosecutor investigation tied up Trump until March 2019.
I firmly believe that no man in human history could have taken on and fought Deep State, the Swamp, the Establishment, media,
GOPe, et al., as valiantly as Trump. Even in his 70's the man has superhuman energy, fortitude, and strategizing. I think Trump's
greatest legacy will be that he ripped away the curtain and the masks fell and we all got to see just how nefarious and rigged
the system is, from federal judges to our intelligence community to the FBI/DOJ to Congress to the media
"I don't know or care anything about Dominion voting machines"
Why not? Take a look at Patrick Byrne's summary of evidence for massive election fraud involving the Dominion machines, on
his blog over at DeepCapture.
It will explain how a man who sheltered in his house, did not campaign, drew no more than six or seven or twenty-five people
to his events, got seven million more votes than a man who drew up to thirty thousand people at his rallies.
...An expert witness in Georgia was able to hack into Dominion in front of the legislative committee in less than a minute. "We're
in." In Dominion, and on the internet.
Dominion machines can do anything! They can assign a weight of 1.5 per single vote to one candidate, and .75 per vote to the
other, and can adjust as necessary. They can assign batches of "adjudicated" ballots to the candidate of your choice. They can
just switch votes from one candidate to the other in increments of several thousand, let's subtract 29,000 votes from candidate
a and add them to b's column. They can allow access by a third party to the administrator's identity and password so the third
party can enter and participate directly in tabulation of the votes.
And more. If your disfavored candidate is winning by a landslide and your 1.5/.75 ratio isn't working, you can put in a USB
card and adjust accordingly.
If you're desperate you can upload tens of thousands of votes in a single drop which all, every one, go to your preferred candidate.
And you can do it in one hour on a machine which can only handle a few thousand votes per hour, fed in manually.
If things get out of control you can call a halt to the vote count, send the observers home, and haul out the extra ballots
stashed under the table skirt. But it's best to be mindful of the video cameras. Which they were not.
Really, read about it: Patrick Byrne, DeepCapture, "Evidence That The 2020 Election Was Rigged." Lays out the various ways
by which it was done, then appends evidence using graphs, memos from election administrators, and statistical analysis.
He's no Trump supporter either, is a committed libertarian, and has never voted for either a Democrat or Republican presidential
candidate in his life. He thinks Barack Obama graced the presidency and that Michelle Obama was a class act as First Lady.
Also: The Chinese government acquired Dominion for $400 million in the fall of 2020.
Finally, does anyone think the Dominion case against Sydney Powell potentially offers an opportunity for the evidence of electoral
fraud to be aired in public?
While it's an effective rhetorical tactic by our fearless leader Unz, there's no reason to be agnostic about CIA ballot-stuffing.
That's as blindingly obvious as their censorship.
The ballot-stuffing shows only the most cursory measures to conceal it, consistent with a command structure that exercises
precision control over media attention. CIA can censor adverse information on their candidate's trading in influence and abuse
of function. So naturally CIA dumped votes in statistically absurd proportions, trusting to their Mockingbird media to short-circuit
public inquiry. When you have arbitrary Nazi-grade life-and-death power, as CIA does, it's hard not to get sloppy. They don't
give a fuck that you saw what they did there, cause shut up.
Spot on about postal votes; it's my only slight disagreement with Ron's take on the affair.
These votes were being received for days, if not weeks before the deadline and could have been (and probably were) counted as
they came in. The gross imbalance between Trump and Biden votes in these after-hours counts, along with the sudden spikes obvious
on many graphs, is proof, imo, of the cheat. In order to get ahead of the narrative, the 'rats said it would happen, and, lo,
it did.
If the regime can't provide for trustworthy elections, it can't expect to be regarded as legitimate. Probably by design; they
don't need us.
Navarro's three reports do a good job of summarizing most of the possible vote fraud. He's a Harvard PhD so more than qualified
to pull all the date together etc. They use many graphics and are easy and fast to read.
In this post-Republic new reality, no Court will take a case in which Discovery reveals any sort of election fraud. The election is over and it's now verboten to revisit it. Don't be surprised if
archive.org is forced to delete thousands of articles about it. Orwellian times
Incumbent Donald Trump lost Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by such extremely narrow margins that a swing of less than 22,000
votes in those crucial states would have gotten him reelected. With a record 158 million votes cast, this amounted to a
victory margin of around 0.01% . So if just one American voter in 7,000 had changed his mind, Trump might have received
another four years in office. One American voter in 7,000
Margins of general vote do not matter. Biden won Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by much higher margins than 0.01%. In Arizona
Biden won by 0.3% of all votes in Arizona and in Georgia by 0.2%. These are small margins but probably comparable to margins in
swing states in 2016 where Trump won.
@Garliv It's for
your own good, of course. I once read an article written by someone who had a chance to hang out with the rich, powerful, famous,
etc. and gain some perspective on their thinking. They really do believe that it's their role to shape the future for the
proles. I know someone who's just like that.
If you like your bourgeois job and want to keep it, you will support the narrative.
All of the comments on here that analyze DJT's strengths and weaknesses miss the point. I personally think he made some very
poor choices; but, to inappropriately paraphrase Carville, it's the fraud, stupid.
Occam's Razor should be applied- instead of the nonsense of Chavez having an interest in voting software; voting machines being
manipulated; truckloads of paper ballots being moved across state lines- my favorite; etc.
The mail in ballots could be sent to a nursing home or to individuals, who are very old, and these individuals could be instructed
by a relative to sign their name.
I frequently explain to individuals, whose first language is not English, the papers, which they are signing. I explain their
401K and retirement plan withdrawals.
It would be very easy to have individuals in a nursing home or even an adult day care center for mentally (dementia) incapacitated
adults sign ballots. There are numerous day care centers in New York City, federally funded, where individuals could be coaxed
to sign ballots. Just say Trump will close the day care center -- especially where interpreters must be provided because the individuals
cannot understand English due to varying stages of mental incapacity.
The day care center is a racket. I believe the reimbursement rate under Medicaid-Medicare is $120 per day. Plus, the transportation
fee - approximately $40 per person each way. These centers flourish in cities, such as New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, etc. I have yet to hear anyone mention that Nancy Pelosi's father was Mayor of Baltimore, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. And Baltimore is
one city that it totally devastated by drugs, prostitution, crime, etc.
Now for the important question. Did Nancy Pelosi have $12 pints of ice cream in her office?
But I wonder how many people have watched the twenty hours or so of state legislature hearings related to the election. Can
people just not be bothered? These were historic hearings of huge importance, but I assume they didn't get much coverage in the
MSM. I think most of them were livestreamed only by small right-wing networks.
Servant of Gla'aki 39, Hapalong 101 anent Willke: Willke sold a million books in less than two months. He was more of a media
phenom than Trump, much hotter at the time of the election. They were going to make a movie of One World. And his message was
more populist, too – basically, fuck your US national interest, we want peace and freedom. He just came out and said what everybody
thought, Oh boy, now that we won the war, we'll get the peace and freedom that we fought for! So he didn't need a Sheldon or a
Gina to rig elections and install him.
Dulles was squirming around under rocks at that time (he cut his teeth at the League of Nations founding,) even before he and
his ultras got their Gestapo in Foggy Bottom, and they arranged Hillary-style party machinations to push Willke aside.
Now of course there's a second line of defense, the CIA proprietaries that steal the election directly:
Diebold and its brass-plate acquirers. CIA set them up to ratfuck Kerry and Maduro and sheep-dipped them to ratfuck Trump.
The whole world knows the USA is a ridiculous fake democracy, a totalitarian CIA pariah state voting alone against peace, development
and human rights. (Just look at the 2nd Committee vote on A/C.2/75/L.4/Rev.1) The USA is North Korea with an ugly leisure squad.
It's the beltway that deserves our fire and fury. Just wipe it out with WMD and start again.
What were the results of the 2016 election? Billary received 65 million to Trumps 62 million. Gotcha. So we have roughly 127
million who showed up to vote that time. (Wonder how many of those were legit.) So ONLY 4 years later, Joe "I Look Like I'm Drugged"
Biden ALLEGEDLY received 80 million and Trump received 74 million. Okay, that is a turnout of 154 million votes. So if I believe
in this fairy tale, I was supposed to believe that in ONLY 4 years the vote count increased by an alleged 27 million. Hell, a
lot of our most populous states do not even have that many people.
Like I say, I concede that Biden might have had about 60-65 million LEGIT votes to Trump's MINIMUM of 74 million. Hmm, so that
means that total vote count would be 134-139 million. Hmm, sounds more reasonable to me. Numbers are not adding up folks.
...Laws don't say a little bit of fraud is OK, because the fraud committed on or by a business
didn't cause bankruptcy. Either there was fraud, or there wasn't. If there was, then the results of the election in those areas
are null and void. The certification of those results expands the fraud to the state level.
That several courts refused to hear cases for lack of standing, is patently ridiculous. If a candidate has no standing, who does?
In an election, everybody has standing because they are affected by the result, and by virtue of Citizens United , corporations
do as well.
In an ideal world, we would be discussing how we can ensure the integrity of our elections, so that both substantively and
the appearance of integrity is upheld. Instead, we are trying to get citizens jailed (right & left) for protesting the sanctity
of a system in which both sides know is corrupt. There is no question in Dems mind that Bush stole the election in 2000, so why
is it any different now that the shoe is on the other foot.
Our oligarch rulers know very well that they rig elections, it has been documented under LBJ, not to mention the long list
of coups all over the world organized by the intelligence agencies over the past 50 years, these are historical facts. But rather
than citizens being able to focus on the real problem, we are beating the crap out of our fellow citizens for something we know
all know is real; and pointing to the other side as the source of the corruption. This is exactly why the rich stay rich and the
poor stay poor.
Mr. Unz, who is always well informed, highly organized and impeccably lucid, gives a credible and succinct analysis of the
dumpster fire that is American politics, indeed of this country's leadership across the board. It creates mostly chaos and suffering
every time it meddles in our affairs these days, certainly over the long run but especially in its current crash program to impose
tyranny over the many so the few can take whatever they want whether they require it or not.
Watch this recent interview of Chris Hedges by Jimmy Dore about the root causes of our current woes. Hedges speaks off the
cuff in words that sound as polished, powerful and precise as the language in tracts considered to be classics. His Pulitzer clearly
was not found in a Cracker Jack box.
He ain't buying that Trump alone was the fount of all our sorrows or that a deceiving sycophantic
grifter like Joe Biden is the fix for anything. There were many bad actors, both GOPers and Dems, both office holders and offstage
string-pullers, who have contributed to the coming collapse of this country, which decapitating Trump will not prevent. Joe just
happens to be the useful idiot who will be left holding the bag when the end comes, which won't be long now. Factoring in Kamala's
possible ascension to the throne will change nothing. Like Joe, she's just a cluck there to take the same orders.
@Carroll Price
...Trump also flew on the Lolita express. If after all the broken promises that Trump made
to his Maga followers anyone still thinks that he is an outsider is, frankly, an idiot.
Trump is a lifetime actor and the entire election was just one big show.
One way we will know if Trump really was a threat to the swamp and an outsider will be what happens after Jan 20. If Trump
ends up dead or impoverished and in prison then we will know that he was a real threat. If he flies off into the sunset, perhaps
even starting a media company, then we will know that it was all one big vaudeville act.
The pool likely goes back to the Obama regime and even further. When it comes to sexual
depravity Bill Clinton has nothing on the Bidens. Of course Trumps history is also chock full
of this filth too. Just more evidence that they are all merely actors on a giant political
stage.
I think there is a cocktail party every night in Manhattan and LA. They do a lot of drugs
and bad things, laugh it up and concoct the next morning's set of mind-destroyingly evil
talking points. And I am quite sure that the FBI is on the line. As a participant.
Biden, Ds, reneging on $2K stimulus promise . Contortionist language is already being
employed by Biden even before he becomes POTUS, which should surprise nobody, and provides
plenty of I told ya so for Red America.
As I previously calculated, much more than $2K is needed to stave off very dire economic
hardship and further deepening of Great Depression 2.0. But for any stimulus to be effective
for small and medium businesses, operating restrictions related to the pandemic need to be
greatly eased; and even then, it's projected that 1/3 of businesses already closed will
remain closed regardless. That reality constitutes a huge blow for small businesses were seen
by many as a way out of the never ending downsizing and offshoring of decent paying jobs.
"Diesen takes on and brings together two large phenomena, namely the revolution in
technology and the change in global power relations."
My continual question: Will the Western world's morality evolve quickly enough to keep
pace with technological progress? I have no worries about Eurasian morality. Rather, it's the
West's loss of its 500 years of domination and what it will do to recoup that immoral
position that's most troublesome.
This is about the consolidation of power after questionable election; Capitol ransacking is
just a pretext for represssions. If it did not occur they would find another one.
Notable quotes:
"... (5) the term "domestic terrorism" means activities that -- (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended -- (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. ..."
"... Why all the talk about "domestic terrorism"? I suspect it's because people can't stand the idea that the Trump mob could be guilty of nothing more than trespassing. Time reports sadly that there are no laws against domestic terrorism, but lists the charges it wants brought: seditious conspiracy, which carries a 20-year maximum sentence, homicide, assault, interstate travel in aid of racketeering, restricted-area violations, vandalism, and trespassing. ..."
"... The authorities promise to hunt the rioters -- many of whom just walked through an open door -- to the ends of the earth as if they were Osama bin Laden. The contrast with the handling of BLM and antifa rioters is stark. ..."
Joe Biden has the people who took over the Capitol on Jan. 6 figured out. In just two days,
he had them pegged for "a bunch of thugs, insurrectionists, white supremacists, and
anti-Semites, and it's not enough." Not enough? He also said they were "domestic terrorists."
Curiously, there is a federal definition of domestic terrorism, but it isn't a crime. There
is now tremendous pressure to change that, and depending on what kind of law takes shape, there
could be huge implications for dissidents.
For now, this
definition from 18 U.S. Code § 2331 is worth studying:
(5) the term "domestic terrorism" means activities that -- (A) involve acts dangerous to
human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended -- (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to
influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the
conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur
primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
Does this apply to the Capitol takeover? Domestic terrorism must be an illegal act
"dangerous to human life" and meant to influence policy. The Trump supporters wanted to
influence policy alright, but what does "dangerous to human life" mean? The
Michigan Penal Code says it is "that which causes a substantial likelihood of death or
serious injury."
That wouldn't include trespassing, breaking and entering, or even scuffling with the police.
Anyone who may have
killed Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick would meet the definition of a "domestic
terrorist," but the circumstances of his death are still not clear. It may be there wasn't a
single "textbook" domestic terrorist at the Capitol that day. Lefties are gloating
over the death of Ashli Babbitt, but the only thing she did that was "dangerous to human life"
was stop a bullet.
Why all the talk about "domestic terrorism"? I suspect it's because people can't stand the
idea that the Trump mob could be guilty of nothing more than trespassing. Time reports
sadly that there are no laws against domestic terrorism, but lists the charges it wants brought:
seditious conspiracy, which carries a 20-year maximum sentence, homicide, assault, interstate
travel in aid of racketeering, restricted-area violations, vandalism, and trespassing.
Sure enough, the Justice Department has set up a task force
to file sedition and conspiracy charges . The investigation is said to be "one of the most
expansive criminal investigations in the history of the Justice Department." The authorities
promise to hunt the rioters -- many of whom just walked through an open door -- to the ends of
the earth as if they were Osama bin Laden. The contrast with the
handling of BLM and
antifa rioters is stark.
Democrat Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security,
has another idea . "Given the heinous domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol," he
wants everyone involved put on the No-Fly List. Rep. Jason Crow, a member of the House Armed
Services Committee, wants the US Army Secretary to track down and
court martial every soldier who entered the Capitol. A court
martial requires a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, usually for a serious
felony. Police departments in
Virginia ,
Washington , and
Pennsylvania are
scouring their rosters , looking for officers who went to the rally, whether they entered
the Capitol or not. Will they be fired?
Wikipedia describes John McCain's daughter Meghan as a
"columnist, author, and television personality." She wants the rioters sent to Guantanamo :
"They should be treated the same way we treat Al-Qaeda" -- yet another American frustrated by
the lack of a law against domestic terrorism.
... ... ...
... [neoliberal] Lefties were of course
pleased that "white supremacists" can
now officially be "terrorists." This is very important for any potential new law because
the occupation of the Capitol has unleashed a wave of vitriol against "white supremacy," even
though there is no evidence the Trump supporters had the slightest racial motivation. NBC News
ran this
headline : "'Vintage white rage': Why the riots were about the perceived loss of white
power." Politico
tells us "there's a term for what happened at the Capitol this week: 'whitelash'." The
Atlantic
explained that "the Capitol riot was an attack on multiracial democracy." The
Guardian 's
headline was "Insurrection Day: When White Supremacist Terror Came to the US Capitol."
Black Congressman Hank Johnson
told Al Sharpton that the black Capitol policeman who killed Ashli Babbitt had
singlehandedly put down a lynch mob: If he hadn't shot her, "I have no doubt that some of us
who look like me would've been hanging from the railings of the 3rd floor, onto the House
floor, swinging like . . . strange fruit." Nancy Pelosi said that
the people who entered the Capitol "have chosen their whiteness over democracy," whatever that
means.
This perfectly matches the views of Richard Durbin, ranking member on the Senate
Subcommittees for Defense and for the Constitution. In 2019, he introduced the Domestic Terrorism
Prevention Act , which called white supremacy "the most significant domestic terrorism
threat facing the United States." The act was only about 3,000 words but used "white
supremacist" 12 times, "neo-Nazi" six times, "far-right" eight times, and "hate crime" 10
times. It was silent on any other kind of domestic terrorism. Sen. Durbin says he will
reintroduce the bill right away in light of the Capitol takeover.
There is no telling what laws could pass in this fevered environment, but it's important to
note what Mr. Durbin's 2019 bill did and did not do. It did not make domestic terrorism a crime
or authorize the designation of "domestic terrorism organizations," which would mean jailing
Americans as if they were Al-Qaeda members and seizing assets without notice. What it
did
do was set up special offices in the FBI, Justice Department, and Homeland Security "to
analyze and monitor domestic terrorist activity and . . . take steps to prevent domestic
terrorism." It's anyone's guess what those "steps" were supposed to be.
The bill also required the three agencies to "review each hate crime incident reported
during the preceding year to determine whether the incident also constitutes a domestic
terrorism-related incident," though it didn't say to what end.
Sen. Durbin loves to quote FBI Director Christopher A. Wray's testimony
before Congress in 2019: "A majority of the domestic terrorism cases that we've investigated
are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacy . . . ."
However, the bill used the definition of "domestic terrorism" from 18 U.S. Code § 2331
cited above, which is ideologically neutral. That means Black Lives Matter and antifa commit
vastly more "domestic terrorism" than all the "white supremacists," "neo-Nazis," and "far-right
extremists" combined. Anyone who shouts "Defund the police," "Justice for Breonna Taylor,"
"Black lives matter," or even "I can't breathe" is trying to "influence the policy of a
government." If, in that context, someone commits an illegal act "dangerous to human life," he
is a domestic terrorist. Since the
death of George Floyd , there have been countless dangerous-to-human-life acts of arson and
aggravated assault; even attempts to
stop ambulances from bringing wounded officers to emergency rooms. If "white supremacists"
were organizing freeway shutdowns, they would surely count as "dangerous to human
life."
The levels of hypocritical hysteria dominating the corporate airwaves and most electronic
media, together with an even more amplified level among the pro$titicians in the Di$trict of
Corruption means they are scared.
They suddenly feel vulnerable. Are they as vulnerable as the people of Yemen who are being
bombed daily and starvation blockaded by the $audi crime clan with the full. assistance of
those D.C. Pro$titician$? Are they as vulnerable as those half million!!! deliberately
starved Iraqi children whom Madelein Albrietstein declared to be "worth it" in forwarding the
I$raeli agenda?
Could it just simply be that they are themselves guilty of crimes against humanity and in
violation of their oaths to protect the Constitution of the United States from all enemies
foreign and DOMESTIC? The little gal under the streetlight with high heels, short skirt and
low-hanging purse in the midnight hour at least provides a desired service. Can the same be
said for the Pro$titicians on the Hill overlooking Urination'$ Capitol?
As for the media whores and pre$$titute$, being myself a recovering journalist; there is
good reason to believe that I have correctly identified them.
I don't see how it can't be recognized that Trump set-up his own supporters by luring them
to DC.
Going to Wash DC to protest wasn't going to change the vote outcome in Congress and any
fool could anticipate Antifa types would show up (apparently Pelosi, Schumer, McConnell and
DC Mayor were advised they were planning to come and riot. So Trump had to have known
too.)
Now, neither POTUS or Congress members will publicly identify the organized Antifa thug
element. So, Trump supporters, and by extension Repubs, are being widely labeled as "domestic
terrorists'. While Trump releases another video today lecturing about violence which
implicates HIS supporters by no mention of the other elements there.
Congressman Hank Johnson told Al Sharpton that the black Capitol policeman who killed
Ashli Babbitt had singlehandedly put down a lynch mob: If he hadn't shot her, "I have no
doubt that some of us who look like me would've been hanging from the railings of the 3rd
floor, onto the House floor, swinging like . . . strange fruit.
This statement is quite stupid but Johnson has said worse in the past:
During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on March 25, 2010[40] concerning the
U.S. military installation on the island of Guam, Johnson said to Admiral Robert F.
Willard, Commander of U.S. Pacific Command, "My fear is that the whole island will become
so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize", to which Admiral Willard replied,
"We don't anticipate that."
The great thing about language in the 21st century is it means whatever you want it to
mean, sort of like Alice in wonderland. A terrorist is whatever they deem to be a terrorist;
anyone who does not go along with their agenda. "building back better" means repression and
censorship. "the new normal" means global corporate government and the great reset agenda.
"global pandemic" means a plandemic that kills one in a million healthy young people. etc.
Facts and information do not matter to these people; it is 1984. This struggle will be
decided by force, as logical arguments are useless to those who deny the basic axioms of
reality and existence (almost all libtards and most rinos). I think in a way it is a good
thing that things are getting worse for the average middle american. Things will need to get
much worse before they get better as more than half the people are still totally asleep. Of
the minority that are awake, most of us have too much to lose right now . But we need to
organize and prepare to take action soon or we will be bled to death by a thousand cuts as
they have been doing for a while now. What kind of a world will our children inherit if we
stay silent and apathetic?
O MY GOD!
All the discussions around Trump reminded me of Hitler after Stalingrad.
After the defeat at Stalingrad, the Germans waited 2 years for Hitler to use the secret
weapon and win the war. The German army suffered defeat after defeat, the Russian communists
were searching for Hitler's body through Bunkers and the Germans still waited for the
super-secret weapon to save them.
Two months after the election, Trump's team suffered defeat after defeat. Trump is waiting
for jail, but his supporters are convinced that Trump still has a secret weapon with which
will win the election.When you wake up to reality. Trump is a false Messiah and he he doesn't
have a super-secret-weapon.
You have to fight your self for justice and truth and not wait for someoneelse to fight for
you while you button porn, tiktok or chat smalltalk on Facebook.
I can't forget what Mother Teresa said 30 years ago: "Don't wait for a leader because he
won't come. Be your own leaders."
You all are for sure. I just changed my party registration and I'm now a proud Democrat. I
don't want to be denied jobs, loans, transportation, and possibly freedom and life itself for
the sake of a country that has collectively decided to destroy itself.
And that's what false flag with Capitol ransacking accomplished. It fives Clinton/Obama/Biden
clique card blank for suppressing the dissent
This false flag operation like shooting protesters by snipers during Ukrainian Maydan is a
logical end of American Maidan and pursued the same goals -- deposing the current president,
hijacking political power and consolidating it via repressions.
Notable quotes:
"... That is why we are witnessing the fussy, aggressive actions of the Democrats - a ridiculous re-impeachment of the president, who will leave the White House in a week, the most severe censorship and suppression of dissent. There is no need for the real winners of fair elections to behave like that, as they are aware of their legitimacy and are confident in themselves (relying on the real, not imaginary, support of the majority of the population). ..."
From the "Biden Exploits His Capitol Gains" article:
Joe Biden's own language certainly sounded less like a magnanimous winner uniting his
people than like that used by autocrats and dictators to hold onto power, argues Diana
Johnstone.
Diana Johnstone's opinion is quite reasonable. In fact, a "creeping"/"bureaucratic" coup
d'etat took place in the United States. And it wasn't Trump at all, but Biden & Co. The
fact that "Joe Biden's own language sounded like that used by autocrats and dictators to hold
onto power" is further confirmation of this.
If you are in the majority and you win the election honestly, then there is no need to act
the way the Democrats did. The current aggressive rhetoric of Biden (and other Democrats) is
evidence that the elections were stolen/falsified. Biden knows this very well, and therefore
his language is as cruel, irreconcilable and repressive as possible. After the illegitimate
elections, the task is to consolidate own's power and suppress all those who reject what
happened. In fact, this is what happened in Ukraine after the Maidan 2014.
That is why we are witnessing the fussy, aggressive actions of the Democrats - a
ridiculous re-impeachment of the president, who will leave the White House in a week, the
most severe censorship and suppression of dissent. There is no need for the real winners of
fair elections to behave like that, as they are aware of their legitimacy and are confident
in themselves (relying on the real, not imaginary, support of the majority of the
population).
Globalization has made the United States a hollow giant. It has produced an enormous
wealth gap, and this inequality is producing a breakdown in social cohesion. They have faced
crisis before in the form of political polarization, economic hardship and racial tensions,
but the situation now is a combination of every one of the mentioned before amplified by
orders of magnitude by the pandemic.
The power of the MIC, Wall Street and Big Tech along with their MSM minions acting in a
concerted way is the only thing preventing an implosion of the country. Either that or the
notion of "American Exceptionalism" is truly implanted in the hearts and minds of the people,
whether they realize it or not.
Mass protests generally have two distinct but intertwined goals: 1) to "make a statement,"
and 2) to inflict a cost. To state the obvious, mass protests occur because a group of people
are unhappy about something, and they want something to change. Change only occurs, in a large
bureaucratic nation like ours, if a loud "message" is conveyed, or if the price of non-change
becomes too high. If thousands of Trump voters are mad as hell because they believe the
election was stolen, and if they want to protest, they can either make their message heard and
then hope for the best (not much hope there), or they can attempt to punish the thieves
-- that is, make them incur some cost for their malfeasance.
What did the mob achieve on Wednesday? We already knew their message -- Trump won the
election, and it was stolen. We know they have support across the country; even our biased
media admit to some 74 million Trump voters, of whom 70% to 80% (depending on the poll) think
the election was stolen. But then what? "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it." And
then what? The message is impotent. It has no consequence.
If 'the message' was doomed to impotence, inflicting 'a cost' was much more tangible, and
much more achievable. By forcing their way into the Capitol building, a motivated and
reasonably prepared mob could have caused tremendous damage. If -- and I stress the conditional
here -- if they wanted to inflict damage, they had a golden opportunity. They had guns,
presumably hidden, and far outnumbered the handful of guards. Any firefight would have been
over quickly, with the mob victorious. Security guards, staffers, even congressmen would have
been easy prey, for kidnapping, injury, or worse. But this did not happen.
... ... ...
Notice how congressmen, left and right, responded to the event. All were indignant. All were
outraged. All condemned the "senseless violence" of the crazed mob and the "attempted
overthrow" of American democracy. All of them: left, right, and center; Democrat and
Republican; Trump supporter or not. All of them condemned it.
Again: Why? The answer here is clear: All congressmen, of all stripes, have a vested
interest in sustaining the system, more or less in its current form . This is obvious. They
are all 'winners' in the system. It has made them all rich, famous, and powerful. Yes, they
fight for relative power and relative influence, but this is largely a sham. The
Republican-Democrat battles are only there to give the impression of real competition. Instead,
in reality, we have a deep and radical monopoly -- a monopoly of pro-corporate, pro-capitalist,
pro-war, pro-Israel, and pro-Jewish individuals. On these things, they all agree. I've been
saying as much for many years: We should focus not on what divides the two parties, but on
what unites them . This is far more revealing.
... More than anything, Trump was a symbol: a symbol of resistance, of defiance, and of an
'in your face' attitude. But nothing more. The Trump presidency was all show, no substance. It
was, and is, hardly worth dying over.
And by 'media,' I mean all media. Consider what our beloved Tucker Carlson had
to say , speaking at the beginning of his show on the very first day after the protest:
Political violence begets political violence. That is an iron law that never changes. We
have to be against that, no matter who commits the violence or under what pretext, no matter
how many self-interested demagogues assure us the violence is justified or necessary. We have
a duty to oppose all of this, not simply because political violence kills other people's
children, but because in the end it doesn't work.
No good person will live a happier life because [Ashli Babbitt] was killed in a hallway of
the Capitol today. So our only option, as a practical matter, is to fix what is causing this
in the first place. You may have nothing in common with the people on the other side of the
country -- increasingly, you probably don't -- but you're stuck with them. The idea that
groups of Americans will somehow break off into separate peaceful nations of like-minded
citizens is a fantasy. That will not happen. There is no such thing as 'peaceful separation';
there never has been, and there won't be.
The two hemispheres of this country are inseparably intertwined, like conjoined twins.
Neither can leave without killing the other. As horrifying as this moment is, we have no
option but to make it better, to gut it out.
The entry of the Capitol building was spontaneous. Nobody saw it coming.
In the immediate aftermath, the media didn't know whether to promote it or bury it. It
took hours and days for the narrative to coalesce on orders from the top.
As it was happening, the media was gob-smacked. The 'insurrection' narrative didn't truly
get going until the protest was long over.
It's real tiresome to do this but people need to be reminded that Ziocorporate conman
fraud Trump and his MAGA brand are a product of the same lot that governs the Democrats, and
that he was never on his constituency's side:
And it's necessary because if there's a chance to unite even a small group of people after
realising how they're being had, then there's a chance for a small change to snowball into
something larger. And it should not stay on the white side of the divide, it's not like the
plandemic's been killing the economy for whites only. No "populist anti-Deep State patriot"
or national leader goes around endorsing other countries' politicians, much less Israel's,
the purest manifestation of corporate bankster power acting in unison with neocolonial
globalism, a trait shared by Biden and Trump.
Actions should be peaceful, because entities like the Pentagon and CIA have an absolute
monopoly on violent repression...
One Christian fellow I listened to said that Antifa were definitely there. He took video
of them walking down the street. That just proves to me that even Antifa knew they were no
threat, otherwise they wouldn't have been mingling among thousands and thousands of Trump
supporters.
The fellow said that from what he could see, the Trump protesters were unarmed, well
behaved, smiling, and content with waving their flags. He said they are proud patriots and
would never think of destroying art work or smashing up the Capitol Building.
He said on the 15 to 20 previous trips he's made to the Capitol Building, the pop-up metal
barriers have always been up, but no barriers were up on January 6th. He said on a previous
trip he had stepped onto the grass to take a picture and was quickly told by an officer to
"get off the grass". But on January 6th, the sidewalks were blocked off, forcing people onto
the grass.
We've seen the video of what looks to be an Antifa member breaking a window, only to be
stopped by a Trump supporter.
No, these were salt of the earth people who were no threat to Antifa OR the spineless
politicians. They knew this, but they've played it up for all it's worth.
Amazon includes a couple accurate blurbs on the product description page:
This short book is wicked, truthful, and entertaining. The author, after outlining a
step-by-step procedure for bringing about a coup, analyzes modern (post–Second World
War) coups, and points out why some succeeded and others failed. ( New Yorker )
An extraordinarily competent and well-written work, displaying very wide knowledge of
the ways in which coups, both successful and unsuccessful, have actually been organized. (
Times Literary Supplement )
You don't do a "coup" by invading the congressional discussion bunker in a nominal
democracy. You do a "coup" by ordering up CIA-organized troops to take over communication
centers as checkpoints secured by APCs go up everywhere as congresscritters are frogmarched
to a nearby stadium. The CEOs and salaried Wokers of the social meedja companies would swear
enthusiastic allegiance to the new powers. Antifa would be issued clean shirts, ties and
government-approved truncheons. Then a grand proclamation that there will be a convention to
work towards national unity. Ooops, that last part actually happened.
If there had been a coup, it would 100% evident.
If there had been fair elections, it would 100% evident.
The event was, variously, a "coup," an "insurrection," or at minimum, "a riot." Protesters
were "right-wing extremists" and even "domestic terrorists" who were attacking "the very
basis of American democracy."
A coup?
An insurrection?
Attacking the very basis of American democracy?
The only reason the crowd was there in the first place was to protest against the people
committing those crimes through election fraud. Hopefully at least the crowd has figured out
that the Republicans and Trump are not on their side...
Jazzhand McFeels of https://therightstuff.biz/ has written a very interesting
article on Dissident Mag about some sudden changes in the administration that could explain
this thing.
If the attack on the Capitol was already so clumsy and ineffective, how could those same
people succeed in the much more difficult task of seccession?
You're assuming that the phony attack was planned by the people who would be involved in a
secession movement. I haven't seen any evidence that it was.
Cui Bono? The Key to 6 January is what did NOT happen. The two houses of congress had gone
off to hear, separately, in public broadcast, evidence from objecting congressmen that there
was massive electoral fraud to criminally deliver the election to Biden. MSM transmitted the
opening statements to the debate by McConnell and Schumer. These two said that there was no
election fraud. MSM then pulled away when the other congressmen started presenting the view
that there WAS fraud. Although MSM was not going to carry what the people are not supposed to
know, and filled in instead with their own propagandists and the Party Line, the proceedings
examining election fraud would have been seen by some of the public through the internet
streams and C-Span. This was clear evidence which the courts should have heard, but refused to
hear. BUT, instead of Congress publicly hearing evidence, the hearings abruptly STOPPED. Why?
The Capitol police, following instructions, opened the barricades and waved the demonstrators
to come in. The demonstrators were guided to the spot where the Deep State assassin was
waiting. A person was shot. After that, there were NO MORE discussions of election fraud. Biden
was confirmed without the airing of evidence of fraud. 6 January was a simple, but elegant,
Deep State SETUP. A psyop. The American people have been, once again, deceived. Once everybody
submits to vaccination there will never again be disputed elections, just like in the third
world.
Correction: The media said that the policeman "collapsed when he got back to the Precinct.
.that he MAY have been hit with a fire extinguisher." It was not reported as fact. No other
subsequent report abouthow he died albeit it should have been established by now.
The second poilce officer who the media says was "killed" by the "riots" was a man who we
heard nothing about on the date of the event, but who, five days later, committed suicide. The
suicide story is not speculation. It was given as a fact. They call this suicide a "killing"
because of the riots. It is more likely a police officer shooting his mouth off about these
lies,who, five days later was suicided.
This summer and fall at least a dozen police officers were killed. Many more were injured.
One got his eye knocked out. Many were very gravely injured. The government officials applauded
their killers, posted bail for them, and every step of the way government officials "incited
the violence".
Trump made a speech in front of his supporters laying out the evidence of the election
fraud. He was complaining about the election fraud, a fraud that was never scutinized or
investigated by anyone except his own lawyers and a few other lawyers, like Sidney Powell. They
want to impeach him for publicly complaining about their stealing the election from him. It's
like someone getting their home stolen, and when the victim publicly complains, he is
threatened with arrest.
Again, they fundament their impeachment grounds on the "insurrection" of January 6, but
again, like the election fraud, no one has scrutinized or conducted the most cursory
investigation of it The fact that we still don't know how that policeman died is telling. The
speculations made about him getting hit by a fire extinguisher are still floating around when
at this point, it should be an established fact how he died. The dopiest doctor in this country
would be able to diagnose a trauma to the head or body, if there were any physical trauma of
that kind.
Two people died from natural causes. Yet, no details are given. One woman, age 34 and
overweight was said to have been "trampled by the mob." Minutes after her death her family and
closest friends were bad mouthing her, saying that she was mentally unstable, a conspiracy
theorist, and "had problems in the past." She just died shortly before, and that was their
public statements about their dearest friend and family member.
Ashli Babbits death was a provocative act that would have encouraged Trump supporters to
turn on the police. It is no coincidence that those around her breaking windows, and screaming
that she was dead when she was not, also provoked the crowds of Trump supporters. They are seen
clearly on the video near Ashli not only breaking windows but changing their clothes after they
had done so to hide their identification. This is clearly seen on the video. One guy provoking
the crowds, breaking windows and screaming that Ashli was dead when she was not, was clearly
Antifa, proven to be Antifa by video evidence. Yet, after January 6, he was interviewed by CNN.
Clearly, the Antifa provocateur was not arrested by the Washington police or the FBI, but at
least 6 Trump supporters were arrested for breaking curfew after 6 p.m. when all that happened
at the Capitol was over. Those six were the first arrested – for breaking curfew. I do
not find it a coincidence that both Ashli Babbitt and those breaking the windows around her,
and screaming that she was dead when she was not, all acted to provoke the crowds and were all
proven to be Antifa members. Was it coincidence that Ashli Babbitt's getting shot also acted as
an unwitting provocateur, along with the Antifa members around her in the Capitol that day? Or
was both Ashli and Antifa working for our security agencies that day, all playing their roles
as agents provocateurs.
Why wouldn't the DOJ and FBI investigate the election fraud? Was it because the government
did it? That would be a good reason not to investigate. Sidney Powell has produced an affidavit
from a Serb who said it was the CIA who oversaw the manipulation of the US voting machines from
Serbia, a country completely taken over by the CIA. He also writes about Hunter Biden's
clandestine trip there in August 2020 to meet with these people.
Whoever didn't develop a sense of humor with your Ziocorporate fraud reality TV show
president posing as patriot anti-deep maverick ain't gonna do it now.
Yes, the coup and insurrection had ALREADY happened.
The coup and insurrection happened when the Democrats AND Republicans rigged the election.
Democratic state courts and election officials changed voting laws, and Republican state
legislatures looked the other way.
You are wrong on so many counts. The event was not spontaneous, that is quite clear when the
guards let the protesters in and they mostly went inside peacefully while a handful of rioters
did minimal damage. Some Antifas, yeah, for sure. But someone stole Pelosi's computer or did
they? That smacks of a plan. It achieved the objectives of the groups on the inside. The
marchers that went inside had to have been, for the most part, surprised that they were
welcomed. Did you see how they walked in between the purple ropes? Took photographs and
selfies, some of these with the guards? Did you see the videos of some of the protesters
stopping the people trying to break the glass windows? ...
I see "anti-Semitism" has made it to the floor during these impeachment hearings. LMAO. I
would guess that 97% of Trump's base is the muh Israel crowd and Trump is as pro-Israel,
pro-Jewish as it gets.
Even more laughable is Maxine Waters standing up and decrying violence. I guess Maxine has a
very selective memory. All these demsheviks and the gay guys over at CNN who had no problem
with Antifa/BLM are now staunch advocates for the Constitution and have a problem with riots.
How in the hell do these cretins live with themselves? Have these hypocrites no shame? It can't
be said enuff that Antifa/BLM's and (((the leftoids))) fingerprints are all over these riots.
This is the new 9-11, folks, don't believe your lying eyes. Look at some of those scraggly
people busting windows and attacking cops? Do they look like the average Trump voter? Do these
young punks scaling the walls look like the average Trump voter?
The democratic party is now pretending to "call out" the "white supremacists" in Congress.
Even if there were "white supremacists" in Congress, they would be not one bit different from
"brown supremacists", "black supremacists","yellow supremaicsts", if by "supremacists" is meant
politicians that belong to the Hispanic caucus, Black caucus or Asian caucus , ALL of whom
claim to be looking out for the welfare of their respective group.
This is of course what is going on here. The democratic party politicians, Pelosi, Schumer,
Biden and the whole left has been race baiting against white people as a default manner of
doing politics for over sixty years now. It is the fault of the FAUX REPUBLICAN PARTY, that has
been posing as conservatives who many whites believe "have their backs", against the hate and
shenanigans the anti-white left perpetrates. THEY ARE WRONG. We see plainly now, that what the
U.S. has is a uni-party, that is left and far left and includes good old Republican RINO's, but
the left and far left is used by the elite to keep and gain control of the U.S. for their own
agenda. The idea now operating is to belittle, denigrate and cow white folks as never before,
because many of the protesters at the recent "event", scared the living bleep out of the
politicians who have simply not been representing them. The corporations and tech moguls,etc.
are not taking the side of the left because they are "better" citizens or politicians than
people on the right side of the political spectrum. They take the side of the left because that
is where these corporations know that the radical Americans are, the ones that burn, loot and
murder and therefore can be used to divide the nation for the big corporations and tech
moguls,etc. Any honest person that considers what happened at the so called violent
demonstration in D.C. knows that compared to the violence that ANTIFA, BLM and other groups
perpertrated on innocent Americans last summer, knows perfectly well that there is no
comparison. The anti-white left, enabled by the democratic party and the news media, IN SERVICE
OF THE U.S. ELITE. BURNED, LOOTED AND MURDERED THE CITIZENS OF AMERICA for months, WITHOUT A
SINGLE WORD FROM PELOSI, SCHUMER, BIDEN HARRIS, ETC.
The simple fact is that these D.C. politicians were scared shitless by some plain American
citizens, who finally felt they needed to meet these representatives that keep ignoring and
abusing them. The wrong people are being blamed here.
Before reading this article, the reader might consider the fact that there was NO COUP, by
the accepted meaning that the word "coup" denotes. Now, if the fake news media and the
democratic party want to explain the event by bending the facts and actual events to fit their
own interpretation of it, that's a problem due to their dishonesty.
@anarchyst hen made
public utilities available for all (obviously without compensation to the owners). No more of
the sad "private company" excuse, and no more billions into the pockets of criminals who hate
us.
Also, make Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Pichai et al. serve serious jail time for election
tampering if nothing else. Both to send out a clear warning to others, and for the simple
decency to see justice served.
Of course this will not happen short of a French Revolution-style regime shift. But since
(sadly) the same is equally true even for your extremely generous and modest proposal, I see
no harm in dreaming a little bigger.
FoxNews finally showed its true face during the election steal when it declared that
Trump had lost the election long before any evidence in support of this thesis
materialized.
For those that paid attention to Fox News, especially daytime and weekend Fox News its
true face has been obvious for some time.
It is now abundantly clear that with a few exceptions (notably Tucker Carlson), FoxNews
is very much on the same page as CNN and the rest of them.
While Carlson is not the worst on Fox News he is not a friend. His obsession with the
China bad narrative is over the top. He is playing the GOP Inc side of the Deep State
coin.
The A block last night was Carlson reiterating over and over, that he and Fox News were
against violence like that at the Capitol. He stated that violence from the left was also
wrong but that violence from the right was not the answer of course like most articles on
this blog, he didn't say what the answer was.
I've come back to salute this essay as the compendium of truth that it is. Several of the
essays here this week have been intelligent and deserving of the Unz readership.
You are most correct when you say that the current set of Nomenklatura are too weak to
sustain rule. I'd call the Big Tech oligarchy the Nickelodeon class. They have digits, which
are really nothing to be afraid of, but any small farmer in the Midwest is more powerful than
they are.
Big changes are coming and it won't take violence to effect them, just a patriotic week or
two off of the social media.
"... I have, for some time, been mis-naming the Nomenklatura as the Politburo, with the commune being the many tentacled international banking cartel. ..."
FoxNews finally showed its true face during the election steal when it declared that Trump
had lost the election long before any evidence in support of this thesis materialized. It is
now abundantly clear that with a few exceptions (notably Tucker Carlson), FoxNews is very much
on the same page as CNN and the rest of them. So what just happened and what is taking place
now?
Americans have been brainwashed into calling things they don't like, or don't understand, as
"Socialist" or even "Marxist". The sad reality is that most Americans sincerely believe that
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are "socialists", and when they see modern movies
ridiculously filled with "minorities" and gender fluid freaks – this is a case of
"cultural Marxism" (a totally meaningless term, by the way!). This is all utter nonsense,
neither Marxism nor Socialism have anything to do with BLM, Antifa, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck
Schumer (in fact, Marxism places a premium on real law and order!). I can't take the time and
space here to discuss Marxism, but I do believe that there is one analytical tool which we can
borrow from Marxist thought to try to make sense of what just happened in the USA. Let's begin
by asking a simple question:
If "the mob" did not win, who did?
Most certainly not the abstract concept of "law and order". For one thing, it is now
abundantly clear that some cops deliberately let a (rather small) subset of protestors not only
across police lines but even inside the Capitol Building itself. That is not exactly law and
order, now is it? Furthermore, it is now also clear that Ashli Babbitt was very deliberately
shot by an (apparently black) cop who was then quickly hidden away from sight by the
authorities. Not exactly law and order either.
Neither did the abstract concept of "democracy" win anything that day. Many protesters were
recorded saying that the Capitol building belonged to the people, not to the people working in
it on behalf of the people. They are right. But even if we accept the notion that those who
entered the building were trespassing, the massive crackdown on free speech which immediately
followed the events at the Capitol is a clear sign that "democracy" did not win that day. More
about that later.
So who won?
Well, look who is celebrating and who is now demanding that punitive and even repressive
measures be taken against Trump supporters:
here
and
here ) The Russia-hating Lobby Antifa/BLM/etc The many freaks of nature leading
various "minorities" Big Tech megacorporations a la Google and Amazon
The list is longer, of course, and it includes pretty much all the folks afflicted with the
now famous Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).
Our list looks like a cocktail of very different actors, but is that really the case?
I submit that if we look closely at this list of possible "winners" we can quickly see that
we are dealing with a single social category /group whose "diversity" is only apparent.
Here is what all these groups have in common:
They are numerically small, definitely a
minority They are very wealthy They are very close to the real centers of power They share the
same narcissistic (Neocon) ideology of self-worship They are driven by the same hate-based
ideology of revenge They don't care about the people of the USA They want to dismantle the US
Constitutional order
On the basis of these common characteristics, I believe that we can speak about a social
class united by a common ideology .
Now, of course, in the plutocratic oligarchy (which the United States in reality is), the
notion of "class" has been declared heretical and it has been replaced by identity politics
– the best way for a ruling class to (a) hide behind a fake illusion of pluralism and (b)
to divide the people and rule over them.
I have already written about what I consider to be a US version of the Soviet Nomenklatura , a
special ruling class which was official in the (comparatively much more honest) Soviet system
but which is always hidden from sight by the rulers of the United States.
The actual word we use are not that important: Nomenklatura , class, caste,
establishment, powers that be, deep state, etc. – they all approximate the reality of a
small gang of self-declared "elites" (as opposed to the "deplorables") ruling with total
impunity and no checks and balances mitigating their de facto dictatorship. Some
well-intentioned people began speaking about the "1%" – which is not bad, even if the
actual figure is even smaller than just one percent. Others used "Wall Street" (as in the
"occupy WS" movement), again – not a bad attempt to describe the problem. Whatever the
terms you chose, what is certain is that this entity has what Marx would call a " class
consciousness " which produces a single " class ideology " characterized by an
extremely strong sense of "us versus them" .
By the way, while I disagree with any notion that the US Nomenklatura is Marxist or
Socialist in any way, I very much agree that these "elites" are displaying an ideological
zeal very similar to what Trotskysts or Nazis typically exhibit, especially when confronted
with the "deplorables" or, like FoxNews says, the "mob" (the Polish word " bydło " – cattle
– very accurately renders this contempt for the masses).
In fact, they see us all as their "class enemy" . And they are quite correct, by the
way.
Their ideology is messianic, racist, violent and hate filled while the members of this US
Nomenklatura see themselves as the cream of the crop, the "chosen people", whose
"destiny" is to rule over the "dark and primitive" "mob".
This contempt for the "mob" is something which self-described "liberals" always try to
conceal, but which always comes out, be it in 1917 Russia or in 2021 USA. There is a weird
logic to this, by the way. It goes something like this: " we are clearly superior to the
plebes, yet these plebes seem to reject that notion, these plebes are therefore a "dark mob"
which absolutely needs to be strictly ruled by us ". The underlying assumption is that
plebes are dangerous, they can always riot and threaten "us". Hence the need for a police
state. QED.
We all remember how the Clinton gang was mega-super-sure that Hillary would easily defeat
Trump. And just to make darn sure that the US "plebes" don't do anything stupid, the US legacy
corporate ziomedia engaged in probably the most hysterical candidate bashing propaganda
operation in history only to find out that the "deplorables" did not vote as they were told to,
they voted for "Trump The New Hitler" instead.
What a truly unforgivable affront of these serfs against the masters which God, or Manifest
Destiny, placed above them!
And just as their pseudo-liberal colleagues from the past, the US liberals decided that this
vote was a slap in their face which, of course, is quite correct (I still believe that most
votes for Trump where not votes for Trump, but votes against Hillary); it was, so to speak, a
gigantic "f**k you!" from the revolting serfs against their masters. And class consciousness
told the US Nomenklatura that this was an anti-masters pogrom , a US "
Jacquerie "
if you wish. This "revolt of the serfs" had to be put down, immediately, and it was: Trump
caved to the Neocons in less than a month (when he betrayed General Flynn) and ever since the
US Nomenklatura has been using Trump as a disposable President who would do all
the crazy nonsense imaginable to please Israel, and who would then be disposed off. And yet it
is now quite clear that the US "deplorables" voted for the "wrong" candidate again! Hence the
need for a (very poorly concealed) "election steal" followed by a "test of loyalty" (you better
side with us, or else ) which eventually resulted in the situation we have today.
What is that situation exactly?
Simply put, this time the USNomenklaturahas truly achieved total
power. Not only do they control all three of the official branches of government, they now
also fully control the 4th one, the "media space", courtesy of the US tech giants which now are
openly silencing anybody who disagrees with the One And Only Official Truth As Represented By
The Propaganda Outlets. This is the very first time in recent US history that a small cabal of
"deep insiders" have achieved such total control of all the real instruments of power. The bad
news is that they know that they are a small minority and they realize that they need to act
fast to secure their hold on power. But for that they needed a pretext.
It is hardly surprising that after successfully pulling off the 9/11 false flag
operation, the USNomenklaturahad no problems whatsoever pulling off the
"Capitol" false flag.
Think about it: the legally organized and scheduled protest of Trump supporters was
announced at least a week before it had to take place. How hard was it for those in charge of
security to make sure that the protesters stay in one specific location? At the very least,
those in charge of security could have done what Lukashenko eventually did in Mink: place
military and police forces around all the important symbolic buildings and monuments and say
"you are welcome to protest, but don't even think of trying to take over any government
property" (that approach worked much better than beating up protesters, which Lukashenko
initially had tried). Yet what we saw was the exact opposite: in DC protesters were invited
across police lines by cops. Not only that, but even those protesters which did enter the
Capitol were, apparently, not violent enough, so it had to be one of the cops to shoot an
unarmed and clearly non-dangerous woman, thereby providing the "sacrificial victim" needed to
justify the hysterics about "violence" and "rule of law".
And the worst part is that it worked, even Trump ended up condemning the "violence" and
denouncing those who, according to Trump, did not represent the people.
The hard truth is much simpler: the "stop the steal" protestors did not commit any real
violence! Yes, they broke some furniture, had some fights with cops (who initially were
inviting people in, only to then violently turn against them with batons, pepper sprays and
flash-bang grenades). Some reports say that one cop was hit by a fire extinguisher. If true,
that would be a case of assault with a deadly weapon (under US law any object capable of being
used to kill can be considered a deadly weapon when used for that purpose). But considering the
nonstop hysteria about guns, the NRA and "armed militias", this was clearly not a planned
murder. Finally, a few people died, apparently from natural causes, possibly made worse by the
people trampling over each other. In other words, the Trump supporters did not kill anybody
deliberately, at most they can be accused of creating the circumstances which resulted in
manslaughter. That was not murder. Not even close. Want to see what a planned murder looks
like? Just look at the footage of the Ashli Babbitt murder by some kind of armed official. That
is real murder, and it was committed by a armed official. So which side is most guilty of
violating laws and regulations?
Furthermore, no moral value can be respected unless it is universally and equally applied.
Which, considering that the US deep state has engaged in a full year of wanton mass violence
against hundreds of innocent US citizens makes it unbelievably hypocritical for the US liberals
to denounce "the mob" now. Frankly, the way I see it, all the US liberals should now "take a
knee" before the pro-Trump protestors and declare that this was a "mostly peaceful" event
which, objectively speaking, it was .
Won't happen. I know.
What will happen next is going to be a vicious crackdown on free speech in all its
forms . In fact, and just to use a Marxist notion, what comes next is class warfare
.
We have all seen Pelosi and the rest of them demanding that Trump either be removed by Pence
and the Cabinet (25th A.), or they will unleash another impeachment. First, if impeached, Trump
won't be able to run in 2024 (which the liberals fully realize is a major risk for them). But
even more important, is to humiliate him, make him pay, show him once and for all "who is
boss"! These people thrive on revenge and victory is never enough to appease them, they simply
hate anybody who dares oppose them and they want to make an example of any and every serf who
dares to disobey them. That is why they always send "messages", no matter how inchoate: they
want to bully all the deplorables on the planet into total subservience.
But they won't stop with just Trump. Oh no! They will also go after all those serfs who
dared defy this Nomenklatura and who objected to the wholesale repudiation of the US
Constitution. For example, in a truly Orwellian move, the NY State Bar now wants to disbar
Giuliani for acting as Trump's lawyer (not a joke, check here ). Which,
considering that Trump already lost several lawyers to such tactics should not come as a
surprise to anybody: apparently, in the "new 2021 Woke-USA", some are more entitled to legal
representation than others.
Don't expect the ACLU to protest, by the way – equal protection under the law is not a
topic of interest to them. Here are a few screenshots take off their website , so see for yourself.
Clearly, the priority for the folks at the ACLU is to destroy Trump and anybody daring to
take up his defense.
One one hand, this is truly an absolute disaster, because when the US ruling
Nomenklatura agrees to drop any past pretenses of objectivity, or even decency, things
will definitely get ugly. On the other hand, however, this immense "coming out" of the US
Nomenklatura is, of course, unsustainable (just look at history, every time these folks
thought that they had crushed the "plebes", the latter ended up rising and showing their
supposed "masters" to the door; this will happen here too).
Last, but not least, let's keep another crucial thing in mind: even if you absolutely hate
Trump, you really should realize that it is not just "the vote" which was stolen, it was the
entire US Constitutional order . While we often focus on the SCOTUS, we should not remember
the many lower courts which showed a total absence of courage or dignity and which caved in to
the hysterical demands of the US Nomenklatura . It is impossible to have a country under
the rule of law when the courts shy away from their obligation to uphold the said rule of law
and, instead, place political expediency above the letter and spirit of the law.
Furthermore, when concepts such as "legal" and "illegal" lose any objective meaning, how can
any action be considered illegal or punishable?
Here is, just as an example, the Oath of Office taken by all Supreme Court Justices:
(emphasis added)
"I, [NAME], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect
to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich , and that I will
faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [TITLE]
under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."
And this is what each member of the US Armed Forces swears: (emphasis added)
"I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend
the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic ; that
I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the
President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to
regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God)."
It does not take a genius to figure out that the SCOTUS is now in the hands of a small cabal
of people who clearly are "domestic enemies" of the US Constitution.
Finally, here is what the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence states: (emphasis
added)
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,–That
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish it , and to institute new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long
established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a
long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
I don't think that there is any need to further beat this dead horse and I will simply
summarize it as so:
The regime which will soon replace the Trump Administration is an illegal occupation
government, with strong ties to foreign interests (and I don't mean China or Russia here!),
which all those who served in the US military have taken an oath to oppose; this is precisely
the kind of occupation regime which the Founding Fathers foresaw in their Declaration of
Independence . Furthermore, the rule of law has clearly collapsed, at least on the
federal level, this should give the states more freedom of movement to resist the decrees of
this new regime (at least those states still willing and able to resist, I think of TX and FL
here). The leaders of this US Nomenklatura understand this, at least on some level, and we
should expect no decency from them; neither should we expect any mercy. Revenge is what
fuels these ideology- and hate-filled people who loathe and fear all the rest of humanity
because nobody is willing to worship them as our "lords and masters ". But this is also
the beginning of their end.
Conclusion: now we are all Palestinians!
True, no "mob" won on the Capitol, unless we refer to the (disgraced, hated and useless)
Congress as "the mob". And, of course, neither did "the people" or the protesters. The only
real winner in this entire operation was the US deep state and the US Nomenklatura . But
they did not win any war, only the opening battle of a war which will be much longer than what
they imagine in their ignorance.
I have said it many times, Trump really destroyed the USA externally, in terms of world
politics. The Dems have done the same thing, only internally. For example, Trump is the one who
most arrogantly ignored the rule of law in international affairs, but it was the Dems who
destroyed the rule of law inside the USA. It was Trump who with his antics and narcissistic
threats urbi et orbi who destroyed any credibility left for the USA as a country (or
even of the the AngloZionist Empire as a whole), but it was the Dems who really decided to
sabotage the very political system which allowed them to seize power in the first place.
What comes next is the illegal rule of an illegitimate regime which came to power by
violence (BLM, Antifa, Capitol false flag). This will be a Soviet-style gerontocracy with
senile figureheads pretending to be in power (think Biden vs Chernenko here). Looking at the
old, Obama-era, names which are circulated now for future Cabinet positions, we can bet on two
things: the new rulers will be as evil as they will be grossly incompetent, mostly due to their
crass lack of education (even Nuland and Psaki are back, it appears!). The Biden admin will be
similar to the rule of Kerensky in "democratic" Russia: chaos, violence, lots and lots of
speeches and total social and economic chaos. The next crucial, and even frightening, question
now is: what will replace this US version of a Kerensky regime?
It is way too early to reply to this question, but we should at least begin to think about
it, lest we be completely caught off guard.
But until then, "domestic terrorism" will, once again, become the boogeyman we will be told
to fear. And, as all good boys and girls know, the best way to deal with such a horrible
"domestic terrorism" threat is to dismantle the First and Second Amendments of the
Constitution. Having corrupt kangaroo courts on all levels, from the small claims level to the
Supreme court, will greatly help in this endeavor. Of course, there will be resistance from the
deplorables who still love their country and their Constitution.
But no matter how long this takes (might be decades) and how violent this confrontation
becomes (and, it will, if only because the regime vitally needs more false flags to survive!),
what will happen with this occupation regime is what happened to all of them throughout history
(could that be the reason why history is not taught anymore?).
As the Russian poet and bard, Vladimir Vissotski, wrote " it is impossible to trample
upon souls with boots " (сапогами
не вытоптать
душу). Now we are all Palestinians. And we, like they, will win!
"Americans have been brainwashed into calling things they don't like, or don't understand,
as "Socialist" or even "Marxist". The sad reality is that most Americans sincerely believe
that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are "socialists", and when they see modern
movies ridiculously filled with "minorities" and gender fluid freaks – this is a case
of "cultural Marxism" (a totally meaningless term, by the way!). This is all utter nonsense,
neither Marxism nor Socialism have anything to do with BLM, Antifa, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck
Schumer (in fact, Marxism places a premium on real law and order!)."
"class" has been declared heretical and it has been replaced by identity politics
– the best way for a ruling class to (a) hide behind a fake illusion of pluralism and
(b) to divide the people and rule over them
It's a neat bait and switch scheme, identity being substituted for class. Billionaires can
now be hailed as people's champions by instituting 'gender-fluid' toilets and forcing their
peons to kneel. Who knows how much force they'll be willing to use against the deplorables
but probably it would know no limit. The shock and awe unleashed against foreign countries
could now be instituted domestically with things like the Phoenix Program being tried here,
among other things. Anything but relinquish power.
The old war-lovers are coming back in. Although he was considered belligerent the new
regime will be worse. War is probably part of the future agenda. Solidifying it's grip upon
the domestic population may be the precursor to embarking upon an unpopular and certain to be
costly war against Iran or perhaps even some clash with Russia.
From the I Ching: "Large ambitions coupled with meager talent will seldom escape
disaster."
The fervid machinations of the current crop of "self"-glorifying wannabes will not, as The
Saker reminds us here, be any exception to the rule, either. They're hardly the first bunch
of feckless opportunists to take a run at "full spectrum dominance" .aiming to trap Life
Herownself within the suffocating CONfines of their own little nut'shell.
The rampant insanity symptomatic of their virulent "self"-sickness, as it runs its
inevitable course, looks like being somewhat more than usually trying for the rest of us,
though .given all the electro-mechanical and institutional enhancement available to them, for
intensifying the degenerative effects of their folly. At the same time, our best response
will be just what we all know is always organically and in all Ways imperative for our Kind,
anyhow. All our precious attention is best devoted to taking care of the Earth and each
other. Our unconditional affection is best lavished on this Living Creation, all our
Relations, and The Great Spirit whose gift it is.
It is an Oligarchy of bond holders. I'm using the word bond as an stand-in for debt
instruments, or any sort of claim on productivity. Bond/Bondage/Debt are all closely related
concepts.
The entire Western World is inter-connected double-entry balance sheets.
One side of the balance sheet is "assets" and the other is "liabilities." One person's
liability is another persons asset.
It is best to view the western world as a balance sheet, especially as private bank credit
is the dominant money type of the west. Private banking and debt spreading has metastasized
like a cancer, and is now consuming the host. Debt instruments and finance paper are being
serviced in the finance sector with QE and 'CARES' act shenanigan's, which pays these finance
"assets."
If you want to call the bond holders in finance and elsewhere as a nomenklatura, go ahead
– but it obscures reality. These people are a class, a class of usurers, who are
"taking" wealth in sordid ways by gaming the system.
All through history, plutocracy has arisen out of the population because debts were not
annulled, or land was enclosed.
Oligarchs of various types are harvesting the world through various means, including the
growth of debt claims. These claims grow exponentially, and outside of nature's ability to
pay. The derivative bubble wants to be paid. What cannot go on, will not.
The balance sheet is not really balanced, one side (the debt instrument holder) is making
exponential claims on debtors.
Moritz Hinsch from Berlin collected what Socrates (470-399 BC) and other Athenians wrote
about debt, and the conference's organizer, Prof. John Weisweiler, presented the new view
of late imperial Rome as being still a long way from outright serfdom. The 99 Percent
were squeezed, but "the economy" grew – in a way that concentrated growth in the
hands of the One Percent . In due course this bred popular resentment that spread in
the form of debtor revolts, not only in the Roman Empire but that of Iran as well, leading
to religious reforms to limit the charging of interest and self-indulgent greed in
general.
By now Nazi references are getting thread-bare. We actually need to examine how the
national socialists operated because their situation is analogous to today.
I very much agree that these "elites" are displaying an ideological zeal very similar to
what Trotskysts or Nazis typically exhibit
National Socialism arose as a reaction to finance capitalism's excesses. The very things
we are seeing today, were present in Weimar Germany. The country was being bought up, and the
people were being denied their birthright. Self-indulgent greed of an arising Oligarchy was
smashed by the National Socialists to then re-balance German civilization.
Nazi zeal restoring civilizational balance is quite something different than leftist
bolshevism.
I have, for some time, been mis-naming the Nomenklatura as the Politburo, with the
commune being the many tentacled international banking cartel. It's the same crowd that
funded the original Bolsheviks.
IMO they are only "Neo" by virtue of the old ones having died, but I'm not going to split
hairs. We all know it is those whose loyalty is to a shitty little country on the
Mediterranean.
@Anonymous ties
extract, which makes politicians whores for their donor class. The donor class is the
"holders of debt instruments" as I explained earlier. Or, they can be part of the military
industrial complex, to then whore for more taxpayer dollars. In all cases it is for self
aggrandizement. By the same reasoning, press-titutes are whores for their paymasters.
The easy money is taken in by usury or other sordid schemes; then donated/recycled into
politicians, to then keep the game going. Average laboring people don't have this surplus
wealth to donate.
It seems even more relevant today than it did then. It's longish, so hang in there if you're
able. In these post-'Capitol' social media de-platforming days, remember that (Chrome) Google
algorithms suppress websites from the conservative and religious right to the 'subversive left
(wsws and popular resistance, for instance). And Google bought Youtube in Oct. of 2006 for a
paltry $1.65 billion.
If you haven't read it and seen the captioned photos, you'll love ' Google Is Not What It
Seems' by Julian Assange, an extract from his new book When Google Met Wikileaks,
wikileaks.org
Also see Scott Ritter's 'By banning Trump and his supporters, Google and Twitter are turning
the US into a facsimile of the regimes we once condemned', RT.com, Jan. 9, 2021 Two excerpts:
"Digital democracy became privatized when its primary architect, Jared Cohen, left the State
Department in September 2010 to take a new position with internet giant Google as the head of
'Google Ideas' now known as 'Jigsaw'. Jigsaw is a global initiative 'think tank' intended to
"spearhead initiatives to apply technology solutions to problems faced by the developing
world." This was the same job Cohen was doing while at the State Department.
Cohen promoted the notion of a "digital democracy contagion" based upon his belief
that the "young people in the Middle East are just a mouse click away, they're just a
Facebook connection away, they're just an instant message away, they're just a text message
away" from sufficiently organizing to effect regime change. Cohen and Google were heavily
involved the January 2011 demonstrations in Egypt, using social networking sites to call for
demonstrations and political reform; the "Egyptian contagion" version of 'digital democracy'
phenomena was fueled by social networking internet sites run by Egyptian youth groups which
took a very public stance opposing the Mubarak regime and calling for political reform."
*************************************
On Sept. 18 , Julian Assange's new book of that name was published. The material was largely
fashioned by conversations he'd had with Google's Eric Schmidt in 2011 at Ellingham Hall in
Norfolk, England where Assange was living under house arrest. The ostensible purpose of the
requested meeting was to discuss idea for a book that Schmidt and Jared Cohen (advisor to both
Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton) were going to write, and in fact did: ' The New Digital
Age ' (2013). They were accompanied by the book's editor Scott Malcomson, former senior
advisor for the UN and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, who eventually worked at the
US State Department, plus Lisa Shields, vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations,
closely tied to the State Department, who was Schmidt's partner at the time. Hmmm. The plot, as
they say, thickens. From the book's blurb :
'For several hours the besieged leader of the world's most famous insurgent publishing
organization and the billionaire head of the world's largest information empire locked horns.
The two men debated the political problems faced by society, and the technological solutions
engendered by the global network -- from the Arab Spring to Bitcoin. They outlined radically
opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its
freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with US foreign policy
objectives and is driven by connecting non-Western countries to American companies and markets.
These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet's future that has only gathered force
subsequently.'
Some background that will hopefully entice you to listen to the 42-minute Telesur video
(sorry, no transcript) I'll embed below; this is the short version: ' Assange claims Google is
in bed with US government'
Note that in other interviews Assange names 'other private and public security agencies' as
well, and names the figures showing how deep Google is into smartphones and almost every nation
on the planet. 'Do not be evil'.
If your appetite hasn't been sufficiently whetted to watch the 38-minute Telesur interview,
you might at a minimum read 'When Google Met WikiLeaks: Battle for a New Digital Age' by
Nozomi Hayase . An excerpt or three, after reminding us that in his earlier 2012 book
Cypherpunks, Assange had said that " the internet, our greatest tool for emancipation,
has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen
":
'Assange unveils how, contrary to Google's efforts to create a positive public image by
giving away free storage, making it appear not like a corporation driven solely by profit
motives, this seemingly philanthropic company is a willing participant in its own government
co-optation. Indeed, he argues, Google Ideas was birthed as a brainchild of a Washington
think-tank.
Assange described how "Google's bosses
genuinely believe in the civilizing power of enlightened multinational corporations, and they
see this mission as continuous with the shaping of the world according to the better judgment
of the 'benevolent superpower.'" (p. 35). This process is so gradual and discrete that it is
hardly conscious on the part of the actors. This digital mega-corporation, through getting too
close to the US State Department and NSA, began to incorporate their ambitions and come to see
no evil. This internalization of imperial values created what Assange called " the impenetrable
banality of 'don't be evil' " (p. 35). It appears that bosses at Google genuinely think they
are doing good, while they are quickly becoming part of a power structure that Assange
described as a " capricious
global system of secret loyalties , owed favors, and false consensus, of saying one thing in
public and the opposite in private" (p. 7). Allegiance creates obedience and an unspoken
alliance creates a web of self-deception through which one comes to believe one's own lies and
becomes entangled in them. [snip]
' Assange pointed to how "the hidden fist
that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army,
Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps" (p. 43).
Google does not see evil in itself. By embedding with U.S. central authority, this global
tech company not only fails to see the invisible fist of "American strategic and economic
hegemony" that dictates the market, but moreover aspires "to adorn the hidden
fist like a velvet glove" (p. 43). By advancing the force of monopoly, they subordinate civic
values to economic and U.S. hegemonic interests and escape any real accountability. They no
longer recognize the unmediated market that responds to people's demands, a true market that
functions as a space of democratic accountability. This normalization of control leads to a
subversion of law, creating a rogue state where a ripple effect of corruption is created, as
individuals, companies and the state each betray their own stated principles.'
'In a sense, one might conclude that Assange's new book is in itself another leak . In
publishing what one might call the "GoogleFiles", Assange conducts his usual job of publishing
in the public interest with due diligence by providing the verbatim transcript and audio of the
secret meeting. This time, the source of the material was Google themselves who sought out
Assange for their publication.'
How wonderful it is that he's rocking Google's Very Large Boat. Hayase also writes that
Cohen and Schmidt engage in their own 'statist' version of the 'good whistleblower/bad
whistleblower meme we're familiar with. Pfffft.
Google used its front page to back
the US government's campaign to bomb Syria: snapshot
More if you'd like it:
From HuffPo's : Julian Assange Fires Back At Eric Schmidt and Google's 'Digital
Colonialism', one exchange that's significant:
' HP : What about the substance of Schmidt's defense, that Google is pretty much at war with
the U.S. government and that they don't cooperate? He claims that they're working to encrypt
everything so that neither the NSA nor anyone else can get in. What would you say to that?
JA : It's a duplicitous statement. It's a lawyerly statement. Eric Schmidt did not say that
Google encrypts everything so that the US government can't get at them. He said quite
deliberately that Google has started to encrypt exchanges of information -- and that's hardly
true, but it has increased amount of encrypted exchanges. But Google has not been encrypting
their storage information. Google's whole business model is predicated on Google being able to
access the vast reservoir of private information collected from billions of people each day.
And if Google can access it, then of course the U.S. government has the legal right to access
it, and that's what's been going on.
As a result of the Snowden revelation, Google was caught out. It tried to pretend that those
revelations were not valid, and when that failed, it started to engage in a public relations
campaign to try and say that it wasn't happy with what the National Security Agency was doing,
and was fighting against it. Now, I'm sure that many people in Google are not happy with what
has been occurring. But that doesn't stop it happening, because Google's business model is to
collect as much information as possible and people store it, index and turn it into predictive
profiles. Similarly, at Eric Schmidt's level, Google is very closely related to the U.S.
government and there's a revolving door between the State Department and Google . '
For the Pffft factor plus some history of WikiLeaks' betrayal by both Daniel
Domscheit-Berg ( his Wiki ), and the Guardian,
the
Daily Dot's : ' When WikiLeaks cold-called Hillary Clinton',
including:
'Within hours, Harrison's call was answered via State Department backchannels. Lisa Shields,
then- Google Executive Eric
Schmidt's girlfriend and vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations, reached out
through one of WikiLeak's own, Joseph Farrell, to confirm it was indeed WikiLeaks calling to
speak with Clinton. [snip]
'But in an act of gross negligence the Guardian newspaper -- our former partner -- had
published the confidential decryption
password to all 251,000 cables in a chapter heading in its book, rushed out hastily in
February 2011.(1) By mid-August we discovered that a former German employee -- whom I had
suspended in 2010 -- was cultivating business relationships with a variety of organizations and
individuals by shopping around the location of the encrypted file, paired with the password's
whereabouts in the book. At the rate the information was spreading, we estimated that within
two weeks most intelligence agencies, contractors, and middlemen would have all the cables, but
the public would not.'
Background on
the Rassmussen story to make sure he was elected head of NATO by shutting down Roj TV:
Interview: Roj TV, ECHR and Wikileaks by Naila Bozo
Note: Easy Copying from the Café to the Café didn't go well. Everything
doubled up, and not in the same order, and none of the quotation font colors hopped aboard. But
it is what it is, and trying to repair it further seems Quixotic.
Unfortunately, the deeper point is being missed. The Transnational Financiers, who control
the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, the military industrial complex,
Silicon Valley, Academia, Education, think tanks, politicians plus political parties, don't
care about the US of the Western world. Their goal is a NWO as described by the insider
Professor Carol Quigley's book, Tragedy and Hope. Rule by a small nucleus of central bankers
ie The Bank of International Settlements and controlled via technocrats. They have no
allegiance to countries, nations, ideology but themselves. Paul is spot on one point it's not
democrat via republican or left via right but them against the rest of humanity!
What is noticeable here is a bit of a contrast between those who live in the US and those
who don't. The former group is naturally very attached to the country and are getting very
emotional over its fate. This is understandable but not defensible. The United States has no
right to a divine appeal or special treatment. It is a witch's cauldron into which the poor
and benighted of the world were thrown only to be turned into tormentors of others by means
of some strange black alchemy. We are now witnessing the weakening of the spell and awakening
of the enchanted masses.
The exhibition of high emotion doesn't seem appropriate here because simply, there is
nothing to mourn. The golden 1950s? That was a fluke based entirely on the outcome of WWII
– the world had been devastated, the US cocooned and protected – and it gave us
the Dulles brothers. 1960s and 1970s? A conservative's nightmare – legions of
long-haired parasites, jangly guitars, LSD, womens' lib and the ultimate humiliation of
NAM!
So when was this golden age? Under Reagan? Well, this is when the dismantling of the inner
core of the empire began. Would Dr Roberts still advocate Reaganomics and dark cold war
threats combined with the destruction of the American working class?
In the end, a number of people have remarked that after decades of ballooning into a
malignant quasi-empire, the US is painfully finding its true level. The "rebellion" being
discussed here was a farce (as confirmed by the stock market) and these are just dummy moves
orchestrated to placate the proles (look, this is just the beginning – since 2016).
Dr Roberts confirms something I said yesterday – what kind of rebellion is possible
in a country with two dozen super-endowed and powerful spying organisations and a super
well-armed internal suppression apparatus? The libertarians over at ZH ask these questions
– but the curse of the CIA is completely self-inflicted and richly deserved. One does
not create a modern unholy inquisition and expect to be able to escape its tentacles.
People talk about hope and optimism. This is the view of an outsider who has been affected
by American global criminality. There cannot be any hope or optimism for the USA until it
fully renounces its collective psychopathy which has cost the world millions of lives and
billions of dollars (not for long) in value.
"It's the height of hypocrisy for people who claim to be the champions of rights for women
to deny the very biological existence of women," former Democratic presidential candidate
Tulsi Gabbard, who just might be the last Democrat in DC with a functioning brain, told
Tucker Carlson. "Instead of doing something that could actually help save people's lives,
they are choosing instead to say 'You can't say mother or father.'"
I would ask for an 'Amen!' at this point, but, thanks to the clown work of lawmaker
Emanuel Cleaver, who ended his congressional prayer opening of the very unsexy 117th
Congress with the words "amen and awoman," even that simple gender-free term (which simply
means 'so be it') is now tainted with foul political intrigue.
With these sort of unforgivable stunts under the belt, the Democrats should be very
grateful they have perfected the art of 'winning' elections, otherwise they would probably
vanish from the political landscape simply out of lack of doing anything positive for the
nation. Indeed, the term 'Democrat' may be on the way out faster than that of 'male' and
'female.'
A Republic is, by definition, an oligarchy. We just refuse to acknowledge what it truly
is. Put some lipstick on the pig.
But ours is not a pure Republic because we do have democratic referendums all of the time
where the people get to make laws that a majority want. We need more of them.
We don't have any at the federal level but there is nothing that prohibits them. Under
Amendment 10 all powers not granted to the federal government are granted to the states and
the people . The implication is that powers left to the people can be exercised by
referendum. Referendums are really the only check on oligarchy.
Definitely staged event, whether the protestors knew or didn't. Going forward, I'm
switching to Signal from WhatsApp and viber, have to rethink my use of Gmail as well. Don't
use faceborg or Jill Dorsey's twat. Enough is enough!
It's what I said would happen in the other thread:
Watching the spectacle from a far a couple of things stand out for me.
This event has really put the fear of God into the DC political class. When you see the
photos of the politicians during this event you see real fear. I bet not one of them ever
thought that the people would be so fed up with the DC political class that they would
storm the Capitol to show their frustration. Such behaviour was simply un-American. It was
things you saw on TV happening in far away places. Never would such scenes ever happen in
the good ole' USA.
The second thing that stands out for me is that the American people have reached their
wits end with the political class and are prepared to do what no-one ever thought they
would do. Storm the Capitol! Disorganised as it was. What can they achieve with real
organisation!
So now the people realise they have power in a collective and this power has put the
fear of God in the people they despise. This has truly been a transformative event both for
the political class and both for the people.
You can see this fear in the hysterical way the DC political class has reacted to this
event. I don't think this hysteria is fake. I think it is quite real. They are so desperate
to regain control of the "narrative" that they are flooding this forum (as pointed out
eloquently by William Gruff, and no doubt many other forums) with sock puppets to denounce
anyone who disagrees with the establishment view.
This hysteria is going to lead to an over reaction which will in turn spur these people
not just to lob a Molotov cocktail (politically speaking) at the DC political class but to
become one themselves.
There is nothing so dangerous as a person with nothing to lose and nothing so fearful as
a man with everything to lose.
How it will play out I don't know, but the old normal has been shattered.
That the USA is a single-party with two branches that play "good cop, bad cop" already
is consensus among serious historians, sociologists, political scientists etc. The news
here is that this system won't change with Biden.
The Vandal sack of Rome of 455 CE was a completely different scenario. By that time,
Rome had only symbolic importance to the Empire, and already was at an advanced stage of
economic decay. Indeed, that's the main factor that differentiates the High from the Late
Empire: the end of Italic hegemony, and the economic rise of the Eastern cities (Nicomedia,
Antioch, Constantinople, Nicephorum etc.). Or, on a second thought, is it? Is the USA in
really such advanced stage of economic decline? Only time will tell.
One last observation is that people usually confuse change with revolution. A given
society doesn't need to go through any revolution in order to change itself. On the
contrary: societal change is always happening, as we talk. What makes revolutions special
is the fact that the previously exploited class becomes the dominant class; they turn the
society upside down (hence the name).
But even a society that avoids any revolution will still change and eventually
degenerate and die. Personally, I like prof. Moniz Bandeira's "Mutazione dello Stato",
literally "mutation of the State", which describes a situation where the contradictions of
society (development of the productive forces and the relations of production) continues to
develop without a revolutionary situation or scenario. In this case, the USA is
"mutating".
We've been in this environment since 911. It's been one continual project, not something
new being being imposed. It's a continual tightening of society, including the
Pandemic.
It's all been allowed to happen for an obvious agenda of compliance and control. From
'riots' of BLM/Antifa to the 'insurrection' of Trumpeteers, the point is to narrow accepted
thought - to manufacture consent, which is much easier with an un or misinformed populace.
A social credit system is coming to the west - call it the Karen Revolution.
Democracy is not an option, and never has been. Time to network with slow-mail and smoke
signals, because as an organizing principle beyond sales and marketing, the internet's days
are numbered.
Yes, the only difference is that one side, the deplorables, are speaking truth to power.
The other side is conviently putting its head in the sand right now and begging for more
federal overreach.
I have tried to explain over the past while, that what we are seeing in the US is an
ongoing coup, This is a coup against the US people by the US corporate and financial
oligarchs. Clearly, they are benefiting by not simply enriching themselves at taxpayers
expense, but securing their own criminal amoral behaviour through the supression of human
rights and what is left of the freedom of speech in the US. This is accelaerating
exponentially and has been going on long before Trump came on the scene.
Avoid paying attention to the distractions, and keep your eye on the ball.
Stealing the election. Trying to remove Trump from office, with two weeks to go, and
'erase' him from the internet (and politics and whatelse?). Turning the U.S. into a
de-facto police state. And the rush to do this all very quickly.
This smacks of desperation.
What are their Dems (rather their Deep State and 'Globalist' bosses) afraid of?
I have tried to explain over the past while, that what we are seeing in the US is an
ongoing coup, This is a coup against the US people by the US corporate and financial
oligarchs. Clearly, they are benefiting by not simply enriching themselves at taxpayers
expense, but securing their own criminal amoral behaviour through the supression of human
rights and what is left of the freedom of speech in the US. This is accelaerating
exponentially and has been going on long before Trump came on the scene.
Avoid paying attention to the distractions, and keep your eye on the ball.
I have tried to explain over the past while, that what we are seeing in the US is an
ongoing coup, This is a coup against the US people by the US corporate and financial
oligarchs. Clearly, they are benefiting by not simply enriching themselves at taxpayers
expense, but securing their own criminal amoral behaviour through the supression of human
rights and what is left of the freedom of speech in the US. This is accelaerating
exponentially and has been going on long before Trump came on the scene.
Avoid paying attention to the distractions, and keep your eye on the ball.
Trump was right on the big tech, he tried to warn about their power for many years, now
big-tech crack down on him and his supporters.
The leftwingers at Big tech really proved his point, they are a enormous threat.
Liberals and leftwingers cheer today, they are people that pick tribalism before freedom
of speeech, so disgusting.
"... Unlike most democracies, the USA is dominated by just two parties that use propaganda to fight for control of the power that Government provides. Republicans stand firmly by Milton Friedman, openly and honestly promoting the best interests of the ruling class and against FDR's New Deal that had transformed the quality of life for hundreds of millions of workers. Republicans are a minority but well organized, well funded and speak with a disciplined message. ..."
"... The Democrat Party leadership has the same agenda because both parties operate in a completely privatized communication system which demands enormous sums of cash to participate. Like everything else in America the two parties can be characterized as businesses that use BS to collect money to give to the mass media, in their endless struggle for political power. Although there are many regional variations across time and geographic regions, Democrats tend to hold a 5% advantage over Republicans, but both parties are rightly held in distain by the 40% of voters who consider themselves to be "independent". Independent or not most elections force American voters back into a choice between Democrat or Republican. ..."
I first became aware of Paul Craig Roberts (PCR) during the depression of 2008 when events
led to my armchair education in economics. PCR contributed to my education along with Michael
Hudson, Steven Keen, Jospeph Stiglitz and others. I learned that economics is an inexact
science full of falsehoods that serve the ruling class in their war against the working
class. A primary falsehood promoted by the Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman is
that unregulated free markets produce the greatest prosperity for the greatest number of
people. Friedman's Chicago School of economics, which dominates US policy under the guise of
freedom and democracy, has actually spread poverty, death and destruction for hundreds of
millions of people throughout the world. Friedman's logic seemingly justifies exploitation of
the working class by the ruling class in the great class war defined by Marx. Most Americans
have benefited from these policies in so far as they were imposed on third world countries
even though they are currently suffering as they have been incrementally imposed on our
domestic population, leading to a growing popularity for political outliers like Donald Trump
and Bernie Sanders.
Unlike most democracies, the USA is dominated by just two parties that use propaganda
to fight for control of the power that Government provides. Republicans stand firmly by
Milton Friedman, openly and honestly promoting the best interests of the ruling class and
against FDR's New Deal that had transformed the quality of life for hundreds of millions of
workers. Republicans are a minority but well organized, well funded and speak with a
disciplined message.
The Democrat Party leadership has the same agenda because both parties operate in a
completely privatized communication system which demands enormous sums of cash to
participate. Like everything else in America the two parties can be characterized as
businesses that use BS to collect money to give to the mass media, in their endless struggle
for political power. Although there are many regional variations across time and geographic
regions, Democrats tend to hold a 5% advantage over Republicans, but both parties are rightly
held in distain by the 40% of voters who consider themselves to be "independent". Independent
or not most elections force American voters back into a choice between Democrat or
Republican.
Trump is not a leader, populist or intellectual thinker. His only concern is himself and
his immediate family. He spends his time tweeting, golfing while eating and promoting junk
food. He seeks immediate profits for himself and his donors in a political system which pays
out 10:1 on investments in successful political candidates, where pay back is realized in tax
benefits. Trump is a successful self promoter who has a few good ideas and the most
substantial following of any Republican politician. But his behavior is too erratic to ever
bring his good ideas to fruition, or you could simply say ge is too lazy to bother.
ump used populist issues, Republican gerrymandering, Republican voter caging and purging
to overcome popular vote losses in 2016 but not 2020. Since 2000 American democratic voting
systems have rightly suffered a credibility gap, which Greg Pallast has documented but is
largely ignored by the mass media and Government which prefers to imagine us as the greatest
democracy ever. Trump has been able to use these problems to sow doubts about the credibility
of the 2020 outcome, even though our voting systems have been much improved on since
2000.
A Princeton Study documented that the USA operates more like an Oligarchy than a Democracy
by studying who benefited from 2000 pieces of legislation. The exclusive beneficiaries of all
that legislation by Democrats and Republicans are the wealthiest Americans that fund the
majority of duopoly activity. This fact helps to explain how wealth is being concentrated
into fewer and fewer hands..
You have to look back as far as Eisenhower and Kennedy to find Presidents dedicated to
promoting the general welfare, one of our constitutional mandates. Since that period,
election results have trapped the US population in a neoliberal economic system where the
vast majority of elected officials are mere figureheads. Biden and Harriss's record is no
exception to that rule. The "establishment" can be characterized as the military industrial
complex, ruling class, .001% or in a variety of other ways. I am not sure how PCR defines
that term, but they write and enforce the laws we all live by:
The use of money, the mass media and propaganda to vilify individuals and wage class war
is a great American past time. That is how Johnson attacked Goldwater and Bush 41 attacked
Dukakis. It is hardly unique to Trump's situation and if anything Trump is a master media
manipulator and name caller.
The history of man is the history of man's enslavement of other men usually under some
form of capitalism. When white people gained certain technological advantages over other
people, they used that technology ruthlessly to gain wealth. This is not unique to white
western culture, but it is an undeniable aprt of human history. Abraham Lincoln said that
capital cannot be accumulated without the contribution of labor, and therefore labor deserves
the first consideration. But we live in a world controlled by capitalists and the only thing
worse than being exploited by capitalists is not being exploited by them
Since the New Deal, the US has been on a path determined by the Friedman school of
economics. This has included the shuttering of mental health hospitals. As a result there are
many white psychotic males running around in a country with more individual guns than the
Chinese Army possesses. There is a real need to control access to these weapons, regardless
of the meaning of the original intent of the second amendment. One legitimate interpretation
of the term "militia" was white armed conscripts used to persistently intimidate and lynch
black slaves which far outnumber wealthy plantation owners. That said hunting is a legitimate
use of firearms even if slavery and war are impossible to justify.
Like Reagan, Trump has fomented racial and gender conflict as a successful political
strategy in a country which still is largely white, even though that proportion is
unsustainable. Whether the Covid-19 epidemic serves a similar political function can be
debated. However, as long as the US and other major powers operate bio-weapons and nuclear
weapons labs life on earth faces unnecessary risks. This website has documented that the 1918
"Spanish Flu" epidemic was most likely started in Kansas from a Rockefeller funded biological
research lab. The post 9-11 anthrax attack through the SU mail was almost certainly a
deliberate attack by a misguided rogue scientist in one of our labs. Bio-weapons and Nuclear
labs should be shut down through international agreements, the initiation of which began
during the Kennedy Presidency. But, unfortunately, the reverse is happening. Trump has even
suggested we should be more willing to use nuclear weapons to get our way, as long as we are
building them.
Overpopulation of the world is a serious problem. Global warming and US war mongering has
created tens of millions of refugees which must immigrate or die. Increases in population
densities everywhere decreases the quality of our lives and needs to be controlled. But to do
so effectively we must attempt to address the underlying causes of mass immigration. Most
people would prefer to live in te culture they were raised in as long as they can make a
decent living.
Under J Edgar Hoover, blacks, liberals, socialists and communists were enemy number one.
Our country has a long history of using the police to contain unrest in the working class.
While Hoover was the most extreme, you are still far more likely to suffer death or other
injury promulgated by the State if you are poor and considered to be part of any of the
groups Hoover vilified. Occupy Wall Street and Black lives Matter protestors were treated
much more brutally than any right wing extremists in support of Trump. Compare the caution
exercised by police during the Ted Bundy grazing conflict standoff and its aftermath with the
Black Panthers and PCR's assertions do not hold up.
Actually Tucker Carlson is one of those people and props to the guy for telling us working
class Whites what "our elite white leader trash" have always thought about us. Of course
Tucker won't dare mention the Jew, but at least he clues us in on white traitor trash that
claim to be superior by avoid being seen near chain restaurants and hotels.
Of course we KNOW that the Jew and his elite shabbos goy only think of the common Black
and Brown foot soldiers as pets as well, these cats are the real Supremacists. These
(((elitists))) will dump the Black and Brown grunts for the Yellow ones, believe that as
well.
I've been following her work for several months now and think her premises much sounder
than Matthew Ehret's, who are actually on the same Canadian team. Generally, the three of us
are working on exposing the rise and spread of what's now known as Neoliberalism. And of
course, there's Dr. Hudson who's ahead of us all.
The line of investigation initiated by Upton Sinclair into the shared Board memberships at
key elite universities within the USA that erased the traditional teaching of
political-economy and replaced it with the mathematical economics which lie at the root of
Neoliberalism's Junk Economics
I see as very promising as they're also prominent bankers and Old Money with social
connections to England's Royalty and Nobility--the primary members of Europe's Rentier
Class . When I look over the comments, many have forgotten just what Class owns the
Duopoly and controls the federal government. Trump was never allowed into their circle but
was used by some of its members in the pursuit of interests that are still shrouded in fog.
My working hypothesis there is they were quite worried that too much industrial capacity had
been foreclosed and moved such that it caused a real threat to national security; thus the
need for MAGA.
With the rise of the Eurasian Bloc, the "threat" isn't military; it's economic. As I wrote
earlier today, an economy based on consumerism will collapse when the consumers can no longer
consume. Hudson's 100% correct that debt's that can't be repaid won't. The current degree of
economic polarization is miniscule compared to what might ensue if the Bidenites don't
forestall it--200 Million people bankrupt while 100 Million have good paying jobs and can
afford their debts--the remaining 40-50 Million are mostly impoverished children. This time
the part of the public that gets shafted as in 2009 under Obama isn't going to sit still, and
what happened in DC will be repeated elsewhere with meaning this time. A genuine MAGA Fascist
wanting control will need to disarm the Rentier Class and the Swamp thus ousting the
current "Friendly Fascist" regime--and that would require a paramilitary since that's
basically what composes the Swamp--Civil War between two Factions of Reaction that would also
split the military. Wonder what barflies think of all that?
Earlier in the week I linked to the latest Renegade Inc program which had Dr.
Hudson as one of the guests. That show's
transcript is now available. Here's an excerpt with Ross Ashcroft asking a question:
"Ross: What do you think are the megatrends that we should be looking at in 2021? What do
you think is the direction of travel, if you like, for so-called developed economies?
"Michael Hudson: Well, the big trend in any economy is the growth of debt, because the
debt grows exponentially. The economy has painted itself into a debt corner. We can see that
in real estate. We can see that for small business. There's also almost no way to recover.
The Federal Reserve has been printing quantitative easing to keep stock and bonds high. But
for the real economy, the trend is polarization and lower employment.
"The trend also is that state and local finances are broke, especially in the biggest
cities, New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. They're not getting income tax revenue
from the unemployed or closed businesses. They're not getting the real estate tax with so
many defaults and mortgage arrears. In New York City there's talk of cutting back the subways
by 70 percent. People will be afraid to take the subways when they're overcrowded with people
with the virus. So you're having a breakdown not only in state and local finances, but of
public services that are state run – public transportation services, health services,
education is being downsized. Everything that is funded out of state and local budgets is
going to suffer.
"And living standards are going to be very sharply downward as people realize how many
services they got are dependent on public infrastructure."
And this one I must also include:
"Ross: What is the one thing that has really surprised you in 2020? What have you laughed
at? What has given you a chuckle?
"Michael Hudson: The surprise – that I really shouldn't have been surprised at
– is how naive Bernie Sanders supporters were in thinking that they were going to get a
fair deal and that the elections were going to be fair. The illusion is that people were
actually going to have a fair election when the last thing the vested interests wanted was
Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or any kind of reformer. So what happened to Sanders is
what happened to Corbyn in Britain and the Labour Party's neoliberal leadership.
"So what's for laughs? I guess, Tulsi Gabbard's takedown of Kamala Harris was absolutely
wonderful. Everybody just broke out laughing, cheering for her. And of course, that's why she
was marginalized, and now we have Kamala Harris as the senior vice president."
Of course, none of the dire economic news is being reported with the focus instead on Wall
Street's markets, with much of the public just as brainwashed about it as Trump. The last
third focuses on politics, which is what most barflies want to read about. So, click the link
and read what Dr. Hudson sees in the tea leaves.
"... Democrats decisively outraised their opponents, giving them a critical edge. Ossoff outraised Perdue by $138 million to $89 million while Warnock received $124 million to Loeffler's $92 million. With over 98% of the votes counted, Warnock has been declared the winner, with 50.6% of the vote. Ossoff, meanwhile, is all but assured of winning as well, and has already declared victory. ..."
"... Thus, both contests have conformed to political scientist Thomas Ferguson's "Golden Rule" of politics: that the party that spends the most almost always wins the election. Ferguson's 1995 thesis , "The Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems," argued that elections are essentially contests between rival big businesses and that the two political parties compete to serve those who pay them, not the public. Nearly 20 years later, a University of Princeton study of 1,779 policy issues found that, ..."
"... Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence." ..."
"... Data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows that, since 2000, the candidate spending the most money has won between 70% and 98% of their races in the House or Senate ..."
"... the real winners in this election were corporate America, who could not lose, whoever won. ..."
In order to beat GOP incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the Georgia Senate
elections, Democrats had to spend big, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in the
process.
The two Georgia Senate elections -- called today for the Democrats -- were easily the most
costly in history, amounting to nearly $830 million in total ($468 million for the race between
Democrat Joey Ossoff and Republican David Perdue and more than $361 million for the special
election between Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock and Republican Kelly Loeffler.
The Democrats' massive war chest came in no small part from hefty contributions from
corporate America. According to data from the Center for
Responsive Politics , tech companies rallied around the Democratic challengers, plying the
two campaigns with millions of dollars. Alphabet Inc., Google's parent organization, was the
largest single source of funds, their PACs, shareholders, or employees donating almost $1
million to Ossoff's campaign alone with other big tech companies cracking his top ten, all with
hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donations from the like of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon,
Facebook, and AT&T. The rest of the top ten were made up by universities.
The Republican candidates also relied on large corporations for much of their funding.
Perdue's biggest donors included Delta Airlines, Home Depot, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of
America, while Loeffler was generously supported by oil and chemical giant Koch Industries as
well as a number of financial institutions like Ryan LLC and Blackstone Group.
However, Democrats decisively outraised their opponents, giving them a critical edge.
Ossoff outraised Perdue by $138 million to $89 million while Warnock received $124 million to
Loeffler's $92 million. With over 98% of the votes counted, Warnock has been declared the
winner, with 50.6% of the vote. Ossoff, meanwhile, is all but assured of winning as well, and
has
already declared victory.
Thus, both contests have conformed to political scientist Thomas Ferguson's "Golden
Rule" of politics: that the party that spends the most almost always wins the election.
Ferguson's 1995 thesis , "The Golden
Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political
Systems," argued that elections are essentially contests between rival big businesses and that
the two political parties compete to serve those who pay them, not the public. Nearly 20 years
later, a University of Princeton
study of 1,779 policy issues found that,
Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial
independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest
groups have little or no independent influence."
https://cdn.iframe.ly/oNuYTi0?v=1&app=1
Empirical evidence seems to support this notion. Data from the Center for
Responsive Politics shows that, since 2000, the candidate spending the most money has won
between 70% and 98% of their races in the House or Senate
The 2020 election was already by far the most expensive in history, even before the Georgia
numbers were added into the mix. The sums of $468 million and $361 million are comfortably
higher than any of those from two months ago, the most expensive of which was the $299 million
contest in North Carolina between Thom Tillis (Republican) and Cal Cunningham (Democrat).
Many were heralding the Democratic upset in Georgia as the start of a new era and a victory
against racism and hate. "The votes of Black people have been suppressed in this nation for a
very long time. This is the dawning of a new day," said Bernice King, daughter of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Warnock, who will become the state's first black senator, agreed.
"Tonight we proved that with hope, hard work, and the people by our side, anything is possible
All of us have a choice to make; will we continue to divide, distract and dishonor one another,
or will we love our neighbors as we love ourselves?" he said in his victory speech.
Yet while corporations continue to have such an outsized role in funding both major
political parties, it is unclear whether substantive change is even possible. The debate over
whether this represents a victory for racial justice can be had, but what seems unmistakable is
that the real winners in this election were corporate America, who could not lose, whoever
won.
Feature photo | Senate candidate Jon Ossoff introduces President-elect Joe Biden in Atlanta,
Jan. 4, 2021, as he campaigns for Raphael Warnock and Ossoff. Carolyn Kaster | AP
US Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is calling out her party for pushing through a
new code of conduct that essentially denies women exist by requiring gender-neutral language in
Congressional rules.
"It's the height of hypocrisy for people who claim to be the champions of rights for
women to deny the very biological existence of women," Gabbard said on Monday night in an
interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
New guidelines introduced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday and passed Monday by
Congress in a party-line vote endeavor to "honor all gender identities" by making all
pronouns and references to familial relationships gender-neutral. For instance, "seamen"
has been changed to "seafarers," and House rules have been scrubbed of such words as
"father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister.""Aunt" and "uncle" will be
replaced by "parent's sibling." Lawmakers also must inculcate such words as
"parent-in-law,""stepsibling" and "sibling's child" to replace
"mother-in-law,""stepsister" and "niece.""He" or "she" references to House
members are instead "such member,""delegate" or "resident commissioner."
"It's mind-blowing because it shows just how out of touch with reality and the struggles
of everyday Americans people in Congress are," Gabbard said. "Also, their first act as
this new Congress could have been to make sure that elderly Americans are able to get the COVID
vaccine now , but instead of doing something that could actually help save people's lives,
they're choosing instead to say, 'Well, you can't say mother of father in any of this
congressional language.' It's astounding."
Congress also has made permanent its Office of Diversity and now requires all committees to
discuss in their oversight plans how they will address "inequities on the basis of race,
color, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age or
national origin." Committees also must "survey the diversity of witness panels at
committee hearings to ensure we are hearing from diverse groups of experts as we craft
legislation."
Gabbard has run afoul of Democratic Party orthodoxy repeatedly in the past two years,
opposing the impeachment of President Donald Trump, speaking out against election fraud,
opposing regime-change wars and blasting the controversial Netflix movie 'Cuties' as "
child porn ." She
embarrassed party favorite Kamala Harris, now vice president-elect, in a Democrat presidential
debate in 2019, and the Iraq War veteran called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the
" queen of warmongers
" after Clinton suggested that she's a Russian asset.
Gabbard, who didn't seek a new term in Congress, was attacked as a "transphobe" and
"bigot" after introducing a bill last month to limit participation in women's sports to
biological females. The movement to "deny the existence of biological women – it
defies common sense, it defies basic, established science, it just doesn't make any sense,"
she told Carlson on Monday.
"No wonder they called you a Russian spy," Carlson replied. "It's dangerous to
have you in the Democratic Party. I'm sorry you're leaving [Congress]."
Republicans praised Gabbard's latest contradiction of Democrat talking points. "Can we
please trade Mitt Romney for her?" one Twitter user asked. Brazilian entrepreneur Daniel
Gonzalez called her "the best Democrat since JFK."
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) was among the many Republicans who
opposed Pelosi's rules changes. "This is stupid," he said. "Signed, a father, son and
brother."
"... It is difficult to know or to ensure that the ballots are actual ballots from registered voters. For example in the early hours of the morning of November 4 large ballot drops occurred in Michigan and Wisconsin that wiped out Trump's lead. State officials have reported that people not registered -- probably illegals -- were permitted to vote. Postal service workers have reported being ordered to backdate ballots that suddenly appeared in the middle of the night after the deadline. These techniques were used to erase Trump's substantial leads in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. ..."
"... Digital technology has also made it easy to alter vote counts. US Air Force General Thomas McInerney is familiar with this technology. He says it was developed by the National Security Agency in order to interfere in foreign elections, but now is in the hands of the CIA and was used to defeat Trump. Trump is considered to be an enemy of the military/security complex because of his wish to normalize relations with Russia, thus taking away the enemy that justifies the CIA's budget and power. ..."
"... The military/security complex favors the disunity that the Democrat Party and media have fostered with their ideology of Identity Politics. ..."
"... I would take it a little further and say that voting by mail is a method of vote fraud. The supposed safeguards are easily circumvented, as some whistleblowers have illustrated with ballots being brought forth in large numbers after election day without postmarks and postal workers being ordered to stamp them with acceptable postmarks. ..."
"... Eisenhower is always lauded for his MIC warning. Frankly he ticks me off. Thanks for the warning AFTER you were in some position to mitigate. ..."
"... the most likely source of fraud that is hard to detect, is ballot harvesting. This should be outlawed as it violates the idea of a secret ballot. Somebody comes to the home of a disinterested voter and makes sure he votes (of course they will never admit to hounding the person) and "helps" them with the ballot. If the voter cannot be cajoled into voting the correct way, you merely throw his ballot in the trash. ..."
"... Living in an urban setting I often had to visit apartment buildings. Without fail, there was always a pile of undeliverable mail in the lobby under the mailboxes. ..."
"... His farewell address was just flapdoodle; it wasn't really dredged up till the 70s. Eisenhower spent eight years spreading tripwires and mines and then said "Watch out." Thanks buddy. ..."
"... As the German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte revealed in his book, Bought Journalism, the European and US media speak with one voice -- the voice of the CIA. The very profitable and powerful US military/security complex needs foreign enemies. ..."
"... inventive creative new ways to deceive.. first it was election machines, then mail in votes. ..."
"... The phrase "there's no evidence" is just a public commitment to ignore any evidence, no matter how blatant or obvious. ..."
"... Paper ballots as ascribed by Tulsi Gabbard legislation is the only safe option for elections. Kudos to Tulsi! ..."
"... Everyone knew about the potential for voter fraud to occur, but the entire system is corrupt, including Trump who has allowed the massive corruption within the system that was present when he entered office to persist and grow because he is a wimpy, spineless, coward, that was too afraid to make any waves and take the heat that he promised his voters. ..."
"... Why anyone voted for Trump in 2020 confounds me. I voted for him in 2016 and he has turned out to be one of the worst presidents in history. ..."
"... Trump in his cowardess and dishonesty knew that the ailing economy would harm his chances of being re-elected, so he allowed the health scare scamdemic to occur and destroy the livelihoods, lives, and businesses of hundreds of millions of Americans because he is a psychopath. Trump did not do what he promised. Trump made America worse than it has ever been since the end of slavery. ..."
"... Trump has also demanded the extradition of Assange after telling his voters that he loved wikileaks. Trump is a two-faced, lying, fraud. It has been his pattern. He consistently supports various groups and people like Wikileaks, Proud Boys, and others and panders to them and voters and tells people that he loves them, and then every time without fail when the heat is on, Trump says," I really don't know anything about them." ..."
"... "I know nothing." Trump saying "I know nothing." defines his presidency and who he is as a person, a spineless, pandering, corrupt, two-faced, narcissist, loser, and wimp! ..."
A few months ago it looked like the re-election of Trump was almost certain, but now there was a close race between Trump
and Biden? What happen during the last months?
In the months before the election, the Democrats used the "Covid pandemic" to put in place voting by mail. The argument was used
that people who safely go to supermarkets and restaurants could catch Covid if they stood in voting lines. Never before used on a
large scale, voting by mail is subject to massive vote fraud.
There are many credible reports of organized vote fraud committed by Democrats. The only question is whether the Republican establishment
will support challenging the documented fraud or whether Trump will be pressured to concede in order to protect the reputation of
American Democracy.
It is difficult to know or to ensure that the ballots are actual ballots from registered voters. For example in the early
hours of the morning of November 4 large ballot drops occurred in Michigan and Wisconsin that wiped out Trump's lead. State officials
have reported that people not registered -- probably illegals -- were permitted to vote. Postal service workers have reported being
ordered to backdate ballots that suddenly appeared in the middle of the night after the deadline. These techniques were used to erase
Trump's substantial leads in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia.
Digital technology has also made it easy to alter vote counts. US Air Force General Thomas McInerney is familiar with this
technology. He says it was developed by the National Security Agency in order to interfere in foreign elections, but now is in the
hands of the CIA and was used to defeat Trump. Trump is considered to be an enemy of the military/security complex because of his
wish to normalize relations with Russia, thus taking away the enemy that justifies the CIA's budget and power.
People do not understand. They think an election has been held when in fact what has occurred is that massive vote fraud has been
used to effect a revolution against red state white America. Leaders of the revolution, such as Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
are demanding a list of Trump supporters who are "to be held accountable." Calls are being made for the arrest of Tucker Carlson,
the only mainstream journalist who supported President Trump.
In a recent column I wrote:
"Think what it means that the entirety of the US media, allegedly the 'watchdogs of democracy,' are openly involved in participating
in the theft of a presidential election.
"Think what it means that a large number of Democrat public and election officials are openly involved in the theft of a presidential
election.
"It means that the United States is split irredeemably. The hatred for white people that has been cultivated for many years,
portraying white Americans as "systemic racists," together with the Democrats' lust for power and money, has destroyed national
unity. The consequence will be the replacement of rules with force."
Mainstream media in Europe claim, that Trump had "divided" the United States. But isn`t it actually the other way around,
that his opponents have divided the country?
As the German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte revealed in his book, Bought Journalism , the European and US media speak with
one voice -- the voice of the CIA. The very profitable and powerful US military/security complex needs foreign enemies. Russiagate
was a CIA/FBI successful effort to block Trump from reducing tensions with Russia. In 1961 in his last address to the American people
President Dwight Eisenhower warned that the growing power of the military/industrial complex was a threat to American democracy.
We ignored his warning and now have security agencies more powerful than the President.
The military/security complex favors the disunity that the Democrat Party and media have fostered with their ideology of Identity
Politics. Identity politics replaced Marxist class war with race and gender war. White people, and especially white heterosexual
males, are the new oppressor class. This ideology causes race and gender disunity and prevents any unified opposition to the security
agencies ability to impose its agendas by controlling explanations. Opposition to Trump cemented the alliance between Democrats,
media, and the Deep State.
It is possible that the courts will decide who will be sworn into office at January 20, 2021. Do you except a phase of uncertainty
or even a constitutional crisis?
There is no doubt that numerous irregularities indicate that the election was stolen and that the ground was well laid in advance.
Trump intends to challenge the obvious theft. However, his challenges will be rejected in Democrat ruled states, as they were part
of the theft and will not indict themselves. This means Trump and his attorneys will have to have constitutional grounds for taking
their cases to the federal Supreme Court. The Republicans have a majority on the Court, but the Court is not always partisan.
Republicans tend to be more patriotic than Democrats, who denounce America as racist, fascist, sexist, imperialist. This patriotism
makes Republicans impotent when it comes to political warfare that could adversely affect America's reputation. The inclination of
Republicans is for Trump to protect America's reputation by conceding the election. Republicans fear the impact on America's reputation
of having it revealed that America's other major party plotted to steal a presidental election.
Red state Americans, on the other hand, have no such fear. They understand that they are the targets of the Democrats, having
been defined by Democrats as "racist white supremacist Trump deplorables."
The introduction of a report of the Heritage Foundation states that "the United States has a long and unfortunate history
of election fraud". Are the 2020 presidential elections another inglorious chapter in this long history?
This time the fraud is not local as in the past. It is the result of a well organized national effort to get rid of a president
that the Establishment does not accept.
Somehow you get the impression that in the USA – as in many European countries democracy is just a facade – or am I wrong?
You are correct. Trump is the first non-establishment president who became President without being vetted by the Establishment
since Ronald Reagan. Trump was able to be elected only because the Establishment thought he had no chance and took no measures to
prevent his election. A number of studies have concluded that in the US the people, despite democracy and voting, have zero input
into public policy.
Democracy cannot work in America because the money of the elite prevails. American democracy is organized in order to prevent
the people from having a voice. A political campaign is expensive. The money for candidates comes from interest groups, such as defense
contractors, Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the Israel Lobby. Consequently, the winning candidate is indebted to his funders,
and these are the people whom he serves.
European mainstream media are portraying Biden as a luminous figure. Should Biden become president, what can be expected
in terms of foreign and security policy, especially in regard to China, Russia and the Middle East? I mean, the deep state and the
military-industrial complex remain surely nearly unchanged.
Biden will be a puppet, one unlikely to be long in office. His obvious mental confusion will be used either to rule through him
or to remove him on grounds of mental incompetence. No one wants the nuclear button in the hands of a president who doesn't know
which day of the week it is or where he is.
The military/security complex needs enemies for its power and profit and will be certain to retain the list of desirable foreign
enemies -- Russia, Iran, China, and any independent-inclined country in Latin America. Being at war is also a way of distracting
the people of the war against their liberties.
What the military/security complex might not appreciate is that among its Democrat allies there are some, such as Representative
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are ideological revolutionaries. Having demonized red state America and got rid of Trump (assuming
the electoral fraud is not overturned by the courts), Ocasio-Cortez and her allies intend to revolutionize the Democrat Party and
make it a non-establishment force. In her mind white people are the Establishment, which we already see from her demands for a list
of Trump supporters to be punished.
I think I'm not wrong in assuming that a Biden-presidency would mean more identity politics, more political correctness
etc. for the USA. How do you see this?
Identity politics turns races and genders against one another. As white people -- "systemic racists" -- are defined as the oppressor
class, white people are not protected from hate speech and hate crimes. Anything can be said or done to a white American and it is
not considered politically incorrect.
With Trump and his supporters demonized, under Democrat rule the transition of white Americans into second or third class citizens
will be completed.
How do you access Trump's first term in office? Where was he successful and where he failed?
Trump spent his entire term in office fighting off fake accusations -- Russiagate, Impeachgate, failure to bomb Russia for paying
Taliban to kill American occupiers of Afghanistan, causing Covid by not wearing a mask, and so on and on.
That Trump survived all the false charges shows that he is a real person, a powerful character. Who else could have survived what
Trump has been subjected to by the Establishment and their media prostitutes. In the United States the media is known as "presstitutes"
-- press prostitutes. That is what Udo Ulfkotte says they are in Europe. As a former Wall Street Journal editor, I say with complete
confidence that there is no one in the American media today I would have hired. The total absence of integrity in the Western media
is sufficient indication that the West is doomed.
Never before used on a large scale, voting by mail is subject to massive vote fraud.
I would take it a little further and say that voting by mail is a method of vote fraud. The supposed safeguards are easily
circumvented, as some whistleblowers have illustrated with ballots being brought forth in large numbers after election day without
postmarks and postal workers being ordered to stamp them with acceptable postmarks.
It really seems to me that there would be no democrat majorities in Congress or in so many state legislatures without vote
fraud.
Worse than the fraud available with vote by mail is the voting of people normally who don't bother to vote. Think of how stupid
and uninformed that average American voter is. Now realize how much more stupid and uninformed the non-voter is, only now he votes.
However, the most likely source of fraud that is hard to detect, is ballot harvesting. This should be outlawed as it violates
the idea of a secret ballot. Somebody comes to the home of a disinterested voter and makes sure he votes (of course they will
never admit to hounding the person) and "helps" them with the ballot. If the voter cannot be cajoled into voting the correct way,
you merely throw his ballot in the trash.
I have little doubt that there have been massive "irregularities", particularly in the so-called battleground states, that
are at play in "stealing" the election.
...The favourite phrase these days is "no evidence of wide spread voter fraud". Let's break that down. Only 6 states have been
challenged for vote fraud. In the big scheme of things, 6 states is not wide spread, even if there is massive vote fraud within
those 6 states. That the vote fraud is not widespread, implies that some vote fraud is acceptable, and that the listener should
ignore it. Last and most importantly, in the narrowest of legalistic terms, testimony or affidavits are not evidence. Testimony
and affidavits become evidence when supported by physical evidence. An affidavit with a photograph demonstrating the statement
would be evidence.
Another phrase is something like "election officials say they have seen no evidence of voter fraud". I have yet to hear a reporter
challenge the "seen no evidence of " part of the statement, regardless of the subject, by asking if the speaker had looked for
any evidence. They won't, because they know damn well no one has.
That is how the liars operate. Not so different from Rumsfeld's "plausible deniability".
Living in an urban setting I often had to visit apartment buildings. Without fail, there was always a pile of undeliverable
mail in the lobby under the mailboxes.
The envelopes were mostly addressed to people who had moved out or died. If ballots were sent to these people based on incorrect
voter rolls, then these too would likely have been left sitting on the floor or on a ledge for anyone to take.
It doesn't take a leap of faith to know what a Trump-hating leftist would do when no one is looking. This moral hazard was
intentionally created by Dems, who know that urban dwellers are transient and lean left politically.
Eisenhower is always lauded for his MIC warning. Frankly he ticks me off. Thanks for the warning AFTER you were in some
position to mitigate.
Ike's a mystery. Why did he NOT question Harry Truman's commitments to NATO, the UN, and all that rubbish? Ike was a WWII guy.
He knew Americans hated the UN in 1953 as much as they hated the League of Nations after WWI. But he let it all slide and get
bigger.
His farewell address was just flapdoodle; it wasn't really dredged up till the 70s. Eisenhower spent eight years spreading
tripwires and mines and then said "Watch out." Thanks buddy.
Well, agree on your points however, on the other side of the ledger, he never understood the stupidity of the Korean war (that
he could have ended) and majorly up-ramped CIA activities in all manner of regime change (bay of pigs anyone?). Almost a direct
path to our foreign policy now (and now domestic policy)
He did deploy the military assistance advisory group to Vietnam in 1955. This is considered the beginning of U.S. involvement
in the war. This allowed the French to moonwalk out the back door leaving us holding the bag. In fairness this was Johnson's war
however. Eisenhower did cut the military budget as a peace dividend to fund interstate system and other domestic projects. In
today political spectrum he would be considered a flaming liberal.
As the German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte revealed in his book, Bought Journalism, the European and US media speak
with one voice -- the voice of the CIA. The very profitable and powerful US military/security complex needs foreign enemies.
What intrigues me is the ultimate political goal of the UN and the WEF when they anticipate a single global government centered
at the UN and the absence of nation-states.
So what is the MIC going to do when there are no existential threats of competing nation-states? Or will the MIC re-engineer
religious wars between the various religious groups, secular and theological? It seems the aspirations of the WEF and its fellow
travellers preclude the occurrence of future armed conflicts.
Of course one needs capitalistic economies to produce the ordnance and materiels for the engineered social factions to war
with each other. Yet if the Greens have their way, there will be no mining period.
More likely is the possibility that none of them actually understand what they are doing. As Nassim Taleb is alleged to have
remarked, 99% of humans are stupid.
The total absence of integrity in the Western media is sufficient indication that the West is doomed.
It's because Western media is completely under the control of Jews, the world's foremost End Justifies Means people. The Fourth
Estate has become the world's most powerful Bully Pulpit. There are still a few good ones though, brave souls they are: Kim Strassel
of WSJ, Daniel Larison of The American Conservative , Neil Munro of Breitbart.
The rest are more or less lying scums, including everyone on NYTimes, WSJ, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, MSNBC, Fox News (minus
Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo), The Economist , and let's not forget the new media: Google, Facebook, Twitter. The
world would be a much better place without any of them.
@Beavertales
-- with either vote flipping on machines or having the totals that paper ballot scanners tabulate adjust via a pre-programmed
algorithm. Many elections have already been stolen this way.
Nancy Pelosi claims that Biden's victory gives the Democrats a "MANDATE" to alter the economy as they see fit with 50.5%.
This proves that Biden will NOT represent everyone – only the left! I have warned that this has been their agenda from day one.
Now, three whistleblowers from the Democratic software company Dominion Voting Systems, alleging that the company's software stole
38 million votes from Trump. There are people claiming that Dominion Voting Systems is linked to Soros, Dianae Finesteing, Clintons,
and Pelosi's husband. I cannot verify any of these allegations so far.
We are at the Rubicon. Civil War is on the other side. There should NEVER be this type of drastic change to the economy
from Capitalism to Marxism on 50.5% of the popular vote. NOBODY should be able to restructure the government and the economy on
less than 2/3rds of the majority. That would be a mandate. Trying to change everything with a claim of 50.5% of the vote will
only signal, like the Dread Scot decision, that there is no solution by rule of law. This is the end of civilization and it will
turn ugly from here because there is no middle ground anymore. As I have warned, historically the left will never tolerate opposition.
Yes, the theft is blatant. But what are you, us, going to do about it? We really can't do much as the Office of the President
Elect requires us to wear masks. For our safety.
"in the narrowest of legalistic terms, testimony or affidavits are not evidence. Testimony and affidavits become evidence when
supported by physical evidence. " Correct – but they also can become evidence by verbal testimony. ie "I saw the defendant hit
the victim with a rock"
Not only have they stolen the election but when Joe Biden and other democrats claim that President Trump caused the deaths
of hundreds of thousands of Americans because of his handling of Covid 19, they are in sane. No world leader could stop the spread
of this respiratory virus. However, Joe Biden and democrats have caused the deaths of hundreds of white people, while whipping
up weak minded people to kill many whites. Biden and the democrats are criminals. Any one who is white, man or woman, that supports
the democratic party is enabling a criminal organization to perpetrate violence on white people, including murder.
Since the article was from a German magazine it's understandable that there is no mention of "the one who shall not be named".
No mention of the people behind the Lawfare group, the same people behind the impeachment, the same people providing financial
and ideological support for the BLM/Antifa, the same people that own the media that spewed lies for 5 years and censored any mention
of the Biden family corruption, no mention of the people behind this Color Revolution, the same people who promoted the mail in
voting and those that managed the narrative for the media on election night to stop Trump's momentum.
For the public consumption the election will be described in vague terms, like this article, blaming special interests and
institutions like the FBI, CIA and MIC without naming names as if an institution, not the oligarchs and chosen pulling the strings,
are somehow Marxist, anti-white or anti-Christian.
The interviewer quotes the Heritage Foundation does anyone even care what they say? The English Tavistock Institute by way
of the CIA which the British molded from the OSS created programs for the Heritage Foundation as well as the Hoover Institute,
MIT, Stanford University, Wharton, Rand etc. These "rightwing think tanks" were created to counter the CIA's "leftwing think tanks"
at Columbia, Berkeley etc. Thank you British Intelligence.
Steve Bannon was just interviewing someone (can't remember his name). Apparently there are about 200 to 300 IT professionals/engineers
working on these so-called "glitches" (not glitches at all) which mysteriously "disappeared" thousands of Trump votes. Then they'd
dump phony Biden votes into the mix. These IT professionals are going to follow the trail.
I've also heard that Dominion Voting Systems played a big part in this scam by using algorithms. One Trump lawyer said that
big revelations are coming.
We're going to have to be patient and just wait.
"The inclination of Republicans is for Trump to protect America's reputation by conceding the election."
I honestly think it's more like the old established Republicans (corporate bought) want Trump to lose because that is what
their campaign donors want (Big Pharma, Wall Street, etc.) They are part of the elite, and the elite (both the Democrats AND Republicans)
want Trump gone so they can continue their crony capitalist looting. They've got to appear like they're behind Trump, but I don't
think they are. Of course, that's not all Republican representatives.
Sounds like they've been rigging elections for awhile now. I bet they just messed up with Hillary. I think that's why she was
so upset. She had it, but they screwed up and didn't supply enough ballots.
@KenHinventive creative new ways to deceive.. first it was election machines, then mail in votes. next it will be magic carpet
voting. But the votes don't count, cause it is the electoral college that elects the President.
Trump also lost a significant number who did not understand Trump was an Israeli at heart, they thought he was a uncoothed
NYC red blooded American.
As far as white, black or pokadot color or any of the religions ganging up against Trump I don't think that happened, the fall
out into statistically discoverable categories is just that, fall out, not those categories conspiring to vote or not vote one
way or the other.
PCR seems to have trouble seeing a difference between the counting of perfectly proper votes which Pres Trump's post office
delivered late which may or may not be allowed by law which can be determined in court, and fraud like the dead voting or votes
being forged.
The fraud is all so transparent but no one in the power elite seems to give a crap whether the public catches on or not these
days. They know that the entire media which creates the false matrix of contrived "truth" that we all live in will back them to
the hilt because they are actually just one more working part in the grand conspiracy. We all know that when "O'Brian" says 2
+ 2 equals 5 we must all believe it, or at least say we do. We interface with "O'Brian's" minions on a daily basis but we don't
know the ultimate identity of "O'Brian" (in the singular or multiple). Many guesses are made, but they hide that from us fairly
well with the aid of their militaries and "intelligence" agencies (aka secret police in other times and places).
For example in the early hours of the morning of November 4 large ballot drops occurred in Michigan and Wisconsin that wiped
out Trump's lead.
In a very similar vein, it is the same thing that happened to Bernie Sanders during the primary's. Joe was down and out, and
Bernie was enjoying the lead and then "Bam!" Overnight Joe is back on top.
Well, fool me once,,,,,, .,and blah, blah whatever Bush said .
Dr Roberts has referenced in the interview a UR article that goes into considerable detail about the massive electoral fraud
by the Democrats and their partners. You've obviously not bothered to read it.
You're like one of those MSM hacks who denies electoral fraud without making any attempt to look at the evidence.
@Begemot
And it's almost always a closer race than anyone would have guessed beforehand -- which I also find suspicious. How likely is
it that the majority of presidential elections over the last century were decided by more or less even numbers of voters from
each party, between more or less evenly matched candidates?
Really seems like they've perfected the art of putting on rigged political shows that you can't quite believe in, but don't
have anything really solid to back up your suspicions. It's like the "no evidence of fraud" canard -- anything solid enough to
show obvious manipulation is explained away as the exception, rather than the tip of a very deep iceberg
Like the false accusations about Russia, delegitimizing the presidential election as fraud is turning out to be much ado
about nothing.
Let's review. The Democrats perpetrated the phony 2016 Russian influence fraud, and now the Democrats are perpetrating the
phony 2020 election victory.
The common elements are Democrats perpetrate fraud.
IMO this is a simple remedy to settle the election fraud mess or we will be arguing about this 20 years from now .from the
American Thinker.
The candidates on the ballot must have an opportunity to have observers whom they choose to oversee the entire process so
the candidates are satisfied that they won or lost a free and fair election.
That is not what happened in the 2020 election. That is the single most important and simple fact that needs to be understood
and communicated. The 2020 election was not a free and fair election, because poll-watchers were not allowed to do their essential
job. The 2020 election can still be a free and fair election with a clear winner, whoever that may be, but time is running
out.
In every instance where poll-watchers were not allowed to observe the process, those votes must be recounted. They must
be recounted with poll-watchers from both sides present. If there are votes that cannot be recounted because the envelops were
discarded, those votes must be discarded. Put the blame for this on the officials who decided to count the votes in secret.
Consider it a way to discourage secret vote counts in the future.
The pandemic has not been fearful enough to close liquor stores, and it in should not be used as excuse to remove the poll-watchers
who are essential to a free and fair election. If we must have social distancing, then use cameras.
Certainly, there are other issues with the 2020 election. There may be problems with software, and there are issues like
signature verification and dead people voting. Everything should be considered and examined, but no other issue should distract
from the simple fact that both sides must be able to view the entire process. If one side is not allowed to view the vote-counting,
then that side should be calling it a fraud. We should all be calling it a fraud.
...Trump had control of the Senate, the House and of course the Executive between his inauguration in January of 2017 and the
Midterm Elections of 2018, a total time period of 1 year and 10 months. What did he do during this time? He deregulated financial
services and passed corporate tax cuts.
At the end of the day, being emotionally invested in US elections is no different to being emotionally invested in Keeping
up with the Kardashians , that is to say your life wouldn't be that different if your don't follow either.
The Democrats Have Stolen the Presidential Election
The Deep State Has Stolen the Presidential Election. FIFY. But they have been in control for decades they just don't care who
knows now. They are taking final steps to make their control impervious to attack.
This is the reason that the establishment latched on to the Eisenhowerian bon mot but entirely memory hole Trumman's
far more explicit warning a freaking month after a sitting president is shot like a turkey in Dallas: it white washes CIA and
NSC .
The place to begin, and it's mind-blowing when you think about it this way, is that nothing was resolved on election night.
Not who will take the oath on January 20th. Nor which party will control the Senate. Nor even who will be Speaker and which party
will control the House.
Suffice it to say, a still raging factional struggle has simply moved to a greater degree behind the curtain.
I noted this movie reference on another thread here:
If your father dies, you'll make the deal, Sonny.
-- "The Godfather"
My point being, you're foolish if you ascribe certainty as to outcome at this point.
Being rid of Trump has been as close to a dues ex machina for the establishment as imaginable since he took the oath. This
ineluctable observation elicits no end of foot-stomping by those who assume it necessarily says anything positive about the man.
With every persistent revision of the script they wrote for him, all ending with his political demise at least, Trump has not
just survived but grown stronger. While the Democrats turned our elections into something only seen in a third-world shit hole,
Trump legitimately drew 71M votes from Americans.
That's a lot of air in the balloon. Believe me, filth like Russian mole Brennan may think everything is finished once they
get rid of terrible, awful Trump, but those above his pay grade know better.
Like him or hate him, Trump is the only principal not wholly or largely discredited. He was saved from destruction during his
first term by the Republican base moving to protect him. That was the import of his 90-95% approval among them, destroy him and
you destroy the Republican Party.
Now, despite -- or perhaps, because of -- everything they've done, that base now includes a significant number of Democrats
and independents. Trump is merely a vessel for an American majority attached to this constitutional republic thingie we've got
going.
Don't get lost in the details. This isn't a puzzle you can solve by internet sleuthing. The plan they executed -- to steal
sufficiently to make the outcome inevitable by the morning after the election at the latest -- failed. This was evident early
on Election Day (e.g. fake water main breaks in Atlanta) and necessitated their playing their Fox/AZ card and shutting down the
count at least until they had removed Republican monitors.
"In 22 states, Republicans will hold unified control over the governor's office and both houses of the legislature, giving
the party wide political latitude -- including in states like Florida and Georgia."
"Eleven states will have divided governments in 2021, unchanged from this year: Democratic governors will need to work with
Republican legislators in eight states, and Republican governors will contend with Democratic lawmakers in three."
The Democrats have: Joe Biden, and a slim majority in the House of Representatives which they are almost certain to lose in
two years.
What the Republicans are going to do is everything we hate, but they will pretend they were "forced" to do it by the Democrats
– the Democrats being the minority party.
Who else could have survived what Trump has been subjected to by the Establishment and their media prostitutes. In the United
States the media is known as "presstitutes" -- press prostitutes. That is what Udo Ulfkotte says they are in Europe.
Left and right.
(What you small brains do not understand is this.)
Democrats enabling the elite to invest in far east (lower wage costs, higher profits) did abandon the working class in America.
Democrats by this act did throw away the working class as a dirty rug.
Democrats with their TPP exporting most of the production to far east would totally destroy working class in USA. Trump's first
act was to cancel this insanity. Democrats are insanely delusional.
Democrats were left. Left is a party that supports the working people.
So here switch occurred. Democratic party now represent the elite, and Republicans now represent the working people.
(The irony of the fate)
The headline for PCR's article is a prediction, not yet established, and incomplete.
There is an ongoing massive attempt to steal the Presidential election as well as to steal an unknown number of House and Senate
seats, and who knows what else.
The 'game' is still on. Many tens of millions of citizens – actual total unknown but possibly in numbers unprecedented in American
history – voted for Trump. Republican candidates for office generally had strong support, but again, the actual percentage of
support is unknown but presumably larger than now 'recorded'.
There are also the many millions who ardently supported Trump, know that Biden is illegitimate, deeply corrupt, and the precursor
to perils unknown. Their determination and backbone and intelligence will now be tested.
There is the electoral college process; there are the state legislators that have a say in the process; there is the Supreme
Court.
There is also the possibility of pertinent executive orders that mandate transparent processes in the face of, say, apprehended
insurrection via fraudulent voting processes.
There is also the matter of how millions of 'deplorables' with trucks and tractors and firearms and other means to make their
point will react to obvious massive election travesty.
The conjunction of the COVID global scamdemic/plandemic, with crazed Bill Gates and kin lurking in the background with needles,
'peaceful' protesters in many cities setting fires and looting with near impunity, and a mass media that is clearly comprehensively
committed to a demonic degree of dishonesty and manipulation, and lunatic levels of 'identity politics' ideology, are among the
elements setting the stage for what may be an historical watershed.
The American Revolution in the 18th century, against the British Crown's authority, came about after years of simmering anger
and sporadic resistance against British injustice. At some point there was a 'tipping point'. When Germany invaded and occupied
Norway early in the 2nd WW, an effective resistance quickly formed in reaction, where death and torture were the known willing
risk. Two years before, those forming the resistance would have been just going on with their lives.
Who's Afraid of an Open Debate? The Truth About the Commission on Presidential Debates. The CPD is a duopoly which allows the
major party candidates to draft secret agreements about debate arrangements including moderators, debate format and even participants.
Ben Swann explains how the new coalition of EndPartisanship org is working to break the 2 party hold on primary elections,
which currently lock around 50% of voters out of the process.
I am currently watching an interview with SD Governor Kristi Noem, who went on ABC to challenge George Stenopolosus' claim
that there is no fraud in this election. She pointed out that there has been many allegations, including dead people voting in
PA and GA, she says we don't know how widespread this is, but we owe it to the 70+ million people who voted for Trump to investigate
and ensure a clean and fair election. She said we gave Al Gore 37 days to investigate the result in 2000, why aren't we giving
the same to Trump?
She is extremely articulate and sounds intelligent and honest, and what's more courageous to come forward like this. I hope
she runs for president in 2024, I'd vote for her.
Am I the only one who sees something profoundly spiritual happening in front of our eyes?
Yes. In reality, 5% of White men sent Trump packing. That doesn't match the GOP negrophile narrative where "based" Hindustanis
join the emerging conservative coalition to make sure White people can't get affordable healthcare in their own countries, though.
So we'll have to watch you parasites spool up this pedantic "fraud" nonsense until the fat orange zioclown gracelessly gets dragged
out.
Good post. You will gain more insight from this background on the speech and drafting.
Jan 19, 2011 Eisenhower's "Military-Industrial Complex" Speech Origins and Significance US National Archives
President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address, known for its warnings about the growing power of the "military-industrial
complex," was nearly two years in the making. This Inside the Vaults video short follows newly discovered papers revealing that
Eisenhower was deeply involved in crafting the speech.
Great article. Thanks. Agree with you about the big stealing being electronic. Trump tweeted out yesterday that over 2 million
votes were stolen this way. For him to say this, they must have evidence.
Dinesh D'Souza said he hopes that when this matter comes before the Supreme Court that they will tackle once and for all what
constitutes a legal vote.
Some pretty big names are involved with this Dominion Voting. It will be interesting to see what Trump's team of IT experts
discover re the use of algorithms to swing the vote.
Why (Oh, why) did Trump had to go? Because Trump is an enema to the Deep State. He was threatening to expose the biggest lie
of the last 100 years – the supposed "liberalism" of US...
The author refers to a body of overwhelmingly persuasive evidence of voter fraud that can be specified and quantified to provide
proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases, not to mention hands down proof in civil cases requiring only a preponderance
of the evidence to establish guilt. Furthermore, the Democrats' easily documented, elaborate efforts at concealing the vote counting
process by shutting down the counting prior to sneaking truckloads of ballots in the back door is by itself powerful circumstantial
evidence of their guilt. You have no idea what "evidence" means, either in general usage or in its strictly legal sense.
The election cannot be trusted at all, just based on the insane entitled emotional state of the Globalist establishment alone.
The system as-a-whole cannot be trusted, for the same reason. They are actively corrupting it in every way they can, and fully
believe (as a matter of religious conviction) that they are right to do so.
That's one of the Jew/Anglo Puritan Establishment's new catch-phrases. There's also "no evidence" that Joe Biden acted in a
corrupt manner in Ukraine, even though he admitted to it on tape. There's "no evidence" that Big Tech is biased against conservative
plebians, despite their removing conservative plebians' published content arbitrarily and with no State compulsion to do so.
The phrase "there's no evidence" is just a public commitment to ignore any evidence, no matter how blatant or obvious.
This newly discovered legal standard goes beyond "preponderance of the evidence" or even "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt"
to establish absolute certainty as the standard.
Just the obvious and necessary complement of the Bob Mueller standard for Russian collusion, don't you think -- "could not
(quite) exonerate"? /s
They went for a softer approach in KY in 2019. The first-term Repub Gov had a Yankee's forthrightness so they just latched
onto comments he made regarding the underfunded teachers pension program and amped-it to high heaven getting teachers all in a
frightful frenzy.
In that solidly Red state, with all other prominent offices on the ballot (AG, SoS, etc.) going overwhelmingly Repub
, somehow the Repub Gov loses to the Dem by around 5000 votes. The "teachers pension" narrative was rolled-out as the reason.
(Btw, it seems that Dominion, or another type, software was used to switch the votes in that race. I've seen video about it.)
@Orville
H. Larson out how the winds are blowing. There is nothing good about it.
Why not this:
-- ONLY in-person voting over a 2-day period, a Sat and Sun, with polls being open from 6AM to 9PM both days.
-- Exceptions are the traditional requested absentee ballot where the voter can be authenticated.
-- Paper ballots must be used at the polls and no single box of 'Straight Vote by Party' is offered.
-- Some kind of SIMPLE scanning tabulator could be used of the ballots and with it NOT being connected to the internet.
There is far too much cheating opportunity built into our current system. That's intended, of course. It needs to end!
Because you don't get it. You are missing the big picture. It was well known that these systems had the ability to be hacked
as soon as they were implemented. It is also a well known fact that massive mail in ballots increases the likelihood that corrupt
individuals are more likely to get away with election fraud.
Everyone knew about the potential for voter fraud to occur, but the entire system is corrupt, including Trump who has allowed
the massive corruption within the system that was present when he entered office to persist and grow because he is a wimpy, spineless,
coward, that was too afraid to make any waves and take the heat that he promised his voters.
Why anyone voted for Trump in 2020 confounds me. I voted for him in 2016 and he has turned out to be one of the worst presidents
in history.
Trump in his cowardess and dishonesty knew that the ailing economy would harm his chances of being re-elected, so he allowed
the health scare scamdemic to occur and destroy the livelihoods, lives, and businesses of hundreds of millions of Americans
because he is a psychopath. Trump did not do what he promised. Trump made America worse than it has ever been since the end of
slavery. Jeremy Powell said today that the economy is dead and will never recover.
The only injustices that Trump gave a damn about were the injustices against himself and his family, and has committed countless
injustices against the entire country and world during his term. Trump is a corrupt narcissist. The facts prove it. Trump is such
a corrupt narcissist that he was willing to destroy the entire economy based on scientific fraud, high crimes, and treason to
use as political cover for his own incompetency which is the most offensive and disgusting diabolical act ever perpetrated on
the entire country.
Trump has also demanded the extradition of Assange after telling his voters that he loved wikileaks. Trump is a two-faced,
lying, fraud. It has been his pattern. He consistently supports various groups and people like Wikileaks, Proud Boys, and others
and panders to them and voters and tells people that he loves them, and then every time without fail when the heat is on, Trump
says," I really don't know anything about them."
"I know nothing." Trump saying "I know nothing." defines his presidency and who he is as a person, a spineless, pandering,
corrupt, two-faced, narcissist, loser, and wimp!
Why would anyone vote for him the second time around after a record of pathological incompetency and pathological corruption?
What's to approve of about him? Go ahead, investigate voter fraud it if is permitted, and if it isn't then ask yourselves why
it is that a system that enables election fraud is in place, and ask yourselves who had the ability to change it and, who had
the ability to benefit from it!
The current term "globalization" was originated by Ted Levitt in an article in the Harvard
Business Review in the 80s and taken up by the Reaganites to push for offshoring of factories
to countries with fewer workers rights and environmental concerns. He edited the magazine and
was a professor at Harvard Business School. Those "weirdos" who championed the term were the
corporate and financial behemoths that preferred it as a euphemism for "economic
imperialism"
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 4 2021 1:07 utc | 56
Our nation, right now, is on the cusp of a great earthquake which will change its
arrangement so that the interior will not be beholden to the coastal elites much longer,
who have themselves thrown off the mantle of nationhood in favor of the globalist paradigm
which values nihilistic individualism over all.
So, in short, you're describing capitalism. A capitalist economy favors individualism,
profits over morality, and is mostly centered around the idea of private property as
described by John Locke. This worked wonders in the vast uncharted territories of America in
the 18th and 19th century, when the population of the United States was below 20 million and
they needed to compete, FAST, against agressive european civilizations who looked at them
with envy.
Now that they are 332 millions and counting, that their natural resources are slowly
depleting and that other civilizations have adapted to the previously unknown phenomenon of
the American empire, USans are faced with a crisis in all sectors, including faith. How come
a system that worked so well for you these past 300 years suddenly fails? well, not suddenly,
but realizing that took a while.
Oh, I know!! It must be because of all those treacherous businessmen who traded their
souls and their country for a quick buck! but we need to condemn them without condemning the
whole system, and saying "capitalism sucks" makes us sound like Ivan the Red Commie. What a
pickle. Let's call them "globalists"! so we can rally the nationalists as a bonus and say
it's all because of evil foreigners.
On certain sites, it goes as far as calling "globalists" ... communists. Or Chinese. Or
Russian. Sure, why not, everyone needs their Emmanuel Goldstein.
"Globalism" is a funny name some weirdos invented since the first Wall Street crashes
happened to justify the worst excesses of the current capitalist economic system without
pointing the finger at the real culprits. I say it's funny because it looks like nationalist
clickbait for the 2 minutes of hate everyone in the West is prescribed each day in this
hyper-social Internet.
Sad fact is, "globalists" are run-of-the-mill bosses who decided it was better for their
end-of-year bonuses if they outsourced some or all of their production to cheap chinese
companies, and not have to pay US salaries anymore. That's not globalist, that's called
looking to make a profit in the short term.
Tell me a better term than "globalist" for nationals who are titans of industry who
betray their fellow nationals in the labor force by looking outside their own nation?
A term of rather recent vintage is Labour arbitrage that is substituting less
costly labour for higher costing labour. The driving motive for all offshoring or
externalising labour resources from the home marketplace. Walmart made billions doing this as
does Amazon.
I agree with Lemming's position on this. And I think Nemesis Calling is wrong about what
the term "Globalist" implies. If a "nationalist" is someone who's loyal to a nation, then
isn't a "globalist" someone who is loyal to the whole globe? Humanity today has many massive
problems that are extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to deal with on a purely
national basis. Nuclear weapons, global climate change, pandemic diseases, the potential
threats and benefits of real artificial intelligence, the extinction of so many species,
controlling multinational corporations, the threat of mass starvation, global inequality...
these are all problems which seem to many people to need the whole human species, or the
whole globe, working together to address them.
I think the major reason why many capitalists started calling themselves "globalists" back
in the 1980's was because they saw this was an idea which was becoming increasingly popular,
and they wanted to try and coopt it for their own benefit.
The trouble was that the CEO's who decided it would be personally profitable for them to
ship their companies jobs to low wage countries were not "real" globalists. If they had
really understood what the decisions they were making would do to their countries, or even to
the corporations they were responsible to their shareholders for managing, they might be
accused of being frauds or even traitors. But they probably didn't understand, so it's
probably more accurate to just call them parts of a greedy and shortsighted elite, which was
far too arrogant to realize how countries like China would be able to exploit their
shortsighted folly. They thought they were being so clever about their plans to exploit the
Chinese. But the irony is that a major reason why they underestimated the Chinese is that
they didn't understand that the fact that the Chinese were Marxists meant that the Chinese
had a different and in some ways better understanding of how Capitalism worked than they did.
They never dreamed that the Chinese would be able to make Lenin's prediction that capitalists
would sell them the rope they needed to hang capitalism come true.
The only way really to understand Brexit is as the outcome of a civil war within
capitalism. There are two dominant forms of capitalism. One you could describe as house
trained capitalism. This is corporations and rich people who are prepared to more or less
go along with democracy, as long as democracy doesn't get out of hand and actually
represent the interests of the people, but as long as it's a sort of thin and narrow form
of democracy, they'll go with it. What they want is stability. They want regulations
which protect their market position from rougher and dirtier companies who would
otherwise wipe them out. They're happy with the administrative state.
And then there's another faction who could be described as capitalism's warlords. These
are people who don't want any constraints in their way at all. They see taxation as
illegitimate, they see regulation as illegitimate. In their unguarded moments, they
reveal that they see democracy as illegitimate. People such as Peter Thiel, the guy who
founded PayPal says actually democracy and market freedom are incompatible. The conflict
should be resolved in favor of this thing he calls the market. Τhe market is an
euphemism for the power of money. And they believe that that power should be unmediated,
that it should be able to do whatever it wants without anyone standing in its way. And
they see as their enemy house trained capitalism. And this is really where the power lies
within.
The whole Brexit debate, is on the one side, the august institutions of capitalism,
like the Confederation of British Industry, saying this is terrible, we don't want this
to happen at all. And on the other side, the oligarchs from the City, very powerful
people who are funding dark money think tanks and other lobby groups, saying we want to
clear it all out of the way. In Steve Bannon's words, " we want the deconstruction of
the administrative state ". And it's a second group, the warlords of money who have
won.
First of all, both capitalist factions in this civil war seek the " deconstruction
of the administrative state. " And actually, the administrative state could be
deconstructed much more efficiently through super-national formations like the European Union.
The European Union institutions have been taken over by powerful banking and corporate lobbies.
And these are taking advantage of the legislative power of those institutions in order to
promote more deregulation and destroy the administrative power of nation-states. As the
Corporate Europe Observatory reported
in 2016: Since Jean-Claude Juncker took office as President of the European Commission in November
2014, there has been an even greater deregulation push, not just on specific rules and laws
which should be scrapped, but on how decisions are made about future laws. Under Juncker,
fundamental changes in policy-making are being introduced which will put major obstacles in the
way of new regulations aimed at protecting the environment or improving social conditions.When David Cameron was renegotiating the terms of the UK's membership of the EU with
European Council President Donald Tusk, a greater European emphasis on deregulation was one of
the four priority areas. To pile on the pressure, Cameron and the UK government spearheaded an
appeal from 18 other member states, demanding quantitative targets, meaning that for every new
regulation put in place, a certain number of other regulations should be removed. [...] As
presented here, Cameron and the European Commission – together with big business - share
a common approach on the deregulation agenda.
That's why the "house trained capitalism", as Monbiot describes it, wants the UK to remain
member of the EU. And, in fact, it's rather contradictory to say that this capitalist faction
is "happy with the administrative state" when at the same time supports a super-national
organization whose ultimate goal is to eliminate the administrative power of the
nation-states.
Monbiot describes the pro-Brexit capitalist faction as " capitalism's warlords ... people
who don't want any constraints in their way at all. They see taxation as illegitimate, they see
regulation as illegitimate. In their unguarded moments, they reveal that they see democracy as
illegitimate. " Yet, these are common characteristics with the "house trained capitalism"
faction. That's because both capitalist factions in previous decades were functioning as a
united force through the complete domination of neoliberalism. A domination which was evident
not only in an economic and a political level, but also in a cultural level, especially in the
Western world. And that's why, as we
wrote recently, both the liberal elites and the far right (as representatives of
the capitalist factions), are seeing the real Left as the primary threat which must be dealt at
all costs, after all.
We need to understand that this civil war between the capitalist factions does not come out of
any substantially different ideological or political approach. Essentially, it's only a tough
bargain. Capitalists just pick sides to negotiate terms and secure their position in the
post-capitalist era, which already looks like a kind of 21st century corporate feudalism. Yet,
we would completely agree with Monbiot's remark that " What happens to us, to the citizens
of the UK, is of very little interest. We're just the grass that gets trampled in this civil
war. "
As we already
pointed out , the level of ruthlessness of this capitalist war can also be
identified in the behavior of the US political class against the American people. It's
astonishing that, inside this terrible situation, where thousands die from the pandemic,
millions lose their jobs and live under extreme insecurity, no one is willing to offer
anything. Both Democrats and Republicans have turned the oncoming election into a political
bargain and they don't even try to hide it.
Inside this ruthless capitalist war, people have become almost irrelevant. What only matters
for the political puppets is to secure the interests of the capitalist faction they represent.
The
rampageous bulls of capitalism are fighting each other in an arena in which
democracy has now turned into dust under their violent clatters. Therefore, we would also
certainly agree with Monbiot's conclusion: We need a political economy which is good for the
people, the people who live today, the people of future generations, good for the rest of the
living world and is actually governed by the people themselves. Not by this kind of capitalism
or that kind of capitalism. These corporations or those oligarchs. A democracy which responds
to people not just once every four or five years, but every day, when we have participation as
well as representation. We need a system that transcends both of these warring factions, and
puts the people in charge.
In fact it is exactly like the last civil war englanders had, the local big fish in a
small pond don't want any outsiders making decisions or competing with them.
In 1642 ancestors of the current englander ruling elite became concerned that James
Stuart, then Charles Stuart were not only encouraging types established in that ever so
provincial Scots Court to compete for valuable contracts, they were taking instruction from
some eyetalian in Rome when there was perfectly good advice available from the Archbishop
of Canterbury. They knew that the archbish would give sound advice because they, the
englander elite had selected & promoted him themselves.
The EU is the stuarts with the pope, and england's established hierarchy realised pretty
soon after entry into the old EC that 'johnny foreigner' who they assumed would bow to the
englander elite's superior insight & worth was doing no such thing. Often, they
believed the rejection was just pure spite done out of envy of england's 'success' lol.
Once it became certain that neither the french or the germans would kowtow, the strategy
to extricate england from the eu was begun. Types like johnson the tele's man in Brussels
filled englander media up with lies & beatups - all horror stories about eurocrats
etc.
Why wouldn't the mugs believe this tosh? They had swallowed some fantastic yarns spread
by the media which kept conservative control of england for decades, eu= evil would be no
different and it wasn't.
There are sound reasons for leaving the eu but this brexit business addresses none of
them, if anything it exacerbates things like sweatshop labour as Poles expect pay and
conditions that people in some commonwealth states will not. Plus they will be easier to
control with no 'schengan nonsense' as they'll all be on temporary work visas and can be
sent home if they are troublemakers supporting organised labour or the like.
On Sept. 15, Tucker Carlson brought onto his show Darren Beattie, a former Trump
speechwriter. Beattie explained to viewers that the same networks promoting color revolutions
overseas are now training their sights on President Donald Trump: "What's unfolding before our
eyes is a very specific type of coup called the 'color revolution.' "
Similarly,
Revolver website posted a multi-part series on the color revolution against Trump, with its
Sept. 9 installment taking up Norm Eisen, one of the participants in the Transition Integrity
Project's war gaming of the 2020 election. Eisen was Obama's White House ethics czar and was
hired by the Democratic leadership of the House Judiciary Committee in 2019, where he prepared
ten articles of impeachment against Trump a month before Pelosi announced an official
impeachment inquiry. He himself took part in the impeachment proceedings.
But his involvement in ousting Trump began even before the nomination. Eisen ran Citizens
for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), financed amongst others by George Soros's
Open Society, which partnered with David Brock to put forward a blueprint -- issued before the
inauguration -- for attacking Trump through such means as policing social media, getting tech
companies to censor content (media platforms ... will no longer uncritically and without
consequence host and enrich fake news), impeachment itself, fake news (a steady flow of
damaging information, new revelations), and other techniques.
Eisen co-authored "The Democracy Playbook: Preventing and Reversing Democratic
Backsliding," a Brookings guide to the perplexed seeking to institute policies through frankly
undemocratic means. Eisen named Gene Sharp's From Dictatorship to Democracy as an inspiration
for his document.
Consider another color revolutionary. Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia
and a supporter of the Ukraine color revolution, realized that "color revolution" was taking on
a negative connotation. In August he tweeted a revised nomenclature: "Autocrats have demonized
the phrase, 'color revolutions.' (& revolution generally has a negative connotation for
many.) Instead, I use the term 'democratic breakthroughs.' "
What kind of democratic breakthrough? Consider McFaul's Sept. 4 tweet:
"Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost
the military. How can he continue to serve as our Commander in Chief?"
Astute readers will note that neither the IC, State Department, or military appoint the
President, who takes that office by means that are actually democratic -- an election!
Eisen also heads the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group, whose website announces that
it is "a bipartisan and transatlantic platform for discourse and coordination to address
democratic backsliding in Europe." What is "democratic backsliding"? Naturally, it's when the
plebes get uppity and vote for their favored candidates, as in, you know, elections.
..The only upshot of the Larry Summers interview is likely to be that maybe a few people
will think that Joe Biden has bad people advising him, and the vast majority will either
dislike Joe because he sucks or because they're Trumpies in their little faux rebellion or they
will believe everything MSNBC et al. tell them about Joe Biden (and thus by extension they'll
believe every word of Summers).
Here's the important lesson, the one that SHOULD be learned: Summers is a NEOLIBERAL. By
this is meant that he is one of that group that believes that the proper role of government is
to create and enforce markets and that ideally all functions of everyone's lives would be
market functions.
The ultimate principle of neoliberalism, as pointed out in Chapter 2 of Kees van der Pijl's
A Survey of
Global Political Economy, is investor "freedom." This principle comes up on page 46 in the
author's discussion of "microeconomics and rational choice theory." After having gone over the
history of mainstream ("marginalist") economics as an "axiomatic" (which really means
faith-based -- if you agree with its principles you might find it interesting) discipline, van
der Pijl gets to neoliberalism. Here's what he says:
Importantly, the neoliberals no longer confine their prescriptions to the economy. They
want economic rationality to be applied to all aspects of society; no organ of the social
body may be allowed to function according to other principles than that of free choice by
rational, self-interested individuals.
Ultimately, as van der Pijl notes in his discussion of Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992), the
standard-bearer of neoliberalism, neoliberalism is committed to investor freedom in all spheres
of life. This is on page 48:
The core concept of neoliberalism is the notion of 'competitively determined freedom'.
This concept of freedom is defined from the principle of privately disposable property of the
means of production, secured by political institutions ensuring 'law and order'. Hayek later
specified law and order as the foundations of private property as such, as freedom of
contract and the coercive upholding of contracts (quoted in Walpen, 2004: 114-5).
Thus, if Larry Summers believes in this insane pile of twaddle, why would he want the
government to send out $2000 checks? That wouldn't promote investor freedom.
(The further catch, of course, is that EVERYONE in DC, in Wall Street, and throughout the
ruling elites of the world, believes in this insane pile of twaddle, and they've believed it
for forty years now. So, in the same way in which Donald Trump was not an exceptional case
responsible for the general insanity of last year's politics, Larry Summers is also not an
exceptional case responsible for why you aren't getting $2,000 checks.)
The day after Christmas, the New York Times online ran a piece on the effects of climate
change(
"The Darkest Timeline," by Jonah Engel Bromwich ). It was basically about another paper,
called "Deep Adaptation," which supposedly changed the course of a lot of people's lives.
Bromwich says about the paper that:
The paper's central thought is that we must accept that nothing can reverse humanity's
fate and we must adapt accordingly. And the paper's bleak, vivid details -- emphasizing that
the end is truly nigh, and that it will be gruesome -- clearly resonated.
"When I say starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war, I mean in your own life,"
wrote the author, Jem Bendell. "With the power down, soon you wouldn't have water coming out
of your tap. You will depend on your neighbors for food and some warmth. You will become
malnourished. You won't know whether to stay or go. You will fear being violently killed
before starving to death."
But you don't really adapt to climate change doom. You commit suicide in advance of the
event. And it's hard to tell why a scientific paper, and not, say, the
story of Paradise, California , would motivate people to say, geez, there isn't much point
in living in a doomed society, so let's plan in advance. Or here's an alternative path: when
confronted with the doom of the human race and of you, personally, you choose to believe in a
pile of insane twaddle, and you say:
billions for the rich , $600 for a few of the rest. Isn't that what Congress is doing now?
To be sure, this is a sort of side-adventure, meant to contextualize neoliberals as the sort of
people who say "oh boy! Profit!" when confronted with disastrous reality.
At any rate, neoliberalism. There are a bunch of books about neoliberalism. Probably the
best place to start is with Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine , published in 2007.
Klein makes clear what the enormous human costs are of neoliberal policy. The neoliberal
method, Klein describes, is simple:
That is how the shock doctrine works: the original disaster – the coup, the
terrorist attack, the market meltdown, the war, the tsunami, the hurricane – puts the
entire population into a state of collective shock. The falling bombs, the bursts of terror,
the pounding winds serve to soften up whole societies much as the blaring music and blows in
the torture cells soften up prisoners. Like the terrorized prisoner who gives up the names of
comrades and renounces his faith, shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise
fiercely protect. (17)
It's your basic imperialism. David Harvey calls it "accumulation by dispossession"; his
book, A
Brief History of Neoliberalism , offers a good summary. I love the understatement at the
beginning of the Google Books synopsis (linked):
Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting
as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout
much of the world since 1970 or so. Its spread has depended upon a reconstitution of state
powers such that privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized. State
interventions in the economy are minimized, while the obligations of the state to provide for
the welfare of its citizens are diminished.
"... has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world..." Yeah.
That's like saying that European countries conquered much of Africa between 1870 and
1914. Uh-huh. It's good to appear innocuous when writing for publication!
Also meaningful are the writings of the French team of Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy.
They've written a lot on the topic; the place to start would be Capital Resurgent . I haven't
read this book in awhile. If I recall correctly, Dumenil and Levy argue that neoliberalism was
a conscious choice of the elites, and that they could have chosen otherwise. But they didn't,
and so here we are.
Those with an appetite for biting prose might enjoy Philip Mirowski's
Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste . Mirowski wants to chastise everyone -- the
neoliberals for their "logic" (beautifully dissected), everyone else for misrecognizing the
neoliberals and for pronouncing neoliberalism to be "dead" when in fact it's more dominant than
ever.
There's an interesting foreign-policy take on neoliberalism in Kees van der Pijl's
Global Rivalries
from the Cold War to Iraq . Ostensibly a history of foreign relations, van der Pijl found
himself obliged to discuss the history of neoliberalism because the history of foreign
relations in the period after 1980 IS the history of neoliberalism.
Richard Cockett's
Thinking the Unthinkable is a good early history of neoliberalism, from before the first
meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society
to its global triumph with Reagan and Thatcher.
All that having been said, it's amazing to find so many people online who think that
"neoliberalism" is some esoteric phenomenon, or neoliberals who don't think they're
neoliberals, or people who think there's no such thing as neoliberalism. You bring up
neoliberalism and they say things like "I don't like labels." If you were to call a tree
"green," would the tree respond by saying "I don't like labels"? We choose names for things
because otherwise we wouldn't be able to talk about them in any serious sense.
Let's be clear. Today, "liberalism" might be this warm, fuzzy belief that government ought
to give ordinary people a thing or two in addition to its usual duties of "national defense"
(under the neoliberal regime this means wars for corporate profit) and "economic policy"
(another giveaway to the rich). That's what the term "liberalism" came to mean in the US in the
period after World War II. There's a longer and deeper meaning for the term "liberalism," and
in that meaning it means what Adam Smith advocated, laissez-faire capitalism. The "neo" in
"neoliberalism," to complete the definition, defines a form of liberalism in which it is
viewed, by the neoliberals, as the duty of government to simulate laissez-faire capitalism by
setting up markets and requiring people to participate in them. That's what neoliberalism is;
that explains its NAME.
The classic neoliberal policy was the original "marketplace" function of the Affordable Care
Act. The ACA was created to keep the insurance companies from pricing their product out of the
market; the ACA obliged people to purchase health insurance (which, significantly, they still
wouldn't be able to use in many ways) by setting up a "mandate penalty" in which non-purchasers
would have to pay more in income taxes.
War for profit is a neoliberal initiative. Since the average consumer cannot purchase a war,
the neoliberal government will step in to insure that there remains a market for war. Typically
the wars serve to create enemies, which then sustain the war. Ultimately, what you see with
neoliberal war is phenomena such as what was reported in Syria in 2016, in which militias
funded by the CIA fought those funded by the Pentagon. It's fine as long as it moves
product.
There shouldn't be any confusion, then, about neoliberalism as a ruling-class ideology. It
has a well-defined meaning and plenty of examples to back up the notion that neoliberalism is a
specific notion with specific beliefs, specific believers, specific policies, and a specific
history.
See if you can acquire some Victor Jara -- good listening. And keep up the struggle!
How is Keith McHenry doing these days? (at least we know he's not a neoliberal.) Have you
visited the encampment in San Lorenzo Park of recent?
Edit to add. Great article on Victor Jara. And song!
No human cost was too high to pay to usher in neoliberalism, to eviscerate the gains
that labor had made under Allende's Popular Unity Coalition, and to maintain a steady
flow of cheap copper, fruit and fish to the U.S. under the auspices of "trade
liberalization." The new constitution passed under Pinochet's dictatorship rolled back
the reforms instituted under Allende. It expanded the power of the presidency and
enshrined private property and corporate profits over social needs; Pinochet rolled
back taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and eliminated a host of government
services. State-owned companies, public housing, education, health care, and pensions
were all privatized, turned into profit centers for corporations and the wealthy. The
constitution written under Pinochet limited reforms, and the gap today between rich and
poor in Chile is one of the highest in Latin America.
Jara's version of the song "Venceremos" or "We Will Overcome," became the anthem of
Allende's Popular Unity Coalition, and also figured centrally in eyewitness accounts of
Jara's death.
Puts a lot into perspective.
One could note that "Trickle Down Theory" got neoliberalism's foot in the door. And now
it is fully inside emptying the fridge.
Leaders in the House of Representatives announced on Friday a rules package for the 117th
Congress that includes a proposal to use " gender -inclusive language" and eliminate gendered
terms such as "'father, mother, son, daughter," and more.
James McGovern (D-Mass.) speaks during a meeting at the Capitol in Washington, on Dec. 21,
2017. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Terms to be struck from clause 8(c)(3) of
rule XXIII , the House's Code of Official Conduct, as outlined in the proposed rules (
pdf
), include "father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, first cousin, nephew,
niece, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law,
brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother,
stepsister, half brother, half sister, grandson, [and] granddaughter."
Such terms would be replaced with "parent, child, sibling, parent's sibling, first cousin,
sibling's child, spouse, parent-in-law, child-in-law, sibling-in-law, stepparent, stepchild,
stepsibling, half-sibling, [and] grandchild."
According to the proposed rules, "seamen" would be replaced with "seafarers," and "Chairman"
would be replaced with "Chair" in Rule X of the House.
... ... ...
The rules package will be introduced and voted on once the new Congress convenes.
bloostar 1 hour ago remove link
What gender was the pig's head? Is it correct to refer to it as a pig?
researchfix 1 hour ago
Well, my father and mother are dead already. So they will never know, that they are not my
father and mother.
Al Gophilia 1 hour ago
These idiots should no longer be honorably idenified with the noun Represtenative.
judgement put 29 minutes ago
Actually, 'repressed-tentative' isn't so bad.
Ms No PREMIUM 1 hour ago
I think it was Lenin that said "The last enemy of Marxism is the family"
Et Tu Brute 1 hour ago (Edited)
When politicians cannot deliver a $2K stimulus that affects 30%+ of the population but
have time to promote laws representing the interest of less than 0.6%* but still affecting
the over 95% who do or will have a family, you know it's not just a matter of ineffective
governance and culture wars, it is deliberate Psychological Warfare, coordinated through
Mainstream Media, aimed at dividing and demoralising the population.
"*******" is an appropriate non-gendered term referring to all the Democrats in
Congress.
St. TwinkleToes 1 hour ago
So now we're supposed to appease 1% of the population who are gender confused freaks by
removing thousands of years of family relationships?
RocketPride PREMIUM 1 hour ago remove link
Democratic Congress continues to endear themselves to true American values. F-ing idiots,
I hope they are all voted out in 2022
sgt_doom 1 hour ago remove link
On Dominion voting machines?????
sgt_doom 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Exactly why there should be laws against geriatric dementia-suffering twits who once were
financially connected to Saddam Hussein in congress.
The twitch Pelosi wants to destroy the family unit: Job #1 of the Maoist agenda!
Itinerant 1 hour ago (Edited) remove link
Just look at how much they are improving the world, fueling inclusive economic growth
!!!
In France they've already moved to force you to fill in parent1 and parent2 instead of
mother and father.
Medical Experts are now saying that boy/girl should be removed from birth certificates as
clinically irrelevant.
Right, no need to check for descended testicles or abdominal hernia in little boys, or
anything else.
What you circumcise, may as well be your thumb, right?
I just had an operation on my testicle, of course it is clinically irrelevant to find the
right doctor for anything to do with your prostrate or testicles, or any gynecological
issues, for that matter.
We are going insane ... we are already in the lemmings rushing to the cliff stage.
F ormer U.S. Treasury Secretary, Chief Economist of the World Bank, Director of the National
Economic Council, and President of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers has warned against any
implementation of a $2,000 COVID relief check.
Writing in business publication
Bloomberg , the 66-year-old economist insisted that the proposal, which has drawn
support from figures as diverse as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, was a "big mistake," as it
would likely "overheat the economy." He noted that he did support strengthening social safety
nets and other spending measures, but maintained that $2,000 was too much. "There is no good
economic argument for the $2,000 checks," he confidently concluded.
Yet there are many reasons not to treat Summers as an infallible economic sage. Chief among
them is his (major) role in causing the 2008 financial crisis that devastated the United States
and much of the rest of the world.
During his time in the Department of the Treasury under President Clinton, Summers
successfully lobbied for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, a 60-year-old piece of
legislation that separated commercial banking from the wild west of investment banking,
insulating Americans' savings from the dangerous world of venture capitalism. He also pushed
for increased deregulation of the finance system in general, setting the stage for an
inevitable collapse. A paid consultant to Citigroup and other financial behemoths, he also
later opposed
efforts to break up the "too big to fail" banks after the crisis.
https://cdn.iframe.ly/D013WdX?v=1&app=1
This is perhaps not even Summers' most notorious moment, however. In 2000, the Governor of
California Gray Davis (D), reached out to the then-Treasury Secretary for advice, suspecting
that energy giant Enron was toying with the state's energy supply for profit, greatly
increasing electricity prices even while power outages surged. Summers
reportedly scoffed at his suspicions, patiently explaining that California's main problem
was over-regulation and that he should allow Enron to operate more freely. One year later,
Davis's suspicions were confirmed as Enron went bankrupt in a massive scandal that exposed the company as a
Ponzi scheme.
Summers has always been a passionate believer in the magic of the free-market. While at the
World Bank, he imposed austerity and trickle-down economics on a myriad of poor countries,
while also infamously promoting the export of toxic waste from rich countries onto poor
countries in Africa on economic grounds, suggesting that poor people's lives were worth less
than those of the rich. "The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest
wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that," he wrote .
Summers also resigned from his position as President of Harvard in 2006 after a vote of no
confidence from the university's faculty. This came in the wake of him attacking
African-American professor Cornel West, claiming that his rap album was an "embarrassment" to
the university. It appeared that the faculty found Summers' comments
that women were inherently inferior in science and engineering, thus explaining the lack of
female graduates and staff in those fields, to be more of an embarrassment, however. No doubt
the wild financial risks he took with Harvard's endowment -- blunders estimated to have cost
the university $1.8
billion -- did not help his cause, either.
Summers is not the only one in corporate media sounding the alarm about giving money to poor
people. The Washington
Post was so strongly against the idea that its board rushed out an editorial insisting
that it was a "bad idea" pushed for political reasons, not economic ones, claiming that all it
would achieve would be to "blow nearly half a trillion taxpayer dollars." Meanwhile, economist
and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warned that the checks would
be "divisive," and that their economics "aren't very good." What "divisive" means in this
context appears unclear, as a recent poll
showed that 78% of Americans support the $2,000 checks. 57% "strongly support" them, while only
7% "strongly oppose" them.
The cost of the project, estimated by detractors at around $464 billion,
is less than
one-quarter of what the billionaire class has increased its wealth by in 2020. At the same
time as the super-rich have been getting richer, however, ordinary Americans have been
suffering. A September report noted that
56 million had been forced to use a food bank at some point, while
51 million Americans were made unemployed by July. A
poll released Monday found that Americans rated 2020 to be the worst year in modern
history. A $2,000 check at the end of it might have made some difference in their outlook, but
if Summers has anything to do with it, that will not be coming their way at all.
Feature photo | Former U.S. Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers attends the meeting with
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during China Development Forum 2017 at Diaoyutai State Guesthouse,
March 20, 2017 in Beijing. Etienne Oliveau | Pool via AP
You are talking about the democrat/marxists manifesto and its philosophy which was so
perfectly described by George Orwell and is as follows:
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully
constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be
contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate
morality while laying claim to it ( ) To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in
them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence
of objective reality" - George Orwell
chunga 31 minutes ago
I suspect the primaries are also completely rigged. It's bugging me now that it's really
setting in. The US is a failed state, bankrupt in every imaginable way.
Im4truth4all 24 minutes ago
"Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them." - George Orwell
"Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana
"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own
understanding of their history." - George Orwell
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every
picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has
been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has
stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right." -
George Orwell
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth." - George
Orwell
"... I'm still stunned that the paper did a study that confirmed what people have suspected, namely that a high cycle threshold used on PCR testing was creating the appearance of a pandemic that might have long receded. The testing mania was generating wild illusions of millions of "asymptomatic" carriers and spreaders. How severe was the problem? Read this and weep ..."
"... up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found. ..."
"... A major reason for the ongoing lockdowns are due to the pouring in of positive case numbers from massive testing. If 90% of these positive tests are false, we have a major problem. The whole basis of the panic disappears. All credit to the Times for running the article but why no follow up and why no change in its editorial stance? ..."
"... I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life -- schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned -- will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself. ..."
"... During the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is unwittingly conducting what amounts to the largest immunological experiment in history on our own children. We have been keeping children inside, relentlessly sanitizing their living spaces and their hands and largely isolating them ..."
"... in the course of social distancing to mitigate the spread, we may also be unintentionally inhibiting the proper development of children's immune systems. ..."
"... The psychological effects of loneliness are a health risk comparable with risk obesity or smoking. Anxiety and depression have spiked since lockdown orders went into effect. ..."
The paper of record in 2020 shifted dramatically to the most illiberal stance possible on
the virus, pushing for full lockdowns, and ignoring or burying any information that might
contradict the case for this unprecedented experiment in social and economic control. This
article highlights the exceptions.
...
Even within the blatant and aggressive pro-lockdown bias, and consistent with the way the
New York Times does its work, the paper has not been entirely barren of truth about Covid and
lockdowns. Below I list five times that the news section of the paper, however inadvertently
and however buried deep within the paper, actually told the truth.
I'm still stunned that the paper did a study that confirmed what people have suspected,
namely that a high cycle threshold used on PCR testing was creating the appearance of a
pandemic that might have long receded. The testing mania was generating wild illusions of
millions of "asymptomatic" carriers and spreaders. How severe was the problem? Read this and
weep:
In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in
Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried
barely any virus, a review by The Times found.
On Thursday, the United States recorded 45,604 new coronavirus cases, according to a
database maintained by The Times . If the rates of contagiousness in Massachusetts and New
York were to apply nationwide, then perhaps only 4,500 of those people may actually need to
isolate and submit to contact tracing.
The implications of this revelation are incredible. A major reason for the ongoing lockdowns
are due to the pouring in of positive case numbers from massive testing. If 90% of these
positive tests are false, we have a major problem. The whole basis of the panic disappears. All
credit to the Times for running the article but why no follow up and why no change in its
editorial stance?
Gone missing this year in public commentary has been much at all about naturally acquired
immunities from the virus, even though the immune system deserves credit for why human kind has
lasted this long even in the presence of pathogens. That the Times ran this piece was another
exception in otherwise exceptionally bad coverage. It said in part:
Scientists who have been monitoring immune responses to the virus are now starting to see
encouraging signs of strong, lasting immunity, even in people who developed only mild
symptoms of Covid-19, a flurry of new studies suggests. Disease-fighting antibodies, as well
as immune cells called B cells and T cells that are capable of recognizing the virus, appear
to persist months after infections have resolved -- an encouraging echo of the body's
enduring response to other viruses .
Researchers
have yet to
find unambiguous evidence that coronavirus reinfections are occurring, especially within
the few months that the virus has been rippling through the human population. The prospect of
immune memory "helps to explain that," Dr. Pepper said.
Data from monkeys suggests that even low levels of antibodies can prevent serious illness
from the virus, if not a re-infection. Even if circulating antibody levels are undetectable,
the body retains the memory of the pathogen. If it crosses paths with the virus again,
balloon-like cells that live in the bone marrow can mass-produce antibodies within hours.
It's still a shock that so many schools closed their doors this year, partly from disease
panic but also from compliance with orders from public health officials. Nothing like this has
happened, and the kids have been brutalized as a result, not to mention the families who found
themselves unable to cope at home. For millions of students, a whole year of schooling is gone.
And they have been taught to treat their fellow human beings as nothing more than disease
vectors. So it was amazing to read this story in the Times :
So far, schools do not seem to be stoking community transmission of the coronavirus,
according to data emerging from random testing in the United States and Britain. Elementary
schools especially seem to seed remarkably few infections.
Byline Karen Yourish, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Danielle Ivory and Mitch Smith
Another strangely missing part of mainstream coverage has been honesty about the risk
gradient in the population. It is admitted even by the World Health Organization that the case
fatality rate for Covid-19 from people under the age of 70 is 0.05%. The serious danger is for
people with low life expectancy and broken immune systems. Knowing that, as we have since
February, we should have expected the need for special protection for nursing homes. It was
incredibly obvious. Instead of doing that, some governors shoved Covid patients into nursing
homes. Astonishing. In any case, the above article (and
this one
too) was one of the few times this year that the Times actually spelled out the many thousands
times risk to the aged and sick as versus the young and healthy.
Notable Opinion
columns
The op-ed page of the paper mirrored the news coverage, with only a handful of exceptions.
Those are noted below.
I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this
near total meltdown of normal life -- schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned --
will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus
itself. The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses never will. The
unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of
the first order.
Worse, I fear our efforts will do little to contain the virus, because we have a
resource-constrained, fragmented, perennially underfunded public health system. Distributing
such limited resources so widely, so shallowly and so haphazardly is a formula for failure.
How certain are you of the best ways to protect your most vulnerable loved ones? How readily
can you get tested?
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is unwittingly conducting what amounts to the
largest immunological experiment in history on our own children. We have been keeping
children inside, relentlessly sanitizing their living spaces and their hands and largely
isolating them. In doing so, we have prevented large numbers of them from becoming infected
or transmitting the virus. But in the course of social distancing to mitigate the spread, we
may also be unintentionally inhibiting the proper development of children's immune
systems.
Our mental health suffers, too. The psychological effects of loneliness are a health risk
comparable with risk obesity or smoking. Anxiety and depression have spiked since lockdown
orders went into effect. The weeks immediately following them saw nearly an 18 percent jump
in overdose deaths and, as of last month, more than 40 states had reported increases. One in
four young adults age 18 to 25 reported seriously considering suicide within the 30-day
window of a recent study. Experts fear that suicides may increase; for young Americans, these
concerns are even more acute. Calls to domestic violence hotlines have soared. America's
elderly are dying from the isolation that was meant to keep them safe.
"... Listening to Joe Biden on the campaign trail is about as painful as listening to Trump. The gaffes just keep on coming! Running for the senate or the presidency? ..."
"... That Biden didn't break a sweat and seemed to know that he wouldn't win in liberal Massachusetts on Super Tuesday is one sign of just how fucked-up the political, economic, and social systems are. ..."
"... If a person buys into the argument that elections mean anything at all, and they do to some extent, then the fact that a left/progressive coalition couldn't pull it off here speaks volumes. ..."
"... Howard Lisnoff is a freelance writer. He is the author of Against the Wall: Memoir of a Vietnam-Era War Resister (2017). ..."
Listening to Joe Biden on the campaign trail is about as painful as listening to Trump.
The gaffes just keep on coming! Running for the senate or the presidency?
That Biden breezed to a presidential primary victory in supposedly liberal Massachusetts
leaves nothing but a sense of despair for anyone on the political left. If Philip Berrigan or
Eugene Debs were alive, either leftist might say "I told you so."
That Biden didn't break a sweat and seemed to know that he wouldn't win in liberal
Massachusetts on Super Tuesday is one sign of just how fucked-up the political, economic, and
social systems are. What was the combination of demographics that gave Biden a victory in
much the same way as a runner on third base comes home and scores after the batter walks with
the bases full?
So-called moderates flocked to Biden, as did those over 50 years old and older Black voters.
Liberals, younger voters, young Black voters, and Latino voters supported Sanders. Political
analysts can go on and on, ad nauseam, but the fact remains that a vibrant and well-organized
campaign by Bernie Sanders on the ground in Massachusetts fell on its face, as did that of
Elizabeth Warren. If a person buys into the argument that elections mean anything at all,
and they do to some extent, then the fact that a left/progressive coalition couldn't pull it
off here speaks volumes. The people who went to the polls spoke, and they would rather
have a neoliberal bumbler than someone who would champion, at the very least, liberal
causes.
... ... ...
Howard Lisnoff is a freelance writer. He is the author of Against the Wall: Memoir of a
Vietnam-Era War Resister (2017).
"... "We are more and more disoriented. There is a little good news, but at the same time there are new dimensions to the virus, and new variations that might turn out to be more dangerous. We now have this fake return to normal. The really frustrating thing is this lack of basic orientation. It's the absence of what [the philosopher and literary critic] Fredric Jameson calls 'cognitive mapping' – having a general idea of the situation, where it is moving and so on. Our desire to function requires some kind of clear coordinates, but we simply, to a large extent, don't know where we are." ..."
"... In his book, Zizek recalls the warnings of scientists after the SARS and Ebola epidemics. Persistently, we were told that the outbreak of a new epidemic was only a matter of time, but instead of preparing for the various scenarios we escaped into apocalypse movies. Zizek enumerates different scenarios of looming catastrophes, most of them consequences of the climate crisis, and calls for tough decisions to be made now. ..."
"... he coronavirus crisis is just a dress rehearsal for future problems that await us in the form of global warming, epidemics and other troubles. I don't think this is necessarily a pessimistic view, it's simply realistic. ..."
"... Now is a great time for politics, because the world in its current form is disappearing. Scientists will just tell us, 'If you want to play it safe, keep this level of quarantine,' or whatever. But we have a political decision to make, and we are offered different options." ..."
"... What if we will need another lockdown, even longer? Or multiple lockdowns? It's a sad prospect, but we should get ready to live in some kind of permanent state of emergency. ..."
"... The coronavirus epidemic is a universal crisis. In the long term, states cannot preserve themselves in a safe bubble while the epidemic rages all around ..."
"... It's tragic, I know, that all kinds of big companies are in deep shit, but are they worth saving? ..."
"... My formula is much more brutal, and darker. The state should simply guarantee that nobody actually starves, and perhaps this even needs to be done on an international scale, because otherwise you will get refugees. ..."
"... "I'm talking about what Naomi Klein calls the 'Screen New Deal.' The big technology companies like Google and Microsoft, which enjoy vast government support, will enable people to maintain Telexistence. You undergo a medical examination via the web, you do your job digitally from your apartment, your apartment becomes your world. I find this vision horrific." ..."
"... "First, it's class distinction at its purest. Maybe half the population, not even that, could live in this secluded way, but others will have to ensure that this digital machinery is functioning properly. Today, apart from the old working class, we have a 'welfare working class,' all those caregivers, educators, social workers, farmers. The dream of this program, the Screen New Deal, is that physically, at least, this class of caregivers disappears, they become as invisible as possible. Interaction with them will be increasingly reduced and be digital." ..."
"... "The irony here is that those who are privileged, those who, in this scenario, will be able to live in this perfect, secluded way, will also be totally controlled digitally. Their morning urine will be examined, and so on with every aspect of their life. Take the new analysis capabilities that can test you and provide results [for the coronavirus] in 10-15 minutes. I can imagine a new form of sexuality in this totally isolated world, in which I flirt with someone virtually, and then we say, 'Okay, let's meet in real life and test each other – if we're both negative, we can do it.'" ..."
"... As Julian Assange wrote, we will get a privately controlled combination of Google and something like the NSA ..."
"... Zizek divides workers during the crisis into those who encounter the virus and its consequences as part of their daily reality – medical staff, welfare-service people, farmers, the food industry – and those who are secluded in their homes, for whom the epidemic remains in the realm of the Lacanian spectral and omnipresent. ..."
Slavoj Zizek's 'Brutal, Dark' Formula for Saving the World
The pandemic is liable to worsen, ecological disasters loom and technological surveillance will terminate democracy.
Salvation will come only by reorganizing human society. A conversation with the radical – and anxious – philosopher
Slavoj Zizek
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Slavoj Zizek.
This is not an easy time for Slavoj Zizek. Quite the opposite, and he's the first to admit it. Reoccurring panic attacks
incapacitate him for hours at a time and, unlike in the past, the nights have stopped providing him with an easy escape.
His sleep is wracked by nightmares of what the future holds for humanity. There are days when he fantasizes about being
infected by the coronavirus. At least, that way all of the uncertainty would come to an end, or so he imagines. Finally, he
would be able to cope with the virus concretely, instead of continuously being haunted by it, as some sort of a spectral
entity.
... ... ...
At age 71, Zizek is currently closeted in his home in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, with his fourth wife, the Slovene
writer and journalist Jela Krecic, who is three decades younger than him. During the past couple of weeks the epidemic
seems to have faded in his country, with only two or three new cases being reported daily. But Zizek, who spoke to Haaretz
via Skype, is in no hurry to breathe a sigh of relief.
How you can overheat economy that is in permanent stagnation mode (secular stagnation)? This
is nonsense. What Larry is actually afraid of but can't say is the staut of the dollar the world
reserve currency.
You can almost physically sense the level of hate toward "neoliberal scum" in comments
below
Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, director of the National
Economic Council under Barack Obama, president of Harvard, and Chief Economist at the World
Bank, wrote a post-Christmas editorial for Bloomberg entitled, "
Trump's $2000 Stimulus Checks are a Big Mistake ." It's a classic:
Some argue that while $2,000 checks may not be optimal support for the post-Covid economy,
taking stimulus from $600 to $2,000 is better than nothing. They need to ask themselves
whether they would favor $5,000, or $10,000 -- or more. There must be a limiting
principle.
The genesis of this Summers article is a perfect tale in microcosm about how America's
intellectual elite manages to lose elections to people like Donald Trump. It's a two-step
error. First, they put people like Summers in charge of economic policies. Then, they let them
talk in public.
Summers the day before Christmas
appeared on Bloomberg to offer his initial thoughts on why $2000 checks must be bad: he
looked at which politicians were supporting the plan, and worked backward. "When I see a
coalition of Josh Hawley, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump getting behind an idea, I think
that's time to run for cover," he said, adding: "When you see the two extremes agreeing, you
can almost be certain that something crazy is in the air."
Seeing that his comments "lit up the Twittersphere," Summers then sat down to compose an
article doubling down on his reasoning. Essentially, he argued that from an econometric point
of view, we're already overdoing it on the help front. If you were under the impression that
huge numbers of people are living off meals from food banks and/or are at risk in an
eviction
crisis , you were wrong.
Noting that "total employee compensation" is "only running about $30 billion per month
behind the Covid baseline," he insisted that $200 billion more in tax rebates per month over
the next quarter would "equal an additional seven times the loss of household wage and salary
income over the next quarter."
He then showed a graph explaining that "because of the legislation passed in 2020, total
household income has exceeded normal levels relative to the economy's potential more or less
since the pandemic began." The good news, as a result, is that "the existing stimulus bill is
sufficient to elevate household income relative to the economy's potential to abnormally high
levels -- unheard of during an economic downturn."
The whole piece reads like an extended New Yorker cartoon, in which an evictee with empty
pockets is about to dive after a rotten apple core in a dumpster, only to be blocked by a
cauldron-bellied Harvard economist in a $3000 Zegna suit. Caption: " Actually, total household
income relative to the economy's potential sits at abnormally high levels ."
There are of course different positions one could take on the question of stimulus checks,
but the issue with people like Summers is the utter predictability of their stances. Summers
belongs to a club of neoliberal thinkers who've dominated American policy for decades. From Bob
Rubin to Tim Geithner to Jason Furman to Michael Froman and beyond, the people one friend
jokingly refers to as the "Rubino Crime Family" are all basically the same person, affectless
technocrats who play up reputations as giant-brained intellectuals -- I always imagine them
with bulbous Alien Nation heads -- while reveling in cold, hard truths about the limits of
government assistance.
And this by an inbred group of gluttons who couldn't survive without the life they drain
from others...
yerfej 3 hours ago remove link
That is the key "the life they drain from others". I have no issue with those who work
their aysses off keeping their just rewards, but this kind of insider filth needs a
lamppost.
two hoots 1 hour ago
Summers and those of his Jabba class know that uncontrolled Congressional giving could
cause collateral damage to their lifestyles. So does every comfortable class below them. It
all depends where you are positioned. Here on ZH i find people playing all sides of the class
game to whatever suits their current mood of us/them others. The more an event can affect us
directly determines where we direct our dislikes...up or down...inconsistently.
Doom Porn Star 1 hour ago
ALL politicians and 'public servants' who advocateor demand lockdowns and restrictions
should cede ALL pay, benefits and accrual of all retirement or other benefits for the
duration of ANY lockdown or restriction of ANY kind.
Those who advocate or demand sacrificed should make first, fullest largest sacrifices.
The whole lot of fascist 'some animals are better than others' lot should be thrown in
gitmo or equivalent.
The_Dude 3 hours ago (Edited)
Study what Summer's and his (((ilk))) did to pillage post - Soviet Russia and you will
understand who is untouchable in this society... And why in more sophisticated societies,
they were always kept at the periphery where they couldn't harm others.
Larry 'Dinner with Epstein' Summers has put more than his foot in his mouth.
BlueLightning 3 hours ago
O boy he's scared now
sgt_doom 2 hours ago (Edited)
Isn't Larry Summers the chief poster boy of the Global Banking Cartel ever since he
inserted the credit derivatives clause in the WTO's Financial Services Agreement*** making it
acceptable legal tender?
Believe that was during the Clinton Administration.
Is Larry still a lobbyist for the cental bankers? Oh yes, his photo is still there:
***[Credit to Greg Palast for uncovering this item.]
Arising 2.0 2 hours ago (Edited)
Larry is a cabal member who has always been out of touch with the 'silly goy'.
iambrambles 3 hours ago
The real question is why trillions to foreign govs and corporations.
$2000/American is chump change and isnt what anyone should be focusing on.
America never had the right fiscal priorities, people tend to forget the brilliance of the
US was with the constitution that enabled more freedoms than before.
But fiscally, America was always doomed after the absolution of the gold standard and the
creation of the federal reserve which allowed for endless government largesse.
ElTerco 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link
"negative consequences of aid to the less fortunate..."
Yet, no mention from Larry of negative consequences of aid to the more fortunate, which,
so far this year, has been around 40x as much money.
ElTerco 2 hours ago (Edited)
The $10+ trillion that has been pumped into the US economy so far has been a firehose to
top earners, while people who lost their jobs got a trickle of runoff as it worked its way
down the street through a very long, crap filled gutter.
Funny how Summers never mentioned *that*.
Max21c 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link
"When I see a coalition of Josh Hawley, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump getting behind
an idea, I think that's time to run for cover," he said, adding: "When you see the two
extremes agreeing, you can almost be certain that something crazy is in the air."
Thus is just more elitist nonsense from the silly conventional wisdom of Washingtonians,
elites, and the Democratic Party establishment. Bernie Sanders was a solid and strong and
energetic candidate and he could have had a chance of beating Trump in a free & fair
election had the Party nomination not been fixed and stolen from him by elites and their
puppet press smear campaigns.
Democrats made a mistake in attacking and undermining Bernie Sanders. Since much of what
has transpired this past year has been massive increases in domestic spending and some social
spending. Bernie Sanders could have beat Trump--fair and square--whereas the Crats had to
cheat with Biden and steal the election. Had the Democratic Party not stolen the election
from Sanders it likely Sanders would have had a significant opportunity to beat Trump. Since
Sanders was positioned right/correctly to be competitive in contrast and have some edge with
a significant part of the public on peace, foreign policy, domestic policy, and social
spending agendas. Would have been a tight race with Sanders versus Trump instead of the fraud
and fraudulent election of 2020. Definitely would have been a tossup on balance. Would have
been even harder if Sanders had teamed with Tulsi Gabbard as they would have had a serious
edge in foreign policy. But both Sanders and Gabbard are official pariahs and lepers in the
Democratic Party and its establishment as well as in the Washington establishment. Sanders
had the issues and would have had the momentum to give Trump a serious run for the money had
he not be forced aside in favor of the establishment candidate in a series of rigged
primaries and media smear campaigns and other subterfuge & Machavellian intrigues.
Max21c 1 hour ago (Edited)
I don't have issue with the size of company but do not like state sponsored industry
whereby the state security apparatus heavily favors state industries and state sponsored
industries--and--the secret police community and intelligence community and political class
ensure that the statals/SEO and state backed companies are protected by the state security
apparatus... The government doesn't have any business being used by Washingtonians, JudeoWASP
elites, Ivy Leaguers and their secret police to using military warmaking powers in the secret
police and intelligence community to rob one and redistribute back to state industries and
state sponsored industries and favor elites and their firms using secret police powers...
That's what both the Bolsheviks and Nazis did... It's the banana republoc and police state
and tyranny...
The socialism Bernie was talking about seemed more his advocating for increases in social
spending. The socialism Washington currently practices both openly and secretively &
covertly and illegally through abuses of secret police powers and state secrecy is much more
dangerous than what Bernie was advocating. The current socialist system as practiced by
Washingtonians and their secret police does much more damage to the country. The police state
socialism is much worse than the social spending games.
Bay Area Guy 2 hours ago remove link
LOL. How do you overheat a dead economy? No real growth (inflation adjusted) in at least
20 years; real unemployment at least 12.5% and probably north of 20%; this DESPITE interest
rates at all time lows and likely to go negative. And this fool is talking about overheating
the economy.
Max21c 2 hours ago remove link
If they can handout hundreds of billions to businesses under a questionable government to
business subsidy program that has been previously fraught with fraud, inefficiencies in
timeliness & appropriateness and geographical distribution. Also, such government to biz
programs which shall likely fail to serve both business and the economy effectively both by
practice and natural elements: such as some businesses being located in areas with a more
sophisticated biz culture; and set of skills; as well as access to better educated &
possibly more skillful entrepreneurs and cultures thereof; as well as some firms being simply
better positioned; as well as some firms being more program wise or welfare wise; and still
other firms being better tuned in or connected to the political system and or its
bureaucracy. Given the afore situation the money is better spent on a basis of widely
scattered and unpredictable et uncontrollable and thus not as apt to manipulation as well as
a direct to households holding the advantage of timeliness.
About 4k is about right for the floor/minimum on the basis of 2k in the form of a stimulus
and another matching 2k+ coming from forwarded tax rebates for future years which can be paid
back through payroll deductions or which can be paid back similar to installment loans
monthly or quarterly.
2k shall suffice in the near term as to stimulating consumer spending, consumer
confidence, business confidence, sales & revenues & profits or the improvement in the
outlook of a future return to profitability and the confidence & risks taking that comes
with firms seeking current and future profits and potentially making investments and pursuing
loans and the potential for an earlier uptick in the credit cycle as banks may change their
outlook on lending sooner than they might otherwise.
@Supply and Demand
'progressive' MeToo had disappeared. The MeToo activists love Bill Clinton and his various
acquaintances, such as the badly aged idiots of Russian Pussy Riot and the Maxwells family.
This is so progressive! See also the "progressive" Google/FaceBook/YouTube blanket censorship
over anything that can be qualified as 'antisemitic' by the ADL (created in memory of a
rapist and murderer Leo Frank). The 'progressives' have been taken for a ride by zionists.
The 'deplorables,' unlike Clintons, have a sense of dignity. As for the half-wit
'progressives,' they will undoubtedly have their chance to learn more about their most
important tutors, the Trotskyists.
The particular temperature of the economy is -- and this will quite obviously come as a
bit of a shock to you -- of no importance right now.
People are suffering.
I realize in using the word "people", I am alluding to a phenomenon that is not in your
vocabulary or data set.
But, then, you are a grade A asshole.
Indeed, you are just as much a sociopath as Dear Leader DJT
You ought to seek help before it is too late.
At best, Summers' boneheaded remark shows that he is aggressively defending Joe Biden's
views. Recall that David Sirota recently translated the New York Times' reporting on Biden's
intervention in the stimulus bill as Biden's Austerity
Zealotry Helped Cut The Stimulus Bill In Half :
Now, in the whittling down of the stimulus legislation, we see the first concrete example
of how Biden's ideology can change policy in the here and now -- and in deeply destructive
ways.
As pain and suffering is crescendoing across the country, Biden refrained from
aggressively pushing the bipartisan initiative for $1,200 survival checks. Indeed, at a time
when there was a legitimate chance to flip some Republicans -- including Donald Trump! --
against McConnell and push for a more robust stimulus, he demurred.
However, the New York Times reminds us today that Biden was "not an idle bystander in the
negotiations." On the contrary, the paper of record tells us that the president-elect played
a decisive role in making sure the legislation was cut in half.
For those of you not well versed in Summers' sorry record, this post might fill in some
gaps.
I've been gobsmacked to see that not only is Larry Summers on various short lists of
candidates to become the next Fed chairman, but that Summers is also supposedly closing in on
the favorite, Janet Yellen.
In early 2012, Summers was lobbying hard to become the head of the World Bank and didn't get
the nod. The fact that he is now under consideration for a bigger job should set alarm bells
off. While Paul Krugman weighs in on both, concluding that Yellen would be the better pick,
he's still far kinder to Summers than the Harvard economist deserves.
The big problem with Summers is not his record on deregulation (although that's bad enough)
or his foot-in-mouth remarks about women in math, or for suggesting that African countries
would make for good toxic
waste dumps . No, it's his appalling record the one time he was in an executive position,
as president of Harvard. Summers was unquestionably the worst leader in Harvard's history.
Summers, unduly impressed with his own economic credentials, overruled two successive
presidents of Harvard Management Corporation (the in-house fund management operation chock full
of well qualified and paid money managers that invest the Harvard endowment). Not content to
let the pros have all the fun, Summers insisted on gambling with the university's operating
funds, which are the monies that come in every year (tuition and board payments, government
grants, the payments out of the endowment allotted to the annual budget). His risk-taking left
the University with over $2 billion in losses and unwind costs and forced wide-spread budget
cuts, even down to getting rid of hot breakfasts. The Boston Globe
provided an overview :
It happened at least once a year, every year. In a roomful of a dozen Harvard University
financial officials, Jack Meyer, the hugely successful head of Harvard's endowment, and
Lawrence Summers, then the school's president, would face off in a heated debate. The topic:
cash and how the university was managing – or mismanaging – its basic operating
funds.
Through the first half of this decade, Meyer repeatedly warned Summers and other Harvard
officials that the school was being too aggressive with billions of dollars in cash,
according to people present for the discussions, investing almost all of it with the
endowment's risky mix of stocks, bonds, hedge funds, and private equity. Meyer's successor,
Mohamed El-Erian, would later sound the same warnings to Summers, and to Harvard financial
staff and board members.
"Mohamed was having a heart attack,'' said one former financial executive .
In the Summers years, from 2001 to 2006, nothing was on auto-pilot. He was the
unquestioned commander, a dominating personality with the talent to move a balkanized
institution like Harvard, but also a man unafflicted, former colleagues say, with self-doubt
in matters of finance.
Now Harvard had put some of its large operating budget at risk in speculative investments
starting in the 1980s, but Summers ramped it up to a completely new level. Again from the
Globe:
The very thing that the former endowment chiefs had worried about and warned of for so
long then came to pass. Amid plunging global markets, Harvard would lose not only 27 percent
of its $37 billion endowment in 2008, but $1.8 billion of the general operating cash –
or 27 percent of some $6 billion invested. Harvard also would pay $500 million to get out of
the interest-rate swaps Summers had entered into, which imploded when rates fell instead of
rising. The university would have to issue $1.5 billion in bonds to shore up its cash
position, on top of another $1 billion debt sale. And there were layoffs, pay freezes, and
deep, university-wide budget cuts
Without overburdening you with detail on the swaps that blew up Summers' piggy bank (see
this Bloomberg story for the
particulars) let there be no doubt that Summers signed up to be a chump to Wall Street. As
Epicurean
Dealmaker remarked when the Bloomberg expose came out (emphasis ours):
Now forward swaps, or forward start swaps -- which behave like normal swaps except the
offsetting fixed and floating rate payments are scheduled to start at a date certain in the
future -- by themselves count as little more than rank interest rate speculation,
specifically in this instance as a bet that short-term interest rates will rise in the
future. They can make a great deal of sense when an issuer intends to sell bonds in the
relatively near future and when the issuer wants to hedge against budgetary uncertainty by
converting floating rate obligations into fixed rate debt. That being said, I have rarely
encountered a corporate client who feels confident enough about both their absolute funding
needs and current and impending market conditions to enter into a forward swap starting more
than nine months into the future. Entering into a forward start swap for debt you do not
intend to issue up to 20 years in the future sounds like either rank hubris or free money for
Wall Street swap desks.
So Summers couldn't keep his ego out of the way, bullied the people around him, ignored the
advice of not one but two presidents of Harvard Management, and left a smoldering pile of
losses in his wake. And serious adults are prepared to allow someone with so little maturity
and such misplaced self confidence to have major sway over much bigger economic decisions?
Summers' second big problem is the scandal that led to his ouster at Harvard, which was NOT
his infamous "women suck at elite math and sciences" remarks. The university has conveniently
let that be assumed to be the proximate cause.
In fact, it was Summers' long-standing relationship with and protection of Andrei Shleifer,
a Harvard economics professor, who was at the heart of a corruption scandal where he used his
influential role on a Harvard contract advising on Russian privatization to enrich himself and
his wife, his chief lieutenant Jonathan Hay, and other cronies. The US government sued Harvard
for breach of contract and Shleifer and Hay for fraud and won. This section comes from a
terrifically well reported account in Institutional
Investor by David McClintick :
The judge determined that Shleifer and Hay were subject to the conflict-of-interest rules
and had tried to circumvent them; that Shleifer engaged in apparent self-dealing; that Hay
attempted to "launder" $400,000 through his father and girlfriend; that Hay knew the claims
he caused to be submitted to AID were false; and that Shleifer and Hay conspired to defraud
the U.S. government by submitting false claims.
On August 3, 2005, the parties announced a settlement under which Harvard was required to
pay $26.5 million to the U.S. government, Shleifer $2 million and Hay between $1 million and
$2 million, depending on his earnings over the next decade. Shleifer was barred from
participating in any AID project for two years and Hay for five years. Shleifer and Zimmerman
were required by terms of the settlement to take out a $2 million mortgage on their Newton
house. None of the defendants acknowledged any liability under the settlement. (Forum
Financial also settled its lawsuit against Harvard, Shleifer and Hay under undisclosed
terms.
And while Harvard can't be held singularly responsible for the plutocratic land-grab in
Russia, the fact that its project leaders decided to feed at the trough sure didn't help:
Reinventing Russia was never going to be easy, but Harvard botched a historic opportunity.
The failure to reform Russia's legal system, one of the aid program's chief goals, left a
vacuum that has yet to be filled and impedes the country's ability to confront economic and
financial challenges today.
And while Summers was not responsible for Shleifer getting the contract, he was a booster
and later protector of Shleifer:
Summers wasn't president of Harvard when Shleifer's mission to Moscow was coming apart.
But as a Harvard economics professor in the 1980s, a World Bank and Treasury official in the
1990s, and Harvard's president since 2001, Summers was positioned uniquely to influence
Shleifer's career path, to shape US aid to Russia and Shleifer's role in it and even to
shield Shleifer after the scandal broke. Though Summers, as Harvard president, recused
himself from the school's handling of the case, he made a point of taking aside Jeremy
Knowles, then the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, and asking him to protect
Shleifer.
And the protection Shleifer got was considerable:
Knowles tells Institutional Investor that he does not remember Summers' approaching him
about Shleifer However, not long after Summers says he intervened on the professor's behalf,
Knowles promoted Shleifer from professor of economics to a named chair, the Whipple V.N.
Jones professorship.
Shleifer's legal position changed on June 28, 2004, when Judge Woodlock ruled that he and
Hay had conspired to defraud the U.S. government and had violated conflict-of-interest
regulations. Still, there was no indication that the Summers administration had initiated
disciplinary proceedings. To the contrary, efforts were seemingly made to divert attention
from the growing scandal. The message from the top at Harvard was, "No problem -- Andrei
Shleifer is a star," says one senior Harvard figure
One instance was a meeting early in the academic year that began in September 2004, less
than two months after the federal court formally adjudicated Shleifer's liability for
conspiring to defraud the U.S. government. A faculty member asked [Dean] Kirby why Harvard
should defend a professor who had been found liable for conspiring to commit fraud. The
second confrontation came early in the current academic year when another professor asked
Kirby why Harvard should pay a settlement of $26.5 million and legal fees estimated at
between $10 million and $15 million for legal violations by a single professor and his
employee, about which it was unaware. On both occasions Kirby is said to have turned red in
the face and angrily cut off discussion.
On at least one other occasion, Summers himself told members of the faculty of arts and
sciences that the millions of dollars that Harvard paid in damages did not come from the
budget of the faculty of arts and sciences, but didn't say where the money came from. Those
listening inferred he meant that the matter shouldn't be of concern to the faculty and that
they shouldn't raise it, a curious notion, given that Shleifer was one of their own
Shleifer has never acknowledged doing anything wrong. Summers has said nothing. And so far
as is known, there has been no internal investigation or sanction. "An observer trying to
make sense of the University's position on Shleifer, Ogletree and Tribe is driven to an
unhappy conclusion. Defiance seems to be a better way to escape institutional opprobrium than
confession and apology. . . . And most of all being a close personal friend of the president
probably does one no harm."
And that's before we get to Summers' role in the ouster of Brooksley Born over credit
default swaps and in supporting the passage of Gramm–Leach–Bliley and the repeal of
Glass Steagall (admittedly so shot full of holes at that point as to be close to a dead letter,
but still necessary to allow Traveler and Citigroup to merge). Yet Summers has refused to
recant any of these actions .
So with this record, it's hard to watch Paul Krugman yet again tarnish his good reputation
endorsing , even in a
careful way, a colossally failed proposition like Larry Summers (Krugman put both Yellen and
Summers in the "I know and admire" category). Take that back. Summers is your man if you are a
banker, looter, or plutocrat.
But given that (per the Ron Suskind book Confidence Men), Obama increasingly couldn't abide
Summers, and Obama wouldn't nominate Summers for the less influential World Bank position, one
has to wonder why his name is suddenly being bruited about as a strong contender for the Fed
chair. It may simply be the dint of Summers' PR efforts.
But I worry another play is afoot. As much as Yellen and Summers are expected to take
largely similar postures on monetary policy, Yellen is anticipated to be less of a bank booster
than Summers. So Wall Street is likely to be pushing Summers' candidacy. But the real play may
be that the insiders know that Summers won't hold up well under protracted scrutiny, and at a
late date, Timothy Geithner will be pushed to the fore. I can only hope that Geithner (due to
his lack of monetary economy chops) won't be seen as an acceptable alternative, but I would not
bet on being so lucky.
Looks like Sidney Powell overplayed her hand with her Hugo Chavez claims and might pay the
price... They also attack her penchant for self-promotion.
This is a solid legal document that attack exaggerations and false claims and as such it puts
Sydney Power on the defensive. But at the same time it opens the possibility to analyze Dominion
machines and see to what extent votes can be manipulated, for example by lowest sensitivity of
the scanner for mail-in ballots and then manually assigning votes to desirable candidate. This
avenue is not excluded.
It also does not address the claim of inherent vulnerabilities of any Windows based computer
used in election, irrespective whether they were produced by Dominion or any other company due to
the known vulnerability of windows OS especially to the intelligence agencies attacks. As
well as the most fundamental question: whether the use of computers in election represents step
forward or the step back in election security? Especially Internet connected voting machines and
centralized tabulation centers deployed in 2020 elections.
So the success here depends whether they can narrow the scope tot ht claims made and avid
discovery of the voting machines themselves.
The weak point is that the letter references the testimony of Chris Krebs, who is a former
Microsoft employee and as such has a conflict of interests in accessing the security of Windows
based election machines produced by Dominion and other companies. Moreover he is now a computer
science processional but a lawyer, who does not has any independent opinion on the subject matter
due to the absence of fundamental CS knowledge required.
Notable quotes:
"... For example, you falsely claimed that Dominion and its software were created in Venezuela for the purpose of rigging elections for the now-deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, that Dominion paid kickbacks to Georgia officials in return for a "no-bid" contract to use Dominion systems in the 2020 election, and that Dominion rigged the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election by manipulating votes, shifting votes, installing and using an algorithm to modify or "weight" votes such that a vote for Biden counted more than a vote for Trump, trashing Trump votes, adding Biden votes, and training election workers to dispose of Trump votes and to add Biden votes. ..."
"... Fifth, you had a financial incentive in making the defamatory accusations. Your own conduct and statements at the press conference, media tour, and on your websites make it clear that you were publicizing your wild accusations as part of a fundraising scheme and in order to drum up additional business and notoriety for yourself. ..."
Sidney Powell Defending the Republic 10130 Northlake Blvd. #214342 West Palm Beach, Florida
34412
Re: Defamatory Falsehoods About Dominion
Dear Ms. Powell:
We represent US Dominion Inc. and its wholly owned subsidiaries, Dominion Voting Systems,
Inc. and Dominion Voting Systems Corporation (collectively, "Dominion"). We write regarding
your wild, knowingly baseless, and false accusations about Dominion, which you made on behalf
of the Trump Campaign as part of a coordinated media circus and fundraising scheme featuring
your November 19 press conference in Washington, D.C. and including your "Stop the Steal" rally
and numerous television and radio appearances on -- and statements to -- Fox News, Fox
Business, Newsmax, and the Rush Limbaugh Radio Show, among others.
... ... ...
I. Your reckless disinformation campaign is predicated on lies that have endangered
Dominion's business and the lives of its employees.
Given the sheer volume and ever-expanding set of lies that you have told and are continuing
to tell about Dominion as part of your multi-media disinformation "Kraken" fundraising
campaign, it would be impractical to address every one of your falsehoods in this letter.
Without conceding the truth of any of your claims about Dominion, we write to demand that you
retract your most serious false accusations, which have put Dominion's employees' lives at risk
and caused enormous harm to the company.
For example, you falsely claimed that Dominion and its software were created in
Venezuela for the purpose of rigging elections for the now-deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo
Chavez, that Dominion paid kickbacks to Georgia officials in return for a "no-bid" contract to
use Dominion systems in the 2020 election, and that Dominion rigged the 2020 U.S. Presidential
Election by manipulating votes, shifting votes, installing and using an algorithm to modify or
"weight" votes such that a vote for Biden counted more than a vote for Trump, trashing Trump
votes, adding Biden votes, and training election workers to dispose of Trump votes and to add
Biden votes.
By way of example only, just last week, you made the following false assertions about
Dominion to Jan Jekielek at The Epoch Times:'
Effectively what they did with the machine fraud was to, they did everything from
injecting massive quantities of votes into the system that they just made up, to running
counterfeit ballots through multiple times in multiple batches to create the appearance of
votes that weren't really there. They trashed votes.
These statements are just the tip of the iceberg, which includes similar and other false
claims you made at your Washington, D.C. press conference and to other media outlets with
global internet audiences. Your outlandish accusations are demonstrably fake. While soliciting
people to send you "millions of dollars"2 and holding yourself out as a beacon of truth, you
have purposefully avoided naming Dominion as a defendant in your sham litigations-effectively
denying Dominion the opportunity to disprove your false accusations in court. Dominion values
freedom of speech and respects the right of all Americans-of all political persuasions -- to
exercise their First Amendment rights and to disagree with each other. But while you are
entitled to your own opinions, Ms. Powell, you are not entitled to your own facts. Defamatory
falsehoods are actionable in court and the U.S.
Supreme Court has made clear that "there is no constitutional value in false statements of
fact." Gertz v. Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 340 (1974). Dominion welcomes transparency and a
full investigation of the relevant facts in a court of law, where it is confident the truth
will prevail. Here are the facts:
1. Dominion's vote counts have been repeatedly verified by paper ballot recounts and
independent audits.
Dominion is a non-partisan company that has proudly partnered with public officials from
both parties in accurately tabulating the votes of the American people in both "red" and "blue"
states and counties. Far from being created to rig elections for a now-deceased Venezuelan
dictator, Dominion's voting systems are certified under standards promulgated by the U.S.
Election Assistance Commission ("EAC"), reviewed and tested by independent testing laboratories
accredited by the EAC, and were designed to be auditable and include a paper ballot backup to
verify results. Indeed, paper ballot recounts and independent audits have repeatedly and
conclusively debunked your election-rigging claims, and on November 12, 2020, the Elections
Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector
Coordinating Executive Committees released a joint statement confirming that there is "no
evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way
compromised" and that the 2020 election was the most secure in American history.3 The Joint
Statement was signed and endorsed by, among others, the National Association of State Election
Directors, National Association of Secretaries of State, and the U.S. Cybersecurity &
Infrastructure Security Agency ("CISA") -- then led by a Trump appointee, Chris Krebs.
In addition, your false accusation that Dominion rigged the 2020 election is based on a
demonstrably false premise that wildly overstates Dominion's very limited role in elections.
Dominion provides tools such as voting machines that accurately tabulate votes for the
bipartisan poll workers, poll watchers, and local election officials who work tirelessly to run
elections and ensure accurate results. Dominion's machines count votes from county-verified
voters using a durable paper ballot. Those paper ballots are the hard evidence proving the
accuracy of the vote counts from Dominion's machines. If Dominion had manipulated the votes,
the paper ballots would not match the machine totals. In fact, they do match. Recounts and
audits have proven that Dominion did what it was designed and hired to do: accurately tabulate
votes.
2. Dominion has no connection to Hugo Chavez. Venezuela, or China.
As you are well aware from documents in the public domain and attached to your court
filings, Hugo Chavez's elections were not handled by Dominion, but by an entirely different
company -- Smartmatic. This is a critical fact because you have premised your defamatory
falsehoods on your intentionally false claim that Dominion and Smartmatic are the same company
even though you know that they are entirely separate companies who compete with each other.
Dominion was not created in or for Venezuela, has never been located there, and is not owned by
Smartmatic or Venezuelan or Chinese investors. Dominion has never provided machines or any of
its software or technology to Venezuela, nor has it ever participated in any elections in
Venezuela. It did not receive $400 million from the Chinese in the weeks before the 2020
election or otherwise. It has no ties to the Chinese government, the Venezuelan government,
Hugo Chavez, Malloch Brown, George Soros, Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster. Dominion does not
use Smartmatic's software or machines, and there was no Smartmatic technology in any of
Dominion's voting machines in the 2020 election.
3. You falsely claimed that Dominion's founder admitted he "can change a million votes,
no problem at all" and that you would "tweet out the video later''-- but you never did so
because no such video exists.
During at least one of your many media appearances, you promised to "tweet out [a] video" of
Dominion's founder admitting that he "can change a million votes, no problem at all." Your
assertion -- to a global internet audience -- that you had such damning video evidence
bolstered your false accusations that Dominion had rigged the election. Yet you have never
produced that video because, as you know, it does not exist. Dominion's founder never made such
a claim because Dominion cannot change votes. Its machines simply tabulate the paper ballots
that remain the custody of the local election officials -- nothing more, nothing less. 4. You
falsely claimed that you have a Dominion employee "on tape" saving he "rigged the election for
Biden''-- but you know that no such tape exists. In peddling your defamatory accusations, you
also falsely told a national audience that you had a Dominion employee "on tape" saying that
"he rigged the election for Biden." Your own court filings prove that no such tape exists. In
them, you cited an interview of Joe Oltmann, a Twitter- banned "political activist" who -- far
from claiming he had that shocking alleged confession "on tape"-claimed he took "notes" during
a conference call he supposedly joined after "infiltrating Antifa." This is a facially
ludicrous claim for a number of reasons, including the fact that he lives in Colorado, where it
would have been perfectly legal to record such a call if it had actually happened. As a result
of your false accusations, that Dominion employee received death threats.
II. Because there is no reliable evidence supporting your defamatory falsehoods, you
actively manufactured and misrepresented evidence to support them.
Despite repeatedly touting the overwhelming "evidence" of your assertions during your media
campaign, every court to which you submitted that socalled "evidence" has dismissed each of
your sham litigations, and even Trump appointees and supporters have acknowledged -- including
after you filed your "evidence" in court, posted it on your fundraising website, and touted it
in the media -- that there is no evidence that actually supports your assertions about
Dominion. Indeed:
One federal judge observed that you submitted "nothing but speculation and conjecture
that votes for President Trump were destroyed, discarded or switched to votes for Vice
President Biden." Op. & Order Den. Pl.'s Emer. Motion, for Deck, Emer., and Inj. Relief
at 34, Whitmer v. City of Detroit, No. 20-cv-12134 (E.D. Mich. Dec. 7, 2020) [Dkt. 62].
Another federal judge commented that the attachments to your complaint were "only
impressive for their volume," are "largely based on anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and
irrelevant analysis of unrelated elections," and include "expert reports" that "reach
implausible conclusions, often because they are derived from wholly unreliable sources."
Order at 24-25, Bowyerv. Ducey, No. 2-20-cv-02321 (D. Ariz. Dec. 9, 2020) [Dkt. 84].
Despite your claim that you have so much "evidence" that it feels as if you are drinking
from a "fire hose," when asked by your interviewers and other media outlets to provide that
evidence, you have failed to do so each and every time. Conservative television host Tucker
Carlson even called you out for failing to provide any evidence to support your
assertions.4
After you put the purported "evidence" in your court filings, Trump loyalist and U.S.
Attorney General Bill Barr stated, "There's been one assertion that would be systemic fraud
and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election
results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven't seen anything to
substantiate that."
... ... ...
Fifth, you had a financial incentive in making the defamatory accusations. Your own
conduct and statements at the press conference, media tour, and on your websites make it clear
that you were publicizing your wild accusations as part of a fundraising scheme and in order to
drum up additional business and notoriety for yourself. Your financial incentive and
motive to make the defamatory accusations is further evidence of actual malice. See Brown v.
Petrolite Corp., 965 F.2d 38, 47 (5th Cir. 1992); Enigma Software Grp. USA, LLC v. Bleeping
Computer LLC, 194 F. Supp. 3d 263, 288 (S.D.N.Y. 2016).
Sixth, you cannot simply claim ignorance of the facts. As a licensed attorney, you were
obligated to investigate the factual basis for your claims before making them in court.
31 There is no factual basis for your defamatory accusations against Dominion and
numerous reliable sources and documents in the public domain have repeatedly debunked your
accusations. As such, you either conducted the inquiry required of you as a licensed attorney
and violated your ethical obligations by knowingly making false assertions rebutted by the
information you found, or you violated your ethical obligations by purposefully avoiding
undertaking the reasonable inquiry required of you as a member of the bar. Either is additional
evidence of actual malice.
Taken together, your deliberate misrepresentation and manufacturing of evidence, the
inherent improbability of your accusations, your reliance on facially unreliable sources, your
intentional disregard of reliable sources, your preconceived storyline, your financial
incentive, and your ethical violations are clear and convincing evidence of actual malice. See
Eramo v. Rolling Stone, 209 F. Supp. 3d 862,872 (W.D. Va. 2016) (denying defendant's motion for
summary judgment and finding "[ajlthough failure to adequately investigate, a departure from
journalistic standards, or ill
I would'nt have thought that a socialist sympathizer would be an enthusiast for the "level
playing field". The neo-liberal Thatcherite freedoms of the single market have led to much
unemployment in Europe. Freedom of capital and freedom of labour work to the benefit of
transnational corporations and much to the detriment of ordinary working people. Much of the
liberal left in Britain now insists that we must remain locked in to this neo-liberal
straight jacket. https://www.thefullbrexit.com/quit-single-market
@ james | Dec 22 2020 19:58 utc | 80 who wrote
"
@ Maff | Dec 22 2020 16:05 utc | 68.. thanks maff.. i stand corrected... i thought the city
wanted brexit.. it appears that is wrong...
"
Maff qualified their claim with the "almost" adverb "all" and provided no linked backing or
specifying the "corporation, bank, financial institution and media outlet" camps. I still
believe that The City of London Corp wanted Brexit, but silly me, I still think those that
own global private finance run the West/world.
I'd say you're both correct. Several banker types have profited nicely on Brexit so far.
Others clearly have not or stand to lose out. Rees Mogg is an excellent example of the Brexit
disaster capitalist lackey.
For long time I viewed the city as homogeneous, but the last five years have taught me
otherwise.
The question I have is was it always like this (well concealed), or is it another side
effect of the west turning in on itself?
James it was a very large majority that wished to leave.
And this is entirely consistent with the history of the EU and its predecessors (The Common
Market): the Irish also voted to leave, then, after great pressure and an almost unanimous
front including almost all the political parties and fire threats of retribution, the vote
was reversed.
In France and the Netherlands where the EU's neo-liberal constitution was put to a vote it
was defeated in both countries. In this case though, as I recollect, the matter of approving
the Constitution was simply taken out of the electorate's hands. The barely revised rejected
constitution was then approved in the form of a treaty which of course was not put before the
electorate.
The reality is that the EU is both a stalking horse for Washington and a hedge against
democracy. It is a neo-liberal project established to ensure that private property should not
be threatened by a potentially egalitarian electorate. It is essentially anti-democratic a
recreation of the Hapsburg empire complete with parliaments/talking shops without sovereign
power and directed by unelected commissioners.
This month's New Left Review has a marvelous article-some 19000 words long, by Perry
Anderson which reveals the EU's nature in great detail. I gave a link a week or so ago.
The problem with much discussion of this matter is that it is a subject on which a radical
socialist and a conservative banker can both agree that the EU is a bad thing. I, a radical
socialist, because I believe that the state must take control over the commanding heights of
the economy and ensure that such horrors as homelessness and poverty are ended. The
conservative financier because he believes that the City of London, which he and his class
have defended from socialist regulation over the years, ought not to be controlled by
bureaucrats in Brussels or the European Central Bank.
The millions of working class Englishmen and women who voted to leave the EU anticipated
that the procedure of doing so would be orderly, sensible and transparent. They were not
voting for Boris and his banker friends but for a revival of manufacturing, progressive
taxation, nationalised, rather than profit taking, utilities and natural monopolies and a
restoration of trade union and civil rights, the right to strike for example.
The truth is that the world is a very big place and there are plenty of countries who
would eagerly embrace offers from the UK to enter into trade agreements formal or informal:
Venezuela, Cuba and Iran all spring to mind. But Russia and China are also obvious potential
partners. And what such countries have in common is that they would not seek to interfere in
the UK's internal politics and to dictate the limits within which political parties there can
operate. In this they differ from the EU, joined at the hip with NATO which is always under
US command. We have just seen in the surgical defenestration of Jeremy Corbyn and his
replacement by a Zionist member of the Trilateral Commission how the EU/US axis, acting
through the tame media and employing the agency of the swollen security establishment (where
the first loyalty is to the Empire and Washington), arrogates to itself the right to decide
just how far the British people will be allowed to go.
In this matter that means that they will, at a pinch, be allowed to leave the EU but that
the Special Relationship (US Occupation) is sacrosanct and NATO is forever.
We need to abstract from pro-China propaganda here. The critique of the USA handing of the
epidemic is a better part of the article. It is true, that the US neoliberal elite was more
conserved about the health on military-industrial complex then about the health and well-being of
the American people.
Writes Margaret Kimberley (in "Opposing War Propaganda Against China," Jan. 25, 2020):
"Now whenever we see a reference to China in the corporate media we always see the words
communist party attached. This silly redundancy is war propaganda along with every other
smear and slur. We are told that 1 million Uighurs are imprisoned when there is quite
literally no proof of any such thing. China, the country which first experienced the COVID-19
virus, was the first to vanquish it, and has a low death rate of less than 5,000 people to
prove it. We depend here in America on China to produce masks and other protective equipment
but China is declared the villain. The country that within one month of realizing there was a
new communicable disease gave the world the keys to conquering it.
"Instead the country which fails where China succeeds, in providing for the needs of its
people and their health, is an international pariah, with most of the world barring Americans
from travel and turning us into a giant leper colony. Trump speaks of the "kung flu" and the
"Wuhan virus," but it is China which conquered the disease that has killed 130,000 Americans
and forced a quarantine which has caused economic devastation to millions of people here.
"But Americans get nothing but war propaganda. Trump and Joe Biden outdo one another
bragging about who will be tougher to China. This week we saw the U.S. government violate
international law again and close the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas."
Writes Roxana Baspineiro in "Solidarity vs. Sanctions in Times of a Global Pandemic":
"Chinese and Cuban doctors have been providing support in Iran, Italy, Spain and have
offered their services and expertise to the most vulnerable countries in Latin America,
Africa, and Europe. They have developed medicines and medical treatments such as Interferon
Alpha 2B in Cuba, one of the potential medicines to combat the virus, which reduces the
mortality rate of people affected by COVID19. But above all, they have offered their interest
in distributing them to the peoples of the world without any patent or benefit
whatsoever."
Regardless of whether citizens of the US know about Chinese efforts, people in other nations
have noticed, according to Stansfield Smith, who writes:
"From the responses to the coronavirus pandemic, the world has seen the model of public
health efficiency China presented in controlling the problem at home. It has seen China's
world leadership in offering international aid and care. It has seen the abdication of
leadership by the US and even its obstruction in working to find solutions. Now the US still
cannot control the virus, and remains mired in economic crisis, while China is rebounding. In
sum, the pandemic has made the world look at both China and the US in a new light. And it has
dealt a serious blow to the US rulers' two decade long effort to counter the rise of
China."
... ... ...
The final section of the book, "Escalating anti-China campaign," is a diverse collection of
essays on subjects such as: US accusations of Chinese repression of Uyghurs; NATO exercises
that threatened to exacerbate COVID spread even while China was bringing aid to Europe; COVID
in the US armed forces; US military belligerence toward China; the color revolution in Hong
Kong; Vietnam's response to COVID; and a call from Margaret Flowers and the recently deceased
Kevin Zeese to replace the US pivot to Asia with a "Pivot to Peace."
Ajamu Baraka writes:
"The psychopathology of white supremacy blinds U.S. policy- makers to the political,
economic, and geopolitical reality that the U.S. is in irreversible decline as a global
power. The deep structural contradictions of the U.S. economy and state was exposed by the
weak and confused response to COVID-19 and the inability of the state to provide minimum
protections for its citizens and residents.
"But even in decline, the U.S. has a vast military structure that it can use to threaten
and cause massive death and destruction. This makes the U.S. a threat to the planet and
collective humanity because U.S policy-makers appear to be in the grip of a deathwish in
which they are prepared to destroy the world before voluntarily relinquishing power,
especially to a non-European power like China.
"For example, when Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo declared in public that the United
States and its Western European allies must put China in "its proper place," this represents
a white supremacist mindset that inevitably will lead to monumental errors of judgment."
So COVID-19 is, to put it mildly, a teachable moment. Looking around the world right now, we
can see who is learning and who isn't. As "Capitalism on a Ventilator" vividly illustrates,
China is leading the way, and the United States is slipping into obsolescence. Those who hope
to survive the coming travails can see who to follow and who to avoid.
Kollibri terre Sonnenblume is a writer living on the West Coast of the U.S.A. More of
Kollibri's writing and photos can be found at Macska Moksha Press .
That's the nature of the neoliberal beast. They control the state including the courts.
Notable quotes:
"... You forgot "standing" as used here and in the Texas suit. Funny how when you sue Democrats, no one ever has standing. ..."
"... Yes, this is the Catch-22 the courts have engineered so they do not have to address election fraud at all. File suit BEFORE the election = no standing because no injury because the election has not taken place so no aggrieved party. File suit AFTER the election = laches and failure to file before the election now means millions will be 'disenfranchised' and r ..."
You forgot "standing" as used here and in the Texas suit. Funny how when you sue
Democrats, no one ever has standing. Well, why not go out and get someone with standing in
the first place? Of course, if Trump does something, there's always a district judge in
Hawaii or Guam presented with a knock-down, can't lose case and Trump's immediately
overruled. Fatass shrugs his shoulders and says, "Hey, wadda ya gonna do?" and moves on to
the next "issue".
Herr Doktor 8 hours ago
After election fraud, courts will find fault for not bringing the question before the
election.
SDShack 4 hours ago
Yes, this is the Catch-22 the courts have engineered so they do not have to address
election fraud at all. File suit BEFORE the election = no standing because no injury because
the election has not taken place so no aggrieved party. File suit AFTER the election = laches
and failure to file before the election now means millions will be 'disenfranchised' and
r
@ uncle tungsten #24 with the appreciated link containing this quote
" A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global
financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered
around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve.
"
The posting ends with this quote
"We have a system of "neo-feudalism" in which all of us and our national governments
are enslaved to debt. This system is governed by the central banks and by the Bank for
International Settlements, and it systematically transfers the wealth of the world out of
our hands and into the hands of the global elite.
But most people have no idea that any of this is happening because the global elite also
control what we see, hear and think about. Today, there are just six giant media
corporations that control more than 90 percent of the news and entertainment that you watch
on your television in the United States."
What an ugly way to run a society. Moving society to public finance and abolishing private
finance is what is needed to save our species and what we can of the world we live in. I am
with China in advocating for Ad Astra because we can see the end of our ability to live on
this planet because of historical faith-based disrespect of it.
No we are not dealing with the analogue of the feudalism of Western Europe, with its
interlocking panoply of mutual obligations that was built around God.
No, we are witnessing the re-birth of the Asiatic mode of production in the Euro-American
countries as the absence of manufacturing production makes itself felt. To wit, like South
American countries, one sees the emergence of two classes, Masters and their Service Servants
(needed for performing all manner of useful but tedious manual service labor, from
dog-walkers to barbers to cooks...)
Significantly, as Americans, French, English and many others sold their jobs to Mexico,
China, Korea, Singapore, and Japan, it was precisely those countries that were given an extra
shot in the arm for breaking from the chains of the Asiatic Mode of Production.
It is particularly interesting that in America, the long-hair guy driving a 50-dollar
Chevy, is supporting Republicans, who have no better future for him than being a servant to
Financiers.
William Gruff # 97
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 18 2020 21:36 utc | 113
The 70s was when they started selling the good redwood saw logs to Japan instead of
cutting them up here because they could get more profit that way. At the time I do not think
it was considered that the Japanese would be able to compete with us as well as they did, and
I think the same applies to the other sellouts of our working class to foreign cheap
manufacturing centers. You have to remember these people really do think they are better.
They do think in class terms even if they avoid that rhetoric in public. The problem is they
thought they could control China like they did Japan. That was dumb then and it looks even
dumber now. You can see similar dumbness in their lack of grip on any realisitic view of
Russia. Provincials really. Rich peasants.
Thanks for the redfish video suggestion. Worth watching not only to get insight about the
current developments in India but also understanding the global Zeitgeist.
I couldn't avoid to identify the exact same type of developments and problems that working
class and increasingly also middle class facing in other parts of the world.
The globalization of capitalism since the fall of USSR and Warsaw pact, has caused
accelerated monopolization of political and economic power everywhere in the world,
this was achieved by enforcing the same neoliberal agenda globally. No matter if you look at
the USA, Germany, Iran or India, you discover the same type of "reforms". Reforms that result
in increased poverty, more and more middle class families are losing their socioeconomic
position and becoming part of working class.
One come to the understanding that the "Great Reset" we are talking about recently, is not
something new in the beginning and making, it's only the continuation of an agenda which has
been in implementation since 30 years ago.
have you noticed that terms like "Imperialism" and "Capitalist government" which were
natural parts of the political discourse in 20th century have been increasingly replaced by
"Nepotism" and "Oligarchy" in 21st century?
Thank you and I have noticed the shift in terminology. I try to avoid it as I believe in
the need to be extremely clear about socialism and capitalism. I prefer to avid CCP and
prefer Chinese Communist Party. I take care to compare western issues with how Cuba is
actually doing. Keep making it clear there is a range of alternatives to private finance
capitalism and IMF usury.
The weavers of deceit and theft that are private finance capitalists are indeed oligarchs
and they attempt to crush any discussion of repossessing their wealth and redistributing it
so that more people can do more work with it and generate stronger societies. The private
finance vultures live in dread of a Tobin tax so I say bring it on. Wherever cash is locked
away and idle - take it and give it to the people as it is they who know how to put it back
to work and generate security and peace within communities.
Wherever power is monopolised in industry then force a devolution of shares to workers and
unions and pay shares as taxes to the state so that dividends go to all including the state.
As it is now in many countries mega corporations extort tax holidays to set up production
units in the counties and dump the entire cost of infrastructure expansion onto those
counties as part of their extortion. Information monopolies are the most critical to
dismantle. Look at the west where critical journalism has been reduced to mediocre
stenography and those with integrity are entirely reliant on other monopolies to squeeze
their digital content between the pillars of censorious monopolies like twitter and facebook
etc. These monopolies are managing public content and creativity and should be in public
ownership - NOT just shareholder public but the entire public.
There is this ruse of oligarchs today just as in Venice in the 16th and 17th century where
the Doges in their magnificence spy on the citizens and reward citizens for spying on each
other, where social cohesion and solidarity is corroded and rots within. That is what the neo
liberal and private finance agenda is - to monopolise $$$ and power and decision making
within the hands of decrepit gerontocrats like Pelosi, Lord Rothschild, Rupert Murdoch, Queen
Elisabeth etc, etc.
Enough of this rant... thank you Framarz. Long live those countries that have for decades
repelled the evil that would crush their freedom and socialism. May Russia find its way to
reintegrate socialism within its future.
by: steven t johnson @ 13 says "the Presidency is essentially unchecked: Article II and
amendment 12 clearly state
that no one can challenge the president.." <= I add "unless congress can find something
they themselves are all
guilty of, and are collectively willing to accept the risk that they themselves might be
removed for the same crime
for which the Congress might impeach the President .. from elected Office impeachment is
impossible.
It is this improbability of removing the President from office that makes the control of
the content allowed or
pushed on the public by the main stream media so important to the stability of the government
and the ability of
the President to lead.
The only way a President can be impeached is to do to the President what the Lenin and
Tolstoy Bolshevik regime
change team accomplished to bring down the Czar of Russia. The media began its attacks on
Christian Czar led
Russia in 1875 by 1919 if the Czar had said it was raining outside the entire nation of
Russia wanting to know if
it were raining would go outside to see for themselves.
Tolstoy, a public hero, blamed the Czar for the problems caused by a pandemic and a famine
of 1891. The peasants
of Russia were trained by media content to distrust any and everything the Czar or any member
of his staff said or
did. Propaganda said there was evil behind every act of the Czar. Tolstoy's famous propaganda
undermined the
Christian faith held by millions of people.
"The Minister for the Interior told the Emperor Czar that Tolstoy's letter to the English
press 'must be considered
tantamount to a most shocking revolutionary proclamation': not a judgement that can often
have been made of a letter
to The Daily Telegraph. Czar Alexander III began to believe that it was all part of an
English plot and the Moscow
Gazette, which was fed from the Government, denounced Tolstoy's letters as 'frank propaganda
for the overthrow of
the whole social and economic structure of the world'." see destroys
Christain Russian government
Norecovery @ 22 says and I have added to what he said to make this list.
1. "The .. criminals have ..take[n] over foreign policy in the U.S.,
these criminals you are talking about are not part of the government, they are private
persons and corporations.
Allow me to remind you that Article II of the Constitution of the USA only concerns two
persons, The President
and the VP.. to them all power to act domestic and foreign is given, Congress has no power
that it cannot get
into law, and no power to govern the office of the President and that has been true since the
original constitution
was ratified in 1788. To conduct war around the world, it is necessary only to won the
president.
2. leveraging money power .. the oligarch network employees highly motivated highly-paid
promoters to force President control onto the world.
3. The Oligarch and their corporations control Congress, Intelligence Agencies, and the
content that MSM presents...
4. the MSM distributed content expresses total censorship as does Google, and social
media
5. Corona virus is bio-warfare designed to undermine small-scale economies and to
establish Oligarch autonomy
6. Using rule of law (generated by nation state power) oligarch owned corporations own all
non taxable property (copyrights and patents) and the right to use all technology (copyright
and patents).
7. Worldwide compliance is the goal of the oligarch. owning the nation state allows
military, financial, and media to be used to crush dissent and to extract wealth.
8. The pharma-promoted questionable gene editing vaccinations are questionable at
best.
9. Humanity is witnessing a worldwide COUPS, UBER-Fascism that exceeds all historical
examples.
10. WWI was a war to take control of the Ottoman owned oil rich land and to tame German
competitive strength.
11. Hilter return Germany to its former power, so WWII was to take German competition
completely out of the equation.
12. The wars in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, are about pipeline and
control of oil production, transport and profit
13. the wars in Belarus, Ukraine, Modldova, Bulgaria Romania, Hunary, Slovakia Cezech
Republic Poland are about getting Western Europe access into Russia.
14. Last week the House passed a bill designed to deny the president any authority to
reduce the US troops in Foreign land.
so your question at norecovery @ 22 will it succeed is relevant. I don't think it will, I
was told the Governor of Florida
has refused to take the vaccine, word is getting around; people everywhere in USA governed
America, in UK governed
Britain, in Republic of France governed France ( riots every weekend for over two years) ,
and Zionist governed
Israel (riots all over the place all of the time).. everyone is skeptical of the nation state
system.
I think the take over would have succeeded if the Oligarchs had not tried to force a
vaccination on people that
genetic engineers (changes the way their body works) the bodies those vaccinated were born
with.
Snake @ 36
You must have spent a lot of time and consideration on that far reaching summary !
That's MOA at its very best !!
I could only add -- - the disfunctional mindset that blights America right now is having an
immediate impact on all corners of the world.
I see it even in my tiny peaceful backwater.
If they create a fascist monster unleash it on the world -- it will consume everything and
everyone in its path.
Whithin a decade.
I love America and its non-stop CIA psyop cyclops social media television.
The New Year will bring renewed police crackdown on private assembly, people's homes, the
continued destruction of employment, $40 checks from Uncle Joe to "tide you over," hysterical
harpies physically assaulting anyone without a mask in blue states, and a full-out propaganda
assault to destroy the defenseless minds of your friends and family.
You're going to lose a lot in the New Year. 2020 was just the beginning. Wait until summer
2021 and BLM/Antifa chaos. Conservative politicians like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul will be crying
"insurrection act!" and Tucker Carlson will launch into Season Two of 30-minute cracking-voice
monologues "this is your America!" while nothing and no one does a goddamn thing to protect
you.
We are on our own. Doctors, schools, cops, families, people you work with -- all are slowly
being sucked into the vortex of this simulacrum of hell being broadcast on their "smart"
phones. Compared to what's being sold to them, your voice sounds positively insane...
"... The bottom line is the true enemies of the American people are no foreign nation or adversary---the true enemy of the American people are the people who control America. ..."
"... This way of thinking points to a dilemma for the American ruling class. Contrary to a lot of the rhetoric you hear, much of the American ruling class, including the "deep state" is actually quite anti-China. To fully account for this would take longer than I have here. But the nutshell intuitive explanation is that the ruling class, particularly Wall Street, was happy for the past several decades to enrich both themselves and China by destroying the American working class with policies such as "free-trade" and outsourcing. But in many ways the milk from that teat is no more, and now you have an American ruling class much more concerned about protecting their loot from a serious geopolitical competitor (China) than squeezing out the last few drops of milk from the "free trade." ..."
This is awesome, he nails the dilemma which our owners are confronted with;
I'll put it this way: It is not as though the American ruling class is intelligent,
competent, and patriotic on most important matters and happens to have a glaring blind spot
when it comes to appreciating the threat of China. If this were the case, it would make
sense to emphasize the threat of China above all else.
But this is not the case. The American ruling class has failed on pretty much every
issue of significance for the past several decades. If China were to disappear, they would
simply be selling out the country to India, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, or some other country
(in fact they are doing this just to a lesser extent).
Our ruling class has failed us on China because they have failed us on everything. For
this reason I believe that there will be no serious, sound policy on China that benefits
Americans until there is a legitimate ruling class in the United States. For this reason
pointing fingers at the wickedness and danger of China is less useful than emphasizing the
failure of the American ruling class. The bottom line is the true enemies of the
American people are no foreign nation or adversary---the true enemy of the American people
are the people who control America.
This way of thinking points to a dilemma for the American ruling class. Contrary to
a lot of the rhetoric you hear, much of the American ruling class, including the "deep
state" is actually quite anti-China. To fully account for this would take longer than I
have here. But the nutshell intuitive explanation is that the ruling class, particularly
Wall Street, was happy for the past several decades to enrich both themselves and China by
destroying the American working class with policies such as "free-trade" and outsourcing.
But in many ways the milk from that teat is no more, and now you have an American ruling
class much more concerned about protecting their loot from a serious geopolitical
competitor (China) than squeezing out the last few drops of milk from the "free
trade."
@102 karlof1 - "By deliberately setting policy to inflate asset prices, the Fed has
priced US labor out of a job, while as you report employers sought labor costs that allowed
them to remain competitive."
I never heard it said so succinctly and truly as this before. That is what happened isn't
it? The worker can't afford life anymore, in this country.
And if the worker can't afford the cost of living - who bears the cause of this, how
follows the remedy of this, and what then comes next?
I really appreciate your point of view, which is the only point of view, which is that the
designers of the economy, the governors of the economy, have placed the workers of the
economy in a position that is simply just not tenable.
No wonder they strive to divide in order to rule - because they have over-reached through
greed and killed the worker, who holds up the society.
How long can the worker flounder around blaming others before the spotlight must turn on
the employer?
You have to remember these people really do think they are better. They do think in class
terms even if they avoid that rhetoric in public. The problem is they thought they could
control China like they did Japan. That was dumb then and it looks even dumber now. You can
see similar dumbness in their lack of grip on any realisitic view of Russia. Provincials
really. Rich peasants.
Thank you, they certainly DO think in class terms ALWAYS. + Rich peasants is perfect
:))
Thankfully they are blinded by hubris at the same time. The USA destroyed the Allende
government in Chile in 1973. After the Nixon Kissinger visit to China in 1979 they assumed
they could just pull a color revolution stunt when they deemed it to be the right time.
Perhaps in their hubris they thought every Chinese worker would be infatuated with capitalism
and growth.
They tested that out in the People Power colour (yellow) revolt in the Filipines in 1986
following a rigged election by Marcos. In 1989 only 16 years after China had been buoyed up
with growth and development following the opening to USA capitalism, they tried out the same
trick in Tienanmen square in China but those students were up against the ruling party of the
entire nation - not the ruling class. BIG MISTAKE. The ruling party of China was solidly
backed by the peasant and working class that was finally enjoying some meager prosperity and
reward a mere 40 years after the Chinese Communist Party and their parents and grandparents
had liberated China from 100 years of occupation, plunder, human and cultural rapine and
colonial insult. Then in 2020 it was tried on again in Hong Kong. FAIL.
The hubris of the ruling class and its running dogs is pathetic.
We see the same with Pelosi and the ruling class in the Dimoratss today. They push Biden
Harris to the fore, piss on the left and refuse to even hold a vote on Medicare for All in
the middle of a pandemic. Meanwhile the USAi ruling class has its running dogs and hangers on
bleating that "its wrong tactic, its premature, its whatever craven excuse to avoid exposing
the ruling class for what they are - thieves, bereft of compassion, absent any sense of
social justice, fakes lurking behind their class supposition.
They come here to the bar with their arrogant hubris, brimming with pointless information
some even with emoji glitter stuck on their noses. Not a marxist or even a leftie among them.
Still its class that matters and its the ruling class that we must break.
@102 karlof1 and Grieved | Dec 19 2020 3:12 utc | 129
I did not understand inflate-assets/suppress-workers and forgot to return to it to clear
it up. Grieved sent me back to Karlof1. I just got it.
That viewpoint indeed explains method of operation to accomplish the results I observed.
When Nixon was forced to default on Bretton Woods use of Gold Exchange Standard* [the USD is
as good as gold], then printing fiat solved the problem [threat to US inventory of
gold]....but printing fiat [no longer redeemable as a promise convert to gold] became the new
problem [no way to extinguish the promises to redeem/pay].
So how to proceed? Aha! Steal from the workers; squeeze 'em, entertain and dazzle 'em!..
Such an elegant solution...slow, certain and hardly noticeable...like slow-boiling frogs...an
on-going project as we blog.
" Correspondence between Hunter
Biden and CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming from 2017 shows President-elect Joe Biden's son
extending "best wishes from the entire Biden family ," and urging the chairman to "quickly"
send a $10 million wire to "properly fund and operate" the Biden joint venture with the
now-bankrupt Chinese energy company.
The $10 million transfer to the joint venture was never completed.
Fox News obtained an email Hunter Biden sent on June 18, 2017, to Zhao Run Long at CEFC,
asking that they please "translate my letter to Chairman Ye, please extend my warmest best
wishes and that I hope to see the Chairman soon.""
Biden went on to note that Bobulinski had "sent a request to Dong Gongwen [Gongwen Dong] and
Director Zang for the funding of the $10 MM USD wire."
"I would appreciate if you will send that quickly so we can properly fund and operate
Sinohawk," Biden wrote.
"I am sure you have been well briefed by our dear friend Director Zan g on the political and
economic connections we have established in countries where you are interested in expanding
during the coming months and years, " he continued. "I look forward to our next meeting."
"Fox News also obtained the response from Ye as part of an email, dated Sept. 6, 2017, from
Biden business associate James Gilliar to Bobulinski. That email forwarded Ye's letter
responding to Biden. The letter is dated July 10, 2017.
Ye stated that he had arranged for Zang and Dong to "expedite the charter capital input to
SinoHawk."
"I am glad to hear from you! Time flies and it has been months since we met in the US. It
seems that we were always on a rush when we were together," Ye wrote to Biden, adding that "the
consensus we made last time has been materialized in a timely manner."
Ye also recommended Biden "arrange your people to coordinate with Director Zang and Gongwen
Dong for specific work."
"I will continue to pay attention and give my support," Ye stated. "I have arranged Director
Zang and Gongwen Dong to expedite the charter capital input to SinoHawk."
"I look forward to meeting you in the near future and discussing our joint undertaking. If
there is anything I could do please do not hesitate to write to me," Ye wrote. "Please accept
my best regards to you and your family."" foxnews
------------
Well, pilgrims, the Ron Johnson hearing today was fun. The best part for me was former
Director Krebs' (election security guy for DHS) repeated statements that the election was
secure, "the most secure in history." Pilgrims, the distinction betwixt "secure" and "honest"
seems to have escaped him as he ignored questions about actual evidence of fraud, a swampie to
the end.
And then, there is Chairman Joe. He knows that nothing will be easier than to kill off
prosecution of his creepy son, or to "suggest" to the Delaware federal prosecutor that a minor
indictment would be appropriate, something resulting in a suspended sentence.
I have watched Tucker debrief Bobulinski twice about that payment. The way Bobulinski tells
it (with documentation) the Bidens were loaned $5 million by MEFC to pay their side of the
capitalization and then actually pocketed the other $5 million as a direct payment to La
Familia from FEMC (Oh Danny Boy!) from - equal opportunity! That was too much for the Bobster
(former naval Lt., man of world finance, patriot, self-abnegator, etc.) Besides, where was his
share?
Pistols at dawn? Good! Tucker can act as his second. Where are my cased flintlock
smoothbores? They are somewhere around here, the English 18th Century ones in the fitted blue
velvet case. pl
The wonderful world you talk about was not experienced by the peoples of Guatemala, Iran,
Chile, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Argentinia, Haiti, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iran, Iraq,
Libya, Syria and many of the homeless and destitute in the US, UK, Japan etc. The wonderful
world you describe is an illusion.
There is a line from the 1960s Science Fiction series called the Invaders from another
galaxy who wish take over the world. At the beginning of each episode the narrator says " they
wish to take over the world and make it their world".
The Transnational Financiers have been working towards that goal for centuries!!!!
If you still believe that America's Sickcare is "the finest in the world" and is endlessly
sustainable, please study these three charts and extend the trendlines.
I've long been making the distinction between healthcare and sickcare : healthcare is the
service provided by frontline operational caregivers (doctors, nurses, aides, technicians,
etc.) and sickcare is the financialized system of Big Hospital Corporations, Big Insurers, Big
Pharma, etc. and their lobbyists that keep the federal money spigots wide open.
This financialized sickcare system is being consumed by the cancer of greedy profiteering
pursued by self-serving insiders. The delivery of healthcare is secondary to maximizing
revenues and profits by any means available .
To believe such a corrupt system is sustainable is magical thinking at its most
destructive.
Covid-19 is revealing this cancerous underbelly. Knowledge of the inner workings of
corporate administration is not evenly distributed, so every participants' experience of the
systemic dysfunction will vary.
Here is one MD's observations of the system's priorities. Others may have different views
but the maxim follow the money is clearly the correct place to start any inquiry of how
America's financialized sickcare functions in the real world.
From what I'm hearing from the front line, a not insignificant number of admissions are of
folks who would not have been admitted in March when there was fear of both the unknown and
systemic failure and, not coincidently, when COVID diagnoses didn't pay as much.
Today, the admission criteria for COVID is so much more flexible than for standard
diagnoses like CHF, and pays so much better than other diagnoses that our 'healthcare' system
is rapidly becoming a 'COVID care' system.
The surge in hospitalizations and subsequent COVID-identified deaths may be driven, in
part, to health systems adapting to new COVID revenue streams.
This would seemingly be good news, after all if it's the hospital administrator's desire
to fill empty beds that's driving admissions rather than infection rates, then systemic
failure can be averted through moderating those admission rates based on system capacity.
If your hospital fills up, just start sending the marginal cases
home--inpatient/outpatient; the outcome for the patient will be pretty much the same and
you've made as much money as your capacity will allow.
Unfortunately, our healthcare 'system' doesn't work like that.
Health systems are in the business of generating revenue, not value. Recent COVID-related
demand destruction has crushed that revenue so they're hungry for more.
Those in health-system operations and those in leadership live in two different worlds.
Leadership will push COVID admissions far beyond any operational limits in their quest for
short term performance. One cannot overstate their mendacity and drive for lucre.
Hospitals are becoming 'COVID factories' with all other admissions (which pay far less)
relegated to second tier status.
Health systems are evolving into an 'all COVID, all the time' format with the emphasis on
testing and (soon) vaccination, at the expense of all else.
Not a few systems of my acquaintance are laying off outpatient medical staff because their
supporting personnel have quit and are not replaced--those resources are being re-directed to
COVID testing and in preparation for mass vaccination.
For the health system in the business of generating revenue, it's an excellent tactic.
They save themselves significant overhead by not paying the clinicians and they make up the
revenue through high-margin COVID services and government bailout payments.
For patients who actually need healthcare, though, this tactic is deadly.
The perversion is end-stage, the health systems pretend to deliver healthcare and the
government pays them to continue the pretense.
There is no long term thinking here, no empathy for the workforce, no thought to the
mission beyond window-dressing--just a relentless, risk-adverse financialization machine.
Think of COVID as a new widget for which the customer will pay 2.5 times the going price
with no quality control, but only for a limited amount of time. Add in talentless,
rent-seeking leadership and all becomes clear.
Of course the real risk is that maxed out hospitals could find themselves in a situation
where admissions suddenly become driven by demand rather than the business model, with a true
non-linear path to failure laying beyond.
The longer daily national hospital occupancy stays above the approximate pre-COVID
capacity of 100k, the more likely you'll see systemic breakdowns--local at first, then
regional.
You won't see it in the press, the healthcare cartels have a pretty good lock on the local
media. Once news starts getting censored on social media, though, then you know it's
happening.
Hold me to that, And call me out in three months if I'm not right.
If you still believe that America's sickcare is "the finest in the world" and is endlessly
sustainable, please study these three charts and extend the trendlines.
Zucker – who now presides over one of the most fervently anti-Trump media outlets in
the American corporate press – hatched the idea to give then-candidate Trump a weekly
slot on CNN during a March 2016 phone call with Micheal Cohen, a lawyer for Trump at the time,
according to audio obtained by Fox News' Tucker Carlson.
Speaking with Cohen hours before the final Republican primary debate in the 2016 race,
Zucker said that while the Trump campaign had shown "great instincts, great guts and great
understanding of everything," he insisted victory would be impossible without CNN's
backing.
"Here's the thing you cannot be elected president of the United States without CNN,"
Zucker boasted. "Fox and MSNBC are irrelevant – irrelevant – in electing a
general election candidate."
When Cohen suggested the CNN chief relay his thoughts to Trump himself, Zucker demurred,
saying he is "very conscious of not putting too much in email," as Trump – "the
boss" – might go blabbing about it on the campaign trail.
You know, as fond as I am of the boss, he also has a tendency if I call him or I email
him, he then is capable of going out at his next rally and saying that we just talked, and I
can't have that, if you know what I'm saying.
Zucker soon talked himself back into contacting Trump, however, committing to "give him a
call right now" to "wish him luck in the debate tonight" – hosted by none
other than CNN – adding "I have all these proposals for him, like I want to do a
weekly show with him and all this stuff."
He went on to lavish praise on Trump, saying he had "never lost a debate" and would
do "great" during the CNN event later that night, even offering detailed advice for how
the president-to-be could deflect allegations that he is a "con man" from other
candidates.
While the source of the recording is unclear, the leak has made waves online, given that
Zucker has since made himself into Trump's "
cable news nemesis ." The network itself, meanwhile, has fielded an endless stream of
negative coverage of the president, heavily pushing the discredited 'Russiagate' conspiracy
theory for years and throwing full weight behind the Democrats' failed impeachment effort.
Some netizens have already suggested the "damning" revelation could soon result in
Zucker's ouster from his high perch at CNN.
"You think Jeff Zucker will be fired? I actually think there's a decent chance he will
be. Trying to kiss up to Trump is on par with murder in CNN world,"wrote filmmaker and
conservative pundit Robby Starbuck.
Others were less taken aback by the audio, as many pointed to the fact that Zucker and Trump
have a lengthy history together, both working on 'The Apprentice,' the hit reality show that
helped to solidify Trump's status as a pop culture icon. In 2012, Trump even hailed Zucker's
takeover as CNN president, saying the network made a
"great move," and that Zucker "was responsible for me and The Apprentice on NBC
– became #1 show!"
"Everyone knows Zucker made Trump, it's 100% true," one user said . "Trump was down and out.
Zucker pitched him a reality TV show called the Apprentice. Why? Because he likes his New
Yorkers, he likes Trump."
Sir,
Pretty sure you're trolling us a little with this post. That said, it is 2020.
I am 100% convinced that covid is a political conspiracy based on personal knowledge and
other info. Tonight Tucker Carlson reports that blood samples taken in early Jan 2020 tested
positive for covid - all of the samples. In other countries there is evidence of covid in the
population going back to Fall 2019; yet no overwhelmed hospitals and spiking death counts
from those early months. The internet fact checkers are clearly arrayed against information
seekers and forcing conformity to the state's message.
Clearly there was malfeasance in the election as well as a general Charlie Foxtrot created
by implementing mail in voting without sufficient time and resources for infrastructure
development; a no brainer that everyone should have foreseen and avoided - except for the
covid hysteria.
We saw the the Russia collusion hoax, Steele Dossier nonsense, idiotic impeachment and
slandering filthy lie campaign against of Justice Kavanaugh.
The list goes on. However, it stretches my credulity that the US military (Army SOF unit?)
would be shooting it out with the CIA in Germany and that Haskel would be there to be wounded
in the action; or was arrested and whisked off to some secret detention facility.
Would you please consider sharing what you really think?
"... Lockdowns as being inherently against the working class is a capitalist (liberal)
falsification: if you pay them while they're kept safe in their homes, you'll have the best
of the two worlds for the working class (being paid without working). This option is only
an anathema for the middle class and the capitalist class - who can't imagine a world
without the proletarians serving them ..."
We all live in an interconnected world and middle class, capitalist class (whatever that's
supposed to mean) and proletarians alike supply goods and services to one another. Money is
the medium that facilitates such exchanges. It follows then that proletarians also serve one
another and ditto for the other classes.
If working classes are paid to stay in their homes, who then supplies their needs? In
spite of Jeff Bozo's efforts and those of Elon Musk, not all transport is self-automating and
robots in Amazon warehouses still need some human inputs to operate quickly and without
hitches.
One could also argue that working fulfils other, non-monetary needs. Karl Marx actually
foresaw this when he wrote about anomie in capitalist systems of production, in which workers
are denied control over their lives and the work they do by being denied any say in what they
produce, how they produce it, the resources and environment needed to produce outputs, and
maybe even whether they can be allowed to work at all.
Lockdowns can be viewed as another method in which to deny people control over their work
and work environments. People socialise at work and lockdowns may be a way to deny workers a
place or a means to connect with others (and maybe to form unions). Is it any wonder then,
that during lockdowns people's mental health has become an issue and public health experts
became concerned at the possibility that such phenomena as suicide and domestic violence
could increase?
You can understand this from this quotation. It is the internal contradictions of the wesern
capitalist system that is driving the changes we observe, not "pressure applied by China",
which I would say is a myth.
"The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal: it lies
in the contradictionariness within the thing. This internal contradiction exists in every
single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictionariness within a thing is the
fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other
things are secondary causes."
"It (Materialist dialectics) holds that external causes are the conditions of change and
internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through
internal causes. In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature
can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis."
Mao Zedong. "On Contradiction" August 1937. Selected Works, Vol.1, p.315.
Lockdowns are a medical protection to eradicate a contagious virus.
The lock downs we have had are fake and we're designed to fail. For political reasons.
The very people who complained 10 months ago, were responsible for them not working,
10 months later those people are still complaining. They are the ones who have prolonged the
contagion.
They are to blame. That includes the polatians and duped public.
It's deliberate !
For those of you that worked hard and played by the rules your whole life to try to save
enough money to have a decent retirement you were robbed and played like a bunch of suckers
by Wall Street. The Fed is helping them steal any wealth the middle class has left. I'm not
sure why these people are still breathing. They should be swinging by their neck from a
rope.
Lost in translation 12 hours ago
"The status quo has been increasingly rigged to benefit insiders and elites as the powers
of central banks and governments have picked the winners (cronies, insiders, cartels and
monopolies) and shifted the losses and risks onto the losers (the rest of us)."
Charles displays a remarkable grasp of the obvious. I sometimes wonder if his target
audience isn't 11-year olds.
Sound of the Suburbs 7 hours ago
How can things possibly get any worse for young people?
Sky high housing costs
Student loans
Low wages and precarious part time jobs
A minimum wage specified at an hourly rate that won't pay a living wage in a part time
job
Most young people don't start off with any capital, and with student loans they will
actually start off with loads of debt.
It's all about investors, so people with money can make more money, and they haven't got
any.
Those young people are trying to earn their money and this just isn't the way we do things
anymore.
J J Pettigrew 6 hours ago
how about HB1 visas and the overstaying? Floods the labor market with outsiders.
Fundamentally transforming the nation.
Sound of the Suburbs 5 hours ago
Young people can't afford to start a family anymore.
You've got to sort out the demographic problem with immigration.
yerfej 5 hours ago
The tax system mimics society, both are run by elites and have so much complexity that
ONLY elites have the ability to circumvent them. Lawyers own society and it is of course to
their benefit to make it full of layer after layer of complex rules and regulations, which as
sold as "protecting the commoner", but in reality it protects the elites by stifling
competition. Start by cleaning up the tax code, have ONE flat rate for ANY AND ALL income
above the poverty allowance and be done with it. THEN the elites can't game the system with
layers and tax accountants to avoid paying. If the common people realized how screwed they're
getting by complexity they would force the change to one rate for all.
Bay Area Guy 3 hours ago
The problem in America today was caused by the Clinton/Bush/Obama administrations, along
with a complicit Congress, encouraging the off-shoring of US jobs, along with vastly
increasing the number of jobs given to people holding H1b's visas who, in turn, off shore a
large percentage of their salaries to their home countries, effectively off-shoring even more
money. The result can be seen in US GDP. Real GDP (after including the effects of inflation),
has consistently contracted since 2000 (see Shadowstats). Add in the fact that illegal
immigration (and, to a smaller extent, legal immigration) has increased the population, and
the result is you have a greater number of people trying to get their share of an economic
pie that's shrinking. When the economy was expanding, people generally felt good about their
situation. So if some sector got a bit of an increase that was more than their increase, it
wasn't as big a thing. But now, with a shrinking economy, when the homeless or illegals or
any other group gets more money, people are increasingly seeing that it's taken out of their
share and they see themselves falling further and further behind. So, they react and object
to that.
So, until or unless a way is found to expand the pie (the economy), you're going to see
greater and greater levels of frustration as anytime Group A gets more funding, every other
group is going to scream bloody murder.
Sound of the Suburbs 7 hours ago (Edited)
What is real wealth creation?
The last thing hedge funds, private equity firms and bankers need is anyone finding
out.
I thought those neoliberals were educated.
Well they like to think they are, but they have no idea about the most basic things like
wealth creation and the monetary system.
They have confused making money with creating wealth.
Sound of the Suburbs 7 hours ago
The US is going downhill fast.
What can we do?
Let them know what real wealth creation is, then they should be away.
Where does real wealth creation take place in the economy?
Economists do identify where real wealth creation in the economy occurs, but this is a
most inconvenient truth as it reveals many at the top don't actually create any wealth.
This is the problem.
Much of their money comes from wealth extraction rather than wealth creation, and they
need to get everyone thoroughly confused so we don't realise what they are really up to.
The Classical Economists had a quick look around and noticed the aristocracy were
maintained in luxury and leisure by the hard work of everyone else.
They haven't done anything economically productive for centuries, they couldn't miss
it.
The Classical economist, Adam Smith:
"The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining
of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the
labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious
merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his
money."
There was no benefits system in those days, and if those at the bottom didn't work they
died.
They had to earn money to live.
Ricardo was an expert on the small state, unregulated capitalism he observed in the world
around him.
He was part of the new capitalist class, and the old landowning class were a huge problem
with their rents that had to be paid both directly and through wages.
"The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in
the community" Ricardo 1815 / Classical Economist.
They soon identified the constructive "earned" income and the parasitic "unearned"
income.
This disappeared in neoclassical economics.
GDP was invented after they used neoclassical economics last time.
In the 1920s, the economy roared, the stock market soared and nearly everyone had been
making lots of money.
In the 1930s, they were wondering what the hell had just happened as everything had
appeared to be going so well in the 1920s and then it all just fell apart.
They needed a better measure to see what was really going on in the economy and came up
with GDP.
In the 1930s, they pondered over where all that wealth had gone to in 1929 and realised
inflating asset prices doesn't create real wealth, they came up with the GDP measure to track
real wealth creation in the economy.
The transfer of existing assets, like stocks and real estate, doesn't create real wealth
and therefore does not add to GDP. The real wealth creation in the economy is measured by
GDP.
Real wealth creation involves real work producing new goods and services in the
economy.
So all that transferring existing financial assets around doesn't create wealth?
No it doesn't, and now you are ready to start thinking about what is really going on
there.
Don't get confused between making money and creating wealth.
When you equate making money with creating wealth, people try and make money in the
easiest way possible, which doesn't actually create any wealth.
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned"
income.
The American have lost sight of what real wealth creation is, and are just focussed on
making money.
You might as well do that in the easiest way possible.
It looks like a parasitic rentier capitalism because that is what it is.
Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy into a financial
crisis.
They will load your economy up with their debt products until you get a financial
crisis.
On a BBC documentary, comparing 1929 to 2008, it said the last time US bankers made as
much money as they did before 2008 was in the 1920s.
The financial crisis appears to come out of a clear blue sky when you use an economics
that doesn't consider debt, like neoclassical economics.
Banks – What is the idea?
The idea is that banks lend into business and industry to increase the productive capacity
of the economy.
Business and industry don't have to wait until they have the money to expand. They can
borrow the money and use it to expand today, and then pay that money back in the future.
The economy can then grow more rapidly than it would without banks.
Debt grows with GDP and there are no problems.
The banks create money and use it to create real wealth.
considering cuomo was responsible for spreading the virus exponentially in the early days, he probably has had more
influence on all of our lives than the others
Story about Fauci, at least at the time was that it was so hospitals wouldn't be liable for deaths among medical
staff. But I think it was completely bad what both Cuomo and Fauci
Dr. Fauci was the trusted expert who intentionally lied to the American people and made things far worse. Cuomo is
directly responsible for why New York's response to the virus was so bad and cost many lives. Bullshit award.
Winter Is Coming for the American working-class.
Even if you don't care about the working poor, their suffering is going to affect you. In some
ways it already has. Despite the CDC eviction moratorium,
evictions have continued during the pandemic. This is led to hundreds of thousands of
people being
infected with Covid .
Expiring state eviction bans have led to hundreds of thousands of additional coronavirus
cases, new research finds, raising alarm about what will happen when the national eviction
moratorium lapses next month.
...
The researchers, from the University of California, Los Angeles, University of California,
San Francisco, Johns Hopkins University, Boston University and Wake Forest University School
of Law, found that lifting state moratoriums and allowing eviction proceedings to continue
caused as many as 433,700 excess cases of Covid-19 and 10,700 additional deaths in the U.S.
between March and September.
If the CDC's eviction ban isn't extended until 2021, experts say, many new cases are
likely to emerge from people being forced out of their houses and apartments.
"This is a time where it's not an overstatement to say that for many people, eviction can
lead to death ," said Helen Matthews, communications manager at City Life Vita Urbana, a
nonprofit in Boston.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that making people homeless during the pandemic is a
public health nightmare. Yet the eviction moratorium did not mean free rent. All that unpaid
rent is build up to $36 billion.
So how many people are about to be evicted? How many people will be homeless on our streets in
the coming months?
It depends on who you ask, but it will be in the tens of millions. Let that sink in for a
moment. Tens of millions of Americans are about to lose their place of residence. The
government has no plans to do anything about it.
One study says 19
million Americans will be evicted in the next two months. That's the conservative
estimate.
Another study says
40 million Americans will lose their homes this winter. These are numbers that will
destabilize American society and the American political system.
The end of the moratorium comes at the same time as the
end of stimulus money .
UI, stimulus, and welfare combined, after spiking to an annual rate of $3.88 trillion in
April, fell to $1.04 trillion in October
39 million Americans
don't have enough to eat right now, and people are waiting in line for hours at food banks
all over the nation just for some Thanksgiving handouts.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 12 percent of all Americans did not have
enough food to eat between October 28th and November 9th.
Let's like clear about something. Politicians, the media, and of course the wealthy couldn't
care less about the suffering of the working class.
However, they do care about getting sick and dying. So what's going to happen is that working
class are going to be crushed, and only then, when the Covid cases spiked to unimaginable
levels, will the ruling elites have an epiphany. That epiphany is you really are your brother's
keeper.
Winter Is Coming for the American working-class.
Even if you don't care about the working poor, their suffering is going to affect you. In some
ways it already has. Despite the CDC eviction moratorium,
evictions have continued during the pandemic. This is led to hundreds of thousands of people
being
infected with Covid .
Expiring state eviction bans have led to hundreds of thousands of additional coronavirus cases,
new research finds, raising alarm about what will happen when the national eviction moratorium
lapses next month.
...
The researchers, from the University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, San
Francisco, Johns Hopkins University, Boston University and Wake Forest University School of
Law, found that lifting state moratoriums and allowing eviction proceedings to continue caused
as many as 433,700 excess cases of Covid-19 and 10,700 additional deaths in the U.S. between
March and September.
If the CDC's eviction ban isn't extended until 2021, experts say, many new cases are likely
to emerge from people being forced out of their houses and apartments.
"This is a time where it's not an overstatement to say that for many people, eviction can
lead to death ," said Helen Matthews, communications manager at City Life Vita Urbana, a
nonprofit in Boston.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that making people homeless during the pandemic is a
public health nightmare. Yet the eviction moratorium did not mean free rent. All that unpaid rent
is build up to $36 billion.
So how many people are about to be evicted? How many people will be homeless on our streets in
the coming months?
It depends on who you ask, but it will be in the tens of millions. Let that sink in for a moment.
Tens of millions of Americans are about to lose their place of residence. The government
has no plans to do anything about it.
One study says 19
million Americans will be evicted in the next two months. That's the conservative
estimate.
Another study says
40 million Americans will lose their homes this winter. These are numbers that will
destabilize American society and the American political system.
The end of the moratorium comes at the same time as the
end of stimulus money .
UI, stimulus, and welfare combined, after spiking to an annual rate of $3.88 trillion in April,
fell to $1.04 trillion in October
39 million Americans
don't have enough to eat right now, and people are waiting in line for hours at food banks
all over the nation just for some Thanksgiving handouts.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 12 percent of all Americans did not have
enough food to eat between October 28th and November 9th.
Let's like clear about something. Politicians, the media, and of course the wealthy couldn't
care less about the suffering of the working class.
However, they do care about getting sick and dying. So what's going to happen is that working
class are going to be crushed, and only then, when the Covid cases spiked to unimaginable levels,
will the ruling elites have an epiphany. That epiphany is you really are your brother's
keeper.
Plenty of money to wage war and create suffering abroad, but not enough to take care of the
peasants at home. I keep hearing the US is a neofeudalist country...in classic feudal times
they took care of the serfs...perhaps that the neo part.
Sure is a sad state you present gjohnsit. Thanks for informing us.
he fallen Christopher Columbus statue outside the Minnesota State Capitol after a group led
by American Indian Movement members tore it down in St. Paul, Minnesota, on June 10, 2020.
(By Tony
Webster/Flickr)
In the general chaos of the summer of 2020, it was a typical moment. At the Minnesota State
Capitol in St. Paul, a band of activists -- primarily from indigenous-rights groups -- had
slung ropes around the neck of a statue of Christopher Columbus and pulled it down by
force.
The moment meant different things to different people. For the woke left, it was another
culture war victory in the age of 1619 and BLM -- a small and long-delayed comeuppance for the
colonial oppressors. For the right, it was the latest advance in the onslaught of the cultural
arsonists -- as cities were burning and statues falling down, it seemed that little would
survive the spontaneous rage inspired by the death of George Floyd in that same city just two
weeks before.
But it was hardly spontaneous, and it had little (if anything) to do with the death of Mr.
Floyd. The destruction of the Columbus statue on the Capitol grounds -- installed by Italian
immigrants in 1931 as a pushback against discrimination -- had long been an explicit goal of
the region's American Indian activists. The eruption of riots in the early summer simply
provided an excuse. As destruction reigned, Twin Cities native activists decided to join in,
taking the opportunity to follow through on something they had wanted to do for decades.
It's actually fairly representative of what happened in major cities across the country this
summer: local activists had an axe to grind, and the superimposition of a national narrative
gave them all the cover they could ever need. (Any outburst of disorder that happens to have
occurred after late May is qualified in the media as a "protest following the death of
George Floyd" -- a carefully crafted non-descriptor.) It's representative, too, of the
interplay among the unholy trinity of the modern activist left: grassroots radicals, big-money
donors, and the big money itself -- concentrated in funds where the donor foundations invest
their dollars.
The St. Paul statue-toppling was organized by a man named Mike Forcia, a member of the Bad
River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Forcia is also the chairman of the
Twin Cities branch of the American Indian Movement (AIM), and of AIM Patrol.
AIM -- the most prominent network of indigenous activists in the country -- is commonly
billed as a grassroots organization. In some ways this is true. AIM was founded in Minneapolis
more than half a century ago, as the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 and other federal policies
geared toward assimilation created sizable urban communities of Indians drawn away from
reservations. Over the years, much of AIM's public profile has been shaped by scattered bands
of activists engaging in highly visible stunts, such as the occupation of Alcatraz from 1969 to
1971.
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Even today, the national network remains fairly decentralized -- sometimes ostentatiously
so. After Forcia's arrest, AIM's national president Frank Paro "was adamant that the rally was
not sanctioned by A.I.M. or associated with the organization," according to court documents
. Paro even went so far as to assert "that Mr. Forcia is not affiliated with the National AIM
organization" -- an interesting claim, given Forcia's identification as chairman of AIM of the
Twin Cities.
It's certainly possible, though -- AIM's decentralization leaves a door open for false
claimants, and even the recognized national organization underwent a schism in 1993. Whether or
not Forcia is associated with Paro's national AIM organization -- and regardless of who has the
strongest claim to the trigram -- it is certain that he is extensively connected in the
activist movement of the Twin Cities. The Facebook page he runs for the region under the AIM
banner has over 12,000 followers. As of 2010 he was vice chair of the Minneapolis American
Indian Center, one of the city's most important hubs of native activity (political and
otherwise). He revived and sustains AIM Patrol -- a sort of neighborhood watch on steroids,
founded to limit police presence in the urban Indian community -- which had been dormant for
decades. And at the very least, he commanded enough influence in the community to organize and
execute a protest which drew no small crowd and successfully destroyed a public monument that
had been standing for nearly a century. Mike Forcia is no mere unlovable rogue; he is a key
player in a network that remains as lively and robust as it was when Minnesota's first Indian
radicals began to organize three generations past.
But it would be a mistake to think that the Twin Cities' indigenous activism remains
"grassroots" in any meaningful sense. In fact, the cause is supported by some of the region's
biggest philanthropic organizations, which in turn support themselves by extensive activities
in finance capitalism.
The most notable of these is the Bush Foundation, founded in 1953 by Archibald Bush, a
childless executive at 3M. At his death in 1966, Archibald Bush left his fortune to be put
toward good works, with no political caveats. Over the intervening decades, the Bush Foundation
has shifted ever leftward in tandem with the philanthropic establishment at large; under
current president Jennifer Ford Reedy, the foundation has gone fully woke .
Institutional connections have been made with the flagship establishments of far-left big
money, such as Borealis Philanthropy and the mother
of all wokeries, the Tides Foundation. But the Bush Foundation is
especially known for its contributions to indigenous causes -- totaling just under $100 million
from 1982-2019, with most of that total concentrated in the last few years as the foundation
amped up its
focus on the cause. This includes over $1 million to the
Minneapolis American Indian Center, where Mike Forcia was vice chair.
Another of Bush's biggest beneficiaries is the Minneapolis Foundation, a sizable
organization whose scope is limited to the local community, and the recipient of over 40 Bush
Foundation grants. Interestingly, the Minneapolis Foundation's Director of Impact Strategy,
Economic Vitality -- as well as director of grant-making and special projects, according to her
LinkedIn -- is a woman by the name of Jo-Anne Stately who is active in indigenous affairs
herself, including a six-year stint as vice president of development at the Indian Land Tenure
Foundation. (The ILTF is another recipient of over $1 million
in Bush Foundation funds.) In 2013, the Bush Foundation provided a grant of $100,000 to the
Minneapolis Foundation to support the Northside Funders Group, a third impact investment
organization where Stately happens to serve as co-chair. (Whether Ms. Stately is any relation
either to the late Elaine Stately, co-founder of AIM and namesake of its Peacemaker Center in
Minneapolis, or Angel Stately,
associate of Mike Forcia and prominent witness
to the death of George Floyd, remains unclear.) What is clear is that the indigenous
activist network of the Twin Cities (and likely elsewhere) has moved far beyond the ragtag band
of urban Indian change-makers in the first decades after relocation.
Of course, like big philanthropy in general, these organizations aren't drawing their funds
from static coffers. Archibald Bush left the foundation endowed with just about $300 million, a
number dwarfed by current assets of more than three times as much. The Bush Foundation, and the
Minneapolis Foundation, and Tides and countless others, all rely on investment to sustain and
grow their resources. The Bush Foundation's 990 disclosures
show just how extensive that reliance is, including substantial investments in Sequoia, one
of the nation's leading venture capital firms. Such relationships are sure to raise questions
about the dependence not just of progressive groups on capital, but of capital on progressive
groups. How long could firms like Sequoia survive without groups like the Bush Foundation
underwriting them? That's a question that must be asked, and the exact same question should be
directed at the radical groups that this relationship enables, like those who took down
Columbus in St. Paul.
The lesson here is not that there's some massive, shady conspiracy behind the people who
destroy our cities. It's that no conspiracy is necessary. All that's required is a seemingly
innocent, and entirely unguided, process. Money falls into the wrong hands: the hands of the
woke, or even the merely progressive. Sustained by the kind of mega-scale investment that now
defines our economy, that money allows so-called community organizations to function without
any real dependence on the community, and thus without accountability to it. The connection to
such national networks also seems to muddy the mission of such organizations, folding them into
a broad and ever accelerating progressive agenda.
And when the cultural green light goes live -- this time George Floyd flipped the switch --
the combined power of big money
I will henceforth refer to the MSM as the regime media or RM.
We reluctantly turned off Tucker last week. I felt bad about it as after watching him for
a few years my wife slowly left behind her liberal north eastern views and came around to the
right side of things. I'll thank him for that.
In 2008, Barack Obama received the names of his entire future cabinet already one month
prior to his election by CFR Senior Fellow (and Citigroup banker) Michael Froman, as a
Wikileaks email later revealed. Consequently, the key posts in Obama's cabinet were filled
almost exclusively by CFR members, as was the case in most
cabinets since World War II. To be sure, Obama's 2008 Republican opponent, the late John
McCain, was a CFR member, too. Michael Froman later negotiated the TPP and TTIP international
trade agreements, before returning to the CFR as a Distinguished Fellow.
In 2017, CFR nightmare President Donald Trump immediately canceled these trade agreements --
because he viewed them as detrimental to US domestic industry -- which allowed China to
conclude its own, recently announced RCEP free-trade area ,
encompassing 14 countries and a third of global trade. Trump also canceled other CFR
achievements, like the multinational Iran nuclear deal and the UN climate and migration
agreements, and he tried, but largely failed, to withdraw US troops from East Asia, Central
Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, thus seriously endangering the global US empire built
over decades by the CFR and its 5000 elite members .
Unsurprisingly, most of the US media , whose owners and editors are themselves members of the CFR ,
didn't like President Trump. This was also true for most of the European media, whose owners
and editors are members of international CFR affiliates like the
Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, founded by CFR directors after the conquest of
Europe during World War II. Moreover, it was none other than the CFR which in 1996
advocated a closer cooperation between the CIA and the media, i.e. a restart of the famous
CIA Operation
Mockingbird . Historically, OSS and CIA directors since William Donovan and Allen Dulles
have always
been CFR members.
This is the case for Anthony Blinken (State), Alejandro Mayorkas (Homeland Security), Janet
Yellen (Treasury), Michele Flournoy and Jeh Johnson (candidates for Defense), Linda
Thomas-Greenfield (Ambassador to the UN), Richard Stengel (US Agency for Global Media; Stengel
famously called propaganda "a good thing"
at a 2018 CFR session), John Kerry (Special Envoy for Climate), Nelson Cunningham (candidate
for Trade), and Thomas Donilon (candidate for CIA Director).
Jake Sullivan, Biden's National Security Advisor, is not (yet) a CFR member, but Sullivan
has been a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace (a think tank "promoting active international engagement by the
United States") and a member of the US German Marshall Fund's
"Alliance For Securing Democracy" (a major promoter of the "Russiagate"
disinformation campaign to restrain the Trump presidency), both of which are run by senior
CFR members.
Most of Biden's CFR-vetted nominees
supported recent US wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen as well as the
2014 regime change in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, neoconservative Max Boot, the CFR Senior Fellow
in National Security Studies and one of the most vocal opponents of the Trump administration,
has called Biden's future cabinet "America's A-Team" .
Thus, after four years of "populism" and "isolationism", a Biden presidency will mean the
return of the Council on Foreign Relations and the continuation of a tradition of more than 70 years .
Indeed, the CFR was founded in 1921 in response to the "trauma of 1920" ,
when US President Warren Harding and the US Senate turned isolationist and renounced US global
leadership after World War I. In 2016, Donald Trump's "America First" campaign reactivated this
100 year old foreign policy trauma.
Was the 2020 presidential election "stolen", as some allege? There are certainly indications
of
significant statistical anomalies in key Democrat-run swing states. Whether these were
decisive for the election outcome may be up to courts to decide. At any rate, Joe Biden may
well be the first US President known to be involved
in international corruption before even entering office.
Why are most US and international media hardly interested in this? Well, why should
they?
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On the issue of voter fraud, the right has sullied real concerns with ballot legitimacy in
highly mismanaged black cities with Bircherist bufoonery. The last of the MAGA faithful -- Alex
Jones, Steve Bannon, Q-Anon, Mike Cernovich, Dinesh D'Souza, Nick Fuentes, Ali Alexander, One
America News, and the Zionist opportunists at Newsmax -- have been trying to cancel more
sensible right-wing populists like Tucker Carlson, Ryan Gidursky, Pedro Gonzalez and others for
expressing skepticism about some of the Trump campaign's narratives on the election.
Like him or not, Tucker is a serious political commentator that has tried and failed to
provide coherence and principles to Trumpism for the last four years. When Tucker asked Sidney
Powell for evidence regarding her claim that Castro, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro and the
Chinese Communist Party stole millions of votes from Trump in an international Marxist coup, he
was subjected to insults, boycotts and unhinged shrieking in response. "THANK YOU SEAN HANNITY
FOR HOLDING THE LINE. THANK YOU TUCKER FOR THROWING US UNDER THE BUS," wrote Nick Fuentes.
Tucker was
vindicated when Trump's team abruptly severed ties with Powell and shelved her circus act.
But that hasn't stopped online Trumpistanis from speculating that Tucker's red bracelet is a
sign that he is a secret kabbalah
practitioner or that he's been a double agent for the satanic pedophile cartel led by Tom
Hanks put in place just for this moment. For Jews concerned that Tucker has been promoting the
potent combination of nationalism and economic populism to deplorables since 2016, it is a
welcome
amusement to see him being sacrificed on the alter of Orange Man Good and traded in for a
harmless lapdog like Hannity.
30 of 31 voter fraud lawsuits filed by Team Trump have been tossed. The whole thing is
starting to look like a Birther-style publicity stunt to help Trump monetize his following
after January. The
most recent defeat , a lawsuit demanding 7,000,000 votes be invalidated in Pennsylvania,
did not provide any compelling evidence for fraud or malfeasance.
Four years ago, Bernie expressed skepticism about mass immigration while Trump's original
campaign hinted at a public health care option and a war against Wall Street. These real world
issues impact real world people, and it allowed for a cross-front alliance of ordinary citizens
against the elite. The two candidates traded disenfranchised and largely white working class
voters throughout the primary, then the general.
But now there are actors on both sides trying to drag things back to personalities,
political tribalism and inanity. The COVID issue has drawn out the petty tyrants on the left
but also the UN-world-government conspiracy theorists of the right, with actual state relief
for desperate working people suffering from the lockdown being drowned out.
For Jewish gatekeepers of the phony right like Ezra Levant , "The Great Reset"
is much more palatable and less dangerous than the real issue of the Great Replacement. Former
Never
Trumper Mark Levin has worked with Sean Hannity to scrub 2020 Trumpism of its
anti-establishment and anti-globalist soul to try and transform it into another
Tea Party style Reaganite collection point for false consciousness held together by fumes
of Trump's personality cult.
There is a silver lining. As niches suffering from the two types of TDS -- Trump Derangement
Syndrome and Trump Delusion Syndrome -- duke it out, the liberal kleptocracy is still having
trouble restoring "normalcy."
The Biden Democrats are eager to betray and start purging the Bernie wing of their party on
economic and foreign policy matters. The GOP, whose establishment has no organic support and
never will, has decided to fake it until they make it and pretend like Trump was never
born.
This forced reboot is bound to meet challenges in an era of high unemployment and social
chaos. People are sick of voting for a "lesser of two evils."
There is lots of talk on the left and right about starting new parties to challenge the Wall
Street uniparty. The Movement for
a People's Party , an endeavor that has recruited big names like Jimmy Dore and Cornell
West, is looking to establish itself and begin attacking the Democratic party from the
left.
Meanwhile, right-populists who aren't hung up on Trump are beginning to talk of an
"America First Party."
The National Justice Party, a political construct that isn't afraid to appeal to white workers
or transcend traditional ideas of left and right, is also starting to gain momentum.
In the battle of corn syrup vs soy, of stupid vs gay, we the people deserve better. The
populi in populist can be described as being part of the radical center: left on economics and
right on social issues. A white worker should not have to vote for the anti-white Democrats
just to have a shot at affordable health care, nor should a rural family have to vote for the
Paul Singer funded Zionist GOP in hopes of being treated with dignity. A grounded and united
movement that explicitly rejects both parties and can obtain what we want must arise from the
ashes of back-stabbed Trumpists and Bernie fans.
The populi in populist can be described as being part of the radical center: left on
economics and right on social issues. A white worker should not have to vote for the
anti-white Democrats just to have a shot at affordable health care, nor should a rural family
have to vote for the Paul Singer funded Zionist GOP in hopes of being treated with dignity. A
grounded and united movement that explicitly rejects both parties and can obtain what we want
must arise from the ashes of back-stabbed Trumpists and Bernie fans.
The median wage in the USA in 2019 was $34,000 / year. If Trumpstein had done even one
tiny little, teensy weensy, itsy bitsy thing for the under $34k working poor .he would have
easily retained enough votes to keep his job. Instead, his domestic policy goals centered
around taking basic health insurance away from the working poor (even during a pandemic),
while giving billions away to his wall street pals, his relatives, giant corporations, and of
course his yid sponsors. Example: Fed Ex paid zero income tax in 2017, 2018, 2019. Let's see
how long a modern society can function when the top 0.1% are worth more than the bottom
80%.
The First World is leaving the "sweet spot" of its capitalist development stage, marked by
a relatively inflated petit-bourgeois middle class, and is reentering a proletarianization
phase. Call it the reproletarianization of the First World.
You seem quite convinced that it was Tucker Carlson's version of events that was true
concerning this phone call to Sidney Powell. You know she disputes this version. Also I read
that Carlson did not make the call himself, but rather had a staffer do it.
One might be a little suspicious that perhaps a staffer put a little too much effort into
getting Ms. Powell to appear on the show, and perhaps embellished or 'interpreted' the phone
call out of concern for their job.
One might also consider it a bit petty and unprofessional to immediately report a rude
phone call on the Carlson news program, and not once but twice.
Are we to believe that Sidney Powell is the only source who has ever been rude on a phone
call with a staffer from the news media? Is it good journalism to publicly attack potential
sources because they said no the first time you asked?
In my opinion it seems a bit hard to believe that Ms. Powell had a meltdown with either
Carlson or a staffer on a phone call. She seems much more the type to just politely say
goodbye and hang up.
But let's assume that she did have a meltdown. Given the circumstances and time crunch
she's under, wouldn't a reasonable person assume she was acting badly because of stress and
she probably didn't mean it?
Carlson couldn't wait longer than the next morning before he planned to publicly shame her
for it? And in the middle of what must be, for her, the biggest and most important thing
she's ever done?
What happened to Tucker Carlson's philosophy of kindness towards one another? And do you
put any stock in the fact that so many people who watch (or watched) Tucker Carlson on a
regular basis were genuinely shocked by what he did? I know I was.
Everything about this seems very strange. If a normally reasonable person like Powell made
crazy sounding claims, why respond with such hostility? Does anybody remember the guy who
built his own rocket so he could prove the Earth was flat? All we had to do was wait.
And as for these voting machine companies having ties to Venezuela in the past, well
that's true. None other than Lou Dobbs on CNN reported this and the whole thing ended up in
congressional hearings iirc.
I have no opinion about Sidney Powell's claims. She seems respectable enough to withhold
judgement until she shows us what she's got. And if even a part of what she claims is true, I
for one will be pretty concerned.
The New Religion
Caitlin Johnstone's recent article, "Oligarchic Imperialism Is The New Dominant World
Religion" kind of puts this all in perspective
"Adherents of the old dominant religion used to read the Bible; adherents of the new
dominant religion read The New York Times. Adherents of the old dominant religion used to go
to church on Sunday; adherents of the new dominant religion go to Hollywood movies. Adherents
of the old dominant religion fought in the crusades; adherents of the new dominant religion
kill families with drones and Tomahawk missiles overseas. Adherents of the old dominant
religion used to burn heretics at the stake; adherents of the new dominant religion imprison
journalists and deplatform "Assadists", "Putin apologists" and "conspiracy theorists" so
their ideas don't infect the rest of the flock.
These labels exist because if mainstream platforms admitted that they refuse access to
literally anyone who disagrees with status quo oligarchic imperialism, they would have to
admit that they are not the objective arbiters of absolute reality they portray themselves as
being, but are in fact propagandists for a very specific belief system. That they are not
tasked with the responsibility of reporting the news, but with promoting the doctrine of the
new dominant world religion. That they aren't news reporters, but high priests.
Religion isn't disappearing, it has just changed its form."
38. Sadly, some "are attracted by Western culture, sometimes with unrealistic expectations
that expose them to grave disappointments. Unscrupulous traffickers, frequently linked to drug
cartels or arms cartels, exploit the weakness of migrants, who too often experience violence,
trafficking, psychological and physical abuse and untold sufferings on their journey".
[37] Those who emigrate "experience separation from their place of origin, and often a
cultural and religious uprooting as well. Fragmentation is also felt by the communities they
leave behind, which lose their most vigorous and enterprising elements, and by families,
especially when one or both of the parents migrates, leaving the children in the country of
origin".
[38] For this reason, "there is also a need to reaffirm the right not to emigrate, that is,
to remain in one's homeland".
[39]
39. Then too, "in some host countries, migration causes fear and alarm, often fomented and
exploited for political purposes. This can lead to a xenophobic mentality, as people close in
on themselves, and it needs to be addressed decisively".
[40] Migrants are not seen as entitled like others to participate in the life of society,
and it is forgotten that they possess the same intrinsic dignity as any person. Hence they
ought to be "agents in their own redemption".
[41] No one will ever openly deny that they are human beings, yet in practice, by our
decisions and the way we treat them, we can show that we consider them less worthy, less
important, less human. For Christians, this way of thinking and acting is unacceptable, since
it sets certain political preferences above deep convictions of our faith: the inalienable
dignity of each human person regardless of origin, race or religion, and the supreme law of
fraternal love.
40. "Migrations, more than ever before, will play a pivotal role in the future of our
world".
[42] At present, however, migration is affected by the "loss of that sense of
responsibility for our brothers and sisters on which every civil society is based".
[43] Europe, for example, seriously risks taking this path. Nonetheless, "aided by its
great cultural and religious heritage, it has the means to defend the centrality of the human
person and to find the right balance between its twofold moral responsibility to protect the
rights of its citizens and to assure assistance and acceptance to migrants".
[44]
41. I realize that some people are hesitant and fearful with regard to migrants. I consider
this part of our natural instinct of self-defence. Yet it is also true that an individual and a
people are only fruitful and productive if they are able to develop a creative openness to
others. I ask everyone to move beyond those primal reactions because "there is a problem when
doubts and fears condition our way of thinking and acting to the point of making us intolerant,
closed and perhaps even – without realizing it – racist. In this way, fear deprives
us of the desire and the ability to encounter the other".
[45]
42. Oddly enough, while closed and intolerant attitudes towards others are on the rise,
distances are otherwise shrinking or disappearing to the point that the right to privacy
scarcely exists. Everything has become a kind of spectacle to be examined and inspected, and
people's lives are now under constant surveillance. Digital communication wants to bring
everything out into the open; people's lives are combed over, laid bare and bandied about,
often anonymously. Respect for others disintegrates, and even as we dismiss, ignore or keep
others distant, we can shamelessly peer into every detail of their lives.
43. Digital campaigns of hatred and destruction, for their part, are not – as some
would have us believe – a positive form of mutual support, but simply an association of
individuals united against a perceived common enemy. "Digital media can also expose people to
the risk of addiction, isolation and a gradual loss of contact with concrete reality, blocking
the development of authentic interpersonal relationships".
[46] They lack the physical gestures, facial expressions, moments of silence, body language
and even the smells, the trembling of hands, the blushes and perspiration that speak to us and
are a part of human communication. Digital relationships, which do not demand the slow and
gradual cultivation of friendships, stable interaction or the building of a consensus that
matures over time, have the appearance of sociability. Yet they do not really build community;
instead, they tend to disguise and expand the very individualism that finds expression in
xenophobia and in contempt for the vulnerable. Digital connectivity is not enough to build
bridges. It is not capable of uniting humanity.
44. Even as individuals maintain their comfortable consumerist isolation, they can choose a
form of constant and febrile bonding that encourages remarkable hostility, insults, abuse,
defamation and verbal violence destructive of others, and this with a lack of restraint that
could not exist in physical contact without tearing us all apart. Social aggression has found
unparalleled room for expansion through computers and mobile devices.
45. This has now given free rein to ideologies. Things that until a few years ago could not
be said by anyone without risking the loss of universal respect can now be said with impunity,
and in the crudest of terms, even by some political figures. Nor should we forget that "there
are huge economic interests operating in the digital world, capable of exercising forms of
control as subtle as they are invasive, creating mechanisms for the manipulation of consciences
and of the democratic process. The way many platforms work often ends up favouring encounter
between persons who think alike, shielding them from debate. These closed circuits facilitate
the spread of fake news and false information, fomenting prejudice and hate".
[47]
46. We should also recognize that destructive forms of fanaticism are at times found among
religious believers, including Christians; they too "can be caught up in networks of verbal
violence through the internet and the various forums of digital communication. Even in Catholic
media, limits can be overstepped, defamation and slander can become commonplace, and all
ethical standards and respect for the good name of others can be abandoned".
[48] How can this contribute to the fraternity that our common Father asks of us?
47. True wisdom demands an encounter with reality. Today, however, everything can be
created, disguised and altered. A direct encounter even with the fringes of reality can thus
prove intolerable. A mechanism of selection then comes into play, whereby I can immediately
separate likes from dislikes, what I consider attractive from what I deem distasteful. In the
same way, we can choose the people with whom we wish to share our world. Persons or situations
we find unpleasant or disagreeable are simply deleted in today's virtual networks; a virtual
circle is then created, isolating us from the real world in which we are living.
48. The ability to sit down and listen to others, typical of interpersonal encounters, is
paradigmatic of the welcoming attitude shown by those who transcend narcissism and accept
others, caring for them and welcoming them into their lives. Yet "today's world is largely a
deaf world At times, the frantic pace of the modern world prevents us from listening
attentively to what another person is saying. Halfway through, we interrupt him and want to
contradict what he has not even finished saying. We must not lose our ability to listen". Saint
Francis "heard the voice of God, he heard the voice of the poor, he heard the voice of the
infirm and he heard the voice of nature. He made of them a way of life. My desire is that the
seed that Saint Francis planted may grow in the hearts of many".
[49]
49. As silence and careful listening disappear, replaced by a frenzy of texting, this basic
structure of sage human communication is at risk. A new lifestyle is emerging, where we create
only what we want and exclude all that we cannot control or know instantly and superficially.
This process, by its intrinsic logic, blocks the kind of serene reflection that could lead us
to a shared wisdom.
50. Together, we can seek the truth in dialogue, in relaxed conversation or in passionate
debate. To do so calls for perseverance; it entails moments of silence and suffering, yet it
can patiently embrace the broader experience of individuals and peoples. The flood of
information at our fingertips does not make for greater wisdom. Wisdom is not born of quick
searches on the internet nor is it a mass of unverified data. That is not the way to mature in
the encounter with truth. Conversations revolve only around the latest data; they become merely
horizontal and cumulative. We fail to keep our attention focused, to penetrate to the heart of
matters, and to recognize what is essential to give meaning to our lives. Freedom thus becomes
an illusion that we are peddled, easily confused with the ability to navigate the internet. The
process of building fraternity, be it local or universal, can only be undertaken by spirits
that are free and open to authentic encounters.
51. Certain economically prosperous countries tend to be proposed as cultural models for
less developed countries; instead, each of those countries should be helped to grow in its own
distinct way and to develop its capacity for innovation while respecting the values of its
proper culture. A shallow and pathetic desire to imitate others leads to copying and consuming
in place of creating, and fosters low national self-esteem. In the affluent sectors of many
poor countries, and at times in those who have recently emerged from poverty, there is a
resistance to native ways of thinking and acting, and a tendency to look down on one's own
cultural identity, as if it were the sole cause of every ill.
52. Destroying self-esteem is an easy way to dominate others. Behind these trends that tend
to level our world, there flourish powerful interests that take advantage of such low
self-esteem, while attempting, through the media and networks, to create a new culture in the
service of the elite. This plays into the opportunism of financial speculators and raiders, and
the poor always end up the losers. Then too, ignoring the culture of their people has led to
the inability of many political leaders to devise an effective development plan that could be
freely accepted and sustained over time.
53. We forget that "there is no worse form of alienation than to feel uprooted, belonging to
no one. A land will be fruitful, and its people bear fruit and give birth to the future, only
to the extent that it can foster a sense of belonging among its members, create bonds of
integration between generations and different communities, and avoid all that makes us
insensitive to others and leads to further alienation".
[50]
A research team I'm part of just published data looking at the 'diseases of despair' crisis
over the last decade (full article is free and available online).
A brief summary of our findings below, and some thoughts....
Trends in the diagnosis of diseases of despair in the United States...
Background and objective Increasing mortality and decreasing life expectancy in the USA are
largely attributable to accidental...
AUDIO:
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN NEARLY 100 YEARS, LIFE
EXPECTANCY IS DECREASING IN THE UNITED STATES. IN THIS EPISODE, DR. LARRY SINOWAY DISCUSSES THE DECLINE AND HOW IT RELATES
TO...
view
more
CREDIT: PENN STATE CLINICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE INSTITUTE
Medical diagnoses
involving alcohol-related disorders, substance-related disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors -- commonly referred to
as diseases of despair -- increased in Pennsylvania health insurance claims between the years 2007 and 2018, according to
researchers from Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics.
Princeton
economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton proposed the concept of deaths of despair in 2015. Case and Deaton's research observed a
decline in life expectancy of middle-aged white men and women between 1999 and 2015 -- the first such decline since the flu
pandemic of 1918. They theorized that this decline is associated with the social and economic downturn in rural communities
and small towns. These changes include loss of industry, falling wages, lower marriage rates, increasing barriers to higher
education, an increase in one-parent homes and a loss of social infrastructure.
"It is theorized
that these changes have fostered growing feelings of despair including disillusionment, precariousness and resignation in many
peoples' lives," Daniel George, associate professor of humanities and public health sciences, Penn State College of Medicine,
said. "Despair can trigger emotional, cognitive, behavioral and even biological changes, increasing the likelihood of diseases
that can progress and ultimately culminate in deaths of despair."
With the
commonwealth's considerable rural and small-town population, particularly around Penn State campuses, Penn State Clinical and
Translational Science Institute led a research study to understand the rate of diseases of despair in Pennsylvania. Institute
researchers collaborated with Highmark Health, one of the state's largest health insurance providers. Highmark provides
employer-sponsored, individual, Affordable Care Act and Medicare plans.
Highmark Health's
Enterprise Analytics team analyzed the claims of more than 12 million people on their plans from 2007 to 2018. Penn State did
not have access to Highmark member data or individual private health information. Although the insurance claims included
members from neighboring states, including West Virginia, Delaware, and Ohio, the majority of the claims were from
Pennsylvania residents. Researchers reported their results in
BMJ Open
.
The researchers
defined diseases of despair as diagnoses related to alcohol use, substance use and suicidal thoughts or behaviors. They
searched the claims data for the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes related to these diagnoses. ICD codes
form a standardized system maintained by the World Health Organization and are used in health records and for billing.
The researchers
found that the rate of diagnoses related to diseases of despair increased significantly in the Highmark claims in the past
decade. Nearly one in 20 people in the study sample was diagnosed with a disease of despair. Between 2009 and 2018, the rates
of alcohol-, substance-, and suicide-related diagnoses increased by 37%, 94% and 170%. Following Case and Deaton's findings,
the researchers saw the most substantial percentage increase in disease of despair diagnoses among men ages 35 to 74, followed
by women ages 55 to 74 and 18 to 34.
The rate of
alcohol-related diagnoses significantly increased among men and women ages 18 and over. The most dramatic increases were among
men and women ages 55 to 74. Rates increased for men in this age group by 50% and 80% for women.
The rate of
substance-related diagnoses roughly doubled for men and women ages 35 to 54 and increased by 170% in ages 55 to 74. In 2018,
the most recent year of claims included in the study, rates of substance-use diagnoses were highest in 18-to-34-year-olds.
The rate of
diagnoses related to suicidal thoughts and behaviors increased for all age groups. Among 18-to-34-year-olds, rates increased
by at least 200%. The rate for all other age groups increased by at least 60%.
The type of
insurance patients had also mattered. People with Medicare insurance had 1.5 times higher odds of having a disease of despair
diagnosis and those with Affordable Care Act insurance had 1.3 times higher odds.
One increase
stood out to researchers: among infants, substance-related diagnoses doubled.
"This increase
was entirely attributable to neonatal abstinence syndrome and corresponded closely with increases in substance-related
disorders among women of childbearing age," Emily Brignone, senior research scientist, Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics,
said.
Neonatal
abstinence syndrome occurs when a baby withdraws from substances, especially opioids, exposed to in the womb.
Future research
can concentrate on identifying "hot spots" of diseases of despair diagnoses in the commonwealth to then study the social and
economic conditions in these areas. With this data, researchers can potentially create predictive models to identify
communities at risk and develop interventions.
"We found a broad
view of who is impacted by increases in diseases of despair, which cross racial, ethnic and geographic groups," Jennifer
Kraschnewski, professor of medicine, public health sciences and pediatrics, said. "Although originally thought to mostly
affect rural communities, these increases in all middle-aged adults across the rural-urban continuum likely foreshadows future
premature deaths."
###
National Center
for Advancing Translational Science of the National Institutes of Health through Penn State Clinical and Translational Science
Institute funded this research.
A podcast about
this topic is available here.
Other researchers
on this project were Lawrence Sinoway, director, Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute; Curren Katz and
Robert Gladden, Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics; Charity Sauder, administrative director, Penn State Clinical and
Translational Science Institute; and Andrea Murray, project manager, Penn State College of Medicine.
Disclaimer:
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the
accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the
EurekAlert system.
Back in 2013 a group of Apple employees decided
to sue the global behemoth. Every day, after they were clocking out, they were required to
go through a corporate screening where their personal belongings were examined. It was a
process required and administered by Apple. But Apple did not want to pay its employees for the
time it had required them to spend. It could be anywhere from 40 to 80 hours a year that an
employee spent going through that process. What made Apple so confident in brazenly
nickel-and-diming its geniuses?
Jeff Rubin, author of The
Expendables: How the Middle Class got Screwed by Globalization , has an answer to the
above question that is easily deduced from the subtitle of his book. The socio-economic
arrangements produced by globalization have made labor the most flexible and plentiful resource
in the economic process. The pressure on the middle class, and all that falls below it, has
been so persistent and powerful, that now " only 37
percent of Americans believe their children will be better off financially than they
themselves are. Only 24 percent in Canada or Australia feel the same. And in France, that
figure dips to only 9 percent." And "[i]n the mid-1980s it would have taken a typical
middle-income family with two children less than seven years of income to save up to buy a
home; it now takes more than ten years. At the same time, housing expenditures that accounted
for a quarter of most middle-class household incomes in the 1990s now account
for a third ."
The story of globalization is engraved in the " shuttered
factories across North America, the boarded-up main streets, the empty union halls." Rubin
does admit that there are benefits accrued from globalization, billions have been lifted up out
of poverty in what was previously known as the third world, wealth has been created, certain
efficiencies have been achieved. The question for someone in the western world is how much more
of a price he's willing to pay to keep the whole thing going on, especially as we have entered
a phase of diminishing returns for almost all involved.
As Joel Kotkin has written, "[e]ven in Asia, there are signs of social collapse. According
to a recent survey by the
Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, half of all Korean households have experienced
some form of family crisis, many involving debt, job loss, or issues relating to child or elder
care." And "[i]n "classless" China, a massive class of migrant workers -- over 280 million --
inhabit a netherworld of substandard housing, unsteady work, and miserable environmental
conditions, all after leaving their offspring behind in villages. These new serfs vastly
outnumber the Westernized, highly educated Chinese whom most
Westerners encounter. " "Rather than replicating the middle-class growth of
post–World War II America and Europe, notes researcher Nan Chen, 'China appears to have
skipped that stage altogether and headed straight for a model of extraordinary productivity but
disproportionately
distributed wealth like the contemporary United States.'"
Although Rubin concedes to the globalist side higher GDP growth, even that does not seem to
be so true for the western world in the last couple decades. Per Nicholas Eberstadt, in "Our
Miserable 21st Century," "[b]etween late 2000 and late 2007, per capita GDP growth averaged
less
than 1.5 percent per annum." "With postwar, pre-21st-century rates for the years
2000–2016, per capita GDP in America would be more than 20
percent higher than it is today."
Stagnation seems to be a more apt characterization of the situation we are in. Fredrik
Erixon in his superb The Innovation
Illusion , argues that "[p]roductivity growth is going south, and has been doing so
for several decades." "Between 1995 and 2009, Europe's labor productivity grew by just 1
percent annually." Noting that "[t]he four factors that have made Western capitalism dull and
hidebound are gray capital, corporate managerialism, globalization, and complex
regulation."
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.426.0_en.html#goog_1789765618 Ad ends in
15s
Contrary to popular belief, globalization has functioned as a substitute for innovation and
growth. With globalization on the march, the western ruling class could continue to indulge in
its most preferred activities, regulation and taxation, in an environment where both of these
political addictions appeared sustainable. Non-western elites could perpetuate their
authoritarian regimes, garnering growth and legitimacy, from the access to the western markets.
Their copy-and-paste method of "innovation" from western firms would fit well with an
indigenous business class composed of mostly insiders and ex-regime apparatchiks.
There are plenty of criticisms that can be laid at the feet of globalization. The issue with
Rubin's book is that is does not advance very much beyond some timeworn condemnations of it.
One gets the sense that the value of this book is merely in its audacity to question the
conventional wisdom on the issue at hand. Rubin, who is somewhat sympathetic to Donald Trump,
seems to be much closer to someone like Bernie Sanders, especially an earlier version of
Sanders that dared to talk about the debilitating effects of immigration on the working
class.
Like Sanders, Rubin starts to get blurry as he goes from the condemnation phase to the
programmatic offers available. What exactly would be his tariffs policy, how far he would go?
What would be the tradeoffs of this policy? Where we could demarcate a reasonable fair
environment for the worker and industry and where we would start to create another type of a
stagnation trap for the whole economy? All these would be important questions for Rubin to
grapple with and would give to his criticisms more gravitas.
It would have also been of value if he had dealt more deeply with the policies of the Trump
administration. On the one hand, the Trump administration cracked down on illegal and legal
immigration. It also started to use tariffs and other trade measures as a way to boost industry
and employment. On the other hand, it reduced personal and corporate taxes and it deregulated
to the utmost degree possible. It was a kind of 'walled' laisser-faire that seemed to work
until Covid-19 hit. Real household income in the U.S.
increased $4,379 in 2019 over 2018. It was "more income growth in one year than in the 8
years of Obama-Biden." And during Trump's time, the lowest paid workers started not to just be
making gains, but making gains faster than the wealthy. "Low-wage workers are getting bigger
raises than bosses" ran a CBS News
headline .
Rubin seems to view tax cuts and deregulation as another giveaway to large corporations. But
these large corporations are just fine with high taxation, since they have a choice as to when
and where they get taxed. Regulation is also more of a tool than a burden for them. It's a very
expedient means for eliminating competitors and competition, a useful barrier to entry for any
upstart innovator that would upend the industry they are in. Besides, if high taxation and
regulation were a kind of antidote to globalization, then France would be in a much better
shape than it appears to be. But France seems to be doing worse than anybody else. In the
aforementioned poll about if their "children will be better off financially than they
themselves are" France was at the bottom in the group of countries that Rubin cited. The recent
events with the yellow-vests movement indicate a very deep dissatisfaction and pessimism of its
middle and working class.
Moreover, there does not seem to be much hostility or even much contention between
government bureaucracies and the upper echelons of the corporate world. Something that Rubin's
politics and economics would necessitate. And cultural and political like-mindedness between
government bureaucracies and the managerial class of large corporations is not just limited to
the mutual embrace of woke politics. It seems that there is a cross pollination of a much
broader set of ideas and habits between bureaucrats and the managerial class. For instance,
Erixon notes that "[c]orporate
managers shy away from uncertainty but turn companies into bureaucratic entities free from
entrepreneurial habits. They strive to make capitalism predictable." Striving for
predictability is a very bureaucratic state of mind.
In Rubin's book, missed trends like that make his perspective to feel a bit dated. There is
still valuable information in The Expendables . Rubin does know a lot about
international trade deals. For instance, a point that is often ignored in the press about
international trade agreements is that "[i]f you're designated a "developing" country, you get
to protect your own industries with tariffs that are a multiple of those that developed
economies are allowed to use to protect their workers." A rule that China exploits to the
utmost.
Meanwhile, Apple, after its apparent lawsuit loss on the case with its employees in
California, now seems committed to another fight with the expendables of another locale. The
Washington Post reported that "Apple
lobbyists are trying to weaken a bill aimed at preventing forced labor in China, according to
two congressional staffers familiar with the matter, highlighting the clash between its
business imperatives and its official stance on human rights." "The bill aims to end the use of
forced Uighur labor in the Xinjiang region of China ." The war against the expendables never
ends.
Napoleon Linarthatos is a writer based in New York.
Earlier this year, our friend and colleague
Stephen Cohen passed away. His contributions to the field of Russian, East European, and
Eurasian Studies will be felt for years to come. Professor Cohen was a historian, but his
legacy extends far beyond his scholarly work. Every year, the Stephen Cohen
Fellowship -- established on Professor Cohen's initiative and supported by Katrina vanden Heuvel
and the Kat Foundation -- funds the graduate education for master's students in the Department
of Russian & Slavic Studies at NYU. Professor Cohen has also helped enable doctoral
students to conduct dissertation research in Russia through the Cohen-Tucker Fellowship .
As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States, we give thanks to Stephen
Cohen for not only his work in the REEES field but for the generosity he, Katrina vanden
Heuvel, and the Kat Foundation have shown to budding Russia scholars. We honor him today by
publishing the testimonials of some of current and former students who have benefitted from
Cohen Fellowships.
Natasha Bluth (Cohen Fellowship)
The Stephen Cohen Fellowship enabled me to continue my studies of the former Soviet Union,
not only easing the financial burden of graduate school, but also providing the opportunity to
merge journalistic training with area studies, engage with a wide range of scholars and
regional specialists, and conduct field research in Ukraine. The support and encouragement
Stephen Cohen offered at our annual fellowship alumni dinners also inspired me to pursue a PhD
in sociology in order to explore post-Soviet civil society, nationalism, and gender from a
social-scientific perspective.
Michael Coates (Cohen-Tucker Fellowship)
During the 2018-19 academic year, I held a Cohen-Tucker Dissertation Fellowship, which I
used to fund over a year of archival research in Russia on the history of the Great Soviet
Encyclopedia. The fellowship allowed me to visit more than a dozen archives in Moscow and Saint
Petersburg, and to copy thousands of pages of original documents. Had I not been able to carry
out this archival work, I would not have been able to write my dissertation. The travel that
the Fellowship enabled was also personally significant to me, because I had never been to
Russia before I arrived in Moscow for my research year, even though I had already been studying
the country and its language for several years. It is one thing to read books about a
particular place, but actually experiencing life there first-hand is quite another, and has
been essential to the development of my understanding of the region. I am extremely grateful to
Prof. Cohen and Ms. vanden Heuvel for their generosity in funding the next generation of Russia
specialists.
Stephen F. Cohen performed a great service in the last four years as he relentlessly
refuted the great Russiagate hoax which not only distorted our political life but seriously
wounded US-Russia relations for years to come. That hoax is a threat to world peace and Prof.
Cohen from the very first saw through it. Both in his writings for The Nation and his near
weekly conversations with John Batchelor of ABC radio rebutted it clearly, eloquently and at
times with good humor. How very much he is missed.
David Hasakkuk,
I'd love to hear you what deeper psychological analysis you may have to offer on the
doublethink phenomenon.
Someone, a hardcore democrat, recently lectured to me that conservatives have no
principles evidenced by support for Trump. I responded that her party should not be lecturing
given their near worship of Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton and apparent lust for killing the
unborn. She went psychotic on me. It seems like it's the same spell that people in cults fall
into - and I've seen some people that I thought were fairly smart and worldly fall into
it.
Symptoms appear to include a lack of ability to appreciate irony, lack of self-reflection,
loss of ability to reason, loss of all perspective and a tendency to see choices as between
an exaggeration of the ugliness of the reality that exists and a fantastical utopia or
idealized person that doesn't exist and never will.
vk @4: "As I've been observing since the last three years: the liberals (Democratic)
don't seem to have any plans..."
Where can you go when you have reached The End of History
? Liberal capitalist ideology has gone as far as it can. Aside from spreading McDonalds and
Walmart to every corner of the planet and getting everyone signed up for Netflix, what is
there left to do?
That Wikipedia article that I linked above will be a real knee-slapper of a read for
many of the bar's regulars, but it is important to understand that liberal capitalists,
including the somnambulistic "woke" faux left who have been vocally demonstrating
their "Post Trump Stress Disorder" symptoms to us, really and truly believe the
literal interpretation of that article as well as the pop philosophy nonsense book by
Fukuyama that the article is about.
The delusional middle class liberals in the West; the sleep-walking "woke"baizuo view their
neoliberalism the way many religious fundamentalists view their religion, which is to say
that they are evangelists. It is their responsibility as the self-professed most
enlightened people in the world to spread their delusion to everyone on the planet so that
everyone can be "exceptional" just like them.
Like Xtian missionaries "saving people's souls" , these baizuo liberals believe
to their core that they are doing people favors by forcing neoliberal American culture down
their throats. This is important to fully come to grips with because this fanatically
American liberal exceptionalism leads to a crusade-like mentality which makes these people
susceptible to warmongering. They imperialistically subjugate the global South while
preaching "critical race theory" nonsense to their victims.
[Note: link above is to Russian language version of the Wikipedia article because the
English language one is crap that has been edited by baizuo morons. Read the crappy baizuo
English language article to compare with the largely dispassionate Russian language one and
gain insight into the blind and automatic, though terribly misplace, assumption of
superiority that "exceptional" American liberals possess]
I mention this because it is why they will never, ever back off from their
warmongering so long as their neoliberal ideology remains. Not only are they certain that
they are doing the morally right thing in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Hong Kong, Belarus, and so
on, they believe that doing nothing would be the same as voting for Trump, and we know how
they feel about that.
This is why there will be more war, even if the US military is no longer capable of
delivering victory, and even if that war threatens the remaining pillars of western market
economics (the Petrodollar and the US$ global reserve currency status). To stand by and do
nothing while people somewhere in the world are being "microaggressioned" is not an
option for them.
"... Trump and Giuliani are vulgar and buffoonish, but they play the same slimy game as their Democratic opponents. The Republicans scapegoat the deep state, communists and now, bizarrely, Venezuela; the Democrats scapegoat Russia. The widening disconnect from reality by the ruling elite is intended to mask their complicity in the seizure of power by predatory global corporations and billionaires. ..."
"... Silicon Valley billionaires, including Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, donated more than $100 million to a Democratic super PAC that created a torrent of anti-Trump TV ads in the final weeks of the campaign to elect Biden. The heavy infusion of corporate money to support Biden wasn't done to protect democracy. It was done because these corporations and billionaires know a Biden administration will serve their interests. ..."
"... Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told CNN during this campaign that Russian disinformation efforts are "more problematic" than in 2016. He warned that "this time around, the Russians have decided to cultivate U.S. citizens as assets. They are attempting to try to spread their propaganda in the mainstream media." ..."
"... This will be the official mantra of the Democratic Party, a vicious redbaiting campaign without actual reds, especially as the country spirals out of control. The reason I have a show on Russia-funded RT America ..."
"... Voice of America ..."
"... World Socialist Web Site, ..."
"... We let these companies get this monopolistic share of the distribution system. Now they're exercising that power. ..."
"... In the Soviet Union the truth was passed, often hand to hand, in underground samizdat documents, clandestine copies of news and literature banned by the state. The truth will endure. It will be heard by those who seek it out. It will expose the mendacity of the powerful, however hard it will be to obtain. Despotisms fear the truth. They know it is a mortal threat. If we remain determined to live in truth, no matter the cost, we have a chance. ..."
40
Comments on Chris Hedges: The Ruling Elite's War on Truth American political leaders
display a widening disconnect from reality intended to mask their complicity in the seizure of
power by global corporations and billionaires. By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost
Joe Biden's victory instantly obliterated the Democratic Party's longstanding charge that
Russia was hijacking and compromising US elections. The Biden victory, the Democratic Party
leaders and their courtiers in the media now insist, is evidence that the democratic process is
strong and untainted, that the system works. The elections ratified the will of the people.
But imagine if Donald Trump had been reelected. Would the Democrats and pundits at The New
York Time s , CNN and MSNBC pay homage to a fair electoral process? Or, having spent
four years trying to impugn the integrity of the 2016 presidential race, would they once again
haul out the blunt instrument of Russian interference to paint Trump as Vladimir Putin's
Manchurian candidate?
Trump and Giuliani are vulgar and buffoonish, but they play the same slimy game as their
Democratic opponents. The Republicans scapegoat the deep state, communists and now, bizarrely,
Venezuela; the Democrats scapegoat Russia. The widening disconnect from reality by the ruling
elite is intended to mask their complicity in the seizure of power by predatory global
corporations and billionaires.
... ... ...
The two warring factions within the ruling elite, which fight primarily over the spoils of
power while abjectly serving corporate interests, peddle alternative realities. If the deep
state and Venezuelan socialists or Russia intelligence operatives are pulling the strings no
one in power is accountable for the rage and alienation caused by the social inequality, the
unassailability of corporate power, the legalized bribery that defines our political process,
the endless wars, austerity and de-industrialization. The social breakdown is, instead, the
fault of shadowy phantom enemies manipulating groups such as Black Lives Matters or the Green
Party.
"The people who run this country have run out of workable myths with which to distract the
public, and in a moment of extreme crisis have chosen to stoke civil war and defame the rest of
us – black and white – rather than admit to a generation of corruption, betrayal,
and mismanagement," Matt Taibbi writes.
These fictional narratives are dangerous. They erode the credibility of democratic
institutions and electoral politics. They posit that news and facts are no longer true or
false. Information is accepted or discarded based on whether it hurts or promotes one faction
over another. While outlets such as Fox News have always existed as an arm of the Republican
Party, this partisanship has now infected nearly all news organizations, including publications
such as The New York Times and The Washington Post , along with the major tech
platforms that disseminate information and news. A fragmented public with no common narrative
believes whatever it wants to believe.
... ... ...
The flagrant partisanship and discrediting of truth across the political spectrum are
swiftly fueling the rise of an authoritarian state. The credibility of democratic institutions
and electoral politics, already deeply corrupted by PACs, the electoral college, lobbyists, the
disenfranchisement of third-party candidates, gerrymandering and voter suppression, is being
eviscerated.
Silicon Valley billionaires, including Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-Google
CEO Eric Schmidt, donated more than $100 million to a Democratic super PAC that created a
torrent of anti-Trump TV ads in the final weeks of the campaign to elect Biden. The heavy
infusion of corporate money to support Biden wasn't done to protect democracy. It was done
because these corporations and billionaires know a Biden administration will serve their
interests.
The press, meanwhile, has largely given up on journalism. It has retreated into competing
echo chambers that only speak to true believers. This catering exclusively to one demographic,
which it sets against another demographic, is commercially profitable. But it also guarantees
the balkanization of the United States and edges us closer and closer to fratricide.
When Trump leaves the White House millions of his enraged supports, hermetically sealed
inside hyperventilating media platforms that feed back to them their rage and hate, will see
the vote as fraudulent, the political system as rigged, and the establishment press as
propaganda. They will target, I fear, through violence, the Democratic Party politicians,
mainstream media outlets and those they demonize as conspiratorial members of the deep state,
such as Dr. Anthony Fauci. The Democratic Party is as much to blame for this disintegration as
Trump and the Republican Party.
The election of Biden is also very bad news for journalists such as Matt Taibbi, Glen Ford,
Margaret Kimberley, Glenn Greenwald, Jeffrey St. Clair or Robert Scheer who refuse to be
courtiers to the ruling elites. Journalists that do not spew the approved narrative of the
right-wing, or, alternatively, the approved narrative of the Democratic Party, have a
credibility the ruling elite fears.
The worse things get – and they will get worse as the pandemic leaves hundreds of
thousands dead and thrusts millions of Americans into severe economic distress –the more
those who seek to hold the ruling elites, and in particular the Democratic Party, accountable
will be targeted and censored in ways familiar to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, now in a London
prison and facing possible extradition to the United States and life imprisonment.
Barack Obama's assault on civil liberties, which included the repeated misuse of the
Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, the passage of Section 1021 of the National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA) to permit the military to act as a domestic police force and the
ordering of the assassination of U.S. citizens deemed to be terrorists in Yemen, was far worse
than those of George W. Bush. Biden's assault on civil liberties, I suspect, will surpass those
of the Obama administration.
The censorship was heavy handed during the campaign. Digital media platforms, including
Google, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, along with the establishment press worked shamelessly as
propaganda arms for the Biden campaign. They were determined not to make the "mistake" they
made in 2016 when they reported on the damaging emails, released by WikiLeaks, from Hillary
Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. Although the emails were genuine, papers such as The
New York Times routinely refer to the Podesta emails as "disinformation." This, no doubt,
pleases its readership, 91 percent of whom identify as Democrats according to the Pew Research
Center. But it is another example of journalistic malfeasance.
Following the election of Trump, the media outlets that cater to a Democratic Party
readership made amends. The New York Times was one of the principal platforms that amplified
Russiagate conspiracies, most of which turned out to be false. At the same time, the paper
largely ignored the plight of the disposed working class that supported Trump. When the
Russiagate story collapsed, the paper pivoted to focus on race, embodied in the 1619 Project.
The root cause of social disintegration -- the neoliberal order, austerity and
deindustrialization -- was ignored since naming it would alienate the paper's corporate
advertisers and the elites on whom the paper depends for access.
Once the 2020 election started, The New York Times and other mainstream outlets censored and
discredited information that could hurt Biden, including a tape of Joe Biden speaking with
former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which appears to be authentic. They gave
credibility to any rumor, however spurious, which was unfavorable to Trump. Twitter and
Facebook blocked access to a New York Post story about the emails allegedly found on Hunter
Biden's discarded laptop.
Twitter locked the New York Post out of its own account for over a week. Glenn Greenwald,
whose article on Hunter Biden was censored by his editors at The Intercept, which he helped
found, resigned. He released the email exchanges with his editors over his article. Ignoring
the textual evidence of censorship, editors and writers at The Intercept engaged in a public
campaign of character assassination against Greenwald. This sordid behavior by self-identified
progressive journalists is a page out of the Trump playbook and a sad commentary on the
collapse of journalistic integrity.
The censorship and manipulation of information was honed and perfected against WikiLeaks.
When WikiLeaks tries to release information, it is hit with botnets or distributed denial of
service attacks. Malware attacks WikiLeaks' domain and website. The WikiLeaks site is
routinely shut down or unable to serve its content to its readers. Attempts by WikiLeaks to
hold press conferences see the audio distorted and the visual images corrupted. Links to
WikiLeaks events are delayed or cut. Algorithms block the dissemination of WikiLeaks content.
Hosting services, including Amazon, removed WikiLeaks from its servers. Julian Assange, after
releasing the Iraqi war logs, saw his bank accounts and credit cards frozen. WikiLeaks' PayPal
accounts were disabled to cut off donations. The Freedom of the Press Foundation in December
2017 closed down the anonymous funding channel to WikiLeaks which was set up to protect the
anonymity of donors. A well-orchestrated smear campaign against Assange was amplified and given
credibility by the mass media and filmmakers such as Alex Gibney. Assange and WikiLeaks were
first. We are next.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told CNN during this campaign that Russian
disinformation efforts are "more problematic" than in 2016. He warned that "this time around,
the Russians have decided to cultivate U.S. citizens as assets. They are attempting to try to
spread their propaganda in the mainstream media."
This will be the official mantra of the Democratic Party, a vicious redbaiting campaign
without actual reds, especially as the country spirals out of control. The reason I have a show
on Russia-funded RT America is the same reason Vaclav Havel could only be heard on the
US-funded Voice of America during the communist control of Czechoslovakia. I did not
choose to leave the mainstream media. I was pushed out. And once anyone is pushed out, the
ruling elite is relentless about discrediting the few platforms left willing to give them, and
the issues they raise, a hearing.
"If the problem is 'American citizens' being cultivated as 'assets' trying to put
'interference' in the mainstream media, the logical next step is to start asking Internet
platforms to shut down accounts belonging to any American journalist with the temerity to
report material leaked by foreigners (the wrong foreigners, of course – it will continue
to be okay to report things like the 'black ledger')," writes Taibbi , who has done some of the best reporting on
the emerging censorship. "From Fox or the Daily Caller on the right
, to left-leaning outlets like Consortium or the World Socialist Web
Site, to writers like me even – we're all now clearly in range of new speech
restrictions, even if we stick to long-ago-established factual standards."
Taibbi argues that the precedent for overt censorship took place when the major digital
platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Google, Spotify, YouTube – in a coordinated move
blacklisted the right-wing talk show host Alex Jones.
"Liberal America cheered," Taibbi told me when I interviewed him for my show, " On Contact ":
They said 'Well this is a noxious figure. This is a great thing. Finally, someone's taking
action.' What they didn't realize is that we were trading an old system of speech regulation
for a new one without any public discussion. You and I were raised in a system where you got
punished for speech if you committed libel or slander or if there was imminent incitement to
lawless action, right? That was the standard that the Supreme Court set, but that was done
through litigation. There was an open process where you had a chance to rebut charges. That
is all gone now.
Now, basically there's a handful of these tech distribution platforms that control how
people get their media.
They've been pressured by the Senate, which has called all of their CEOs in, and basically
ordered them, 'We need you to come up with a plan to prevent the sowing of discord and
spreading of misinformation.' This has finally come into fruition. You see a major reputable
news organization like the New York Post -- with a 200-year history -- locked out of its own
Twitter account.
The story [Hunter Biden's emails] has not been disproven. It's not disinformation or
misinformation. It's been suppressed as it would be suppressed in a Third World country. It's
a remarkable historic moment. The danger is that we end up with a one-party informational
system. There's going to be approved dialogue and unapproved dialogue that you can only get
through certain fringe avenues. That's the problem. We let these companies get this
monopolistic share of the distribution system. Now they're exercising that power.
In the Soviet Union the truth was passed, often hand to hand, in underground samizdat
documents, clandestine copies of news and literature banned by the state. The truth will
endure. It will be heard by those who seek it out. It will expose the mendacity of the
powerful, however hard it will be to obtain. Despotisms fear the truth. They know it is a
mortal threat. If we remain determined to live in truth, no matter the cost, we have a
chance.
Chris Hedges Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who
was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years forThe New York Times,where he
served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously
worked overseas forThe Dallas Morning News,The Christian Science
Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America showOn Contact.paul eastonNOVEMBER
23, 2020 AT 10:28 AM
It seems like the masters are just as deluded as the slaves. But the situation is
unsustainable. When many millions of slaves become homeless and hungry that reality will become
unavoidable. Who will they blame? Will they attack one another or will they revolt against the
system? Soon we will see. Carolyn L ZarembaNOVEMBER
24, 2020 AT 10:30 AM
I share only alternative media since I don't trust "mainstream" media one iota. I post
articles from the World Socialist Web Site, Consortium News, the Grayzone, Caitlin Johnstone
and others all the time. I am a socialist. I was only banned from posting on FB once, for
criticizing Israel. No surprise there. But I suspect FB of shadow banning, i.e., making it look
like you've posted an article but making it invisible to others in their news feeds. I first
learned of this practice from Craig Murray, another whose articles I post regularly. paul
eastonNOVEMBER
25, 2020 AT 1:35 AM
That is a chilling thought. I was shadow banned by medium.com a few years ago. It appeared
to me that my posts and comments went in, but no one else could see them. At least with them I
could tell something was wrong because I had regular conversations with some people. With FB I
don't know if you could ever be sure. R ZwarichNOVEMBER
25, 2020 AT 5:37 AM
Mr. Easton is indeed correct. It is VERY chilling, especially if people would imagine what
THEY would do, if they had our Enemy's morally depraved motivations, and if they had the
control our Enemy has over ALL our communications switches.
There are three basic types of mass communications. One to many. Many to one. And many to
many.
The Enemy has complete access to 'one to many' communications, and complete control over
anyone's else's access to same. Many to one communications are ineffective for intrinsic
reasons. Many to many communications offer myriad methods of cunningly creative control.
If we send out group emails, for example, in simple old-fashioned list-serves, they who
control the switches could easily 'filter', to determine who among addressees gets any message,
and who doesn't.
I used to write comments in the Boston Globe, the wholly owned plaything of a VERY weird old
Billionaire and his proud and beautiful young trophy wife. (Less than half his age, of course).
At first I thought the Globe NEVER censored. I could write anything, and it would post. Ahh but
then I learned that the Globe is a HEAVY handed censor, but was clever enough to put a 'cookie'
in your browser folder to tell their server to let you see your own comments, so you would not
even know that no one else could see them. It was 'stealth censorship'.
We should try to remember that these people are morally depraved, in their constant
paroxysms of raw Greed and raw Lust. No force exists any longer in our nation to restrain them.
Anything we can 'see' that they CAN do, we can pretty much figure they already DO do, or else
sooner or later will. Carol ShapiroNOVEMBER
23, 2020 AT 1:44 PM
While I don't agree with you, Chris Hedges, all the time, I believe you are our one. true.
journalist. Thankful for your honesty. Insight. Huge intellect. Global experience. I am an
"unenrolled" voter -- an extremely disillusioned former Bernie Sanders supporter. Truly, I feel
like he would have been our closest attempt to achieving a real "citizen government". What a
laughable term that is these days. Bernie never would have had a chance running as a Democrat
– absurd. He should have walked out of that convention four years ago and taken his
supporters with him. Oh wait- you said that. NeverNOVEMBER
23, 2020 AT 2:59 PM
Don't forget that the selective coverage by the NY Times in this campaign didn't start when
Biden became the nominee. Up to that time, the Times ran one or two articles on Sanders it
seems. Whatever the number, it was miniscule. They almost completely ignored one of the most
significant campaigns in modern history, thus helping to ensure it died on the vine. And when
they did cover it one or two times, it was always negative.
US liberals more fascist than conservatives–long observed by historians/social
philosophers
"amerikans do not converse as Tocqueville wrote, amerikans entertain each other. amerikans do
not exchange ideas, they exchange images. the problem w amerikans is not Orwellian–it is
huxleyan: amerikans love their oppression: Neil Postman Stephen MorrellNOVEMBER
24, 2020 AT 1:18 AM
Glenn Greenwald's points need stressing: (i) some of the most vociferous proponents of
online censorship are mainstream and 'alternative' 'journalists' who on repeated occasions have
egged on the carriers to shut sites, pages, accounts or postings; (ii) these 'journalists'
aren't just serving the narrowest band of oligarchic media empires in history, but also are
ivy-league bourgeois brats with no interest at all in exposing the injustices or malfeasance of
bourgeois society, unlike many journalists of the past; and (iii) that it's not in the
immediate material interests of the carriers to conduct the censorship, especially in the
longterm, since it consumes resources and lowers traffic and profits. They'd much rather the
government do it and for them to be compensated at taxpayer expense.
To avoid future potential government antitrust measures or nationalisation (heaven forbid!),
Zuckerberg and his ilk have been censoring in heavyhanded and hamfisted ways that aren't so
'autonomous' but for the moment at least can be traced along the usual Democrat-controlled
thinktank and CIA/FBI lines, which of course also are beyond public scrutiny. Despite the
prospects for freedom of reach (and reach is what it's really about) apparently growing dimmer
with each senate committee appearance by the carrier oligarchs, ways and means will be found to
circumvent their draconian measures. While alternative non-censoring platforms have yet to gain
significant traction, it likely won't take much for one to catch on, perhaps sparked by an
outrageous event of suppression, that turns Facebook, Twitter, etc, into museum pieces. One
might imagine, for instance, Wikileaks-style YouTube, Facebook, Twitter equivalents that act as
true carriers, purely machine-based and devoid of human interference, that precludes them
becoming the 'moral guardians' that Twitter, Facebook etc, are quickly metamorphising into.
As increasing swathes of the population appear not to be aligning within the bourgeoisie's
preset ideological 'tribal' boundaries, there's a certain schadenfreude in seeing the rulers in
dread of the truth getting out and spreading uncontrollably. Their tailored counter-narratives
simply are too enfeebled and slight to square with the hard reality that's hitting everyone,
from the most educated and brainwashed to the least. That ivy-league stenographers are being
pressed into the service of censorship gives some indication of the desperation of the rulers.
We all know, as do they but can never admit it publicly, that censorship and repression are
frank admissions that they've lost all 'arguments' for their very existence.
To an extent, Trump has been responsible for letting the genie out of the bottle, as the
first president probably since before Andrew Jackson to have failed, repeatedly, to put
lipstick on the racist, capitalist imperial pig. The efforts by the ruling class at censorship
and naked suppression of freedom of reach and of access to sources of truthful information will
only increase in desperation as their myth-making narratives become ever more unable to
rationalise a crisis that's they're beginning to see as intractable and endangering their
rule.
"Splitting the public up into two oppositional factions who barely interact and can't even
communicate with each other because they don't share a common reality keeps the populace
impotent, ignorant, and powerless to stop the unfolding of the agendas of the powerful."
Surely so. But I'm not sure whether this was deliberately planned by the plutocrats as a
political strategy, or whether this bifurcation spontaneously emerged from tech company
algorithms designed only to increase their profits.
Clearly, the plutocrats have seized upon this bifurcation to keep the populace divided and
engaged in a kind of civil war, but it's sort of like the pandemic – was it a plot
hatched or an opportunity exploited?
This might not seem to matter at this point, but IMHO the answer helps to determine not
only what we're up against but also the best ways to fight the bastards.
SHOCKER / NOVEMBER 24, 2020
https://www.wakingtimes.com/tyranny-standing-rock-govt-divide-conquer-strategy-work/
`
"Divide and conquer.
`
"It's one of the oldest military strategies in the books, and it's proven to be the police
state's most effective weapon for maintaining the status quo.
`
"How do you conquer a nation?
`
"Distract them with football games, political circuses and Black Friday sales. Keep them
focused on their differences -- economic, religious, environmental, political, racial
[gender- pandemic] -- so they can never agree on anything. And then, when they're so divided
that they are incapable of joining forces against a common threat, start picking them off one
by one."
JWK / NOVEMBER 24, 2020
"We live in different information universes, chosen for us by algorithms whose only
criterion is how to maximise our attention for advertisers' products to generate greater
profits for the internet giants,"
Which precisely explains how we got the recent POTUS candidates, displayed as the "best and
brightest". Really? That's the best they have? You can look across the board at ALL of the
two party's leadership and get the same picture. These are far from the "best and brightest".
They may be bright, since psychopaths are often quite intelligent, but they certainly have
zero qualification for best.
KHATIKA / NOVEMBER 24, 2020
Regardless. The democrats ignored people like Tulsi Gabbard and Sanders to flock to Biden.
This is just a sign of how brainwashed the people have become. The propaganda is working
quite well.
ANARCISSIE / NOVEMBER 24, 2020
This raises the question of why these people were selected. I think Trump sabotaged the
Republican fix for 2016 by exploiting weaknesses in its pseudodemocratic primary structure,
but the choice of Biden is hard to figure from any angle. Someone should investigate. About a
year ago I was conversing with some deplorables about Biden and a perfectly intelligent young
Black woman hotly defended him against all criticism. Anita Hill, the crime bill, the
invasion of Iraq, his creepiness, just bounced off her shell. How do people get this way?
JULIUS SKOOLAFISH / NOVEMBER 24, 2020
in passing
. WESTERN VALUES™ . The country that judges other countries' elections just
had an election. Somebody won. One day a court will tell us who. Apparently counting votes is
a tremendously difficult task, requiring enormous amounts of time.
. http://russiahouse.org/current_news.php?language=eng&id_current=3183
.
See also (via Fort Russ – Matthew Ehret)
Ah, Ms Johnstone, my fellow United States citizens love their " echo chamber comas "
because it allows them to completely suppress any and all logic, justice, empathy, and shame
for the blood-thirsty Evil Empire that they cherish and support. The Evil Empire has no soul
at all; and it requires its subjects to be soul-less as well. Resistance is futile!
Ms. Powell did not have much of a reputation in conservative legal circles until last year
when she took on the case of Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump's first national security adviser,
who had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. but later sought to withdraw his plea. The case
became something of a cause célèbre among many Trump loyalists, who have long
insisted that the president and his allies were the target of nefarious "deep state" law
enforcement and intelligence officials.
Ms. Powell, a native North Carolinian who began her legal career as an assistant federal
prosecutor in Texas, certainly believed that. And through her aggressive defense of Mr. Flynn
-- she often used incendiary rhetoric, accusing the F.B.I. of committing "atrocities" against
her client -- she became an admired figure on the right and a frequent guest on conservative
radio and television programs.
... ... ...
In a statement to The New York Times earlier this year, Ms. Powell said she had long
considered "prosecutorial misconduct and overreach" a problem. Conspiracies within the
American government have been a preoccupation of hers for some time: In 2014 she
self-published a book that purports to be a seminal work in "exposing 'the Deep State.'"
The book arose from her work in private practice, where she spent years representing
defendants in the Enron financial scandal, including the accounting firm Arthur Andersen and
James A. Brown, a former executive at Merrill Lynch. During that time she began to impugn the
motives of one of the federal prosecutors on the case, Andrew Weissmann, who went on to be a
member of the special counsel team under Robert S. Mueller III, who led the investigation
into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.
... ... ...
In an interview last week on the top-rated "Rush Limbaugh Show" -- in which she spoke for
nearly 20 minutes and faced no skepticism from the guest host, Mark Steyn -- Ms. Powell
claimed that the voting machines in question had been designed to rig elections for the
former ruler of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013. They were "so hackable a
15-year-old could do it," she said. And she cited unnamed "math experts" she had supposedly
consulted who told her how an algorithm added votes for President Trump to Joseph R. Biden
Jr.'s totals.
In an interview the day before on Fox Business, Ms. Powell also said the conspiracy
involved "dead people" who voted "in massive numbers" -- again offering no proof -- and
described how fraudulent paper ballots were also part of the scheme.
Speaking early last week to the right-wing radio host Mark Levin, who has the
fourth-largest audience in talk radio, Ms. Powell said she had obtained an affidavit from
someone purportedly present when the scheme was hatched by pro-Chávez forces in
Venezuela to rig his elections.
Because of her involvement in the Flynn case, the pro-Trump media often presented her as
an expert with unimpeachable credentials.
"Sidney Powell is no joke," declared one Breitbart article published last week, which
mentioned her early career as a federal prosecutor and her work for Mr. Flynn. Mr. Limbaugh,
too, told his audience last week that he seriously doubts she would be putting her
credibility on the line if she hadn't uncovered serious wrongdoing.
Other Trump allies were less convinced that her claims should be taken seriously. Tucker
Carlson of Fox News said last week that when he pressed Ms. Powell, she failed to produce any
evidence to support the elaborate conspiracy she purported to have uncovered. His dissent was
not appreciated by the president's defenders, or by Ms. Powell, who said Mr. Carlson had been
"very insulting, demanding and rude" to her.
Despite initial praise from the president, who announced less than two weeks ago that she
had been added to his team of "wonderful lawyers," it was never clear during her brief time
with the campaign what her job was supposed to be. Her efforts on behalf of the Trump
campaign appeared to be largely limited to public relations She has defended the president
and attacked the integrity of the vote solely on Twitter, on television and at news
conferences, acting more as a publicity agent than a lawyer.
She has said she plans to file a suit in Georgia but hasn't yet. It is unclear whether
that work will continue now that the Trump campaign has cut her loose.
Jeremy W. Peters covers national politics. His other assignments in his decade at
The Times have included covering the financial markets, the media, New York politics and two
presidential campaigns. He is also an MSNBC contributor.
"... "No crisis is more serious for our Money Power than an attempt by a head of government to assume personal control of intelligence and operations or to by-pass existing agencies by setting up parallel ones." ..."
"... Perhaps the most accurate overview of our intelligence community can be achieved by visualizing it as a "nationalized secret society." Our predecessors, in their struggle against the old order of kings and princes, had to finance secret societies such as the Illuminati, Masons, German Union, etc. out of their own pockets. ..."
"... At great expense and risk such secret societies were able to infiltrate the major governmental and private institutions of the nations that our noble predecessors targeted for take over by the Money Power. Such bureaucratic takeovers are expensive and time consuming. They can be considered complete only when promotions, raises, and advancements are no longer based on objective service to the stated organizational objectives, but are in the hands of the infiltrating group and its secret goals. ..."
"... By appealing to "national security" we are able to finance and erect secret societies of a colossal scope, far beyond the wildest dreams of our path breaking predecessors. Besides the benefits of public financing reaped by these "nationalized secret societies," we obtain a decisive advantage from the fact that these our "spook" operations are sanctioned by law! ..."
"... Maintaining discipline, loyalty, and secrecy is no longer solely a matter of propaganda, blackmail, patronage, and intimidation. Although these remain important tools, especially in emergency cases, ordinary discipline among initiates (now called agents) can be encouraged by appealing to patriotism and can be enforced in courts of law by prosecuting "national security violations." ..."
"No crisis is more serious for our Money Power than an attempt by a head of
government to assume personal control of intelligence and operations or to by-pass existing
agencies by setting up parallel ones."
9. PROFESSOR Y. ON COVERT OPERATIONS AND INTELLIGENCE ~
In our fully developed state-capitalist systems we have found absolute control of
governmental intelligence gathering and covert operations to be vital.
Besides providing a valuable tool in our struggle with rival dynasties, such control is now
an integral and necessary part of our day-to-day operations. Large intelligence communities are
inevitable, given the system of all encompassing governments which we have imposed upon the
world during our ascent to power. Our power would be short-lived indeed if the pervasive
influence and power of these iron-disciplined intelligence agencies fell into the hands of mere
politicians, especially those beyond our control.
We do not allow intelligence agencies to pursue the "national interest," the way the public
conceives "spies" to operate. Politicians cannot be permitted to divert the power and influence
of our intelligence community from the esoteric requirements of our Money Power to petty
political struggles.
Neither nationalistic aspirations of races and peoples nor ideological visions of
intellectuals for humanity can be allowed to pervert intelligence and covert operations. Our
rationalizations, both within the intelligence community and to the public at large, must be
diverse and flexible, but the intelligence community must further without exception the
inexorable goals we have set for humanity.
No crisis is more serious for our Money Power than an attempt by a head of government to
assume personal control of intelligence and operations or to by-pass existing agencies by
setting up parallel ones. Such intrusions must be met decisively. Although a contrived scandal
to remove the offending politician from office is the first line of defense, we dare not shrink
from assassination when necessary.
Perhaps the most accurate overview of our intelligence community can be achieved by
visualizing it as a "nationalized secret society." Our predecessors, in their struggle against
the old order of kings and princes, had to finance secret societies such as the Illuminati,
Masons, German Union, etc. out of their own pockets.
At great expense and risk such secret societies were able to infiltrate the major
governmental and private institutions of the nations that our noble predecessors targeted for
take over by the Money Power. Such bureaucratic takeovers are expensive and time consuming.
They can be considered complete only when promotions, raises, and advancements are no longer
based on objective service to the stated organizational objectives, but are in the hands of the
infiltrating group and its secret goals.
How much easier it is for us, the inheritors of a fully developed state-capitalist system!
By appealing to "national security" we are able to finance and erect secret societies of a
colossal scope, far beyond the wildest dreams of our path breaking predecessors. Besides the
benefits of public financing reaped by these "nationalized secret societies," we obtain a
decisive advantage from the fact that these our "spook" operations are sanctioned by
law!
Maintaining discipline, loyalty, and secrecy is no longer solely a matter of propaganda,
blackmail, patronage, and intimidation. Although these remain important tools, especially in
emergency cases, ordinary discipline among initiates (now called agents) can be encouraged by
appealing to patriotism and can be enforced in courts of law by prosecuting "national security
violations."
As massive as our intelligence community has become in itself, we still operate strictly on
the finance capitalist principle of leverage. Just as a rational finance capitalist never owns
more stock in a corporation than the bare minimum required for control, intelligence operatives
are placed only in as many key positions as are required to control the target organizations.
Our goal, after all, is agent control of all significant organizations, not intelligence
community member ship for the entire population.
The organizational pattern of baffling "circles within circles," characteristic of classical
secret societies, is retained and refined by our intelligence community. That "one hand not
know what the other is doing" is essential to the success of our operations. In most cases, we
do not allow the operatives themselves to know the ultimate, and when possible, even the
short-range objectives of their assignments.
They operate under "covers" that disguise our goals not only from the public and target
groups, but from the agents themselves. For instance, many agents operating under "left cover"
are led to believe that the agency, or at least their department, is secretly, but sincerely
motivated by socialistic ideology. Thus, they assume that the intelligence agency's ultimate
goal is to guide left-wing groups in "productive" directions, even though they cannot always
see how their own assignment fits into those assumed goals.
Other "left-cover" agents, those with right-wing predilections, are encouraged to believe
the agency is simply "monitoring" violence prone, subversive groups in order to protect the
public. When such agents are asked to participate in or even lead radical activity they assume
that the ultimate objective is to fully infiltrate and destroy the organization for the good of
the country. This is very seldom the case. We waste little or no money protecting the "public"
or defending the "nation."
Agents operating under "right-cover" are handled in symmetrical fashion. Agents with
right-wing prejudices are encouraged to believe the agency is right-wing. Left-prejudiced
agents are asked to operate under "right-cover" in order to "monitor" dangerous rightist
organizations. Most intelligence agents remain blithely ignorant of the big picture which is so
clear to us from our spectacular vantage point. Very few have enough information or
intelligence to reason out how their specific and sometimes baffling assignments promote the
legislative, judicial, operational and propaganda needs of our Money Power. Most would never
try. They are paid too much to think about such things.
Agents with a "gangster-cover" are of two types. First, there is the sincere gangster that
draws his salary from an intelligence agency. He is led to believe that the gangland
"Godfathers" control the government agency for their own purposes. Actually, the situation is
the opposite. The agency controls the gangster for other purposes. Second, is the sincere crime
fighter who is led to believe that the agency is at tempting to infiltrate and monitor the
gangsters as a preliminary step to destroying organized crime. Such "upstanding" agents commit
many crimes in their zeal to rid the country of organized crime!
To envision how we operate in this lucrative field, let's briefly look at the mechanics of
dope smuggling. Police and customs officials are told to leave certain gangsters alone, even
when transporting suspicious cargoes. This is made to seem perfectly proper since it is well
known that secret police infiltrators of organized crime must participate in crimes in order to
gain the confidence of gangsters.
What customs agent would want to upset a carefully laid plan to "set-up" the underworld
kingpins of dope pushing! But the agent, as well as the police who cooperate, are mistaken in
believing that the purpose of the assignment to help smuggle dope is ultimately to smash
organized crime. If he could see the big picture, as we can, the agent would see that
practically all our dope is smuggled by federal intelligence agents and secret police! How ever
could such a volume be transported safely? Real harassment and prosecution is reserved for
those who enter the field without our approval.
Here is our organized crime strategy: On the one hand we pass laws to ensure that mankind's
favorite pastimes (vices) are illegal. On the other hand, we cater to these "vices" at a huge
monopoly profit with complete immunity from prosecution.
A new and growing methodology of our intelligence community is psychologically and
drug-controlled agents. Properly, these are referred to as "behavior modified" agents, or, in
the vernacular, "zombies." With the use of hypnotic drugs, brain washing, sensory deprivation,
small group "sensitivity" training, and other behavior modification techniques, the scope of
which was hinted in the movie "Clockwork Orange," complete personalities can be manufactured
from scratch, to the specifications of value structure profiles we design by computer to suit
our purposes. Such personalities are quite neurotic and unstable due to defects in our still
developing technology, but still useful for many purposes.
The primary virtue of "zombies," of course, is loyalty. Agents that are subconsciously
programmed for the assignment at hand cannot be conscious traitors. All a "zombie" can do is
reveal how compulsive and psychotic he is with regard to his "cause." Even to trained
psychologists he simply appears to be the proverbial "lone nut." Although the "zombie" may have
memories of psychotherapy at a government agency when questioned under hypnosis, this is
unlikely to raise suspicion in the mind of court-appointed psychologists. After all, "lone
nuts" should be kept in insane asylums and subjected to psychotherapy! At most, the government
hospital will be reprimanded for letting a loony loose before he was cured.
Until our techniques can be perfected the use of "zombies" must be restricted to "national
dramas" designed to justify the growing power of our centralized governments over the lives of
our people. Most suicidal radicals and "crazies" who so mysteriously avoid arrest for years at
a time are "zombies" conditioned to terrorize the public in the name of some irrational
ideology. After repeated doses of such terror, the public is conditioned to accept the
necessity of our intrusive police state with very little objection.
The way is clear for an accelerated program of behavior modification research to be
conducted mostly at public expense in the name of mental health and rehabilitation. Such
research can be conducted with little complaint in prisons, refugee camps, drug rehabilitation
centers, government hospitals, veterans hospitals, and even public schools and day care
centers. Mental institutions, methadone maintenance centers, and prisons are fertile fields for
recruiting the deranged or drug-addicted persons most suitable for "zombie" conversions. Of
course, only a few of our most trusted agents actually participate in the creation of
"zombies." The brilliant researchers and experimenters who make most of the breakthroughs
earnestly believe that their techniques are destined strictly for the betterment of
mankind.
Inevitably, a fraction of the population objects to behavior modification as an infringement
of man's "sacred" free will even if they are convinced that our intentions are benign. We
carefully leak a few scandals to satisfy such persons that our experiments are being kept
within bounds and that excesses are being stopped. Our artificial scandals exposing the
"excesses" of coercive psychology are carefully designed to make the researchers seem
incompetent and clumsy to the point of maiming and killing their "patients." This effectively
conceals the fantastic strides we have made toward total behavioral control. Great things are
going to be possible in the future.
This is highly relevant critique of Trump legal team. But what the author misses is the
systematic campaign of promoting mail-in ballots and enabling ballot harvesting fraud, which is
quite provable and which violated constitutions os several states in which it was practiced. For
example in Georgia the agreement was reached between the Secretary of State and Tracy Abrams, but
the secretary of State has no legal authority to change the state election laws, COVID or no
COVID.
Is not interruption in vote counting qualify as brazen interference? It was never explained.
Just swiped under the carpet. Does neoliberal Dems manipulations with mail-in ballots quality as
"brazen interference" ? i would say yes, it does, This is replica of Pendergast Political Machine
methods. Please note that I am not a Trump supporter. I actually consider both Trump and Biden to
be very similar abominations.
There is a lot of bad reporting in the media, but a lot of the blame rests on Trump, his
legal team and the magnitude, complexity and implausibility of their claims
Trump's lawyers spent a lot of time at the podium lecturing the media on their "fake"
reporting on the fraud claims. No doubt, after four years of mainstream media malpractice, they
have reason for making this claim.
However, the moralistic lecturing was myopic and counterproductive, simply because even
honest journalists (if there are any left) have been left with their heads spinning by the
quantity and magnitude of the claims the Trump administration is putting out there right
now.
Any honest person approaching the fraud claims without a pre-determined position on their
validity (something that is, unfortunately, all too rare) has inevitably been left feeling
overwhelmed and confused. There's just too much information. There are too many conflicting
claims. There isn't enough time to adjudicate each one of them properly. Not only is some
degree of media skepticism to be expected, it's actually the only responsible thing to
do , given the complexity and magnitude of the fraud claims, and the stakes at play.
One of the central claims being made by Trump's legal team is that there exists a vast
national and global conspiracy involving a network of shadowy electronic voting companies,
communist regimes, foreign dictators, vote routing, switching and deleting involving complex
algorithms, and the complicity of numerous Democratic governors and election officials. The
evidence proffered so far to support this claim is a single affidavit by an unnamed Venezuelan
official, and a number of non-specific allegations of data anomalies on election night.
Should we -- should the media -- simply assent to these claims, based solely upon the
heat of Sidney Powell's rhetoric, and a single affidavit? How seriously should we even take
them, given that the clock is ticking, and it is hard to imagine the Trump team actually
proving these allegations by the safe harbor deadlines, whether they are true or not?
How much effort should they expend chasing every new bone Sidney Powell and MAGA surrogates
throw their way?
"Dianne Feinstein's husband! George Soros! Scytl! German servers! Raids by U.S. military!
Spain! Hugo Chavez! Nancy Pelosi's chief of staff! Bill Gates! Cuba!" And so on and so
forth.
It's exhausting just trying to keep up. However you look at it, much of it is
extraordinarily confusing and, frankly, prima facie unbelievable. Of course, truth is
sometimes stranger than fiction. Powell could be right. But how likely is it that all
her increasingly wild allegations should come together just as she has laid them out? And how
surprised should we be that people outside the MAGA camp are skeptical?
3) The whole thing feels like intellectual blackmail
Rudy Giuliani complained that his team is preparing and presenting cases that would normally
take months, if not years to prepare and argue in normal circumstances. The media should give
them time to make their case, and wait for the evidence, he said.
But who's fault is this? The Trump administration had four years to investigate Dominion,
Smartmatic, and the dangers of electronic voting in general. They could have convened
bipartisan committees to investigate voter fraud and the vulnerabilities of these voting
machines.
In 2016, even after he won, Trump claimed that there were millions of fraudulent
votes. If he really believed that, why didn't he do something meaningful about it while he was
in office? Posting about it on Twitter doesn't count.
Sidney Powell has raised some good questions about electronic voting, if only that people
will readily believe wild claims of fraud using it. These questions should be pursued, however,
a few days ago, most of us had never even heard of Dominion, Smartmatic and Scytl, etc.
Now we're being told that we must simply believe Powell's theory that these companies stole the
election. Countless MAGA followers are posting that they are absolutely sure , without
the slightest shadow of a doubt, that Dominion is behind the electoral theft. This feels
mad.
"She's a competent lawyer!" her supporters say. "She's brilliant, she's honest! She's a
patriot!" Maybe she is all of these things, but I'm not going to make a judgment about the
outcome of a presidential election, or assent to a vast, complex, and highly implausible
theory, based upon such thin gruel.
I need time. I need evidence. I need witnesses and counter-witnesses, examined and
cross-examined. And being told by the MAGA crowd that I must assent to the theory, and to
declare certainty that an election is invalid and that a coup has been perpetrated,
without any of these, feels like intellectual blackmail.
The simple fact is, this process should not be happening under the gun like this. And
that's on Trump, not the media.
4) Trump's legal team is making an amateur error in its approach to convincing the
public
A thousand doubts does not constitute proof. Amateur debaters often fall into the trap of
trying to win a debate by listing as many arguments as they can come up with. The mistake is in
thinking that people are convinced by sheer quantities of evidence.
In reality, this almost always backfires. When you pound people over the head with argument
after argument, they tend to become confused, bewildered, and, in the end, resentful. They
resent not having the chance to really think through any one claim or argument in detail.
Inevitably they begin to suspect that you're just trying to pull a fast one on them. Usually,
they're right.
Trump and his legal team have fallen into this trap. At the press conference, they made
repeated reference to the "hundreds" of sworn affidavits they have gathered, and the large
number of their lawsuits. However, while hundreds of affidavits may be "evidence," in the legal
sense of the term, they do not amount to proof.
A journalist for The Blaze reviewed the affidavits filed in Michigan and noted that many of
them do not actually contain allegations of fraud. Instead, they often have to do with
circumstantial things, such as how GOP challengers felt they were being "treated" by election
officials, or described "fraudulent" behavior that could plausibly be interpreted as election
officials following normal procedures that GOP challengers simply failed to understand.
Maybe some of the affidavits obtained by Trump's legal team contain slam-dunk proof of
widespread fraud, but if they do, they are being lost in the noise.
Expert debaters know that the best way to win an argument is to select only the very
best arguments, and to focus on those. If you go for quantity of evidence, inevitably you
will include low quality evidence in your arguments. Your audience, which is not so much
weighing each piece of evidence (an impossible task), as whether you are the sort of person who
should be trusted, will often only remember your bad or weak arguments. The result is
that they will write off everything else you say, as coming from a fundamentally unreliable
source.
Trump and his surrogates have raised important questions about election integrity.
Unfortunately, however, they have also repeated and promoted numerous false claims. Starting on
election night, Trump began retweeting every claim of fraud that came across his Twitter feed,
without any effort to fact check them. Many of them have subsequently been proven to be
baseless.
It should come as no surprise that those who are not already on board the Trump Train are
reacting to each new claim made by Trump with deep skepticism. The tragedy is that some
of these claims may be valid. However, Trump's carelessness with the truth has fatally undercut
his ability to lead a productive inquiry into voter fraud.
5) The fraud 'investigation' is being conducted ass-backwards
Trump, his legal team, and MAGA supporters all began with the conviction that the
election was stolen. Then, they went in search of the proof.
People are skeptical of the effort, because that's the worst possible way to go about an
investigation. The point of conducting an investigation is that you do not know the answer. You
have a hypothesis or a suspicion, but not proof.
The Trump admin has, from the very beginning, claimed absolute certitude. Unfortunately,
this isn't just bad epistemology, it's also insanely reckless, since, by definition, the very
claim calls into doubt the very existence of democracy in America.
The word " coup " is being tossed around by MAGA followers carelessly. To say that's
a loaded word is an understatement. But Trump and his team have left themselves no escape
route. Even if incontrovertible evidence shows up at some point that the election was not
stolen, a significant portion of the MAGA crowd will always believe that it was. At this point,
there is nothing that could convince them otherwise.
Clearly, having a large body of citizens who believe that their government is illegitimate
comes with potentially catastrophic unforeseen consequences. Nobody in the Trump administration
or MAGA crowd seems to be giving any thought to this. Damn the torpedoes.
Given that it's Trump, we can expect him to throw out outrageous claims without making any
real effort to determine if they're really true. However, it is our responsibility to
prioritize truth over political expediency. Whatever our political affiliations, our duty is to
investigate with indifference to the outcome, rather than seeking ways to substantiate
our personal preferences. When faced with a choice between truth and winning, choose truth,
every time.
6) The U.S. electoral system is a mess
Rudy Giuliani has at least this much right. The evidence Giuliani and his team have
collected of conflicting processes and procedures around the country, the reports of
irregularities, the evidence of actual fraud, and the ongoing efforts of Democrats to push less
secure voting methods, may not be sufficient to actually overturn the result. But it absolutely
is sufficient to suggest that the whole system is a mess, and vulnerable to
exploitation.
While I believe the odds of Trump's fraud claims leading to the election being overturned
are slim (although I am keeping an open mind on the question), we can at least hope that the
whole sordid episode leads to some serious and much-needed bipartisan electoral reform, so that
this does not happen again.
But in the end, that's only going to happen if cooler heads prevail, and reckless rhetoric
only leads the country down a dark road of further division and strife.
John Jalsevac is
currently working towards a PhD in philosophy. Prior to grad school, he worked for over a
decade as a journalist, editor, and pro-life activist. His previous journalism and creative
writing have appeared in The Public Discourse, Gilbert! Magazine, Dappled Thing, LifeSiteNews,
and others.
The "conspiracy" gets more interesting the more deeply you look into it. For
instance :
A government body exists that certifies voting machines and software as being 'okay to
use' by individual states. There's a voluntary aspect to this, I believe -- states can choose
to ignore the certification, yeah? But that doesn't matter, because the conspiracy is about
Dominion , and Dominion was certified safe.
And this means that potentially complicit in the communist/globalist/Soros conspiracy to
overthrow Trump are:
* Dominion, obvs.
* Those heads of state that okayed the use of Dominion machines (possibly)
* Those members of that government body most directly responsible for repeatedly certifying
Dominion products
* The laboratory (Wyle, almost always) which repeatedly tested and cleared Dominion
products
And if Wyle is itself on the take from communists/globalists/Soros, shouldn't we
reasonably assume that every other voting product they've tested and cleared is
therefore suspect?
And if that election commission is on the take from communists/globalists/Soros, mustn't
we assume that they are only certifying voting products which serve their agenda?
And should we not question those most responsible for advancing the responsible parties in
that commission to their present exalted state?
And what of Wyle's owners? (National Technical Systems) Should we not be
particularly concerned by their voluntary acquisition of a laboratory group that
exists as a tool of communists/globalists/Soros and sways elections on their behalf?
We need a public hearing all right. Like Watergate. Reminds me of when Sam Ervin said the
telephone is the instrument of the devil. Wiser words I cannot think of.
Every precinct in the United States uses a paper trail to ensure results can be audited.
Every single vote cast involves a piece of paper with voter selections on it. In Georgia,
where Dominion systems were used, the hand audit produced virtually identical results. That
was a full hand recount. If the tally machines were switching votes, even a partial audit
would pick up on that immediately.
Very good article here, and does a good job explaining why so many of us have trouble
taking the claims of fraud seriously. Especially given Trump's long estrangement with truth
generally, and his tendency to promote conspiracy theories, especially those which stand to
benefit him if believed (see QAnon.)
The issues with electronic voting machines have been known for years, and I've seen the
case made convincingly by commentators left, right, and center. I'm certainly glad to have
cast a paper ballot in the last election, as everyone in my state does. Hopefully a silver
lining from this mess will be the adoption of more robust paper balloting systems
nationwide.
Everybody casts a paper ballot in one way or another. In the few places that have voting
machines (and I think it's very few honestly), a paper ballot is generated for auditing
purposes.
Per my understanding, electronic voting machines are fairly widespread and fall into
several categories. While some states do require a paper ballot to be generated for auditing
purposes, there are some states like Kentucky and Indiana that have direct electronic voting
without that capability. It is worth noting that none of those states are the swing states
now in contention though, and that they are invariably red states.
My jurisdiction briefly switched to all-electronic machines, then quickly returned to the
paper ballots read by optical scanning device . . . a much better system.
"The mistake is in thinking that people are convinced by sheer quantities of
evidence."
It works for the democrats, that all they ever do is 'level charges without evidence' in the
MSM, and where Tucker was attempting to take Ms. Powell and it seems your on board like all
the other conservatives tell us, we have to accept Biden, while we look into voting
irregularities and fraud, sometime in the future [post GA's Jan 5th 2nd electronic vote
steal].
I am going to eschew the question about Mr. Carlson and Ms Powell ----
But your observations about what works is accurate. It's a tactic that does work. It works
for prosecutors How do you get 50 million people to believe the Russians actually invaded
election boards and their processes across the country.
And yet, here we have vast irregularities in differing parts of the country. I think there
is a case for fraud, but whether or not that is demonstrated, there is clearly a case for an
audit on both machines and mail in ballots. and there absolutely needs to be an audit of
votes to registered voters and no one needs to a HS diploma to comprehend that it's near
impossible for all mail in ballots to be for x candidate and less than a 6th grade education
to know that if you have 2000 registered voters or even a population of 2000 that the total
number of votes is never going to exceed 100% -- if it does, there's serious problem.
What, no comment forthcoming from you about the terrible, awful, totally crooked election
that happened in 2016, with millions and millions of fraudulent votes--- that Trump never
looked into? In 4 years? At all?
Until he lost this election? He's been whining about how this election was going to be
rigged, couldn't he have skipped a few golf games to actually look into it before it reared
its ugly head and kicked him out of the White House? Sure, sure.
One thing that seems to have gotten lost in the fog--and that definitely got lost
by this author--is that Giuliani and Powell are working on effectively two separate cases.
Both are working for Trump, and both are working against Biden et al with regards to this
election, but there is a clear line of demarcation between the two. Powell's focus is
primarily, if not solely, on Dominion and the electronic case, while Giuliani's primary focus
is on alleged physical fraud.
It makes no sense to assume that Powell's investigation should have begun four years ago,
and then use that as a basis to sneer, as this author does, at Giuliani--whose investigation
could not possibly have begun before November 4--for complaining about having to compress a
type of investigation that typically takes years into less than a month.
I'm not sure what Powell has. Some of the anomalies she has obliquely referred to are
already out there, if you look for them, and they are indeed suspicious (e.g. successive
batches of votes, often 10 or more in a row, all with the exact same ratio of Biden-to-Trump
votes--a statistical, if not literal, impossibility). However, it doesn't look like those
would be enough to swing the election, because even in her telling, if the race had been
closer, the Dominion irregularities would not have been discovered at all. The electronic
interference was significant, but it wasn't what made the difference.
The meat of this case, with the potential to flip the results, lies with old fashioned
physical fraud--ballot-manufacturing and box-stuffing--and Giuliani's mad scramble to find
enough evidence in time.
My gut says he won't make it.
There are very strong indications that what Giuliani and the Trump team suspect did indeed
happen. Most notable is the Democrats' brazen interference with GOP poll-watchers in multiple
states; it is inexplicable if they did not have something to hide. But by the same token,
that very interference successfully hid whatever it was that they did, and because of that,
they have already gotten away with it--the evidence that Giuliani needs is gone forever.
The room is filled with smoke, but the fire has already been extinguished--and without the
fire, Trump can't win.
"The mistake is in thinking that people are convinced by sheer quantities of
evidence."
Evidence, philosophically, is something that is true. If I have an apple in my hand and I
reach out and drop it, I can truthfully tell you that it will fall towards the ground. It is
evidence of the existence of gravity. I can't see gravity. But I can see the apple fall (and
anything else I drop). So can everyone in the world.
An affidavit is not evidence. It is a statement that someone is claiming is true. The
statement may or may not be true. So a lot of affidavits is not a "sheer quantity of
evidence". It's not evidence at all. Trump supporters need to understand that. And this is
why Trump continues to have these court cases thrown out: he is not presenting any real
evidence of fraud. Why? Because there isn't any.
You've got this wrong because your definition of evidence is wrong. An affidavit IS
evidence.The truthfullness or importance of it is something decided in court. It is evidence
just much as a fingerprint at a crime scene is evidence. The relevance of the fingerprint
evidence still has to be determined in court.
What's most obvious to me is that the lawyers making these far-fetched claims didn't
themselves believe the claims. The effort was geared to flood the zone, so to speak, to
create confusion and doubt resulting in state legislatures stepping in to settle electoral
vote allocations.
Sowing doubt this way might be acceptable in criminal court, where defense lawyers are trying
to establish reasonable doubt, however, here the objective should be to determine what
happened, and not inventing things that might have happened.
Soros, Chavez, Spain and communists? I believe the term is "jumping the shark."
Mr. Jalsevac confuses two different facts under heading no. 6, "The U.S. electoral system
is a mess." (1) The US electoral system is not a genuine system at all but an aggregate of
electoral systems that vary by state and even by county. (2) Some of these systems are
untrustworthy. It is clear that the second fact is cause for concern and in need of remedy.
It is not so clear that the first one is. The diversity of electoral systems is a feature
that contributes to the difficulty of manipulating national electoral results. It is the
chief reason why the Trump team has had to resort to grotesque conspiracistic fantasies to
maintain its claim that Trump is the legitimate winner.
"Durable, hand marked paper ballots must be established as the national standard for
democratic elections in the United States. While using paper may sound antiquated, the
consensus among election security experts is that nothing else provides the needed
reliability,security, and transparency. Durable, voter marked paper ballots are appropriate
technology for public elections....Hand Counted Paper Ballots are considered the 'Gold
Standard' of democratic elections"~ National Election Defense Coalition
https://www.electiondefense...
Are there any electronic voting machines in Team D-controlled states? How did they get
there? Did they sneak in across the border? Which political party held the presidency from
2008-2016? Were they pushing relentlessly for paper ballots, hand counted in public? For that
matter, following the 2016 election, I heard lots of conspiracy theory talk from Team D, but
little in the way advocating for paper ballots, hand-counted in public.
The Senate report was long on words, light on specifics. Great, if continuing a new cold
war is your objective. Note that the House did not impeach on that basis, after two years and
change of promising russiagate bombshells that never came.
According to this article, there are 8 states still using voting machines that produce no
paper trail. It's not a long article, but I extracted this list:
"eight states that will use some form of paperless voting in 2020: Texas, Louisiana,
Tennessee, Mississippi, Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky and New Jersey. "
There have been Democrats complaining about electronic voting machines for at least the
last 20 years. You're a bit late to the party, but you're welcome to join. Our democracy
works best when citizens are willing to work together toward goals on which they agree,
regardless of whether or not they agree on all goals.
I would also be glad to see bipartisan electoral reform, but only if includes measures
taken to protect votes before the actual voting starts. Some of the voter suppression
measures we.ve
seen in the last few years are:
- Purging of voter rolls near an election to keep voters from having a chance to vote
- Implementing postal procedures to reduce the speed of mail delivery to make it more
difficult to vote by mail
- Removing mail sorting machines and post office drop boxes to make it more difficult to vote
by mail
- Reducing the number of polling sites in areas populated by the other political party to
complicate voting in person
- Rejecting mailed in ballots because trivial differences in the signature, such as a missing
middle initial.
All of the Republican handwringing about "voter fraud" in the election seems to boil down
to complaints that the judges stopped their efforts to steal the election. Some of that gets
dressed up with pontification about the importance of the credibility of the election. The
credibility of an election is supremely important, but voter suppression damages that
credibility as much as voter fraud.
I noticed you did not mention the Ramsland affidavit in your discussion of the competence
of Trump's legal team. The affidavit attempts to identify areas in Michigan in which more
votes were cast than the number of registered voters. Unfortunately, all the examples
provided were in Minnesota. That does not suggest thorough research. In addition, the areas
listed in the affidavit tend to be in very Republican areas of Minnesota, suggesting that any
voter fraud may be as likely to be Republican as it is to be Democratic.
"Keeping copies of the physical ballots does nothing to assuage these concerns"
I disagree. Here in Michigan we do regular hand checks of randomly chosen scanners, and of
all of them if any problem arises. It has been remarkably accurate in my town.
The opposite of such scanning is prolonged counting, by fallible humans some of them
partisan and fighting with other partisans. I don't see advantage there.
But yes, hacking of any electronic device is a monster problem, and must be addressed by
regular and randomized physical confirmation, just as is done with any quality control
issue.
To be effective against fraud the count needs to be compelled by law and done on a truly
random sampling of ballots until statistical near-certainty of the result through
hand-counting alone is achieved, falling back to a count of all ballots if the election is
close.
Optional procedures executed in creative ways by goofy partisans is what "regular hand
checks" sounds like to me, though I may be wrong.
I agree it's not worthless to save the ballots, and I'd even agree with you far enough to
disagree with the author and say it's possible to design a good manual-check procedure. But I
read what he said as a simplification of the truth: in 2016 there was so much sillyness in
the law and the implementation of recount procedures that it'd be better if the machines
weren't there at all, and I doubt that's changed.
When it is close, we by law have an automatic 100% recount of machine scanned ballots by
hand. That is what was done in 2016. That was discontinued by agreement of both political
parties after the initial round of those counts showed zero error. Zero. By agreement. Thus,
it can be done. But you are correct about the sampling idea, and the need for uniform
enforceable law on the matter.
Now we're being told that we must simply believe Powell's theory that these companies
stole the election.
No, you must either do your own investigating to try and ascertain the truth, (which NO
media outlet seems to be doing) or keep an open mind that Powell will be able to prove what
she says. Powell is not some two-bit lawyer. She's a seasoned federal prosecutor putting a
lot on the line in making these claims. Grant her a modicum of respect in entertaining the
possibility that she can back up what she says.
Also, the Trump campaign has filed exactly 3, and now 4 lawsuits - not 30-something as is
continually and falsely reported and regurgitated by the media. The other lawsuits are by
supporters and allies, but not Trump's lawyers. Yes, it's hard to keep up, but YOUR JOB is to
at least try. Thank you.
I suggest young Master Jalsevac spend a couple of years living in one of our fine major
cities to see how things really are run outside of political philosophy books.
One of the oddest things about this is that in the past, particularly in 2004, many
Democrats charged that the Republicans had stolen the election, particularly in Ohio. Google:
2004 election stolen. You will find a lot of hits. Does anyone remember Diebold voting
machines? Are they still in use? Were they manipulated on behalf of Republicans, then or
later? I have no idea. But I want to make a few points: 1. Liberals have at times complained
loudly about stolen elections and the ease of manipulating electronic results by various
Republican-connected people. 2. Whether these were true or not have they ever been
sufficiently investigated? 3. Why, now is it only a vast liberal conspiracy that is alleged
to exist, and not perhaps the still existing conservative conspiracy from 2004? In November
2005 Mother Jones reviewed a book, Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election &
Why They'll Steal the Next One Too
The voting machine division of Diebold was taken over by Dominion Voting Systems. That's
the easiest conspiracy theory in history. The real question, if you want to believe, is why
the Republicans sold their election-stealer to the Democrats.
"In other words, Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters.
This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic
remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be
invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would
come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant
corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed
injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens.
That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal
arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and
unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the
disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated
state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more. At bottom, Plaintiffs have failed to
meet their burden to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Therefore, I grant
Defendants' motions and dismiss Plaintiffs' action with prejudice."
You know, this kind of reasonable and thoughtful writing is why, as a liberal, I like
coming over here to the dark side of town to see what's going on. Even while struggling to
present an open mind, he admits to being buried in the silliness of it all. A good read. Not
surprised to see all these calls for crucifixion in the comments.
You know, this kind of reasonable and thoughtful writing .......
It is neither reasonable or thoughtful. It pretends to be condemning the defense while
pretending that they would otherwise have a case. And he is refusing to acknowledge that the
why Trump has to turn to Rudy - his last resort - is because the reputable lawyers he had on
his team are refusing to make bogus claims in court; to be fair, so does Rudy, but he is
willing to make them to the press and they are not.
Even while struggling to present an open mind, he admits to being buried in the
silliness of it all.
You are doing what Liberals so often do. They are so hungry for a Republican who is not
calling them names and willing to admit that Trump is at fault, that they completely miss the
point that the "admission" is trying to make. When Comey admitted that Hillary Clinton
omitted no indictable offense, they praised him for his "fairness". But he was not being fair
at all. He would have to be an evil crook to indict the nominee of one of our major parties
when he knew she could not be convicted. But he broke every rule of propriety and launched
into a condemnation that handed Trump what he needed to win the election. So this writer
admitted that Trump is making no case . So what? You seem to have missed the
fact that he is falsely claiming that Trump does have case to make. And that
claim is utterly baseless!
I am not a partisan. I detest political parties. But I also detest seeing partisans
complimented for being non-partisan for simply not being on the raving extreme of their
party. It lowers the standard of what it beings to be non-partisan. Non-partisan means to
make judgements consistently on principle, applying the same standards to everyone. I expect
that many Republicans will read my post and conclude that I am being partisan - because that
is taken nowadays to mean "condemns my party". But I get accused just as often by Democrats
to being a Republican, so that is alright with me. But in so far as this particular quarrel
is concerned, President Trump has no case at all. The Pennsylvania elections were run be
declared Republicans. Prominent Republicans, and they gave both Republican Senators more
votes. They counted the legal votes as they were cast. They ran a fair, honest and honorable
election!
Thanks for the magnificent reply, 414 words, all thoughtful. You may have me there in your
sterner criticism of Rod's equivocation about Trump, but consider the audience, after all. As
for being a liberal hungry for a conservative who is not an asshole, guilty as charged. You
make a good point that Rod still seems still to yearn for Trump to have a case to make and
that is true, but I think Rod is fairly conflicted in this and other conundrums conservatives
must find themselves as the whole enterprise sinks into hopelessness and tawdry hopelessness
at that. It is a hard row to hoe, after all. I never said he was non-partisan, just a poor
conservative religious guy trying to make his way in the difficult world while continuing to
try to be a decent man. It is what is endearing about his writing to me sometimes. But I
thank you for this response, it shows both feeling and intelligence.
Unfortunately IMHO, the Kraken was either a careless misspeak or a bluff to shake the
trees to see if a whistleblower would fall out. If the later, it failed. If the former, I am
inclined to give Sidney a break. She has done yeoman's work for Flynn. And so the Kraken
seems destined to remain a creature of Scandinavian lore and Hollywood movies. I wish it were
not so. The Dominion software apparently is easily hacked and allows votes to be directly
manipulated without a trace. Hard to make a case without an audit trail. I wonder whether the
outcry from MAGA supporters will be sufficient to encourage states to choose a more secure
vendor or will Dominion still be in widespread use during the midterms? Kemp, Raffensberger
and company should be ridden out of GA on a rail after a good tar and feathering. Other
states have their own corrupt actors who should receive the same consideration. They all have
sold us out -- if the Dems take the Senate, even to slavery under socialism -- for 30 pieces
of silver. As for Kemp and Raffensberger, in a different age I might have suggested an
appointment with a high, sturdy branch in one of GA's many 100 plus years old live oaks.
As I listened to Lin's interview today I tho't that there must be something in the
Southern water. Both he and Sidney have that Southern drawl. Very genteel, polished and
extremely intelligent.
I am a very brave soul, but I don't think I would want to go up against either of them in
a court of law. 🙂
I forget who it was, either Lou or Tucker, that ended their interview telling Sidney half
jokingly to remember to lock her doors at night.
Please remember to PRAY God's protection for this wonderful woman!
When are they going to lay out the case? Lin Wood and Sidney have been making serious
statements. They have reputations beyond reproach. I believe them when they say they have the
goods. It's like they have to get the election called for Trump or they will surely be
political prisoners.
IF you watch the movie "Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America's Elections"* you will see
that a steal was supposed to happen in Florida that day and it got thwarted, before it got
started,
PLUS, they didn't have the mail in ballot scheme in place yet to back up their theft back
then. China Virus was their plandemic to make that happen, and to get the cash from the Care$
Act to get machines for everyone.
*"(2020)From voter registration to counting ballots, data security expert Harri Hursti
examines how hackers can influence and disrupt the U.S. election system."
Love Sidney Powell but that interview did not give me a lot of confidence. I sure hope she
has some solid evidence. Doesn't sound like she has much though. Don't have much time
left.
Biggest heist in the history of the US and nothing can be done about it is sickening. Barr
and Wray should be ashamed of themselves for letting something like this happen on their
watch. They did nothing. Thanks to them the constitution is now worth nothing. The rights are
gone. Law and order is gone. We are on our own.
How do Barr and Wray even look at themselves in the mirror?
Finally, I found out from this interview where I could send money to support this legal
effort. I'm tired of the RNC doing nothing. Sidney Powell will get my direct support now.
DefendingtheRepublic.org – is the right place.
According to Time : "in addressing the causes and consequences of this pandemic –
and its cruelly uneven impact – the elephant in the room is extreme income inequality.
How big is this elephant? A staggering $50 trillion. That is how much the upward redistribution
of income has cost American workers over the past several decades." Economics as a zero sum
game in other words
Damn, Krystal dropping one of her classic heaters today: "Affirmative action is the type of program that poses little
threat and only benefits to affluent white liberals. It's the college admissions version of identity politics: more
about getting brown faces in high places to make WHITE people feel good than it is about actually addressing the very
real problems it seeks to ameliorate." - Krystal Ball
As a black person I hate to admit that I've bought into the BS all of this time but she is absolutely right. All of her
data is correct. AA is just a tool for bourgeoisie blacks to get into better schools. Period. Nothing else. Stop trying
to sell it as some saving grace that it is not. The point about student loans is exactly right. If you want to help a
ton of black people with college then do something about this BS student loan situation.
"White Saviors" is a way to say what we've been saying all along. Affirmative Action IS racist. You are saying that
someone needs help because of their skin color, as if that makes them inferior. Racist.
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America, by Ira
Katznelson (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2005), preface, appendix, index, 238 pp.
Count me among the 79%. I WILL NEVER BELIEVE that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential
election without MASSIVE CHEATING from Democrats and the Washington Swap - to INCLUDE a
select number of RINOs, Never-Trumpers and Lincoln Project Scuumm, whose main mission,
admittedly, was just to "get rid of Trump and then worry about Biden later"
. That is more or less a quote from Turncoat, Michael Steele.
Trump has got it right. Allow GSI to fund Biden transition team without conceding.
Americans deserve to know the election results are counted properly. Dominion voting
machines need to be audited. No signature authorization means no vote. Votes showing up
after deadlines not acceptable. Ensuring a fair and free vote is essential in America.
Given the mass of mail in votes due to covid America needs to follow the authenticity
guidelines more than ever. Not less.
Washington Democrats don't care what America knows, what America thinks - they care
about power and if stealing it is their only path then they will steal it and leave it to
you and me to prove it.
Here's an analogy : imagine the blues and reds both agree that I am a notorious thief,
even if it's only a false narrative. Then they hire me as a security guard. That would be
willfully, knowingly hiring a criminal, which would be criminal, not because of the facts,
but because of the logic.
A couple of thoughts about the Venzuela gambit. Evidently Tucker Carson wanted Sydney to
tell him all about the "Dominion" vote flipping in a public interview. Which would have been
tantamount to giving away all the potential Republican case, and given the Democrats prior
knowledge of what to expect. A no-go. Mentioning "Venezuela-Cuba" could have the effect of
heading off a direct civil war if the US Dems and Repubs have a" common enemy" to blame. (Too
late for Russia, China too touchy, not many other major targets). Note that Venezuela has a
paper trail created at the same time as the electronic vote...
"Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own," senior Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and
Jenna Ellis said on Sunday in a joint statement. "She is also not a lawyer for the president
in his personal capacity."
Giuliani and Ellis gave no explanation for the statement. Trump last week named Powell, a
former federal prosecutor, among five well-known lawyers who would lead his legal team in
challenging the results of this month's presidential election.
Powell was among three featured speakers when the Trump legal team held a press conference
on Thursday to give an overview of its election-fraud cases in key states that the president
apparently lost to Democrat rival Joe Biden.
Powell focused largely on accusations that Dominion voting machines and Smartmatic election
software were fraudulently manipulated to award thousands of fake votes to Biden. Her
allegations went deeper, involving allies of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez owning
Dominion and having ties to Democrat billionaire donor George Soros.
But by Thursday night, Powell's story was being challenged by a conservative media
superstar, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who said she had brushed off multiple requests to
provide evidence of the Dominion-Smartmatic scheme for his show. She also was invited to be
interviewed on his show, but "when we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop
contacting her," Carlson said.
Powell responded by saying
she told Carlson not to contact her again because he was "very insulting, demanding and
rude." She also provided him with an affidavit and referred him to a witness who could help
him understand her statistical evidence. Carlson followed up the next night, saying he had
heard from Trump sources, including other members of the president's legal team, who said that
they hadn't seen Powell's evidence firsthand.
If Powell's allegations in the press conference seemed a little wild, her interview on
Saturday night with conservative news outlet Newsmax took the case to another level. She
accused Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and the state's secretary of state, Brad
Raffensperger, of receiving financial benefits to help Biden win the state's 16 electoral
votes.
"Georgia's probably going to be the first state I'm gonna blow up," Powell said of
her planned fraud cases. "And Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it because
they're in on the Dominion scam." She added that her Georgia lawsuit, which she hopes to
file this week, "will be biblical."
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
15
pogohere 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 08:17 PM
Some teams are harder to play on than others. Look at the Flynn case. The US Dep. of Justice
surrendered to Powell et. al. and requested that its own case against Flynn be
dismissed following the disclosure by Powell's efforts that the DOJ was withholding
evidence-- a "Brady rule violation"-- of Flynn's innocence from the defense and the court.
Flynn's prestigious Wa DC law firm earlier had Flynn plead guilty. The judge is holding up
the dismissal of that case, against all precedent. Powell most likely isn't finished. Neither
is The Donald.
GoldMorgsCom 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 08:31 PM
Giuliani and Ellis intimidated and gearing down? Powell least nervous at the presentation.
Usually fraud by (voting)computers escapes the possibility of external proof. But a
peculiarity in the Michigan-elections enabled it. See on the site vashiva (Shiva) MIT PhD
Analysis of Michigan Votes Reveals Unfortunate Truth of U.S. Voting Systems. Its systematic
fraud, save screenshots. Steven J. Miller Ph.D. published his testimony, that about 50'000
mail-in ballots of republicans have disapeared in Pensylvenia and 50'000 absentee ballots
have been abused by others (in favor of Biden = +50000). It makes up about 150000 to the
disadvantage of Trump in PA. Bidens surplus was about 75000. About Michigan and Pensylvenia
it has been published that the number of fraud votes was sufficient for a fraud change of the
outcome in favor of "the democrats". The signals are that the same happened in the other
critical states . See also -- Trump lawyers allege 'MASSIVE' election fraud, point to sworn
statements & efforts to threaten and silence them (VIDEO)-- 19 Nov, 2020 20:30 (
rt-search, on top at the right ) In the first ten minutes it is explained how the "democrat"
bosses facilitated huge fraud with absentee ballots. In Pensylvenia 682'000 have been
accepted without proper checks and with destroying the evidence of fraud. It is a federal
offence not to store all election records (scans), even not collecting them, such as besiding
mail-in envelopes and not checking them before opening them.
JingsGeordie 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 08:18 PM
Disavows? That's twisting the information (edit - they've now changed it to 'distances') From
Gen. Flynn's twitter feed - ".@SidneyPowell1 has been suspended from Twitter for 12 hours.
She understands the WH press release & agrees with it. She is staying the course to prove
the massive deliberate election fraud that robbed #WeThePeople of our votes for President
Trump & other Republican candidates."
Thesheperd666 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:02 PM
Trump fired Sidney Powell ? That is a huge mistake and might coast him the presidency. Trumps
team looks weak now ! Sidney look more confident and much more calmer than Rudy Giuliani. I
really don't trust Rudy as much as Sidney, wondering if they are afraid of spoiling the
Republic party before the 12th amendment goes to the house for votes ? Either side your on
this makes Trumps team look bad, and are starting to make up stories. I think Trump did win
by a landslide and this years vote was stolen from the US citizens. Demarcates can breath a
little more easier now that Sidney is gone, she was the strongest one on the team. Trump
needs more Sidney Powell's not less, I don't trust Rudy nor do I think he has what it takes
to win. Trump needs better Lawyers, Rudy is just a celebrity lawyer that will keep his image
no matter what ! Trump needs tigers not mice !
anastasia265 3 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:27 PM
It's not true. She was never a part of that team and had her own funding site. Their strategy
was to keep the two matters separate
J_P_Franklin 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 08:49 PM
Majority of Republicans are and have conspired against Trump since 2016. America First
Trumpism is the opposite of Republican open borders/free trade treason.
GoldMorgsCom 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:03 PM
Peculiar is that the German chamber of commerce does not reveal any registration of the
Dominions, neither of Smartmatic neither of Scytl neither of Amazone. These have not
registrated or their registrations are being hidden on request. So who's prosecution by the
German state prosecutors is to be requested?
Gerald Newton 2 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 10:56 PM
Sidney Powell has not released her evidence yet but it is coming. She has an impressive
record and probably will crush much of the federal justice system. That is what she does.
Read her book, Licensed to Lie. It is about the way federal prosecutors lie to prosecute like
they did to Senator Stevens of Alaska.
Swanster6450 3 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:56 PM
I guess Sidney Powell is finding what happens to people from outside the political loop when
they seek to stick their nose in and point out a few inconsistencies. Chucked under a bus is
the usual outcome. Julian Assange is also finding out the same thing and, incidentally, so
too is Donald Trump. All shafted and all chucked under a bus for pointing out a few
inconsistencies.
RTreaderCaribb 3 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:56 PM
I have one question and one question only: why would Sydney Powell who seems to be very
bright and a good lawyer say something of which she would know will be exposed only in less
than 14 days to be totally untrue? This makes no sense at all. And so I think we all should
pray that this woman does not end up like Jeffrey Epstein. We should take our time. 14 days
are nothing in comparison to the endless work she has to put in . And if she cant show any
fact for her allegations then we can maybe say something went wrong with her. But right now
let this woman work. All this prejudgment in the public court is irritating to me. And if
Sidney Powell did the same then yes, she would be irritating to me too. And for Trump: If he
can prove voter fraud then he should go to the supreme court. If he cant then at some point
he must concede. I guess the latest is December 14th and until then he should just figure out
what it is. That is his legal right. And for the American people: if you were so stupid to
vote for Biden then please bear the consequences thereof because you will go down the tubes.
The man is not well in his head.
allan Kaplan 3 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:43 PM
Sidney Powell's stamina, her defiance and her antipathy is so real that those who have faced
injustice by the hands of the powerful know what it takes to get such bullies sweating. The
house of cards of the Democrat commies will come tumbling down once Powell gets to the podium
of naming names, dates, places, and their coconspirators et al. I love her tenacity,
determination, perseverance and her unflinching boldness that most of the dems are sweating
about! Thank you Ms. Powell for a great American tradition and go full speed... the
dissenting maverick you are!
GoldMorgsCom 3 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 09:27 PM
They are so scared that the president Trump will conduct the great cleansing, to start with
removing the authority on the dollar from the Federal Reserve to the usa federal state of the
people. They are already blocking the president Trump during four years to keep him from
that. They know they can now only keep the president Trump from the great cleansing by
removing him from office. They will do more than the high treason of the fraud against the
federal elections, to remove the president Trump from office. Eventually they will detonate a
smuggled-in nuclear bomb and allegate Russia or fire a missile with a nuclear bomb from an
unindentified submarine and allegate Russia. You believe the spread of Covid-19 this year was
a coincidense? If Russia is being attacked any more (with allegations) it is a good reason
for conducting the great cleansing in Russia. Those probably sly covered Khodorovski-types
who are pressing forward (exports of) GMM-injections "against Covid-19" are probably
backstabbing Russia; catastrophic future compensation claims on Russia and confiscation of
all export-incomes. This is a good reason for conducting the great cleansing out of Russia of
all Khodorovski-types. We hope that the reorganized government of Russia will cleanse out all
Khodorovski-types, no matter the president Trump will continue office and conduct the great
cleansing in the usa or not.
Marlin1091 12 minutes ago 23 Nov, 2020 01:06 AM
Google did and is helping biden. That is why I don't use google any more, I use Yandex and
for fackrok I use vk
BRT 207, agreed that the interview was less than cathartic, but Sidney has a tighrope to
walk. Her opponent is not the opposing campaign of Dem hacks. Her opponent is CIA. CIA
stuffed all those ballots. Unfortunately for Sidney, in US law and regulation, CIA crime is
secret. The perps are secret under the IIPA. The facts are secret under the operational files
exemption. The law is secret under COG procedures. Flynn explained the birds and bees to her.
Remember DIA is JFK's creation.
Now Sidney has to find a way to puke up evidence of CIA crime in court.
CIA ratfucked Chavez with their electoral malware, albeit ineffectually.
CIA put their Venezuelan proprietary through a couple of sheepdippings and turned it on
Trump. Just like they used it on Kerry. Just like they do whenever you vote for the wrong
guy. Honnête homme Hopsicker, offered a lifetime of hookers and blow to shut up, has
the most synoptic take:
This is transnational organized crime by CIA. Sidney has to call CIA agents under oath.
She has to protect them from DO's murderers. She has to explode everything you think about
your bullshit fake democracy. I don't know if she can do it but I hope she can.
@anastasia
ny investigation would occur only after a Trump victory, in which case the investigation
would not be bi-partisan.
In terms of your original quote concerning maintenance of legitimacy:
* The urban areas will never accept election of Trump, as Trump and his supporters have no
intention of trying to remedy urban fiscal shortfalls by Federal borrowings.
* It would appear that governmental legitimacy has already been lost on both the urban and
hinterland coalitions in the US.
* The urban coalition cannot support itself even in the absence of conflict with the
hinterland coalition, and is thus incapable of ruling the USA.
* Legitimacy of some sort of government might be restored if Trump's election concerns are
acted upon, and if the US urban areas declined into political irrelevance, but not otherwise.
By Arthur Allen, editor for California Healthline, joined Kaiser Health News in April
2020 after six years at Politico, where he created, edited and wrote for the first health
IT-focused news team. Previously, he was a freelance writer for publications such as The New
York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Lingua Franca magazine, The New Republic, Slate
and Salon. Earlier in his career, he worked for The Associated Press for 13 years, including
stints as a correspondent based in El Salvador, Mexico and Germany. He is the author of the
books "V
Kaiser Health News. accine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver" (W.W.
Norton, 2007); "Ripe: The Search for the Perfect Tomato" (Counterpoint Press, 2010) and "The
Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl" (W.W. Norton, 2014). Originally published at Kaiser Health
News
Kaiser Health News .
When he started researching a troublesome childhood infection nearly four decades ago,
virologist Dr. Barney Graham , then at
Vanderbilt University, had no inkling his federally funded work might be key to deliverance
from a global pandemic.
Yet nearly all the vaccines advancing toward possible FDA approval this fall or winter are
based on a design developed by Graham and his colleagues, a concept that emerged from a
scientific quest to understand a disastrous 1966 vaccine trial.
Basic research conducted by Graham and others at the National Institutes of Health, Defense
Department and federally funded academic laboratories has been the essential ingredient in the
rapid development of vaccines in response to COVID-19. The government has poured an additional
$10.5 billion into vaccine companies since the pandemic began to accelerate the delivery of
their products.
The Moderna vaccine, whose remarkable effectiveness in a late-stage trial was announced
Monday morning, emerged directly out of a partnership between Moderna and Graham's NIH
laboratory.
Coronavirus vaccines are likely to be worth billions to the drug industry if they prove safe
and effective. As many as 14 billion vaccines would be required to immunize everyone in the
world against COVID-19. If, as many scientists anticipate, vaccine-produced immunity wanes,
billions more doses could be sold as booster shots in years to come. And the technology and
production laboratories seeded with the help of all this federal largesse could give rise to
other profitable vaccines and drugs.
The vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, which are likely to be the first to win FDA
approval, in particular rely heavily on two fundamental discoveries that emerged from federally
funded research: the viral protein designed by Graham and his colleagues, and the concept of
RNA modification, first developed by Drew Weissman and
Katalin Karikó at the University of Pennsylvania. In fact, Moderna's founders in
2010 named the company after this concept: "Modified" + "RNA" = Moderna, according to
co-founder Robert Langer .
"This is the people's vaccine," said corporate critic Peter Maybarduk, director of Public
Citizen's Access to Medicines program. "Federal scientists helped invent it and taxpayers are
funding its development. It should belong to humanity."
Moderna, through spokesperson Ray Jordan, acknowledged its partnership with NIH throughout
the COVID-19 development process and earlier. Pfizer spokesperson Jerica Pitts noted the
company had not received development and manufacturing support from the U.S. government, unlike
Moderna and other companies.
The idea of creating a vaccine with messenger RNA, or mRNA -- the substance that converts
DNA into proteins -- goes back decades. Early efforts to create mRNA vaccines failed, however,
because the raw RNA was destroyed before it could generate the desired response. Our innate
immune systems evolved to kill RNA strands because that's what many viruses are.
Karikó came up with the idea of modifying the elements of RNA to enable it to slip
past the immune system undetected. The modifications she and Weissman developed allowed RNA to
become a promising delivery system for both vaccines and drugs. To be sure, their work was
enhanced by scientists at Moderna, BioNTech and other laboratories over the past decade.
Another key element in the mRNA vaccine is the lipid nanoparticle -- a tiny, ingeniously
designed bit of fat that encloses the RNA in a sort of invisibility cloak, ferrying it safely
through the blood and into cells and then dissolving, thereby allowing the RNA to do its work
of coding a protein that will serve as the vaccine's main active ingredient. The idea of
enclosing drugs or vaccines in lipid nanoparticles arose first in the 1960s and was developed
by Langer and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and various academic and
industry laboratories.
Karikó began investigating RNA in 1978 in her native Hungary and wrote her first NIH
grant proposal to use mRNA as a therapeutic in 1989. She and Weissman achieved successes
starting in 2004, but the path to recognition was often discouraging.
"I keep writing and doing experiments, things are getting better and better, but I never get
any money for the work," she recalled in an interview. "The critics said it will never be a
drug. When I did these discoveries, my salary was lower than the technicians working next to
me."
Eventually, the University of Pennsylvania sublicensed the patent to Cellscript, a biotech
company in Wisconsin, much to the dismay of Weissman and Karikó, who had started their
own company to try to commercialize the discovery. Moderna and BioNTech later would each pay
$75 million to Cellscript for the RNA modification patent, Karikó said. Though unhappy
with her treatment at Penn, she remained there until 2013 -- partly because her daughter, Susan
Francia, was making a name for herself on the school's rowing team. Francia would go on to win
two Olympic gold medals in the sport. Karikó is now a senior officer at BioNTech.
In addition to RNA modification and the lipid nanoparticle, the third key contribution to
the mRNA vaccines -- as well as those made by Novavax, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson -- - is
the bioengineered protein
developed by Graham and his collaborators . It has proved in tests so far to elicit an
immune response that could prevent the virus from causing infections and disease.
The protein design was based on the observation that so-called fusion proteins -- the pieces
of the virus that enable it to invade a cell -- are shape-shifters, presenting different
surfaces to the immune system after the virus fuses with and infects cells. Graham and his
colleagues learned that antibodies against the post-fusion protein are far less effective at
stopping an infection.
The discovery arose in part through Graham's studies of a 54-year-old tragedy -- the failed
1966 trial of an NIH vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. In a clinical trial,
not only did that vaccine fail to protect against the common childhood disease, but most of the
21 children who received it were hospitalized
with acute allergic reactions, and two died .
About a decade ago, Graham, now deputy director of NIH's Vaccine Research Center, took a new
stab at the RSV problem with a postdoctoral fellow, Jason McLellan. After isolating and
obtaining three-dimensional models of the RSV's fusion protein, they worked with Chinese
scientists to identify an appropriate neutralizing antibody against it.
"We were sitting in Xiamen, China, when Jason got the first image up on his laptop, and I
was like, oh my God, it's coming together," Graham recalled. The prefusion antibodies they
discovered were 16 times more potent than the post-fusion form contained in the faulty 1960s
vaccine.
Two 2013 papers the team published in Science earned them a runner-up
prize in the prestigious journal's Breakthrough of the Year award. Their papers, which
showed it was possible to plan and create a vaccine at the microscopic structural level, set
the NIH's Vaccine Research Center on a path toward creating a generalizable, rapid way to
design vaccines against emerging pandemic viruses, Graham said.
In 2016, Graham, McLellan and other scientists, including Andrew Ward at the Scripps
Research Institute, advanced their concept further by publishing the prefusion structure
of a coronavirus that causes the common cold and a patent was filed for its design by NIH,
Scripps and Dartmouth -- where McLellan had set up his own lab. NIH and the University of Texas
-- where McLellan now works -- filed an additional patent this year for a
similar design change in the virus that causes COVID-19.
Graham's NIH lab, meanwhile, had started working with Moderna in 2017 to design a rapid
manufacturing system for vaccines. In January, they were preparing a demonstration project, a
clinical trial to test whether Graham's protein design and Moderna's mRNA platform could be
used to create a vaccine against Nipah, a deadly virus spread by bats in Asia.
Their plans changed rapidly when they learned on Jan. 7 that the epidemic of respiratory
disease in China was being caused by a coronavirus.
"We agreed immediately that the demonstration project would focus on this virus" instead of
Nipah, Graham said. Moderna produced a vaccine within six weeks. The first patient was
vaccinated in an NIH-led clinical study on March 16; early results from Moderna's
30,000-volunteer late-stage trial showed it was nearly 95% effective at preventing
COVID-19.
Although other scientists have advanced proposals for what may be even more potent vaccine antigens ,
Graham is confident that carefully designed vaccines using nucleic acids like RNA reflect the
future of new vaccines. Already, two major drug companies are doing advanced clinical trials
for RSV vaccines based on the designs his lab discovered, he said.
In a larger sense, the pandemic could be the event that paves the way for better, perhaps
cheaper and more plentiful vaccines.
"It's a silver lining, but I think we are definitely pushing forward the way everyone is
thinking about vaccines," said Michael Farzan , chair of the department of
immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research's Florida campus. "Certain techniques that have
been waiting in the wings, under development but never achieving the kind of funding they
needed for major tests, will finally get their chance to shine."
Under a 1980
law, the NIH will obtain no money from the coronavirus vaccine patent. How much money will
eventually go to the discoverers or their institutions isn't clear. Any existing licensing
agreements haven't been publicized; patent disputes among some of the companies will likely
last years. HHS' big contracts with the vaccine companies are not transparent, and Freedom of
Information Act requests have been slow-walked and heavily redacted, said Duke University law
professor Arti Rai.
Some basic scientists involved in the enterprise seem to accept the potentially lopsided
financial rewards.
"Having public-private partnerships is how things get done," Graham said. "During this
crisis, everything is focused on how can we do the best we can as fast as we can for the public
health. All this other stuff is going to have to be figured out later."
"It's not a good look to become extremely wealthy off a pandemic," McLellan said, noting the
big stock sales by
some vaccine company executives after they received hundreds of millions of dollars in
government assistance. Still, "the companies should be able to make some money."
For Graham, the lesson of the coronavirus vaccine response is that a few billion dollars a
year spent on additional basic research could prevent a thousand times as much loss in death,
illness and economic destruction.
"Basic research informs what we do, and planning and preparedness can make such a difference
in how we get ahead of these epidemics," he said.
I appreciate the recent re-look at the nexus of public investment funding private profit
in the pharma space. I'm not old enough to recall how things were done prior to the 1980s
with regards to promising academic discoveries getting commercialized in the United States.
There is also a glaring omission here in that there are mechanisms for the Federal Government
to take control of patents and price fix in an emergency, but it's clear that was never going
to happen and was never whispered in the lead up to operation Warp Speed. Pfizer keeps
pointing out they never took government money, which is a set up for them to set the price at
whatever they want while executives line their pockets.
The second point, that is not a focus of the article, is that these technologies are still
completely unproven. I am optimistic about the early results, though would feel better if
they were published in quality journals and not press releases. We simply don't know anything
about long term affects of dosing with this technology. These articles make it sound like
we're out of the woods and these vaccines are here to stay, but what if there are high
percentages of people that get major side effects? We still have no idea.
I was just thinking about that this morning. I thought about the little boy who cried
wolf. If Don had not tarnished his (??where-with-all??) by not leading. He still be the
Prez.
I applaud you for standing with power of your convictions. Not many have the integrity to
do so. This is meant sincerely.
On the other hand I think Larry has a point. Hopefully his and my concerns will prove to
be unfounded. I believe it is too soon to tell. Your question about the quantification of
risk is a fair question and is difficult for the layman judge.
I share the concerns that have been and are voiced here. Still, there is a class aspect to
it all. It seems as if this war is like every other war; the poors are sent in first. There
are many, perhaps the majority of volunteers, that need the couple of hundred bucks the
pharmas are offering the participants. They are the same people that line up to sell their
blood plasma every week. Big business, that. So, I woke up, looked in the mirror, and told
the old man there to "Suck it up, Buttercup."
And Lambert and others are right when they say our leaders should be first in line to roll
up their sleeves. Just don't forget the many that have already done so.
It was a revelation to me that RNA vaccines had been in the works since the 60s. That
makes me a little more in-favor of them. It is still frightening that this vaccine will be
mandated for all medical personnel before the rest of the population. Also interesting that
RNA gets greased up to slip past the enzymes(?) that destroy errant RNA I'm still trying to
think how that might not be such a good thing. But you are right – it looks like it
works. Extremely well in fact. But a timeline to prove it is safe? I'd say one or two
generations. If this mRNA slips past the mechanisms to protect the cell from foreign RNA then
it could hang around long enough to communicate itself back to the genetic DNA – it's
just that they don't quite know how that process works yet. And that's scary as hell.
(Lamarck's Signature). I'd say maybe we should not give this vaccine to anyone under the age
of 35 until we know more about possible negatives involving inheritance. Instead we should
produce good medicines to treat these infections.
Yes, we need volunteers. And they need to be fully informed. I hope you noticed this
remark in yesterday's Water Cooler. Of course, we don't know that the commentor's claimed
bona fides are factual, but if so, his/her take seems appropriate to me.
The publications and a full accounting of side effects are important for a new technology
like this. Traditional vaccinations are in the billions of doses at this point and quite
safe. For this new technology, it's quite hard to say. The publications might bowl me over
and convince me, but press releases do not.
It should be noted that, so far, we have proof of effectiveness in the form of press
releases that are intended to goose stock prices.
Long story, but the neoliberalization of basic biomedical science is complete. This was
foreseeable upon passage of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. I remember how such science was done
way back then. Scientists did science. Those without the patience and essentially
self-abnegation required for that, went to work at Ciba-Geigy or Burroughs-Welcome or Merck.
The system worked, more or less. At the time I was a very junior lab member, and I told my
labmates that Bayh-Dole meant only that we would pay for most science (at least) twice, the
first time when NIH/NSF/ACS/AHA/March of Dimes funded it and the second time when Big Pharma
"bought" it and charged what a false, not free, market in research and health care would
bear. They just stared at me, with stars in their eyes.
Dolly Parton is a great songwriter and performer but is also a shrewd businesswoman who is
hyper-focused on helping "her people" in the region where she grew up dirt poor. "Coat of
Many Colors" is one of the truly great autobiographical songs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_Many_Colors_(song)
1.So if there were to be no vaccine and the virus had it's way with us, killing 1% of us,
that's what, -- 3 million souls?
2. Alternatively, if there is a vaccine and everyone is vaccinated and that brings an end
to the pandemic, with deaths much curtailed, but 25,000 get Guillian Barre', that's still a
win right?
(Though not if you are one of the 25,000.)
3. Lastly, given their penchant for maximizing clicks and eyeballs,
how do you think the media would handle situations 1 or 2?
Trust in Public Health is easier to knock down than to build back up, especially
vaccines.
As Greg Brown says, "It's a long way up but it's a short way down."
South Dakota will be very informative on this front. It appears to be trying to drag-race
herd immunity through infection before a vaccine shows up. It will probably be the control
group for the statistical study of the relative efficacy on lives saved by a vaccine vs.
letting the disease take its natural course. Beer appears to be the placebo vaccine of choice
in South Dakota.
My reading of this is that even if Pfizer didn't take government money as part of the Warp
Speed initiative, as a mRNA vaccine it still likely builds on the earlier work. I have no
problem with pharma companies making a profit of their later work – they did do the
last critical developments – but nothing for the earlier work isn't right.
We pay for it but they profit from it. Why? Why is there for profit pharma and corporate
medicine to begin with? Why is there competition instead of cooperation in the production of
life saving/extending and other commonly needed goods and services? The provision of
pharmaceuticals and medicine are a free market failure. We are not adequately provided with
what we all must have at prices we all can afford. They've failed not because of the
scientists and medical practitioners who do the real work. They've failed because of the
capitalist parasites that own the corporations that employ the professionals who create the
products and provide the services on the ground.
One thought unsupported by any relevant technical expertise: the delivery mechanism sounds
well suited for bio weaponry given it bypasses your immune reaction to RNA.
The protein design was based on the observation that so-called fusion proteins -- the
pieces of the virus that enable it to invade a cell -- are shape-shifters, presenting
different surfaces to the immune system after the virus fuses with and infects cells. Graham
and his colleagues learned that antibodies against the post-fusion protein are far less
effective at stopping an infection.
Reminds me of this other mysterious shape-shifter: From Wikipedia:
Prions are misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal
variants of the same protein. They characterize several fatal and transmissible
neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals. It is not known what causes the
normal protein to misfold, but the abnormal three-dimensional structure is suspected of
conferring infectious properties, collapsing nearby protein molecules into the same shape.
The word prion derives from "proteinaceous infectious particle".
Long-term follow-up of individuals who have received this vaccine versus their placebo
compatriots is essential!
Not likely to be similar. The "shape shifting" of the viral fusion protein means that
different epitopes (i.e., different constellations of 3-D structure that elicit
immune/antibody responses) of the fusion protein, which is embedded in the viral membrane
envelope, are presented pre- and post-fusion. Antibodies against "post-fusion" fusion protein
are unlikely to work because fusion with the host cell is the key phase of infection. But,
and this is a big consideration, rushing into this is foolish, despite the rise in Big Pharma
stock prices.
COVID vaccine revelation sinks like a stone; disappears
In major media, certain stories gain traction. The trumpets keep blaring for a time before
they fade.
Other stories are one-offs. A few of them strike hard. Their implications -- if anyone
stops to think about them -- are powerful. Then nothing.
"Wait, aren't you going to follow up on that? Don't you see what that MEANS?"
Apparently not, because dead silence. "In other news, the governor lost his pet parakeet
for an hour. His chief of staff found it taking a nap in a desk drawer "
One-offs function like teasers. You definitely want to know more, but you never get
more.
Over the years, I've tried to follow up on a few. The reporter or the editor has a set of
standard replies: "We didn't get much feedback." "We covered it." "It's now old news." "There
wasn't anything else to find out."
Oh, but there WAS.
A few weeks ago, I ran a one-off. The analysis and commentary were mine, but the story was
an opinion piece in the New York Times. The Times called it an opinion piece to soften its
blow. I suspected it would disappear, and it did.
Its meaning and implication were too strong. It would be a vast embarrassment for the
White House, the Warp Speed COVID vaccine program, the vaccine manufacturers, the coronavirus
task force, and vaccine researchers.
And embarrassment would be just the beginning of their problem.
So here it is again. The vanished one-off, back in business:
COVID vaccine clinical trials doomed to fail; fatal design flaw; NY Times opinion piece
exposes all three major clinical trials.
Peter Doshi, associate editor of the medical journal BMJ, and Eric Topol, Scripps Research
professor of molecular medicine, have written a devastating NY Times opinion piece about the
ongoing COVID vaccine clinical trials.
They expose the fatal flaw in the large Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna trials.
September 22, the Times: "These Coronavirus Trials Don't Answer the One Question We Need
to Know"
"If you were to approve a coronavirus vaccine, would you approve one that you only knew
protected people only from the most mild form of Covid-19, or one that would prevent its
serious complications?"
"The answer is obvious. You would want to protect against the worst cases."
"But that's not how the companies testing three of the leading coronavirus vaccine
candidates, Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, whose U.S. trial is on hold, are approaching the
problem."
"According to the protocols for their studies, which they released late last week, a
vaccine could meet the companies' benchmark for success if it lowered the risk of mild
Covid-19, but was never shown to reduce moderate or severe forms of the disease, or the risk
of hospitalization, admissions to the intensive care unit or death."
"To say a vaccine works should mean that most people no longer run the risk of getting
seriously sick. That's not what these trials will determine."
This means these clinical trials are dead in the water.
The trials are designed to show effectiveness in preventing mild cases of COVID, which
nobody should care about, because mild cases naturally run their course and cause no harm.
THERE IS NO NEED FOR A VACCINE THAT PREVENTS MILD CASES.
There. That's the NY Times one-off. My piece analyzing it went on much longer, but you get
the main thrust:
The leading vaccine clinical trials are useless, irrelevant, misleading, and
deceptive.
But now, it gets much worse. Because Pfizer has just announced their vaccine is almost
ready. CNBC headline, November 9: "Pfizer, BioNTech say Covid vaccine is more than 90%
effective -- 'great day for science and humanity'"
And not a peep about the NY Times one-off. That's gone, as if it never was.
Trump's coronavirus task force knows the truth. Biden's new task force, waiting in the
wings, knows the truth. But they don't care. They're criminals. They'd sell a car with a gas
tank ready to explode to a customer with cash.
But you care, because you can read and think.
You can raise hell.
Now, in case anyone is interested in knowing WHY the major clinical trials of the COVID
vaccine are designed only to prevent mild cases of COVID, I'll explain.
A vaccine maker assumes that, during the course of the clinical trial, a few of the 30,000
volunteers are going to "catch COVID-19."
They assume this because "the virus is everywhere," as far as they're concerned. So it'll
drop down from the clouds and infect a few of the volunteers.
The magic number is 150. When that number of volunteers "catch COVID," everything stops.
The clinical trial stops.
At this point, the vaccine maker hopes that most of the volunteers who "got infected" are
in the placebo group. They didn't receive the real vaccine; they received the saltwater
placebo shot.
Then the vaccine maker can proudly say, "See? The volunteers who caught COVID-19? Most of
them didn't receive the vaccine. They weren't protected. The volunteers who received the real
vaccine didn't catch COVID. The vaccine protected them."
Actually, the number split the vaccine makers are looking for is 50 and 100. If 50 people
in the vaccine group catch COVID, and 100 in the placebo group catch COVID, the vaccine is
said to be 50% effective. And that's all the vaccine maker needs to win FDA approval for the
vaccine.
But wait. Let's look closer at this idea of "catching COVID." What are they really talking
about? How do they define that? Claiming a volunteer in the clinical trial caught COVID adds
up to what?
Does it add up to a minimal definition of COVID-19 -- a cough, or chills and fever? Or
does it mean a serious case -- severe pneumonia?
Now we come to the hidden factor, the secret, the source of the whole con game.
You see, the vaccine maker starts out with 30,000 HEALTHY volunteers. So, if they waited
for 150 of them to come down with severe pneumonia, a serious case of COVID, how long do you
think that would take? Five years? Ten years?
The vaccine maker can't possibly wait that long.
These 150 COVID cases the vaccine maker is looking for would be mild. Just a cough. Or
chills and fever. That scenario would only take a few months to develop. And face it, chills,
cough, and fever aren't unique to COVID. Anyone can come down with those symptoms.
THEREFORE, THE WHOLE CLINICAL TRIAL IS DESIGNED, UP FRONT, TO FIND 150 CASES OF MILD AND
MEANINGLESS AND SELF-CURING "COVID."
About which, no one cares. No one should care.
But, as we see, Pfizer is trumpeting their clinical trial of the vaccine as a landmark in
human history.
And THAT'S the story of the one-off the NY Times didn't think was worth a second
glance.
Because they're so stupid? No. They're not that stupid.
They're criminals.
And the government wants you to take the experimental COVID vaccine, whose "effectiveness"
was designed to prevent nothing worth losing a night's sleep over.
The only worry are the adverse effects of the vaccine, about which I've written
extensively. These effects include, depending on what's in the vial, a permanent alteration
of your genetic makeup, or an auto-immune cascade, in which the body attacks itself.
By Jon Queally, staff writer, Common Dreams. Originally published at
Common Dreams
Pinpointing a reality denounced as "
morally obscene " by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a new government study shows how some of the
nation's largest and most profitable corporations -- including Walmart, McDonald's, Dollar
General, and Amazon -- feast upon taxpayer money by paying their employees such low wages that
huge numbers of those workers throughout the year are forced to rely on public assistance
programs such as Medicaid and food assistance just to keep themselves and their families
afloat.
According to a statement from Sanders' office, the study he commissioned the Government
Accountability Office to carry out -- titled " Millions of Full-time Workers Rely on Federal Health
Care and Food Assistance Programs " -- found that an estimated 5.7 million Medicaid
enrollees and 4.7 million SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients who
worked full-time for 50 or more weeks in 2018 earned wages so low that they qualified for these
federal benefits. In addition, an estimated 12 million wage-earning adults enrolled in Medicaid
and 9 million wage-earning adults living in households receiving SNAP benefits worked at some
point in 2018.
Upon the study's release Wednesday, Warren Gunnels, staff director and policy adviser for
Sen. Sanders, tweeted: "The real looting in America is the Walton family becoming $63 billion
richer during a pandemic, while paying wages so low that 14,541 of their workers in 9 states
need food stamps -- all subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. Yes. The Walton family is the real
welfare queen in America."
According to the Washington Post :, based on the GAO report:
Walmart was one of the top four employers of SNAP and Medicaid beneficiaries in every
state. McDonald's was in the top five of employers with employees receiving federal benefits
in at least nine states.
In the nine states that responded about SNAP benefits -- Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana,
Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington -- Walmart was found
to have employed about 14,500 workers receiving the benefit, followed by McDonald's with
8,780, according to Sanders's team. In six states that reported Medicaid enrollees, Walmart
again topped the list, with 10,350 employees, followed by McDonald's with 4,600.
In Georgia, for example, Walmart employed an estimated 3,959 workers on Medicaid -- an
estimated 2.1 percent of the total of non-elderly, non-disabled people in the state receiving
the benefit. McDonald's was next on the list, employing 1,480 who received Medicaid, or 0.8
percent of the total of non-elderly, non-disabled people on the program. "
"At a time when huge corporations like Walmart and McDonald's are making billions in profits
and giving their CEOs tens of millions of dollars a year, they're relying on corporate welfare
from the federal government by paying their workers starvation wages," said Sanders in a
statement. "That is morally obscene."
With the individual wealth of
high-ranking executives and members of billionaire families like the Walton's, who own
Walmart, soaring even as front-line, minimum wage employees and their families struggling to
stay afloat amid the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, Sanders argues that the stark contrast
should be a wakeup call for those who have refused to see how unjust and economically backward
it is for the federal government, meaning taxpayers, to subsidize the cruel wages that massive
profitable companies force their workers to accept.
"U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable
corporations in America," said Sanders. "It is time for the owners of Walmart, McDonald's and
other large corporations to get off of welfare and pay their workers a living wage."
No one in this country should live in poverty," Sanders added. "No one should go hungry. No
one should be unable to get the medical care they need. It is long past time to increase the
federal minimum wage from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to $15, and guarantee health care
to all Americans as a human right."
These looters at the top don't just rely on welfare for their workers: they also rely on
government assistance in other ways, such as favorable tax treatment and other goodies to
bring their boondoggles to town, and of course trillions in infusions/ giveaways like we saw
this year. Not to mention golden parachutes in corporate bankruptcies, facilitated by the
"way things are done."
""There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of
barbarism," wrote Walter Benjamin. In precisely this vein, Walton's new Crystal Bridges
museum offers American-made art to strategically cover up the ugly reality Walmart has
created. Spanning the colonial era to the present, the exhibition space's fulsome celebration
of the American spirit eulogizes the nation of shared confidence and abundance, sustainable
mortgages, and worker dignity that Walmart has brutally demolished. The notion that Walton's
supremely self-satisfied kunsthalle might serve as a balm, let alone a monument, to the
market-battered American spirit is analogous to, say, Genghis Khan inviting survivors of his
Mongol hordes to admire an installation of his plunder "
As Amazon uses a network of subcontractors and contractors for everything for logistics to
making toilet paper, all those employees will never show up on "official" stats re.
Amazon.
I called it a straw man because " but let us sweep Whole Foods and Amazon Prime under the
rug" suggested that the piece had done that, when they weren't mentioned.
An equally accurate storyline could be–"Workers in at least 9 states would be forced
to live off even more government handouts without Walmart's employment".
Its tough to give companies grief here simply for paying what the market dictates. I'm all
for going after the route of the problem–monopsony power–but noting the symptoms
without actually raising awareness of the underlying problem is a distraction that keeps the
plebs anger directed where it can't have much effect on the bigger picture. Being mad at
Walmart instead of the government policy that has destroyed unions and made it easier/cheaper
to move jobs overseas isn't serving middle America. Ironically, this distraction serves
Walmart quite well. They actually champion hire minimum wages as it stifles competition
Its an interesting thought experiment to imagine absolutely no minimum wages but a UBI and
universal healthcare so that no one needed a job just to survive. Then Walmart could pay its
employees any low amount and no one would bat an eye (although I suspect wages actually
wouldnt fall because walmart would lose its monopsony power)
Government policy doesn't write itself: lobbyists guide the pen, and donors/ owners like
Walmart pull the guides' puppet strings. "Personal responsibility" goes both ways.
To use yesterday's metaphor, I'd say that the PMC is like the human being co-driver in a
"self"-driving car programmed by capital.
Though if we can get people to admit they feel the symptoms by describing the symptoms,
some of those people might then be ready and willing to hear about the disease which is
giving them the symptoms.
Tempting as it might be to shape the narrative so that the Walmarts of the World appear
more like hapless innovators, shrewdly capitalizing on a crooked playing field, it only works
if you blinker yourself to the fact that the WotW have at least 8 of the ten fingers on the
hands architecting those same playing fields.
Don't get me wrong–I'm not trying to say Walmart is hapless. Maybe I'm too cynical,
but I actually think they're so shrewd they want you to focus on these press releases about
how they pay so little. If the only thing that stems from that is increasing the minimum
wage, they come out big time winners
Here's what the market dictates. " I can get 10 interns who will pay ME to LET them do
your job. Now shut up and get back to work." The way to stop the Market Dictatorship of what
wages will be is to impose a Legal Dictatorship on the market of what wages will be.
That's what the Wages and Hours Act was about to begin with. Make it a long-sentence
hard-time felony to pay less or to take less. Abolish Free Trade in goods , services or
people. That means Sealing the Borders to create zero immigration for as long as necessary to
use the labor shortage to torture the employER class into raising wages and conditions
upward. And to weld shut the "illegal immigration escape hatch" by which employERS (
including limousine liberals) pay less than the legally imposed minimum wage.
Ya, I agree. Providing health care and making sure kids have food and education are
subsidies that help businesses in a healthy way. And a UBI is a great idea as well! Toss in a
Carbon tax, and you have my ideal policy.
We've had this debate here for years so the above article is a bit of a recycled chestnut
rather than an original thought.
And perhaps the answer for the "outrage" of those Walmart heirs is to reestablishment a
meaningful inheritance tax since receiving billions through death is indeed an entitlement
and not just for the Walmart heirs but also for plenty of mansion owners dotting the
Northeast.
As for the company itself, yes it's a crappy and low paid place to work but they are
hardly unique in that and one reason they top those mentioned lists, along with McDonalds, is
that they are the number one and number two employers by number of employees in the country.
And the reason they are so large is that they give their custormers what they want and can
afford which cannot be said of so many competing looters that the author ignores.
There are lots of worse companies than Walmart but in the battle of the coastals versus
the deplorables they have always made a fat juicy target for those who probably pay their
hired help less than Walmart does its "associates."
Right!?
I keep thinking about how at 15/hour people will lose what small piece of our social safety
net that keeps them "making it". No family is purchasing health insurance on that increase.
And really the few dollars per hour might not even make up the food benefits for a medium
sized family. It's scary to get a raise where you end up worse off then before.
I mean I guess that's just the messed up reality when a whole bunch of household costs have
been introduced or increased since policies using means testing (income and asset thresholds)
to determine access. Actually I am sure ok not sure but it would make sense that these
companies know exactly how much pay will kick these employees off benefits. So the employee
community is less likely to make a fuss for small increases in pay which is the norm we have
come to accept as workers. I'm all for real talk minimum/ living wages for the communities
people actually live in.
"Corporate welfare queens" As others have noted, it isn't just Walmart and the Waltons.
Trying to think of an appropriate term to describe the outcome of the decision by a majority
of the US Supreme Court justices in the Citizens United case that not only enabled but
tacitly encouraged One Percent, corporate, Wall Street, executive branch, legislators' and
central bank behavior that, although still a cycle, has led to the opposite of a "virtuous
cycle". "Morally obscene", corrupt and corruptible, and dishonorable are some descriptions of
resultant behavior that come to mind. Too bad "The Swamp" wasn't drained, but has been
further expanded and left both legacy political parties tarnished. It is said that a fish
rots from the head down. That may be so, but that doesn't mean the rot cannot be allowed to
set in. Follow the Money.
It turns out that when the TrumpAdmin used the phrase " the Swamp", what they strictly
specifically and only meant were the impartial scientists at the various departments ,
bureaus and agencies. And they have done all they could to drain out the impartial scientists
and stop the science. Which is all they ever meant by "drain the Swamp".
Citizens United decision was a display of right wing insanity in all it's glory: I
suppose insanity was either baked into the Constitution – or in 1780 – was not
yet insanity?
Still can't get over that decision – ever since, my thought: term limits for friggen
federal judges – and certainly the SCOTUS crew and throw in Congress and the Senate as
well.
We have term limits for state officeholders in Michigan. All that mostly gets us is
cynical amateurs who view their limited term as a chance to make contacts and audition for
lobbying/law/etc. jobs after leaving office.
And the non-cynical amateurs who want to make things better are term-limited out of office
just when they are finally learning where all the hidden levers, ropes, pulleys, secret trap
doors are. Meanwhile, the lobbyists are not term limited.
Term limits for national office would make some things worse while making nothing
better.
Ah, those immortal lobbyists! Term limits for politicians – combined with limits on
lobbyists. One can dream. No? I'd like to try it. How can we actually drain the Swamp/
Oh. Crap. We have a Supreme Court. Freedom to Lobby infinitely. Freedom of bribery – I
mean freedom of speech.
OK, So nothing can be done. Perhaps state office holders are a different thing then National
politicians? (Yeah, maybe not) But Do you want to remove the term limits on our President
then? No? I'd keep that limit.
Should we just resign ourselves to be stuck with this stuff till the Sun expands and swallows
the USA? The future colony on Mars will have a better way? Not likely.
We have term limits. They're called elections. If/when there's something wrong with
Democracy, fix Democracy. If/when there's something wrong with the Constitution, fix the
Constitution
In most cases, artificial term limits don't do either. I would say there are two
exceptions: limiting the presidency to two terms, and limiting the tenure of federal judges.
In the latter case, 18-year term limits have been suggested, and that could be the right
number, I'm not sure.
Now, with respect to fixing Democracy and the Constitution, for a First Step, please see
HJR-48: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States providing that the
rights extended by the Constitution are the rights of natural persons only -- oh, by the way,
stating that money does not equal speech.
Every looting is real looting. Little looters in the streets are real looters. Big looters
in the suites are real looters.
Since the big looting is currently legal in many cases, laws would have to be changed to
stop the big looters looting. Its worth trying to do. It won't happen with Joemala and
McConnell conspiring together to stop it from happening.
We need to elect a Red Gingrich minority of officeholders into the House and into the
Senate. The "squad" could be the nucleus of that if they decide to center economic justice
instead of critical race wokeness.
Congrease had/has the legal power to enact legislation with which to reign in what has
become the early 21st century gilded age .. but they refuse to .. Nearly ALL of them have
their dirty proboscii harpooning the lowly constituents who elected them ..too busy sucking
any and all of plebian bodilyeconomic liquidity whilst paying deference to the know-it-all,
BigTime-parasitic Oligarchic Brainbugs!
If Biden does that, then Trump himself could very well win again if he runs in 2024. If
that scenario plays out that way, I hope Trump picks Ivanka to be his VP running mate. That
way, Ivanka would be on track to be America's first woman president. I just hope Hillary
would live long enough to see that happen.
I used to dread the Friday news drops. The unemployment numbers, employed people in
minimum wage jobs, workers at home working away, and major inflation in the grocery stores
are hitting people extremely hard coming up to Holiday season. I really can't wait to see the
Friday news drops now. Not just the Trump temper tantrum stuff, but the economic quips they
make. Then what is totally mind blowing are the comments on social media. Some people that
are not hurting much, or at all seem to think that all things are fine as wine in the rest of
the country. I know this reply does not specifically comment on your article, but it is a
wide view of the current situation.
With the computers and big data, the simplest solution is to claw back the benefits paid
to the employees from the corporations, call it humanitarian tax.
But, it would be hard to find a lobbyist to write it, even harder to find a sponsor in the
congress.
That would destroy the ability of these people to get jobs and to receive benefits.
I think you might have the cause and effect mixed up. In my state, anyone who gets SNAP
benefits has to work at least 20 hours a week. These "bad" employers are the ones with
flexible schedules and because the jobs are so crappy, they are readily available. Maybe it's
not that WalMartb workers need benefits, it's that the benefits recipient needs WalMart and
McDonalds.
Every state is different. I just have to show proof of income (which I have, though I
don't have a job). But the amount of SNAP you get varies widely. I am 150% of poverty level
and the state of Pennsylvania just raised my monthly benefit to $16.50.
Another way to put it: Walmart, McDonald's, Dollar General, and Amazon are really
government stores with outsourced management and labor.
Socialism American-style.
Whenever I am in Walmart or any supermarket with automatic check out, I avoid automatic
check out completely and only go to regular check out, no matter how long the line is.
Automatic check out is a precursor to eventually firing all human cashiers. In my "larger"
town, where I often end up in Walmart for the cheaper pet food, an Aldi's was built precisely
opposite it, across the road. I heard an Aldi's employee saying they get paid better than
Walmart. And lots of their prices are the same or better. So I will be spending a lot more
time there.
O'Connor pushed her about her claims that computer software used in the election,
particularly Dominion Voting Systems, has been tainted, and he wondered how she would prove it.
For starters, Powell said that her legal team has pictures of votes being manipulated in
real-time.
"It is terrifying, and it is a huge national security issue," Powell said. "Why the
Department of Justice and FBI have not done something, Dominion is closing its offices and
moving. No doubt they're shredding documents. God only knows what else. More than 100 Dominion
people have wiped any connection with Dominion off the internet."
She also claims that they have testimony from witnesses opening military ballots and
trashing them if they were for Trump, and substitute ballots were put in for Biden.
"I'm essentially staking my personal and professional reputation on these allegations, and I
have no hesitation from what I've seen in doing so," she noted. "In fact, I think it would be
irresponsible if not criminal of me not to come forward with it."
She also says she would LOVE for Dominion to sue her over her allegations so she can conduct
civil discovery. Powell also reacted to Fox News host Tucker Carlson's criticism of her on his
program on Thursday night.
While probably "less aggressively nasty" than Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden is still a
"conventional politician," but it won't be easy for him to dismiss his party's progressive
wing, Larry Sanders told RT's Going Underground.
Brother to US Senator Bernie Sanders and the Green Party Spokesperson on Health and Social
Care (England & Wales), Larry Sanders told RT's Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi that
while Biden was not his "choice" for president, he prefers him over the current
incumbent, President Donald Trump.
... ... ...
As a fixture of the establishment, Biden will follow the interests of corporate money and
the military-industrial complex rather than anybody else's, Sanders noted.
"Biden is a conventional politician, he is beholden to big money, he is beholden to
defense industries,
joe_go 13 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 07:03 AM
If no one in America went to vote the country would still look the way it looks today. The
big money and military industry would run the country the way it runs it when people vote and
think it matters.
Spirgily_Klump 20 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 12:46 AM
Do you know after Biden was out of the VP office the Chinese communist party had donated $70
million to one of his foundations at the University of Pennsylvania from which Joe drew a
salary of over $900,000 per year? With his benefiting from the hundreds of millions his
family took in from foreign powers and persons how can he gain the security clearance
necessary for the presidency? The president needs the highest clearance. Even an applicant to
the CIA get polygraphed.
shadow1369 Spirgily_Klump 9 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 11:00 AM
Just one of many skeletons jangling in Bidet's closet, they will be used by his controllers
to keep him on track.
Iwanasay 19 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 01:22 AM
It doesn't matter who is in power, America's destiny has been chosen by other behind the
scene faces
RedDragon 15 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 05:27 AM
All USA presidents are beholden to big money entities, inclusive incoming Biden presidency.
Trump is beholden to the Jewish money powers etc..
"... "Democracy" is little more than another word for "rule by money" – it can be nothing else. The entire world is falling under the delusion that "each vote counts". ..."
"... The world is utterly corrupt, ruled almost exclusively by monied interests. Jesus said: "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." ..."
"... Misinformed by the politicians and the MSM, presumably. So if establishment and career politicians are the enemies of the people, then anti-politicians and populist outsiders who want to drain the swamp deserve our fullest support. ..."
This is not just America. It is global. the decades old drive to convert the world's
governments to "democracy" is in fact a drive to place the elite in total control of the
populations. "Democracy" is little more than another word for "rule by money" – it can
be nothing else. The entire world is falling under the delusion that "each vote counts".
The world is utterly corrupt, ruled almost exclusively by monied interests. Jesus said:
"No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will
be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."
Which is your choice?
I_left_the_left , Nov 16, 2020 10:29 AM Reply to Victor
Are voters really as corrupt as those they vote for?
Laurence Howell , Nov 16, 2020 12:44 PM Reply to I_left_the_left
No, just mis-informed
I_left_the_left , Nov 16, 2020 1:11 PM Reply to Laurence
Howell
Misinformed by the politicians and the MSM, presumably. So if establishment and career
politicians are the enemies of the people, then anti-politicians and populist outsiders who
want to drain the swamp deserve our fullest support.
They are programmed and propagandized, embracing the illusion that the electoral system is
not structured and controlled to make sure no significant change can occur, no matter who is
president. It is a sad reality promoted as democracy.
They will prattle on and give all sorts of reasons why they voted, and for whom, and how if
you don't vote you have no right to bitch, and how it's this sacred right to vote that makes
democracy great, blah blah blah. It's all sheer nonsense. For the U.S.A. is not a democracy;
it is an oligarchy run by the wealthy for the wealthy.
This is not a big secret. Everybody knows this is true; knows the electoral system is
sheer show business with the presidential extravaganza drawing the big money from corporate
lobbyists, investment bankers, credit card companies, lawyers, business and hedge fund
executives, Silicon Valley honchos, think tanks, Wall Street gamblers, millionaires,
billionaires, et. al. Biden and Trump spent over 3 billion dollars on the election. They are
owned by the money people.
Both are old men with long, shameful histories. A quick inquiry will show how the rich have
profited immensely from their tenures in office. There is not one hint that they could change
and have a miraculous conversion while in future office, like JFK. Neither has the guts or the
intelligence. They are nowhere men who fear the fate that John Kennedy faced squarely when he
turned against the CIA and the war machine. They join the craven company of Johnson, Ford,
Carter, Reagan G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama. They all got the message that
was sent from the streets of Dallas in 1963: You don't want to die, do you?
Ask yourself: Has the power of the oligarchic, permanent warfare state with its propaganda
and spy networks, its vast intelligence apparatus, increased or decreased in the past half
century? Who is winning the battle, the people or the ruling elites? The answer is obvious.
It matters not at all whether the president has been Trump or Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan or
George W. Bush, Barack Obama or George H. W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, or Jimmy Carter.
The power of the national security state has grown under them all and everyone is left to moan
and groan and wonder why.
All the while, the doll's house has become more and more sophisticated and powerful. It is
now essentially an electronic prison that is being "Built Back Better." The new Cold War now
being waged against Russia and China is a bi-partisan affair, as is the confidence game played
by the secret government intended to create a fractured consciousness in the population through
their corporate mass-media stenographers. Trump and his followers on one side of the coin;
liberal Democrats on the other.
Only those backed by the wealthy power brokers get elected in the U.S.A. Then when elected,
it's payback time. Palms are greased. Everybody knows this is true. It's called corruption. So
why would anyone, who opposes a corrupt political oligarchy, vote, unless they were casting a
vote of conscience for a doomed third-party candidate?
hether it's Tweedledee or Tweedledum – will result in the death and impoverishment of
so many, that being the end result of oligarchic rule at home and imperialism abroad.
Orwell called this Doublethink:
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind
simultaneously, and accepting both of them . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely
believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes
necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the
existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one
denies – all this is indispensably necessary.
And while in Nineteen Eighty-Four Doublethink is learned by all the Party members
"and certainly by all who are intelligent as well as orthodox," today in the USA, it has
been mastered even by the so-called unintelligent.
To live in the USA is to live in the Church of the Good Hustler.
People often ask: What can we do to make the country better? What is your alternative?
A child could answer that one: Don't vote if you know that both contenders are backed by the
super-rich elites, what some call the Deep State. Which of course they are. Everybody
knows.
Reply
I_left_the_left , Nov 18, 2020 9:50 AM
"the U.S.A. is not a democracy; it is an oligarchy run by the wealthy for the wealthy."
Sorry, no. The whole point about Trump is that he is the great anti-politician, the outsider,
the patriot enemy of the corrupt ruling elites who only care about status, power and control,
not the interests of the American people or any other. By contrast, Biden is clearly the
perfect puppet of the oligarchy and political establishment. The ruling class expected their
ally Clinton to win in 2016, never Trump. The great election steal of 2020 is all about
reversing this little surprise, and to make sure that the irksome people power of US
democracy will finally be under full control. No more land of the free; the USA is now on the
cusp of becoming a leftist fascist dictatorship, in which US patriots are the new German
Jews, and in which future elections will be as meaningful as those of the Soviet Union.
A Texas Libertarian , Nov 18, 2020 6:05 AM
If you don't see that there is a big difference between Trump and Biden, then you are
still in the dollhouse. Trump certainly ain't perfect, but at least he wants to keep the
economy open. Biden is the lock down candidate. If that's all I knew about each of these
candidates, it'd be enough to vote for Trump. But there is a lot more.
Also, 'democracy' is the virus, not the cure, and Orwell was a dumb ass socialist.
Curmudgeon , Nov 17, 2020 11:55 PM
With all of his warts, Nixon did end the Vietnam war. Reagan ended the Cold War and
mutually assured destruction. Wilson got the US into WWI, FDR did WWII, Truman set up Korea
and Clinton tried to heat up Yugoslavia.
George Wallace circa 1965 said there wasn't a dimes worth of difference between the Democrats
and Republicans. They are different branches of the corporate party and globalists competing
for the speed of takeover. Trump is a corporatist but for all of his faults has gone off
script with his own corporatist agenda to cut in on the action, and the owners ain't havin'
it, because the Trumpian party is ever-so mildly nationalistic. Nationalism cannot be allowed
to rear its beautiful head, because people will love it. Trump is a turd, alright, but Biden
is a pile of shit.
I_left_the_left , Nov 18, 2020 9:53 AM Reply to Curmudgeon
Would Biden end endless wars of intervention against the wishes of the neo-cons and
military-industrial complex, as Trump has been doing?
Wow what a hopeless and dreary world you live in. I left the dollhouse in the weeks after
9-11 when I realized the official narrative was full of holes. But I don't find the world out
here quite so dreary as you. Call me a dreamer, but I still believe that good always
(eventually) wins over evil, and I believe the ideals of America – the very same ones
that were probably sold to us as a fake bill of goods a long time ago – is REAL and not
an illusion because so many people believe in it. Perception is reality. Donald Trump despite
all his personal quirks and flaws I sincerely believe to be a deal maker who is interested in
protecting and serving the American people. Even if it's out of his own narcissism that he
wants to do so I'll take it. Regardless, one good thing that has come out of the last 4 years
is that I think a LOT of people have gotten "woke" in their own ways. Not all have left the
dollhouse yet but many have. Have faith in people.
Lysias , Nov 17, 2020 2:01 PM
If it made no difference who won, why were the elites so fanatically opposed to Trump?
It does make a difference cf. the mad scramble to get GWB elected in 2000. At that time
the rulers had decided on years of aggressive foreign policy therefore they need the "war
party" in. When Obama was pitted against the lame duck McCain it was time for some "smiley
face" rule with a surge in the woke factor with the first (gasp!) African American
president.
With Trump, I think it was a genuine shock when he was elected. Like Brexit in the UK, it
just wasn't supposed to happen! Trump is too much of a wild card. Too revealing. Suggesting
there's a deep state and actually taking conspiracies seriously? How dare he!. More to the
point, he's not getting with the covid program.
I_left_the_left , Nov 18, 2020 10:01 AM Reply to wardropper
Trump had the perfect billionaire's lifestyle, but gave it all up to run for the
presidency. He donated all presidential salary to good causes and says he has lost billions
by becoming president, unlike any other political leader you care to mention. More seriously,
he has put himself and family in grave danger by opposing the corrupt ruling classes of the
USA, and by his insolent attempt to 'drain the swamp'. In the near future, the elites will
persecute and try to imprison him and his family, to prevent any further rebellion against
their control in the land of the unfree.
We don't really know how fanatically opposed to him they actually are.
What the media choose to show us always has several layers of superficial, misleading crap
attached to it.
Appearing to be opposed to something is a pretty old trick, after all.
It covers your ass.
Lysias , Nov 17, 2020 10:50 PM Reply to wardropper
Paying off the BLM rioters? That's not something you do just to create an appearance.
The mass mailing of unsolicited ballots is of course a recipe for fraud, even more so in a
state where the voter rolls contain tens of thousands of people who haven't voted or updated
their records in more than a decade. This is how you get dead people voting, as we
reported here at The Federalist and as Tucker Carlson
noted last week .
But there's another, less sensational but perhaps more consequential election scandal in
Nevada that hasn't yet made headlines, even though it's been hiding in plain sight for weeks
now. Under the guise of supposedly nonprofit, nonpartisan get-out-the-vote campaigns, Native
American voter advocacy groups in Nevada handed out gift cards, electronics, clothing, and
other items to voters in tribal areas, in many cases documenting the exchange of ballots for
"prizes" on their own Facebook pages, sometimes even while wearing official Joe Biden campaign
gear.
Simply put, this is illegal. Offering voters anything of value in exchange for their
vote is a violation of
federal election law , and in some cases punishable by up to two years in prison and as
much as $10,000
in fines . That includes raffles, free food, free T-shirts, and so on.
... ... ...
There are about 60,000 eligible Native American voters in Nevada who make up about 3 percent
of the state's total voting population. That's almost twice the current margin of Biden's
current lead over President Trump in Nevada. So the Native American vote really does matter, it
could even be decisive. It therefore matters how many Native American votes were influenced by
an illegal cash-for-votes scheme, especially if funding for it came from American taxpayers via
the NCAI.
It also matters because this didn't just happen in Nevada. Organizers there might have been
more obvious about what they were doing, but there's evidence that similar efforts, including
gift card and electronics giveaways, were undertaken in Native communities in
South Dakota ,
Arizona ,
Wisconsin ,
Washington ,
Michigan ,
Idaho , Minnesota , and Texas .
All of this coordinated illegal activity, clearly designed to churn out votes for Biden and
Democrats in tribal areas all across the country, is completely out in the open. You don't need
special access or some secret source to find out about it. You just have be curious, look
around, and report it.
Unfortunately, mainstream media outlets are not curious and refuse to report on any of this
stuff. What's described above is an egregious and totally transparent vote-buying scheme in
Nevada that was likely undertaken on a similar scale across nearly a dozen other states, but
you won't read about it in The New York Times, or hear about it on CNN.
That's not because the story is unimportant, but because, for the media establishment, it's
inconvenient. No wonder these groups didn't try to hide what they were doing.
"... And, objectively, how is the neoliberal model doing? For starters, there is so much money around that doesn't know what to do with itself, that the price of money (interest rates) has never been lower. Ever. Basic supply and demand. ..."
We really need to accept that we may not know what we think we know. For 40 years, we've all
been bleating the mantras of neoliberalism which were promoted as The Natural Order of Things,
but are in fact just a model, one of many.
And, objectively, how is the neoliberal model doing? For starters, there is so much money
around that doesn't know what to do with itself, that the price of money (interest rates) has
never been lower. Ever. Basic supply and demand.
At the same time, neoliberal governments, citing lack of money, have imposed austerity
measures on the working class, cutting services and support to such an extent that serious
social problems have arisen.
The reason the governments are short of cash is because they have continually reduced the
share of GDP that goes into public coffers.
Blind Freddy can see the resultant inequality is a highly undesirable state of affairs,
generating social unrest and unstable markets. Bizarrely, it is also contrary to the most basic
of economic truisms: give poor people money and they spend it right away, generating a ripple
of economic activity that reverberates through the real economy.
But according to neoliberalism, what we have here is perfectly fine because it accords
with the model. And then the High Priests move in and blow smoke over the whole thing with
incantations of why this must be so, again according to the model, which they themselves drew
up to coordinate the way we do things. And of course, they believe their economic theory is the
Natural Order of Things.
The pandemic has blown the lid off a few of those mantras. It'll take fifty years to
decarbonise? We advanced decades in a few weeks. There is no magic money tree? Yes, there is
and you just used it. Giving poor people money undermines the economy? No, it doesn't –
you've just proved it. Government debt is a drain on the economy? Not if it stimulates
activity. Tax is an expense that needs to be curtailed? No, it's an investment in the economy
for everyone.
There are so many things we think we know and many of them are nonsense. We need to take the
opportunity this disruption presents and design a society for humans, not for corporations.
A slight majority of Republicans believe that President Trump "rightfully won" the
presidential election two weeks ago, a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released Wednesday found.
The survey,
taken November 13-17 among 1,346 U.S. respondents, found 73 percent expressing the belief
that Joe Biden (D) won the election, compared to five percent who chose Trump. However, 53
percent of Republicans, specifically, believe Trump "rightfully won," while less than a third,
29 percent, said the same for the former vice president:
According to Reuters, an even greater majority of Republicans expressed concern that the
election was, in fact, "rigged":
Asked why, Republicans were much more concerned than others that state vote counters had
tipped the result toward Biden: 68% of Republicans said they were concerned that the election
was "rigged," while only 16% of Democrats and one-third of independents were similarly
worried.
Social media censorship of anything that questions party line.
Protests are met with police oppression.
We are told when & where we can go & how many we can see.
Plans to prove health & vaccine status.
A reset no one voted for.
Is this enough for everyone to say NO? #NoGreatReset
Olde, sadly it probably exceeds 52% bc we know some rightwing dishonesty to pollsters is
still a big prob that needs fixing!! For how to correct these 52+ %, my idea is online training
for a few things like mask use obs, and a sensitivity/civilty course, and also training could
cover how elections are secure and legit. It wouldn't be totally mandatory, but anyone passing
the quiz after it could receive rewards, maybe corporations would donate stuff?? And or maybe
anyone whose social media accounts were suspended could have them restored provisionally???!?
We need to unify the country somehow!!
A GOP recount observer in Georgia claims that several ballots recorded as Biden were
actually votes for Trump , and workers conducting the recount became angry when he reported
what was happening to elections officials.
The insider told Project Veritas , "The second person was supposed to be checking it
right, three times in three minutes she called out Biden," adding "The second auditor caught it
and she said, " No, this is Trump .""
"Now, that's just while I'm standing there. So, does the second checker catch it every
time? But this lady in three times in three minutes from 2:09 to 2:12 she got three wrong."" he
continued, adding "They were calling their bosses. They were pointing at me..."
Earlier in the day, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger hit back against claims
that he facilitated an unfair, illegal ballot count . He's also been accused of trying to skip
the manual recount altogether, and initially "wanted to just rescan the bar codes & be done
with it."
, 3 hours ago
Welcome To America
Welcome To The Most Corrupt Nation On The Planet......Fact
Welcome To The Most Dumbest Naive Brainwashed Nation On The Planet....Fact
smellmyfingers , 3 hours ago
This is click bait for people who want Trump and and an honest election.
The evidence is overwhelming. They will do Nothing.
You reap what you sow, America better get ready for a totally lawless society because it's
coming.
The First Rule , 1 hour ago
Fulton and Dekalb Counties are cesspools of Democrat Cheating (as is apparently areas of
Cobb).
Brad Raffensperger knows this. He just doesn't care to make sure the votes are counted
accurately there.
If he did, Trump would win GA. And Perdue would NOT be in a Run-Off.
But Brad's boss, George Soros, would frown upon that.
Normalcy Bias , 3 hours ago
This is exactly why they've made Republican Poll Watchers stand back 50'-100.'
Having spent over half of my life in or in a county next to Fulton, I'd wager that half of
the Fulton County poll workers aren't even literate.
106 play_arrow 1
Didymus , 3 hours ago
and gop allows it. they never fight, they always give in.
LetThemEatRand , 3 hours ago
Uniparty.
Sven Novgorod , 2 hours ago
The Uniparty = Deepstate.
It's been like this for a long time and when you look back in time with that point of view
most of the unusual laws and decisions made by lawmakers over the years start to make sense,
at least from the point of view of the Uniparty and it's associates.
Gerrilea , 2 hours ago
Psychotic question, seriously. Blame the victim.
The American public has been trained & conditioned like Pavlov's dogs to believe our
government has our best interests at heart. Hell, I believed it for a very long time. Slowly
I woke up to the Uniparty after the 2004 election.
We can't have endless wars & war profiteering by multi-national conglomerates like
Halliburton without cannon fodder AND Pelosi giving her "men" in the White House, all the
money and resources the American people can offer for the next 10 generations.
We've been continually sold a bill of goods that most did not realize was a poison pill.
"The Crime Bill", "took a bite out of crime". When in reality it created the Prison
Industrial Complex that initiated the New American Plantation and how we got a CANDIDATE for
the VP position whom actually argued in court NOT to allow criminals out whom had done their
time BECAUSE it would hurt the business model of the prison.
I could go on and on AND all we are left with is armed restoration of Constitutional Law
and bringing the traitors before a military tribunal for execution.
Kan , 2 hours ago
98% of the counties are NOT corrupt, so you'd not see much just the software slowly
without your knowledge moving the numbers over to the BLUE candidates and RHINO's.
That is why most of the map of counties is RED and not BLUE. You only need some of the
most populous locations in the past because the news was setup to keep us around 50/50 all
the time... But in this case its 30% more trump votes they have to overcome with cheating in
the democrap cities.
slightlyskeptical , 32 minutes ago
The recount will give the answer on the machines. Thus far they haven't found any machine
tabulating errors in the recounts.
DebbieDowner , 2 hours ago
Spent my time trying NOT to get into politics, because it's a waste of my talents and
skills.
What a sham... there was never any way to WIN. The only option was/is all out war.
Peace_and_Love , 3 hours ago
So, they need to stop the whole effing process and start over, and have every damned vote
verified by both parties, with video recording the damned process.
LetThemEatRand , 3 hours ago
The interesting question is whether Trump (a highly flawed candidate who brought us a
bigger banker bailout than Bush/Obama by far) is going to finally wake up middle America to
the fact that elections don't matter. If he accomplishes that, he won. Bigly.
"... "They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen." ..."
"... we can see that 2016 candidate Trump was relatively Trumpist but President Trump was less so. Salaries for the bottom 25% of workers did have the highest rate in increase during his term (through 2019). But in 2020, candidate Trump almost completely rejected Trumpism and ran as an ruling class establishment stooge. ..."
"... Trumpism is not a revolutionary ideology in the correct sense of the term. It is an incrementalist approach that seeks to better the material conditions of the working class but within the current capitalist power structure. ..."
"... The ruling class strategy in the US is to decorate with masks of "diversity" the ugly visages of class dominance. Thus Obama's and soon Kamala's pro-ruling class policies cannot be criticized for fear of being abused as a "racist". ..."
"... Trumpism relies on labor markets to improve the material conditions of the working class. A tight labor market necessarily transfers wealth from the rich to the poor in the form of decreased profits for the rich through increased salaries for the poor. ..."
"... Trump the ruler was presented with the greatest gift a border-loving Trumpist politician could ever ask for: Covid-19. But instead of exploiting this crisis like Viktor Orbán did in Hungary, Trump stabbed Trumpism in the back by turning himself into a useless libertarian during the crisis by refusing for example to push a law that requires home manufacturing of all critical supplies and in never closing the borders properly. He acted like a narcissistic clown in the early days of the crisis and deserves to lose just for that reason. ..."
"... So US racism is fully owned and perpetuated by the ruling class: wealthy oligarchs (including Trump), the media, Wall Street, CIA, FBI, the military industrial complex, multi-national corporations, Silicone Valley Tech, Hollywood, etc. Where there is power there is racism, where there is powerlessness there may be bigotry but not racism. The above lineup of ruling class racists, except for Trump, is the Biden coalition. The ruling class goal is to place an "enlightened person" mask over naked and rapacious ruling class greed and oppression. ..."
"... Under Biden, globalization will once again increase the pace and amplitude of the immiseration of the working class, resistance to the dominant economic paradigm will only grow on both the progressive left and the popular right. ..."
"... In a sense the Biden presidency will be a reactionary movement in that they will be trying to restore the pre-Trumpism political order. This will only further cement the soundness of Trumpism as an ideology. ..."
"... The bottom has no political or economic leverage, and isn't navigating to a position of strength. For example, the "bottom" is currently accepting placebo identity-politics as pacifier. The "bottom" is still searching for an "easy button" solution rather than taking a deeper look at oneself and the layout of the chess board at the macro level. ..."
"... Within an environment of worker scarcity, automation is a positive trend and helps lessen inflationary pressures. The problem with the US is that there is not enough automation because of cheap and docile labor. Compare a meat packing plant in Denmark which is highly automated compared to a US plant, which is packed to the brim with cheap imported labor. Much of the Covid crisis in the US and UK is brought about by sweatshop-style working conditions. ..."
"... It's grotesque to learn that Kamila Harris's relatives are connected to Uber/Lyft. Prop. 22 getting approved in California is another sign of propaganda/big money effectiveness ..."
"... Trumpism stands in opposition to globalization; whose goal is worker abundance which necessarily drives wages down and increases oligarchic wealth. US led imperialism, especially in the Middle East is also a necessary feature of globalization. ..."
"... Here too I would make a modification. Neo-liberalism and globalization aren't about worker "abundance" but rather worker "disposability." Again, if the idea is to create an abundance of workers, driving down market share, then why make finding work so complicated? Why be against strong education systems which would create new workers. Why shut down factories here in the US only to open them in Korea? Why lock up so many Americans for petty offensive, removing them from the willing work force. ..."
"... I would argue that the heart of neo-liberalism is a class structure that places "the establishment" as not just important in the grand scheme of things, but completely indispensable to an individual. And part of that self-aggrandizement is the subjection of every one else. "I am worth more than a thousand of you." Thus, why I must get 2-million-dollar bonus (even after bankrupting the company) and a post on the new re-org chart while everyone else gets a pink slip and watch their hard-earned pensions disappear in chapter 11 proceedings. ..."
"... But it does speak to how disposable workers are to upper management. You are hired for X, and when X is done you are automatically laid off. Why would you waste time giving such an employee training of any sort? Let alone benefits or perks. ..."
"... What is inexplicable is when unions attack Trumpist attempts at macro-scarcity through the use of national borders. A united Union/Trumpist front is required against ruling class interests. Struggling for worker scarcity does not mean one "hates" the workers the ruling class is importing in order to create worker abundance. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is Capitalism's attempt to remove the fetters on profits that exist within the power of a nation-state. Worker abundance is just one of many Neoliberal goals. Borders are a huge fetter to capitalism's basic mission of maximizing profit by producing commodifies with the cheapest labor and selling them to the wealthiest consumers. ..."
"... This is a very important aspect of precarity. Reducing work competition for jobs to increase wages is only half the job, stopping financial predators is the other half, imo ..."
"... Without immigration or outsourcing or even automation, the predators will find still other ways to break labor. We are seeing it with identity politics. ..."
"... I would argue that Bernie and Tulsi are "Trumpism adjacent" in the larger sense of Trumpism. ..."
"... If Trumpism as an ideology is going to flourish, Tulsi in particular will play a critical role in this. The simplest way to see this is that when the ruling class smears someone as a "Russian asset" what they are really doing is recognizing them as a Trumpist threat. ..."
"... precarious (adj.) 1640s, a legal word, "held through the favor of another," from Latin precarius "depending on favor, pertaining to entreaty, obtained by asking or praying," from prex (genitive precis) "entreaty, prayer" (from PIE root *prek- "to ask, entreat"). ..."
"... The notion of "dependent on the will of another" led to the extended sense "risky, dangerous, hazardous, uncertain" (1680s), but this was objected to. "No word is more unskillfully used than this with its derivatives. It is used for uncertain in all its senses; but it only means uncertain, as dependent on others " [Johnson]. Related: Precariously; precariousness. ..."
"... Questiones Disputatae ..."
"... contra, sed contra, ..."
"... When investigating the nature of anything, one should make the same kind of analysis as he makes when he reduces a proposition to certain self-evident principles." ..."
"... Vista Hermosa residents like Luna are troubled by a 2019 environmental rollback by the state, AB1197, that exempts homeless housing developments in the City of Los Angeles from the mandates of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Arguably California's broadest environmental law, CEQA requires builders to assess the environmental impacts of new development and find ways to avoid or mitigate them. ..."
"... The political will to rollback CEQA has continued into 2020. In January, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, who represents District 53 bordering Vista Hermosa, introduced a new piece of legislation, AB1907, to further expand CEQA exemptions to now include all affordable housing. ..."
"... "a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion of currently produced wealth. This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves the kind of effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital accumulation in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped" ..."
We have to carefully distinguish between two very different concepts, both based on the word
"Trump". First there is "Trumpism" which is an ideology. The overarching idea behind Trumpism
is to make the GOP a working-class oriented party. The key policy aims of Trumpism are worker
scarcity and anti-imperialism. Worker scarcity is achieved through immigration restriction and
protectionist trade policies. So together, we have the Trumpist Trinity, anti-immigration,
trade restriction, and anti-imperialism. This is the ideology that Trump ran on and rode to
victory in 2016. This is the idea. Unions exist to create micro-worker scarcity. Borders can be
used to create macro-worker scarcity which is far more powerful. And E-verify can be far more
effective than a bombastic wall.
Trumpism stands in opposition to globalization; whose goal is worker abundance which
necessarily drives wages down and increases oligarchic wealth. US led imperialism, especially
in the Middle East is also a necessary feature of globalization. Invade the World / Invite the
World.
The US has always featured two political parties that serve ruling class interests; Huey
Long described it thusly,
"They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters
on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative
grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen."
Trumpism attempts to force one group of waiters to get their grub from the working class'
kitchen. This is obviously an ambitious goal.
Now comes a crucial distinction. In addition to the ideology of "Trumpism" there is "Trump",
the man and his brand. At best there is an extremely tenuous relationship between Trumpism and
Trump. Now to some extent this is natural as ideas never remain pure for long when poured into
the cauldron of reality. With that in mind, we can see that 2016 candidate Trump was
relatively Trumpist but President Trump was less so. Salaries for the bottom 25% of workers did
have the highest rate in increase during his term (through 2019). But in 2020, candidate Trump
almost completely rejected Trumpism and ran as an ruling class establishment stooge.
Now of course Trump is an oligarch and so he is a member of the ruling class. But within
oligarchy, the only people who can challenge the existing order are oligarchs. He committed
massive class treason in 2016 in order to serve his narcissistic need for recognition and
power. In no way should Trump be idealized as altruistically caring about the working class.
Trumpism was nothing more than a means to an end. Trump's end is and always will be Trump, not
Trumpism per se. But none the less Trump exploited and brought to life Trumpism and his motives
for doing so are irrelevant.
Trumpism is not a revolutionary ideology in the correct sense of the term. It is an
incrementalist approach that seeks to better the material conditions of the working class but
within the current capitalist power structure. It posits a class struggle ideological
superstructure which is radical opposition to the globalist ruling classes insistence on an
identitarian (politics of race, sex, etc) perspective. The ruling class strategy in the US
is to decorate with masks of "diversity" the ugly visages of class dominance. Thus Obama's and
soon Kamala's pro-ruling class policies cannot be criticized for fear of being abused as a
"racist".
Trumpism's non-revolutionary aspect is similar to social democracy, as was championed by
Bernie Sanders in 2016 (in 2020 Bernie unfortunately fell to the dark side of identitarian
politics, which are necessarily the enemy of class politics and the most effective class
warfare tool in the ruling class' tool box). The key difference is that Trumpism relies on
labor markets to improve the material conditions of the working class. A tight labor market
necessarily transfers wealth from the rich to the poor in the form of decreased profits for the
rich through increased salaries for the poor.
In fact far from there being any contradiction between Trumpism and social democracy there
is a mutual dependence between them. The public education, health, and support institutions of
social democracy are can only be supported and revitalized by a prosperous working class. The
key idea of Trumpism is that the state asserts its borders to create labor scarcity. The great
problem of Trumpism is that the state is everywhere a tool of ruling class oppression. Borders
are the battle lines of the struggle.
Trump the ruler was presented with the greatest gift a border-loving Trumpist politician
could ever ask for: Covid-19. But instead of exploiting this crisis like Viktor Orbán
did in Hungary, Trump stabbed Trumpism in the back by turning himself into a useless
libertarian during the crisis by refusing for example to push a law that requires home
manufacturing of all critical supplies and in never closing the borders properly. He acted like
a narcissistic clown in the early days of the crisis and deserves to lose just for that
reason.
The ruling class response to Trumpism is identitarian politics: noble ruling class lords
screaming that the dirty peasants are racist. What the US ruling class must always do is
project their racism onto the peasants, who white or black, both suffer economically from
racial oppression. Mao Tse-Tung gave this astute analysis of US racism:
In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites
in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the Negro people
. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other
enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people. At present,
it is the handful of imperialists headed by the United States, and their supporters, the
reactionaries in different countries, who are oppressing, committing aggression against and
menacing the overwhelming majority of the nations and peoples of the world. We are in the
majority and they are in the minority.
So US racism is fully owned and perpetuated by the ruling class: wealthy oligarchs
(including Trump), the media, Wall Street, CIA, FBI, the military industrial complex,
multi-national corporations, Silicone Valley Tech, Hollywood, etc. Where there is power there
is racism, where there is powerlessness there may be bigotry but not racism. The above lineup
of ruling class racists, except for Trump, is the Biden coalition. The ruling class goal is to
place an "enlightened person" mask over naked and rapacious ruling class greed and
oppression.
Under Biden, globalization will once again increase the pace and amplitude of the
immiseration of the working class, resistance to the dominant economic paradigm will only grow
on both the progressive left and the popular right. Previously elections in the US were
between center left and center right factions fighting for the right to serve the ruling class.
Looking at 2020 from a bird's eye perspective, roughly speaking the Biden coalition is most
progressives, the center left, and many elements of the center right (elements close to the
Bush family). The Trump coalition is portions of the center right and the popular right. The
ruling class was going to be fine whatever the result, but a Biden presidency constrained by a
GOP Senate is ideal in some ways to the ruling class.
A key strategic objective of the ruling class is to keep the left and right at each other's
throats. Trump helped them achieve this rigid politically binary goal despite occasionally
flirting with political fluidity during the 2016 campaign where his similarities to Bernie
Sanders were unmistakable. In contrast, anti-ruling class progressives and popularists have to
find a way to combine their forces and energy in opposition to the ruling class and not in a
pointless stalemate of playing "socialists" vs; "fascists", a battle whose only possible winner
is the ruling class.
One of the most interesting outcomes of the 2020 election is the specter of Latinos
embracing Trumpism. From an economic point of view this makes total sense. Immigration
restriction will benefit first and foremost the material conditions of the Latino working
class. Also Trump's macho populist persona works well within Latino culture. Not to mention
many Latinos despise blacks and so the whole BLM phenomenon helped push Latinos onto the Trump
train.
California is a now a de facto one-party state but that conditions are ripe for the rise of
a popularist yet macho, Latino based, Trumpist style political faction to oppose the
cosmopolitan urban Democratic hegemony. Back in the 60's, Cesar Chavez was endeavoring to
increase the QUALITY of Hispanic life in the US by increasing the salaries of farm workers
through a strategy of worker scarcity.
Ruling class institutions, threatened by the potential of having portions of their wealth
transferred to poor peasants, created an organization called "La Raza" as an alternative to
Chavez. La Raza wanted QUANTITY, they wanted more and more Latinos to build up their base of
political power.
And all the better if these Latinos stayed poor: not only do their ruling class paymasters
stay happy, this would also keep the Latino masses dependent on their identitarian political
leaders. So one of the key outcomes of the 2020 election is that in ever larger numbers,
Latinos are rejecting Quantity of Latinos and opting for Latino Quality of life.
And so in order to further Trumpism, Trump, who is acting as a fetter upon it, must go.
In a sense the Biden presidency will be a reactionary movement in that they will be trying
to restore the pre-Trumpism political order. This will only further cement the soundness of
Trumpism as an ideology.
But Trump as a leader is a much more mixed bag. New Trumpists will arise, for example Tucker
Carlson or podcaster Joe Rogan. 2024 will be a great year for Trumpism because this time Trump
will not be running it; and that may allow many progressives to join the train, especially in
light of how much hippy punching they are about to endure from the coming Biden synthesis of
Neolibs and Neocons.
Nice essay. I especially liked the differentiation between Trump and Trumpism.
I'd be interested to hear what your vision of the platform (main objectives) might be for
this new Trumpism party.
I still question whether top-down politics of any stripe is really going to address the
underlying economic and biosphere issues we're facing. Why? Because:
the top-down political economy is dedicated to maintaining status quo (with emphasis on
status & wealth), and
the bottom-up people who want things to change seem to want someone else to do all the
changing
most of our big problems arise from the disconnect between what we must do as a species
in order to survive and what we're currently, actually doing as individuals
When a Zen-like party emerges, which encourages its adherents to understand themselves,
seek "right" action (accurate situational analysis yielding a well-crafted strategy), and do
right action, I'll get interested in politics again. For now, we're just treading water in a
strong current that's headed to a bad place.
The Zen plan is no panacea, though. That path involves great risk (e.g. lots of failures)
and hard work. Pay's not that good, either.
Top-down vs. bottom-up are not necessarily contradictory and can in successive waves
contribute to social change in an increasingly self-reinforcing manner. Bottom-up change
influences top-down change (often through the opposition forces' malignant top-down
overreaction) which intensifies bottom-down change: so on and so on.
I would describe the main objectives for Trumpist party as the development of "Green
Trumpism". The moral imperatives associated with the climate crisis would be used as a
catalyst for Trumpist labor scarcity through the means of a Green Reindustrialization. The
process of globalization is one where production is severed from consumption. Production is
moved to cheap labor countries with terrible environmental standards. Capitalists produce
dirtier commodities while increasing their profits. This process must be reversed. If the
first world wants to consume then they must produce.
First world population growth is a critical factor in exasperating the climate crisis. All
of this growth can be linked to immigration, usually people from low consuming nations moving
to high consumption nations. These migration flows must be reversed.
Globalization requires imperialist power to enforce the safe transport of commodities
produced in far flung regions of the world. As globalization declines, so will necessarily US
imperialism.
yes, bottom-up and top-down would interact, if only the bottom-up was happening. It's
not.
The bottom has no political or economic leverage, and isn't navigating to a position of
strength. For example, the "bottom" is currently accepting placebo identity-politics as
pacifier. The "bottom" is still searching for an "easy button" solution rather than taking a
deeper look at oneself and the layout of the chess board at the macro level.
Using the climate crisis as driver for econ change is the Great Hope, and the top 1% is
hip to the game. They have and will continue to block meaningful change. Keep in mind that
just stopping the daily damage to the environment will render much (most) of our industrial
and household infrastructure obsolete. Nobody's ready to take that on, and that's the
implication of actually effective Green policy.
Right now, across the political spectrum, "green" consists of "what's convenient" instead
of "what's necessary". This is the individual-ethic bankruptcy I've alluded to elsewhere:
it's endemic from top 1% to bottom-est of the bottom.
You made a few statements I don't agree with:
"Capitalists have dirtier / more destructive production than (others)." 1st world production
is cleaner than in other places, and that 2nd and 3rd world production often happens in
non-capitalistic scenarios. Dirty production happens where dirty production is tolerated.
Another statement you made: "globalization has to stop / be reversed". Dunno about that
one. Globalization has resulted in production moving to cheapest-input locations. Like China.
Globalization will stop only when cost-of-inputs is leveled, and we're decades away from
that, and a whole lot more pain for the Developed world. Slow barge, that one.
Your essay doesn't address the effect of automation on household or societal economics.
Automation is not a reversible trend, and it's accelerating. The focus on the "where" of
production might not yield the HH economic benefits you're hoping for.
Some fairly different strategies need to be developed at the household level in order to
address the problems we face. Would you consider using the household as the pivot-point of
your new econ strategy rather than using industry and government?
Americans can exert more power with their consumption choices than their choices at the
ballot box. So certainly the household is a crucial pivot point.
Green tariffs can overnight level cost-of-inputs. Climate change provides a powerful moral
incentive to co-locate US consumption and production.
Within an environment of worker scarcity, automation is a positive trend and helps lessen
inflationary pressures. The problem with the US is that there is not enough automation
because of cheap and docile labor. Compare a meat packing plant in Denmark which is highly
automated compared to a US plant, which is packed to the brim with cheap imported labor. Much
of the Covid crisis in the US and UK is brought about by sweatshop-style working
conditions.
The question on automation is that somehow "the people" have to have a slice of the
profits and thus benefit from the process. A Yang-style UBI would need to go hand in hand
with increased automation.
I agree with the uselessness of the current Green movement. It is typically just used as a
tool to attack perceived opponents. But a Green Trumpism would no doubt both address the
climate crisis and help alleviate economic inequalities.
"The ruling class was going to be fine whatever the result, but a Biden presidency
constrained by a GOP Senate is ideal in some ways to the ruling class."
Yeah – there will be a lot of Biden disappointment amongst Us the majority –
this Precariat. A true Green New Deal would offer lots of employment opportunities here in
the USA – and would seem ideal for either party to embrace. Divided government won't
achieve it – the ruling class – and both parties – with short sighted heads
up their asses won't embrace it anyhow.
Regardless, Trumpism seems a fail except for a vast mob angry/scared/confused voters- and
some tax break aficionados. It's not just Biden/Harris won't deliver – but Tucker
Carlson, Joe Rogan, Ted Cruz, or whichever clever one runs in 2024 , won't deliver either,
and Trumps wall is a fiasco. If still effective propaganda..?
It's grotesque to learn that Kamila Harris's relatives are connected to Uber/Lyft. Prop.
22 getting approved in California is another sign of propaganda/big money effectiveness
– and We the People being tricked once again. I got lot's of mail showing
photos and quotes of regular working people embracing Prop 22 VOTE YES! save our jobs –
it passed easily.
Overall: Still glad to see Trump himself out of the White House – the clever
SOB.
This is a good essay. But I still have a few issues with it.
The key policy aims of Trumpism are worker scarcity and anti-imperialism. Worker scarcity
is achieved through immigration restriction and protectionist trade policies. So together, we
have the Trumpist Trinity, anti-immigration, trade restriction, and anti-imperialism. This is
the ideology that Trump ran on and rode to victory in 2016. This is the idea. Unions exist to
create micro-worker scarcity. Borders can be used to create macro-worker scarcity which is
far more powerful. And E-verify can be far more effective than a bombastic wall.
I would modify this to say "worker exclusivity", that only a narrow class of workers can
be tapped for specific terms of employment. When discussing the subject with those on the
rights, they are far more concerned about immigrants "taking their jobs" then they are of
building a scarcity of workers to gain a market share over employers. Let's not forget that
"Trumpian" is still fervently anti-union, even though this would be a good way of
generating "micro scarcity" as you put it. Being anti-union would be counterproductive to
worker scarcity.
Assuredly, "worker scarcity" makes a certain degree of sense. And I can easily see how
you came to that conclusion. But I fear you still give "trumpisim" too much credit in that
they have specific goals that they are attempting to achieve, and thus conceive of logical
steps to that goal.
I would argue that the right doesn't have goals in the same perspective as we on the
left may seem them. What we might think of as "goals" are better described as ideological
commandments that must be obeyed at all cost, and ignoring all consequence. As you noted
yourself. Trump's wall would do little to impede immigration. A better e-verify system
would be far more effective. So why ignore e-verify while being completely for the wall?
Because the wall is a visible simple of defiance against immigration that conservatives can
march back and forth in front of brandishing their 2nd amendment right. You can't do that
for a government policy.
Trumpism stands in opposition to globalization; whose goal is worker abundance which
necessarily drives wages down and increases oligarchic wealth. US led imperialism, especially
in the Middle East is also a necessary feature of globalization.
Here too I would make a modification. Neo-liberalism and globalization aren't about
worker "abundance" but rather worker "disposability." Again, if the idea is to create an
abundance of workers, driving down market share, then why make finding work so complicated?
Why be against strong education systems which would create new workers. Why shut down
factories here in the US only to open them in Korea? Why lock up so many Americans for
petty offensive, removing them from the willing work force.
I would argue that the heart of neo-liberalism is a class structure that places "the
establishment" as not just important in the grand scheme of things, but completely
indispensable to an individual. And part of that self-aggrandizement is the subjection of
every one else. "I am worth more than a thousand of you." Thus, why I must get
2-million-dollar bonus (even after bankrupting the company) and a post on the new re-org
chart while everyone else gets a pink slip and watch their hard-earned pensions disappear
in chapter 11 proceedings.
Of course, unlike much of the right, neo-liberalism does have a goal-oriented
methodology. So, creating "worker abundance" to force down individual worker market share
certainly makes sense. But is it true? It doesn't capture the full cynicism of typical
neo-liberal thinking. For creating so much worker abundance, plenty of neo-liberal aligned
employers still managed to complain about worker "allocations" (the idea that certain
employment sectors face chronic worker scarcity.) Indeed, current "plug-n-play" employment
patterns have made filling many positions nearly impossible because no one ever has the
right qualifications for a specific job without training. I have seen engineering jobs go
empty for years because they can't find "prior experience for proprietary development
project." (face palm.).
But it does speak to how disposable workers are to upper management. You are hired for
X, and when X is done you are automatically laid off. Why would you waste time giving such
an employee training of any sort? Let alone benefits or perks.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I will attempt to respond to your points.
Ruling class elements of the GOP attack unions in order to minimize worker micro-scarcity.
What is inexplicable is when unions attack Trumpist attempts at macro-scarcity through the
use of national borders. A united Union/Trumpist front is required against ruling class
interests. Struggling for worker scarcity does not mean one "hates" the workers the ruling
class is importing in order to create worker abundance.
This is to accept the ruling elite's identitarian frame, which boils down to: class struggle is racist. What this basically boils
down to is that the ruling class is benevolent and kind and loves purely altruistically to
import little brown workers while evil workers hate them because they are taking their jobs.
Oligarchs + cheap labor immigrants = good. Workers militating for their class interests =
bad. The key goal for Trumpism is to flip these equations.
Worker abundance necessarily means job scarcity from the worker's point of view. This
makes workers desperate and willing to accept lower wages. This has been happening for the
last 40 years at least since the end of the Cold War, if not a little sooner. Worker scarcity
means job abundance, from the worker's point of view. This means plenty of options because
management has to bid up salaries to attract workers.
Neoliberalism is Capitalism's attempt to remove the fetters on profits that exist within
the power of a nation-state. Worker abundance is just one of many Neoliberal goals. Borders
are a huge fetter to capitalism's basic mission of maximizing profit by producing commodifies
with the cheapest labor and selling them to the wealthiest consumers.
Nation-states can also
impose regulations (environmental, worker, etc) which also limit capitalist profit. Free
trade allows corporations to relocate factories to nations with the lowest salaries,
environmental and worker protections. For those jobs that cannot be transferred, Prop 22 is
the thin edge of the neoliberal wedge that is constraining the nation-state from protecting
workers.
I understand restricting immigration and anti-globalism as a means to increase US workers
leverage in raising wages in jobs and in better political representation. This addresses the
physical world of work.
Left unaddressed, and equally important imo, is the fact that US business and economy is now
largely financialized; much of the greatest wealth comes from unregrulated or restrained
predatory financial practices, from rentierism, from tolls and fines and fees.
This
financialization is every bit as important as the physical conditions you list in the rise in
precarity, maybe even more so at this time. How, for instance, would only physical
restrictions have changed the financial outcomes of the 2008 mortgage bank frauds and
financial crisis, the outcomes of ratings agencies giving bogus ratings to junk bonds,
changed the exorbitant rise in medicine prices, etc?
This is a very important aspect of
precarity. Reducing work competition for jobs to increase wages is only half the job,
stopping financial predators is the other half, imo
O could have stopped the bank predators in 2009-10, but chose not to. In his own
words:
+++ Without immigration or outsourcing or even automation, the predators will find still other
ways to break labor. We are seeing it with identity politics.
Beware of the UBI: it simply greases the wheels for more privatization instead of public
goods and infrastructure, similar to how vouchers and charters gut a public school
system.
Financialization is the necessary result of globalization's destruction of Fordism: which
is the interdependent role of worker and consumer. In order to increase profits, Ford doubled
his workers' salaries so that could serve him as consumers as well as workers.
Globalization
seeks to increase profits even further by disassociating the worker and the consumer. Work is
off-shored to low wage countries, whose leaders intentionally damp down local consumption.
This paradoxically means the soon to be immiserated western worker is still called upon to
play the role of global consumer of last resort.
At the same time, huge waves of profits are
washing over Wall Street. And so temporary speculative bubbles are created that serve two
purposes. First false wave of prosperity brought on for example by a real estate boom tamps
down any worker resistance towards the new economic order. Secondly the seemingly "free
money" created by speculation allow western consumption to continue.
So necessarily a Green Reindustrialization will force Wall Street to stop chasing
speculative squirrels and to instead concentrate on financing the new clean plant that will
help alleviate the climate crisis.
Rogan likes to do long form interviews across the political spectrum, but he has
consistently been a fan of Bernie and Tulsi. Author is Confusing the medium with the message.
Not the same.
I would argue that Bernie and Tulsi are "Trumpism adjacent" in the larger sense of
Trumpism.
If Trumpism as an ideology is going to flourish, Tulsi in particular will play a
critical role in this. The simplest way to see this is that when the ruling class smears
someone as a "Russian asset" what they are really doing is recognizing them as a Trumpist
threat.
Trumpism in its highest form will mean a reconciliation of the non-identitarian left
and right. For example, white identitarians like Richard Spencer have abandoned Trumpism.
I think that one of the most important considerations is that there needs to be a
coalition of sorts – between the working class Trumpian base and the Left (primarily
Generation Y and X). It shares one thing, they are both victims of the Establishment,
neoliberals, and urgently need change.
One image has always been very important to me. Note the distribution of socially
conservative, economically left wing voters.
The major challenge facing Democrats today is that race, gender, identity politics, and
religion appear to trump economics, at least as far as politically engaged primary voters
go. The old-line Democrats were an economic liberal party with socially conservative and
socially liberal wings (the social liberals, in fact, were in a minority). The new
Democrats are a socially liberal party with an economic conservative wing (neoliberals) and
a progressive economic wing. They all agree on social issues. They are loath to compromise
on open borders (which is what the existing immigration dysfunction de facto gives us),
transgender bathrooms, making room for pro-life members, or gay married couples' wedding
cakesbecause those are the only issues that hold their economic right and economic left
together.
I don't think that the Democratic Party in its current form is viable for the left.
So the price of a new New Deal majority would be to let Democrats welcome abortion
critics and opponents of mass immigration, so long as they favored a higher minimum wage,
less "synthetic immigration," and a pause on globalization (which facilitates international
labor arbitrage). In the words of John Judis:
I think that we would end up with the following compromise.
1. The economically left, culturally right agrees to accept global warming, end the wars,
and "socialism" like universal healthcare), and to offer legal immigrants along with
minorities a shot at the middle class
2. The economically left, culturally left agrees to compromise on immigration, globalization
(think put a strong emphasis on re-industrialization and de-financialization), and social
issues (think abortion, guns, defend the police, etc).
Interestingly, the American Conservative has an article lambasting Trump as well.
"The ruling class goal is to place an "enlightened person" mask over naked and rapacious
ruling class greed and oppression."
Maybe the same can be said of placing a "socially conservative" mask. We need to be
cautious in positing the possiblility of a multi-ethnic, multi-racial conservative movement
that somehow manages to be "nationalist, anti-cosmopolitan, anti-immigration" but still
serves the interests of the multi-racial, multi-ethnic, religiously diverse, working class
populace that's already here.
Implementing worker scarcity will necessarily further the economic interests of the
multi-racial, multi-ethnic, religiously diverse, working class populace that's already
here.
Just as implementing worker abundance necessarily furthers the economic interests of the
multi-racial, multi-ethnic, religiously diverse, RULING class populace that's already
here.
Great write up.
While I generally agree with your characterizations, I will also throw out there ..in no
particular order..
1) luckily , trump and his "legion of doom" aren't competent enough to draw on the "larger
picture" you've outlined here to maximize his effectiveness by using these natural
advantages, in their plot of self aggrandizement luckily for us americans/ the trump is his
own worst enemy.
2) ejecting trump from trumpism is a path to greater success for the right and
fascism/corporatism, which some "smart" people will surely weave into their future plans and
models. And the corporatists,be they from the republican side of the aisle, or the democratic
side will surely carry forward with this opening in american politics.
because trump does have to go the professionals of deception can mold that wisp of smoke into
any shape they want but it won't stay for long and doesn't hold up to any scrutiny . it isn't
real..It isn't even a chunk of clay
3] the problem of trumpism, or "conservative republican politics", or "democratic party
politics" is that they all necessarliy MUST be a lie in progress. NONE of the political
duopoly can go into "truthland" . it is their kryptonite. So all have agreed to never enter
and call it a no go zone
And the fact that everything about our political situation is "fact free",at least in the
sense that any facts used are only used out of context to keep a truer understanding from
happening; hasn't stopped anyone yet and isn't likely too any time soon so too bad for
everyone. .we'll call that a draw.
The 30,000 foot description of yours not withstanding, that type of over arching layers of
this onion, is something for planners to incorporate in "the con" as it needs to be.. but is
above the paygrade of most political actors , who work at rousing the rabble
4) I don't see actual agency of the people . what people want to do has nothing to do with
what is going to happen usually, if the elites want something to happen, they provide the
opinions and the votes.. "deserve" has nothing to do with it.. and "our reality" is just an
illusion.
So over layering a description of bigger forces, over the chaos that has been created to keep
this "hegelian dialect" in place , is again for those at a higher pay grade in the
process..
Too many chefs ruin the meal but hey ,it's our gruel and we have nothing else to eat , for
the moment and maybe less later, if they get their way.
"Post-truth" is dystopian. It's a luxury to live at a distance from unpleasant realities.
If a society can sustain a population/segment so far up their own **** then you've "arrived"
in a sense.
However, dystopia sounds better than the crises that lay ahead. It's the unavoidable hard
landing that worries me.
Maybe truth works like wealth: The first generation discovers the truth. The second
generation teaches the truth. And the third generation fakes news.
The Democratic Party doesn't want to come to terms with the fact that they deserve as much
blame as the GOP for the predicament the working class finds itself in.
They chose under Clinton to repeal Glass Steagall, sign free trade agreements, and bring
China into the WTO. Under Obama, those policies largely continued. Under Biden, all signs
indicate that this will still continue.
I think the brutal reality is that the upper middle class is willfully ignorant of what
the precariat faces. Public health authorities, while understandably trying to contain the
pandemic, are not the ones who are going to see their lives destroyed. The working class was
doomed either way, either by being disproportionately hurt by the coronavirus (they can't
work from home) or from long-term unemployment (they've suffered more as a percentage of
total jobs lost). In other words, they don't have a stake in keeping the lockdown and may see
opening up as a lesser evil.
Likewise, the Liberals who are in secure upper middle class white collar jobs tended to
act disdainfully when working class people protested the lockdowns. I'm not saying the
protestors were right, but many are people who put their lives into their work, such as small
business owners. Evidently, subsidies were needed at the very least.
In this regard, the GOP might have more hope than the Democrats, barring a Berniecrat
takeover of the Democrats, which is looking less likely. That said the GOP still has a huge
right wing apparatus that would have to be overcome for a "real populist" (ex: someone who
actually cared about the well being of the working class) to take over.
One advantage might be that younger people are overwhelmingly left wing economically, so
as Generation Y and Z become a bigger share of the electorate, things may change.
Likewise, the Liberals who are in secure upper middle class white collar jobs tended to
act disdainfully when working class people protested the lockdowns. I'm not saying the
protestors were right, but many are people who put their lives into their work, such as
small business owners. Evidently, subsidies were needed at the very least
To this day, they still get outraged for the same reasons. If you so much as point out
what you just wrote–not being anti-science but simply the hardship lockdowns cause and
how it needs to be properly addressed–at best you'll be called scientifically
illiterate. At worst you'll be accused of being an evil rich person who wants to kill grandma
to make the stock market go up.
While some of the protests may have been astroturf, not all of them were. If you're a
small-business owner facing the prospect of losing everything you've worked for and basically
being told "you're on own" of course you will be angry. Likewise, if you're an employee and
can't work from home, of course you will be stressed out about losing your job. This is the
real "economic anxiety" and it is no laughing matter.
for the real small business owners, and the individuals who can't work .
they ought to feel pissed
after all . a fraction of the trillions that are earmarked for wall street, could have "paid
their bills"..at least for a year . and then the "citizens" would be getting something
tangible for the debt being incurred in their name by the duopoly.
All the people realizing "someone" is getting bailed out and it isn't them
I was puzzled by the victory of Prop. 22 in California. This is a state which has huge
Democratic majorities, and normally rubber-stamps all union-sponsored legislation.
Uber and Lyft threatened that if Prop. 22 did not pass, they would either stop operations
or would lay off 75% of their temp workers.
(not unlike an employer threatening to move to China if their workers form a union.)
They also threatened that ride prices would at least double, and wait times would greatly
increase.
The average voter may have put their own self-interest ahead of any class loyalty.
Final note: the gig workers did get a few benefits out of AB 5, things granted by Uber and
Lyft to buy some goodwill.
Comments welcome! I do not live in CA so I am just guessing on this. It was an important
vote.
Prop 22 is going to be the most important result of the 2020 election, not Trump
v Biden or control of either legislature.
I've been very puzzled by the result too as it passed handily and wasn't really close. I
don't live near CA either, but I did read that among other misleading tactics, the Prop 22
proponents gave delivery bags to restaurants that use these gig delivery services so that the
delivery drivers would be dropping off meals to people in Yes on 22 bags, which made it seem
like prop 22 would be beneficial to gig workers if you didn't look into it much.
So on the one hand there was the intent to deceive. But then I think that if I heard about
these dirty tricks 3,000 miles away, surely CA voters must have known about them too.
The depressing thing is that maybe a lot of people did know exactly what Prop 22 was all
about and decided they liked the idea of a permanent underclass always only minutes
away at the touch of a button to do the things they can't be bothered with for a
pittance.
The fact that so many of the gig company execs worked first in the Obama administration
and are now heading back to the Biden administration with dreams of scaling up prop 22 is a
very ominous portent.
I voted NO on prop 22, but a mailer I received from the YES side may show why it
passed.
It has text with "by 4-to-1, app-based drivers overwhelmingly prefer to work as
independent contractors".
The pictures of smiling workers on the mailer are all minorities (Asian, Hispanic,
Black).
I'd suggest a small percentage of CA voters actually use Uber/Lyft, so am inclined to
believe voters did not vote to preserve their own self-interest.
The "YES" mailer lists 5 advantages for the drivers, "guaranteed hourly earnings for
app-based drivers", "per mile compensation toward vehicle expenses", "medical and disability
coverage for injuries and illnesses", "new health benefits for drivers who work 15+ hours a
week", and "additional safety protections for app-based drivers"
The mailer lists groups supporting it, NAACP, California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce,
Consumer Choice Center, The Latin Business Association, Black Women Organized for Political
Action, California Small Business Association, California Senior Advocates League.
I remember a prior YES on 22 mailer had support from Mothers Against Drunk Driving..
The "YES" group spent about 12x more than the No group (188 million vs 15million)
I saw a lot of pro Prop 22 advertising and nothing against it. The ads were all sleek,
full of cheerful drivers with big smiles, and easily the best made ads of 2020. I knew that
there was something bad about the proposition, but until just a few days before the election
I couldn't tell you why. All my mental bandwidth was on the national elections and not on
parsing the various state propositions like I normally would. This time it was all on
something else.
If a poli-sci/poli-econ geek like me was having some problems with truly understanding
this extremely effective, slickly made campaign of manufactured consent, what does that say
about the many, often financially and/or socially overwhelmed, California voters who would be
much like me? I think that the overlords had the perfect situation for getting the
proposition passed.
"but the (GOP) party needs to reverse its positions on taxing the wealthiest, punishing
and preventing the expansion of organized labor, reversing their position on outsourcing
manufacturing, and addressing economic precarity"
And I need to become 6'4″, handsome, young and athletic.
Indeed why would they reverse when the Dems agree with them on all of it. What the above
article doesn't get is that the true ruling class response to precarity is simply to make
sure voters have no options to address it. We are in a class war, not a battle between
political parties. Any promises Biden made to the poor will blow away like smoke once in
office. He is on the record saying that billionaires are swell folks.
Lambert linked an interesting article yesterday in Water Cooler that talked about cycles
in history and the ingredients of high social unrest. The subject is historian Peter
Turchin
He has been warning for a decade that a few key social and political trends portend an
"age of discord," civil unrest and carnage worse than most Americans have experienced. In
2010, he predicted that the unrest would get serious around 2020, and that it wouldn't let
up until those social and political trends reversed. Havoc at the level of the late 1960s
and early '70s is the best-case scenario; all-out civil war is the worst.
The fundamental problems, he says, are a dark triad of social maladies: a bloated elite
class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general
population; and a government that can't cover its financial positions.
Turchin is saying that social instability is not just the result of high inequality but
also of a bloated ruling class that is itself insecure because there aren't enough PMC jobs
for all those college graduates and their credentials. Thus in our case the political parties
have come to be dominated by these middle class concerns with the poor almost entirely out of
the picture and dismissed as racist deplorables who probably deserve their fate. As the
article says this sociological theory of history is controversial but at least worth
considering.
A good, broad, liberal arts degree, or something like it, can be useful in many kinds of
jobs, if the jobs exist . Much of the high skilled, high paying jobs have all been shipped
overseas, and the remaining good paying jobs increasingly are office jobs requiring not only
a masters degree, but good social connections, and at least saying only goodthoughts to get
and keep.
It use to be that there was plenty of diverse work. If you failed at getting tenure or
that job at the bank, or the government position you wanted, there was plenty of good work
requiring only some education, intelligence, and drive. Having the kind of degree and
connections that someone in the modern PMC would merely be very useful, not a requirement for
a good life. Bur now we have too many people having the exact education needed to get the few
remaining good jobs in the few safe fields, and unlike fifty years, failure means
destitution, not disappointment.
And yet claiming that this class war exist, which is supposedly immiserating increasing
numbers of Americans ever higher up the class chain, is all deplorably racist, sexist,
homophobic, and transphobic I am reliable informed. /s
It is unsettling to see writers who I have been reading for years, even decades, start
saying that it is racism or bigotry, and only that, which explains the Bad Man. One doesn't
have to be a Marxist to make a connection with the increasing poverty and corruption under
both parties over the past forty or fifty years with President Trump. Yet, many refuse
to.
It does make me wonder what it is that I am blind to.
I agree,
the class war is a better way of seeing things.
all the symptoms and externalities the class war provides are the things the parties use as
fodder issues for their respective bases but all the duopoly can provide is more of the same
. "their way" their culture . their rules . their precedents their history..
this is how they seem to win they teach the children to think their" way".
Then what else will happen in the future
people continually adopting patterns that already exist.
They have created a culture . and we all know how people are treated by their neighbors who
are "counter-culture"
It becomes a self reinforcing narrative, where the hive keeps the status quo because they
want to .
We keep supporting systems that are there to control us rather than recreating systems that
help .. like we are "supposed" to or something.
James P. Yep. That paragraph has some giant "ifs" in it that caught my eye as I was
reading. The likelihood of Republicans sponsoring legislation to repeal "right to work" laws,
which tend to be in Republican-dominated states, is almost nil. Further, a party that is
opposed to any tax increases, no matter what need has to be addressed, isn't going to change
course. Another "if" is relying on someone like the egregious Tom Cotton, as mentioned, for
leadership about legislation.
I am sure, though, that you are already on your way to becoming a beefcake model and
internet influencer.
It's going to take some time for this article to sink in. Words like precariat and
precarity are fairly new concepts, at least for me and my automatic spell checker. What is
the etymology of this word and what are it's conceptual dimensions. I know what precarious
means and I can see how using it as an adjective works. But if it's going to be a key term I
want to know more about it. Accordiing to a quick search, the etymology is:
precarious (adj.)
1640s, a legal word, "held through the favor of another," from Latin precarius "depending on
favor, pertaining to entreaty, obtained by asking or praying," from prex (genitive precis)
"entreaty, prayer" (from PIE root *prek- "to ask, entreat").
The notion of "dependent on the will of another" led to the extended sense "risky,
dangerous, hazardous, uncertain" (1680s), but this was objected to. "No word is more
unskillfully used than this with its derivatives. It is used for uncertain in all its senses;
but it only means uncertain, as dependent on others " [Johnson]. Related: Precariously;
precariousness.
So what is striking in reading it's etymology is that it is defined as something
"dependent, uncertain, risky, dangerous, hazardous." This characterizes many areas of life.
With respect to contemporary life in the area of economics, I certainly see it all around me
and in the news headlines, in the instability of good long-term paying jobs with benefits. In
politics, I certainly see the risks, dangers, and hazards, especially in the highly
militarized nature of foreign relations. But looking at the term from the perspective of a
"social scientist" does it explain the antecedents that lead to this condition and is it
operational in the sense of breaking it down into more rudimentary terms and
relationships.
I am reading St. Thomas Aquinas' book "On Truth" and although the style of Questiones
Disputatae , with its contra, sed contra, and style is archaic and hard to
follow, it provides a good way of centering dialogue. In Question one of Article 1, the
formal reply to the stated Article of "What is Truth?" states:
When investigating the nature of anything, one should make the same kind of analysis
as he makes when he reduces a proposition to certain self-evident principles."
Since this term "precarity" is new to me, I don't think I have a good handle on how to use
it outside of a descriptor. Does it explain anything? And maybe I'm just asking too much of
the word. Maybe it's just meant as that, a simple characterization whose underlying causal
relationships are to yet be determined and examined.
I've seen precariate be described as a combination of precarious proletariat.
While one could argue the position of the proletariat is always precarious, I do think the
are times in history which are more precarious than others, and what we see now is certainly
one (climate change impacts, opioid/alcoholism, covid19 pandemic, ever increasing inequality,
globalization of manufacturing, health care for profit in the US, increasing cost of housing
and education, no doubt many more)
Nice piece generally and which kinda validates a feeling I've had generally that
"uncertainty is increasing" which is often bad for people in so many ways – uncertainty
among the "entitled" can be highly damaging to polling (in addition to all the points raised
in the article). The elephant in the room is of course interpreting polling results. For
example 70% Democrat at a precinct/state/national level is consistent with an infinite number
of explanations: at one end we have "strong means" (meaning these are "solid" votes) and at
the other we have "very weak means but big variances" (meaning these votes are subject to all
sorts of factors like news items, real or manufactured, etc). We can't "know" which universe
we're in .Unless we conduct a secondary survey to give a "second line in the x-y plane" to
see where it intersects the main one ..then we know whether the 70% is driven by means or
variances or some combination.
The likelihood function for all "limited dependent variable models" – discrete
choices like voting – has a term that is multiplicative in means and variances. Thus
"70%" could mean any of a HUGE number of things. Those of us experienced in interpreting
these data can rule out the "dumb" explanations .but we are still left with a number of
"possible explanations". If we don't actively talk to voters, do a lot of qualitative
research etc, then we can't begin to limit the number of "possible solutions" further. I have
had little experience in applying the methods to polling so I rely a lot on sites like NC to
give "insights from the ground". It is a pity polling institutions don't. YouGov were on the
right track in 2017 but bottled it due to collecting data for their "second line" in a poor
way. It's a pity – if they collected data in better way they'd be far and away the best
polling organisation. Though the downright lies told by Trumpites that Lambert has
highlighted remain a problem – I do have ideas how to address this but they go way
beyond the scope of the site and like I've said before, I think pushing MMT etc is a better
use of resources (even though it pains me personally not to have my own "hobby horse"
championed, hehe).
But I personally think increased variances are a fact of life and reflect the article's
point that uncertainty in life is hurting everyone.
Uncertainty and fear are increasing because the kick-the-can strategies are starting to
look really wobbly, and the fights for survival and hail-marys (like MMT) are being trotted
out.
The velocity of change has increased, and the rate of adaptation appears to have somehow
actually slowed down. Just exactly the wrong response at the wrong time.
One commenter above poked fun at the term "precarity" – said it was a $10 gimmick
for the word "poor".
A while back Mark Twain said a "cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education".
Precarity is a college-educated middle class "information worker" who is "feeling
poor".
The effects of automation and globalization are moving up the class ladder. The ship's
sinking and the water's already flooded 3rd class berths (rust belt and flyover), and is
about 1/3 of the way into the 2nd class cabins.
Agree or disagree with Andrew's Yang's proposal for a universal basic income, I think he
is definitely on to something when he talks about the ramifications of automation and machine
learning, though he isn't the first person to point it out.
Some people are simply not aware–it's not that they necessarily don't care, they
simply just don't know–while others are in denial or don't care.
Regardless of where a given person falls, I do agree that with Yang and others that say
dealing with this economic reshaping will be of the key challenges–if not the most
important challenge–of our time.
reshaping our monetary system is one of the biggest hurdles in reshaping our economic
present.
Monetary reform efforts like the modern day "chicago plan" as was described in the bill
proposed in congress in 2011/2012 112th congress HR 2990
open the door to creating money debt free, and permanently which could pay off the national
debt, and fund policies like single payer health care and even "citizen dividends", that are
really just ways to inject money into the economy, rather than starting the injection of
money into the economy on wall street , like now.. https://www.congress.gov/bill/112-thcongress/house-bill/2990/text
In sharp contrast, Trump may have appeared indifferent to the gravity of the coronavirus,
but his persistent calls to reopen the economy addressed the precarity issue, as they
appealed to many workers whose livelihoods were being destroyed by the pandemically induced
government restrictions placed on economic activity.
The average worker up through October does not have Covid and may not know anyone of
working age who does have Covid ..but they do have a job, and if the job must be done
in-person they know they were vulnerable.
"Keeping the economy open" is more urgent to them than defeating Covid through
lockdowns.
This is a big reason why Trump even kept this election close.
In America, the authorities who order lockdowns cannot simultaneously order financial
relief. This created a tragic class divide on fighting the pandemic.
These days the members of the media tend to be dominated by the upper middle class who
attended elite colleges and probably don't even understand the meaning of precarity.
Therefore to them it seems perverse to object to lockdowns and elaborate precautions that the
work from home set can more easily deal with. In the old days newspaper reporters rose
through the ranks and came from small town newspapers and were more in touch with the general
society rather than journalism schools.
I live in California and was surprised to learn here that Harris opposed prop 22. While
the Pro campaign carpet bombed the airwaves with ads, I never saw any CA leaders raise a
voice in opposition or attempt to explain why this would be bad for working people. Never saw
any mention, other than in the state election booklet, that the prop introduced a huge
supermajority needed to repeal it, making it effectively impossible to remove once passed.
Didn't see any out of state money funding ads despite it being obvious that success in
California would lead to adoption in other states.
Well Harris does all support and oppose M4A depending on who shes talking to and when
she's saying it, so there's that. I suspect any disagreements she may express over prop 22's
passage are crocodile tears at best.
Her and every other leader who takes positions on many issues but not on this one. Perhaps
they saw polling and thought it best instead to add to the strategic underground reserves of
dry powder.
Great piece. One effect of spreading precarity–and I will use the term more loosely
to encompass not only economic precarity, but also the increasing sense of pervasive dread
and fear experienced by so many across all walks of life–is that living in this state
increases one's susceptibility to both totalitarian ideologies and to drives for war against
some perceived enemy. To me this explains the shadow of "law and order" hard nationalism
coming from the far right, the more extreme variants of identity politics on the left, and
the terrified push for censorship and "full lockdown" coming from the neoliberal center.
Unfortunately the billionaire class and their pets in the media see all of this as a
potential cash cow rather than a serious danger. Given their stranglehold on the national
discourse and their control of the most effective means of mass organizing (social media),
I'm not sure it is possible to reverse the trend early enough to prevent some kind of major
conflict. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try!
P.S. To avoid any confusion, when I disparagingly refer to "full lockdown" I mean an
authoritarian lockdown without accompanying benefits for workers and with "papers please"
checkpoints and penalties. The worst kind of lockdown, where people are both unable to
support themselves and are actively prevented from doing so. In my opinion people who push
for a hard lockdown before benefits/compensation can be arranged are unintentionally
advocating for such a position; the compensation will never come.
Heck, I've seen comments (generally not on this site) admiring what China did and
lamenting the fact that it can't be done here in the United States.
I sure hope these are troll accounts and not real people in this country, especially not
real people on the left. If these are real people, we are in more trouble than I thought.
A government with the power to literally weld people's door shut, which is what China did,
can do a lot of other scary things.
Yes, like get on top of a virus (and achieve the highest level of economic growth in human
history, and produce incredible poetry, and so on). And as I'm not 'in this country,' I
believe I'm not 'real people.'
I have seen the same thing and have had the same concerns. I do think there is more
dishonest disruption/manipulation and trolling going on than we are aware of. It's at the
point where I automatically assume that most social media accounts are not taking an honest
position. I hope I'm right, because if I'm wrong then humanity is absolutely terrifying.
The corporate imperialism status quo isn't terrifying enough for you? Oil and gas seeping
out through the land under and around "affordable housing" because CEQA doesn't count on
those properties doesn't terrify you? Flint's water crisis doesn't terrify you?
The throngs of human beings thrown out onto the street by Upgrading slumlords and
developers doesn't terrify you? Overlords talking with straight faces about excess and
surplus humans and ramming Prop 22 through doesn't terrify you?
There's a big difference between "humanity is OK, but the small slice that rules us is
terrible" and "humanity is in deep shit because we're mostly terrible." The first implies a
solution, the second what? Hope for a benevolent AI overlord to emerge?
Read my post again. I said that I automatically assume that most accounts posting terrible
stuff are bots. There are accounts that say awful things about almost any and every topic
imaginable. The number of them is so huge that if these are real people and not
bots, then people may indeed be largely terrible. But I assume they are bots.
https://popularresistance.org/affordable-housing-developers-set-their-sights-on-former-toxic-oil-fields/
DeSmog blog Vista Hermosa residents like Luna are troubled by a 2019 environmental rollback by the
state, AB1197, that exempts homeless housing developments in the City of Los Angeles from the
mandates of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Arguably California's broadest
environmental law, CEQA requires builders to assess the environmental impacts of new
development and find ways to avoid or mitigate them.
The political will to rollback CEQA has continued into 2020. In January, Assemblyman
Miguel Santiago, who represents District 53 bordering Vista Hermosa, introduced a new piece
of legislation, AB1907, to further expand CEQA exemptions to now include all affordable
housing.
I'm reminded of the excellent post by Anne Amnesia in May 2016, (yes, when Obama and Biden
were still in office, and the White House was just a huge gleam in Kamala's way too sparkly
eyes, given the massive poverty, incarceration and inequality in California, as she
successfully ran for California Senator and will have not completed even one term)
Unnecessariathttps://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/
A very brief excerpt (it's long and meaty), emphasis mine:
In 2011, economist Guy Standing coined the term "precariat" to refer to workers
whose jobs were insecure, underpaid, and mobile, who had to engage in substantial "work for
labor" to remain employed, whose survival could, at any time, be compromised by employers
(who, for instance held their visas) and who therefore could do nothing to improve their
lot. The term found favor in the Occupy movement, and was colloquially expanded to include
not just farmworkers, contract workers, "gig" workers, but also unpaid interns, adjunct
faculty, etc. Looking back from 2016, one pertinent characteristic seems obvious: no matter
how tenuous, the precariat had jobs. The new dying Americans, the ones killing themselves
on purpose or with drugs, don't. Don't, won't, and know it.
Here's the thing: from where I live, the world has drifted away. We aren't
precarious, we're unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to
the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what's worst of all, everybody who matters
seems basically pretty okay with that. The new bright sparks, cheerfully referred to as
"Young Gods" believe themselves to be the honest winners in a new invent-or-die economy,
and are busily planning to escape into space or acquire superpowers, and instead of
worrying about this, the talking heads on TV tell you its all a good thing- don't worry,
the recession's over and everything's better now, and technology is TOTES AMAZEBALLS!
The Rent-Seeking Is Too Damn High
If there's no economic plan for the Unnecessariat, there's certainly an abundance for
plans to extract value from them. No-one has the option to just make their own way and be
left alone at it. It used to be that people were uninsured and if they got seriously sick
they'd declare bankruptcy and lose the farm, but now they have a (mandatory) $1k/month plan
with a $5k deductible: they'll still declare bankruptcy and lose the farm if they get sick,
but in the meantime they pay a shit-ton to the shareholders of United Healthcare, or Aetna,
or whoever. This, like shifting the chronically jobless from "unemployed" to "disabled" is
seen as a major improvement in status, at least on television.
I was surprised Prop 22 passed because it was not doing well in the polls for most of the
pre-election period. It seemed Californians were solidly against it. Then, perhaps 4-6 weeks
before the election, I noticed a dramatic change in messaging. Suddenly the ads were touting
that if Prop 22 passed, Uber and Lyft drivers would receive health care benefits. I assumed
that this was deceptive messaging designed to turn the vote around. Here is what Kaiser
Health News says about the benefits:
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201029/App-based-companies-pushing-Prop-22-say-drivers-will-get-health-benefits-Will-they.aspx
Looks like it worked. I guess there's no penalty for this sort of deception, or at least, no
enforcement of a penalty.
So, I have CSPAN on at the moment. They're streaming the DC #MillionMAGAMarch
#StopTheSteal SuperSpreader rally.
The over-the-top vitriol is rather breathtaking. The angry ignorance is depressing.
They're "not gonna allow the Steal." They're gonna "be warriors." "Trump WON! Trump WON!
Trump WON! Trump WON! "
The Occam's Chainsaw "logic" is on full display.
Meanwhile, yesterday's new U.S. Covid19 case count was more than 184k, 1.6m for Nov
1-13.
No argument there. I started an Excel sheet, w/ transcribed JHU data commencing Oct 1st
(thru yesterday). The exponential upward trendline in the graph has an R-sq of 0.91. (an
iterative 7-day moving avg is also illuminating.)
Of course, it'll go up until it no longer does. And, "new cases" incidence rates comprise
but one facet of interest.
If you're struggling but aren't sick (yet), economic concerns win out. No big surprise
there. 70 million people are fighting a return to austerity and a technocratic "Great Reset"
that was devised without their input. They see it as literally fighting for their lives and
livelihoods. The new admin can ignore this at their own peril. (Too bad Trump didn't actually
solve any of their problems, but at least he gave them his attention, more than anyone else
has done in decades.)
Many people have to choose between the certainty of being unable to pay their bills, if
they stay home, versus the unknown risk of contracting COVID if they work.
Staying home is luxury a lot of people just don't have–even pre-COVID it was very
common for people in low-wage jobs that don't provide sick-leave to show up to work sick. It
wasn't because these people are evil or wanted to get anyone sick but rather because if you
don't work you don't get paid.
Precisely. The rent isn't going to pay itself, and people are scared about their future.
Covid isn't an obvious terror like Ebola, so people weigh the risks and decide in favor of
their economic security. If we were like some of the more advanced countries in the world,
they wouldn't have to make this choice, but here we are.
"at least he gave them his attention, more than anyone else has done in decades."
Hmmm last time I looked Bernie Sanders was paying attention and proposing solutions since
at least 2015. Nice how you just erased him and the millions who voted for him.
You're right. Trump is the only primary-winning candidate who paid attention to
the working class in recent memory. Bernie was obviously a million times better than Trump
because he was sincere, he had a plan, and he would have followed through. But he got
screwed.
I'm becoming a bit weary of reading that politicians like Trump are "exploiting anxieties"
about poverty and unemployment, as though such anxieties were unreasonable and the problems
didn't really exist. The trouble is that "responding to voters' concerns about their lives"
doesn't have quite the same dismissive overtones. The supercilious assumption that people who
are afraid of losing their jobs are being "exploited", whereas people being urged to vote on
gender lines aren't, seems very strange. Is anyone really surprised that people are more
worried about how much money they have than about which gender they are?
Understand people's problems, devise reasonable solutions, communicate your plan to the
voters, and follow through on your promises. It sounds so easy, doesn't it but good luck
trying it with the media and parties working together against you at every turn. Pull up
those bootstraps!
Thanks. We are going to find out how the velocity of the vote is slower than the velocity
of hunger.
"Civilization is about 3 meals thick." John Brockman, ex-con.
We are not together and the people in power don't want to give the people without, food
money. Two more and 3 more months of disease as hunger and death knock at more and more
doors. Evictions pick up apace.
Cormac McCarthy dystopia. No country for anybody.
The economic theory attributed to Warren Mosler and popularized by Stephanie Kelton is the
last idea. If it is a Hail Mary then so be it. If it doesn't work, isn't put to work, mankind
itself is doomed.
Public health care authorities understandably directed their policy responses toward
pandemic mitigation, and the Democrats largely embraced their recommendations. But they
remained insensitive to the anxieties of tens of millions of Americans, whose jobs were
being destroyed for good, whose household debts -- rent, mortgage, and utility arrears, as
well as interest on education and car loans -- were rising inexorably, even allowing for
the temporary expedient of stimulus checks from the government until this past August
I agree and worse this dynamic is playing itself out again–talk about whether
President-elect Biden should institute a lockdown is bringing out the "lockdown now, worry
about the consequences later" mentality again.
While I'm not sure Biden personally regards the millions of those who cannot work from
home, but aren't considered essential, collateral damage, there are clearly a segment of
Democrats who do–I've even seen it on Facebook among people I know. It provides further
proof that the Democrats, as Thomas Frank and others have astutely noted, have become
predominantly the party of the college-educated upper-middle class.
While I'm not denying the severity of the pandemic, the consequences of business shutdowns
and subsequent layoffs are very real and not something to be laughed at or minimized,
especially if Democrats want to have a future among those who are less affluent.
The globalists found just the economics they were looking for.
The USP of neoclassical economics – It concentrates wealth.
Let's use it for globalisation.
Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48, observed what the capital accumulation of
neoclassical economics did to the US economy in the 1920s. "a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion
of currently produced wealth. This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking
purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves the kind of
effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital
accumulation in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were
concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by
borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped"
This is what it's supposed to be like.
A few people have all the money and everyone else gets by on debt.
Most of today's problems come from the 1920s.
Financial stability had been locked into the regulations of the Keynesian era.
The neoliberals removed them and the financial crises came back. https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/banking-crises.png
"This Time is Different" by Reinhart and Rogoff has a graph showing the same thing (Figure
13.1 – The proportion of countries with banking crises, 1900-2008).
After the 1930s, they wanted to ensure those times would never return and put things in
place to ensure they didn't.
The neoliberals have been busy stripping them away.
What did the economists learn in the 1940s? http://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf
In the paper from 1943 you can see ..
They knew Government debt and deficits weren't a problem as they had seen the massive
Government debt and deficits of WW2.
They knew full employment was feasible as they had seen it in WW2.
After WW2 Governments aimed to create full employment as policymakers knew it could be done
and actually maximised wealth creation in the economy.
Balancing the budget was just something they used to do before WW2, but it wasn't actually
necessary.
Government debt and deficits weren't a problem.
They could now solve all those problems they had seen in the 1930s, which caused politics to
swing to the extremes and populist leaders to rise.
They could eliminate unemployment and create a full employment economy.
They could put welfare states in place to ensure the economic hardship of the 1930s would
never be seen again.
They didn't have to use austerity; they could fight recessions with fiscal stimulus.
The neoliberals started to remove the things that had created stable Western societies
after WW2.
"If I thought voters were racists who want basic economic security and the other party was
offering them racism but not economic security, I would simply try offering economic security
but not racism rather than offering them neither." -Ed Burmilla https://twitter.com/edburmila/status/1324420903409692673
We stepped onto an old path that still leads to the same place.
1920s/2000s – neoclassical economics, high inequality, high banker pay, low regulation,
low taxes for the wealthy, robber barons (CEOs), reckless bankers, globalisation phase
1929/2008 – Wall Street crash
1930s/2010s – Global recession, currency wars, trade wars, austerity, rising
nationalism and extremism
1940s – World war.
We forgot we had been down that path before.
Right wing populist leaders are only to be expected at this stage.
Why is Western liberalism always such a disaster?
They did try and learn from past mistakes to create a new liberalism (neoliberalism), but the
Mont Pelerin Society went round in a circle and got back to pretty much where they
started.
It equates making money with creating wealth and people try and make money in the easiest
way possible, which doesn't actually create any wealth.
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned"
income.
The American have lost sight of what real wealth creation is, and are just focussed on making
money.
You might as well do that in the easiest way possible.
It looks like a parasitic rentier capitalism because that is what it is.
Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy into a financial
crisis.
What they are doing is really an illusion; they are just pulling future spending power into
today.
The 1920s roared at the expense of an impoverished 1930s.
Japan roared on the money creation of real estate lending in the 1980s, they spent the next
30 years repaying the debt they had built up in the 1980s and the economy flat-lined. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk
Bankers use bank credit to pump up asset prices, which doesn't actually create any
wealth.
The money creation of bank credit flows into the economy making it boom, but you are heading
towards a financial crisis and claims on future prosperity are building up in the financial
system.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf
Early success comes at the expense of an impoverished future.
Let's get the basics sorted.
When no one knows what real wealth creation is, you are in trouble.
We want economic success
Step one – Identify where wealth creation occurs in the economy.
Houston, we have a problem.
Economists do identify where real wealth creation in the economy occurs, but this is a
most inconvenient truth as it reveals many at the top don't actually create any wealth.
This is the problem.
Much of their money comes from wealth extraction rather than wealth creation, and they need
to get everyone thoroughly confused so we don't realise what they are really up to.
The Classical Economists had a quick look around and noticed the aristocracy were
maintained in luxury and leisure by the hard work of everyone else.
They haven't done anything economically productive for centuries, they couldn't miss it.
The Classical economist, Adam Smith:
"The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of
the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour
of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant
and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his
money."
There was no benefits system in those days, and if those at the bottom didn't work they
died.
They had to earn money to live.
Ricardo was an expert on the small state, unregulated capitalism he observed in the world
around him. He was part of the new capitalist class, and the old landowning class were a huge
problem with their rents that had to be paid both directly and through wages.
"The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the
community" Ricardo 1815 / Classical Economist.
They soon identified the constructive "earned" income and the parasitic "unearned"
income.
This disappeared in neoclassical economics.
GDP was invented after they used neoclassical economics last time.
In the 1920s, the economy roared, the stock market soared and nearly everyone had been making
lots of money.
In the 1930s, they were wondering what the hell had just happened as everything had appeared
to be going so well in the 1920s and then it all just fell apart.
They needed a better measure to see what was really going on in the economy and came up with
GDP.
In the 1930s, they pondered over where all that wealth had gone to in 1929 and realised
inflating asset prices doesn't create real wealth, they came up with the GDP measure to track
real wealth creation in the economy.
The transfer of existing assets, like stocks and real estate, doesn't create real wealth and
therefore does not add to GDP. The real wealth creation in the economy is measured by
GDP.
Real wealth creation involves real work producing new goods and services in the economy.
So all that transferring existing financial assets around doesn't create wealth?
No it doesn't, and now you are ready to start thinking about what is really going on
there.
Economists do identify where real wealth creation in the economy occurs, but this is a
most inconvenient truth as it reveals many at the top don't actually create any wealth.
Hide what real wealth creation is, and pretend it's making money, and this problem goes
away.
There are two different things here. Trump betrayal of his voters is one thing, but election
fraud is another and is unacceptable no matter what is your opinion about Trump. We should not
mix those two topics.
All our political forms are exhausted and practically nonexistent. Our parliamentary
system and electoral system and our political parties are just as futile as dictatorships are
intolerable. Nothing is left. And this nothing is increasingly aggressive, totalitarian and
omnipresent.
Jacques Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity (1991)
Look at them! Look at them, will you? Behold our politicians' horrible languid maws!; the
courtier-like faces of department managers. They are indeed salesmen, for the very power of
nations is measure in relation to their own mercantile activity.
Jean Cau, Le meutre d'un enfant (1965)
"What's going to happen now?" I was asked earlier today. "Nothing and everything," I
replied. Immigration, largely unchallenged and unscathed (excepting the incidental impact of
COVID-19 on population movement) from four years of Trumpism, will now continue to
accelerate unabated . Zionism will continue to enjoy the expansion of American
institutional and military support, this time with the blood interest of Jared Kushner replaced
with the Jewish
spouses of all three of Biden's children. And the momentary Obama-era delusion of a
post-racial America will continue to dissolve in the reality of the increasing
awareness and importance of race throughout the West, not solely as a result of mass
migration but also of the increasing ubiquity of the ideologies of racial grievance and
revenge. There will, of course, be a dramatic change for the worse in tone and spirit, and some
smaller legislative victories like the
banning of federal anti-racism training will likely soon be reversed. The defeat of Donald
Trump is also hugely demoralizing to many decent American people, and emboldening to their
bitterest enemies. This is to be sorely regretted. But it is in the shared qualities of Trump
and Biden, rather than the election and sham ballots, that the real nature of our political
systems and their future can be perceived. And it is in these shared qualities that our true
problems lie.
Parliamentary electoral democracy is merely a representation of the general system in which
it operates. Slavoj Zizek comments:
At the empirical level, of course, multi-party liberal democracy "represents" -- mirrors,
registers, measures -- the quantitative dispersal of different opinions of the people, what
they think about the proposed programs of the parties and about their candidates, etc.
However, prior to this empirical level and in a much more radical sense, the very form of
multi-party liberal democracy "represents" -- instantiates -- a certain vision of society,
politics, and the role of the individuals in it: politics is organized in parties that
compete through elections to exert control over the state legislative and executive
apparatus, etc. One should always be aware that this frame is never neutral, insofar as it
privileges certain values and practices.
The truth of the system, in terms of its non-negotiable aspects, is thus revealed in the
"values and practices" privileged and ring-fenced under both Trump and Biden. What are these
non-negotiables? Zionism, GloboHomo ideological capitalism and its "woke" leftist correlates,
and the neoliberal promotion of GDP as the benchmark of human success and happiness.
Zionism
Jews have little to fear from a Biden presidency, which is presumably why Haaretz
is
claiming that the "American Jewish vote clinched Biden's victory and Trump's ouster.
American Jews decided the outcome of the U.S. elections." Donald Trump might have been
hailed as the "most pro-Israel President in U.S. history," but Jews are notoriously
unreliable in their partnerships with non-Jewish elites. Fate, it must be said, has not been
kind to those gentile elites that have exhausted their usefulness to Jews. And Trump is
surely exhausted, having spent a busy four years fighting for Jews in Israel and in the United
States. He reversed long-standing US policies on several critical security, diplomatic and
political issues to Israel's favour, including the Iran nuclear accord, the treatment of Israel
at the UN, and the status of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. In December 2019, he announced
his Executive
Order on Combatting Anti-Semitism , promising to fight "the rise of anti-Semitism and
anti-Semitic incidents in the United States and around the world." One wonders what else he
could possibly have done for these people -- apart from a war with Iran -- a question that
appears to have been answered by Jews with a resounding "Nothing." One can only imagine Trump's
facial expression on seeing Benjamin Netanyahu's
emphatic congratulations to Joe Biden, punctuated with the loving refrain: "I have a
personal, long and warm connection with Joe Biden for nearly 40 years, and I know him to be a
great friend of the State of Israel."
Biden and Harris, replete with their immediate familial ties to Jews, are viewed in Zionist
circles as being at least as reliable as Trump, although not as exuberant and bullish. Biden
has been known as a staunch supporter of Israel throughout his 36 years in the Senate, often
cites his 1973 encounter with then-Prime Minister Golda Meir as "one of the most consequential
meetings" of his life, and has on more than one occasion regaled audiences with a tale about
his father telling him that "You don't need to be a Jew to be a Zionist." While some
modifications are likely in the American approach to Iran, few reversals are expected on
Trump's four years of pro-Israel activism. Biden, for example, has weakly criticized moving the
embassy to Jerusalem but said he would not pull it back to Tel Aviv. Michael Herzog at
Haaretz
describes both Biden and Harris as "traditional Democrats, with a fundamental commitment to
Israel whose roots are in part emotional in nature (in contrast to Obama)."
The change in relationship between America and Israel will be, in meaningful terms,
restricted to the personal. Netanyahu, for all his fawning, is likely to undergo a personal
demotion of sorts, with David Halbfinger of the New York Timespointing out
that we can expect a Biden presidency to diminish Netanyahu's "stature on the global stage and
undercut his argument to restive Israeli voters that he remains their indispensable leader."
Palestinian leaders, probably the best-positioned to offer a perspective on the potential for
an improvement in their condition under the new presidency, have been sombre to say the least.
Hanan Ashrawi, a senior PLO official, responded
to the question if she expected United States policy to continue tilting heavily in Israel's
favor: "I don't think we're so naïve as to see Biden as our savior." Contrast this with
the cheerfulness and confidence of Israel settlers who have grown accustomed to the perennial
nature of American support for Zionism. David Elhayani, head of the Yesha Council, an umbrella
for Jewish settlements in the West Bank,
said the party of the U.S. president ultimately doesn't matter so long as the baseline
commitment to support Israel persists: "Under Obama, we built more [settlement] houses than we
have under Trump I think Biden is a friend of Israel."
The fact that the grassroots of the Democratic Party are
drifting away from Zionism is no more consequential than the fact the grassroots of the
Republican Party wanted major action on immigration reform. The former, like the latter, have
been equally ignored by the real power brokers and influencers. Regardless of the radical
appearance of Democrat-affiliated movements like Black Lives Matter, the fact remains that all
of the leftist aggression and rhetoric of the summer of 2020 has resulted in the putative
election of an establishment Zionist and political pragmatist who is sure to execute a more or
less formulaic neoliberal scheme for government. In one sense, the bland, forgetful, and
familiar Biden, who lacks any hint of genuine or novel ideology and was elected purely as a
symbol of "not Trump," is the fitting response to Trump, who was equally devoid of ideological
sincerity or complexity beyond the symbolism of "not Establishment." And so, while the media
proclaims, as Heraclitus, that "all is in flux," from a different perspective we could argue,
like Parmenides, the opposite -- "there is no motion at all."
GloboHomo
If I retain one abiding, surreal, memory of the Trump presidency in the years ahead it will
be the Don dancing to the Village People in the wake of his numerous drives to legalize
homosexuality in various African backwaters. That the Red State Christians comprising so much
of his base could maintain their self-adopted blind spot on this issue is a remarkable
testament to the power of personality, because no world leader in history has done more in
recent history than Donald Trump to export what E. Michael Jones has so aptly termed "the Gay
Disco" -- the double-barrelled shotgun of unbridled finance capitalism and the superficial
freedom of sexual "liberty." As the pastors and preachers of South Carolina and Texas urged
their huddled congregations to pray for the President, Trump was busy dispatching new
missionaries, like U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, to the corners of the earth in
search of converts to the Church of GloboHomo.
In February 2019, the U.S. embassy indulged in some nostalgia for Weimar when it
flew LGBT activists from across Europe to Berlin for a strategy dinner to plan to push for
decriminalization in places that still outlaw homosexuality -- mostly concentrated in the
Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. For my part, I can think of many social problems in
these parts of the world, but it really takes a special kind of mind to arrive at the opinion
that one of the most pressing is that they need to become more gay. Grenell, however,
horrified that Iran has the audacity to execute its own convicted homosexual pederasts, was
not to be deterred, and was instrumental in the blackmail of lesser nations, promising they
would be denied
access to terrorism intelligence if they don't legalise homosexuality. All of which has
left the far corners of the American cultural-military empire questioning whether they could
better live with suicide bombers or sodomy.
Against such manoeuvres, Biden's apparent claim to be one half of the "most pro-equality
ticket in history" seems a little overstated. That being said, there's no question that Biden
is going to step up the domestic nature of GloboHomo significantly as soon as he assumes
office. Biden has pledged to sign the Equality Act, thus far opposed by the Trump
administration, within his first 100 days in office, a piece of legislation that will amend
"the Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender
identity in employment, housing, public accommodations, public education, federal funding,
credit, and the jury system." Biden has pledged to appoint significant numbers of homosexuals
and transsexuals to positions of influence, and has promised to allow transsexuals to join the
military. Experienced in advancing global LGBT+ dogma as part of the Obama-Biden
administration, Biden will also once again take up the global mantle,
expressing his "hopes to reverse Trump's efforts and expand queer rights internationally by
making equality a centrepiece of US diplomacy," and condemning
Poland's "LGBT-free zones." Stunning and brave indeed.
There is a certain sense in the cases of both Trump and Biden that, for all the flamboyance
of their efforts in this area, there is a performative aspect to this politics. I don't get the
impression that either has been especially personally committed to these ideas or actions, but
that, as pragmatic-symbolic politicians, they have been made aware that this is the direction
the broader System is moving in and they should comply and support it. The longevity and
gradual acceleration of these trends, beginning in earnest with the presidency of Bill Clinton,
would suggest a systemic movement underlying, and entirely untethered to, specific political
parties or figures. Throughout the West, and much as with Zionism, GloboHomo, or hedonistic
credit-based capitalism and its sexual correlates more generally, is to be accepted and
promoted as an essential part of the role of neoliberal government. In the context of declining
basic freedoms at home, for example the obvious decline in free speech and the creeping
criminalisation of meaningful dissent against the status quo, the international promotion of
homosexuality and transsexual identities offers a cost-free and PR-friendly method for
increasingly authoritarian neoliberal regimes to posture as crusaders for freedom. The trucker
in Ohio is, logical flaws notwithstanding, and whether he wants it or not, thus assured of his
place in the Land of the Free via his government's emancipation of the gays and transvestites
of Uganda. Engaged politically only at the most superficial level, the masses play along with
this ruse, often in blunt denial, possessing only fragmentary realisations of the fact their
countries are changing around them while the petty "rewards" of Americanism are meagre and
peculiar, if not insulting.
GDP!
Along with frequent reassurances that he was "giving serious consideration" to doing
something, Trump's presidency was marked by regular updates on the performance of American GDP.
Unfortunately the GDP, like the Jewish vote, appears to have stabbed him in the back, with
around 70% of
American GDP represented in counties that (putatively!) voted Democrat. Trump's tragicomic
belief in GDP performance as a form of politics in its own right is perhaps the quintessential
example of the mentality of homo economicus and the tendency of neoliberals to view
countries as mere zones, or economic areas, where everything is based on rationalism and
materialism, and national success is purely a calculation of economic self-interest. Writing
pessimistically of Trump's expected nomination
in 2015 , I issued a stark warning about the influence of Jared Kushner, but also
added:
For all his bluster, Trump is a creation and product of the bourgeois revolution and its
materialistic liberal ideologies. We are teased and tantalized by the fantasy that Trump is a
potential "man of the people." But I cannot escape the impression that he is a utilitarian
and primarily economic character, who seeks a social contract based on personal convenience
and material interest. In his business and political history I see only the "distilled Jewish
spirit."
I don't think I've seen anything over the last four years that has made me question or
revise that assessment. Trump's dedicated tweeting on GDP in fact had the opposite effect.
The disturbing reality, of course, is that GDP is only one side of a national economy.
Another crucial aspect is government borrowing, and current projections suggest that the United
States is " condemned to
eternal debt ." According to The Budget Office of the United States Congress (CBO), "the US
economy would enter the first half of this century with a public debt equivalent to 195 percent
of its GDP. In the next 30 years the debt of the most powerful economy on the planet would more
than double." The first significant jump occurred in the wake of the subprime crisis, in which
Jewish mortgage lenders were especially prominent. The subprime crisis forced public debt to 37
percent of GDP, which then rose steadily to 79 percent between 2008 and the outbreak of
COVID-19. It now stands at 98 percent, and is accelerating. Although the United States has
reached comparable levels of debt in the past, there has almost always been an accompanying
war, or wars, which acted as a financial pressure valve -- a fact that does not bode well for
isolationists but may be encouraging news for Zionist hawks.
Joe Biden has claimed recently that "a
Biden-Harris Administration will not be measured just by the stock market or GDP growth, but by
the extent to which growth is raising the pay, dignity, and economic security of our working
families" -- while at the same time welcoming millions of new immigrants and legalizing the
~20M+ illegals into the workforce .The American economy is in fact extremely unlikely to change
direction, with Biden
reassuring his billionaire donors gathered at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan in June 2019
that "no one's standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change." I believe
him. Biden was part of an administration that
looked on as 10 million working Americans lost their homes. Matt Stoller at the
Washington Post has described Obama-era Democrat economic policies as "in effect, a
wholesale attack on the American home (the main store of middle-class wealth) in favor of
concentrated financial power." Biden was part of a team that outright rejected prosecuting
major bankers for fraud and money laundering, and that represented one of the most
monopoly-friendly administrations in history:
2015 saw a record wave of mergers and acquisitions, and 2016 was another busy year. In
nearly every sector of the economy, from pharmaceuticals to telecom to Internet platforms to
airlines, power was concentrated. And this administration, like George W. Bush's before it,
did not prosecute a single significant monopoly under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Instead
[under Obama] the Federal Trade Commission has gone after such villains as music teachers and
ice skating instructors for ostensible anti-competitive behavior. This is very much a
parallel of the financial crisis, as elites operate without legal constraints while the rest
of us toil under an excess of bureaucracy.
Biden is the product of funding from
forty-four billionaires , including six hedge fund speculators, seven real estate barons,
and five in the tech sector. Of the top 22 donors, at least 18 are Jews (Jim Simons, Len
Blavatnik, Stewart Resnick, Eli Broad, Neil Bluhm, David Bonderman, Herb Simon, Daniel Och, Liz
Lefkovsky, Steve Mandel, Bruce Karsh, Howard Marks, S. Daniel Abraham, Marc Lasry, Jonathan
Tisch, Daniel Lubetsky, Laurie Tisch, and Robert Toll). The Jewish consortium behind Biden is
almost identical in its financial composition to that behind Trump which, as I've explained
previously , was notable for its embodiment of "usury and vulture capitalism, bloated
consumerism, and the sordid commercial exploitation of vice." Biden's transition team ,
meanwhile, is comprised of "executives from Lyft, Airbnb, Amazon, Capital One, Booz Allen,
Uber, Visa, and JPMorgan." In short, expectations that Biden is going to break up Big Tech, or
any monopoly for that matter, are the fantasies of the deluded, the ignorant, and the
duped.
Conclusion
While the drama and recrimination surrounding the election are unquestionably fascinating, I
hope you'll forgive for being less agitated than most. My reasons for lethargy are simple: I
knew that regardless of outcome we'd get four more years -- four more years of Zionism,
GloboHomo, and the standardized, rationalized machinery of economic escalation that now
provides the apologetic engine for mass migration. Behind the abortion debates, Supreme Court
picks, culture wars, and media theater, these are the non-negotiables of the System. You don't
hear about them, and you can't talk about them, because you can't vote on them. And this is the
biggest electoral fraud of all.
I feel particular sorrow for ordinary decent Americans, in what today should be the land
of plenty for all, who are having to witness this horrible implosion of their country and
values. Other than divine intervention there is no hope. The media, money markets and
political classes are either directly run by the same children of a devil or by loathsome
gentiles who have taken the Judas coin or who are cowards in fear of their miserable
life's.
What is life if it means cowering down in the face of evil? An ancient voice trying to
tell this strange world that you are controlled by an evil power and that your eternal fate
is determined by how you respond to it i.e. join the freak show or stand up like a true man
or woman and tell them no.
The writer of this essay is a man of culture, with wide interests. There are not many
left. Compare him to the moronic voices of today with their narrow perverted interests and
weep for what faces you.
I feel particular sorrow for ordinary decent Americans, in what today should be the land
of plenty for all, who are having to witness this horrible implosion of their country and
values. Other than divine intervention there is no hope. The media, money markets and
political classes are either directly run by the same children of a devil or by loathsome
gentiles who have taken the Judas coin or who are cowards in fear of their miserable
life's.
Particular particular sorrow for the young. As for divine intervention, we used to have a
saying about God helping those who help themselves. Surely there must be some action we can
take.
While the drama and recrimination surrounding the election are unquestionably
fascinating, I hope you'll forgive for being less agitated than most. My reasons for
lethargy are simple: I knew that regardless of outcome we'd get four more years -- four
more years of Zionism, GloboHomo, and the standardized, rationalized machinery of economic
escalation that now provides the apologetic engine for mass migration. Behind the abortion
debates, Supreme Court picks, culture wars, and media theater, these are the
non-negotiables of the System. You don't hear about them, and you can't talk about them,
because you can't vote on them. And this is the biggest electoral fraud of all.
Exactly correct. As early as mid April 2017 I could see that Trump had no intention of
keeping his promises to middle Americans I wrote a comment to this blog saying as much.
Trump is a minion of the Deep State.
The Deep State doesn't care about the unimportant internecine squabbles of the two
parties as long as their important issues are advanced (wealth and power). As a matter of
fact it strengthens the false perception that there is a choice when voting.
Trump and the Deep State do not care what the American people want. They know that most
American people are inane fools and will believe anything. Most Americans would rather watch
America's Got Talent, Dancing With The Stars or The Masked Singer than be informed about
important issues.
The only discernible values espoused in this rambling crypfic article is dog-whistling to
bigots of yore.
There is no study of history, no analysis, no insight and no meaning beyond blathers about
jews and homos.
The tone is hatred and despair with the judgement that others are to blame and there is
nothing to work towards.
The Zizek quote offered a word-salad refrain that everybody comes to power under some
bias, to themselves, if nothing else. But Zizek's actual point has be de-contextualized. Here
is what Zizek was saying:
//Let's remember that [Hannah] Arendt said this in her polemic against Mao, who himself
believed that "power grows out of the barrel of a gun" – Arendt qualifies this like
an "entirely non-Marxist" conviction and claims that, for Marx, violent outbursts are like
"the labor pangs that precede, but of course do not cause, the event of organic birth."
Basically, I agree with her, but I would add that there never will be a fully peaceful
"democratic" transfer of power without the "birth pangs" of violence: there will always be
moments of tension when the rules of democratic dialogue and changes are suspended.
Today, however, the agent of this tension is the Right, which is why, paradoxically, the
task of the Left is now, as the US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has pointed out, to
save our "bourgeois" democracy when the liberal center is too weak and indecisive to do it.
Is this in contradiction with the fact that the Left today should move beyond parliamentary
democracy?
No: as Trump demonstrates, the contradiction is in this democratic form itself, so that
the only way to save what is worth saving in liberal democracy is to move beyond it –
and vice versa, when rightist violence is on the rise, the only way to move beyond liberal
democracy is to be more faithful to it than the liberal democrats themselves. This is what
the successful democratic return to power of the Morales's party in Bolivia, one of the few
bright spots in our devastated landscape, clearly signals.//
In other words we must be conservatives who are willing to progress!
And hey, crypto-fascists: Zizek is not on board with you just because RT runs him on their
version of Fox News.
The world is never going back to the old-timey dayz of white settlement of an eden
America. So move forward or croak of old age or both.
As to the idea that "decent Americans" are in any way demoralized by Trump's loss:
BULLSHIT!
If you are demoralized by Trump's loss, you have been ejected from decency. But Luckily
for you, it so happens USA is a happy-enough home for all stripes of perverts.
@Verymuchalive the
Occidental Observer writers in prison, you have zero reason to think Trump won't crack down
on free speech in 2020.
Another 4 years of Trumpstien means a very large % of the right will continue to sleep,
something Biden could not get us to do. Biden could never get the right to support vaccines
or martial law.
No Trump apologist besides Alex Jonestien gives an excuse why Trump is backing a unsafe,
hastily made vaccine for a disease with a 99% survival rate. No Trump cultist will provide a
credible one. (Wally will not be the first)
And what happened? She was raped and kicked in the butt by him. He always does that to
everybody. He did it to his dad, he did it to his brothers and sister, he did it to his
family ..and now he has raped America.
Trump's only ability is to find out what others fear or desire, then overpromise on
everything and deliver nothing or even the opposite after u have given him your support or
money. That's how he operates in business, and that's how he has conducted his fake
presidency.
I am surprised that so many seemingly intelligent people have been taken in by this
well-known conman.
Great article. What I find strange is a businessman from New York second only to Israel in
population of Jews could be so easily duped by them. Loyal only to themselves. In the words
of Harry Truman "Jesus couldn't do anything with them, what am I suppose to do with
them?".
I think it needs to be emphasised that the "homo" in globohomo stands for
"homogeneity" and not "homosexuality":
Globohomo
(adj) A word used to describe a globalized and homogenized culture pushed
for by large companies, politicians, and Neocon/Leftist pawns. This culture includes
metropolitan ideals such as diversity, homosexuality, sexual degeneracy, colorblindness in
regard to race, egalitarianism, money worship, and the erasure of different individual
cultures, among other things.
My reasons for lethargy are simple: I knew that regardless of outcome we'd get four more
years -- four more years of Zionism, GloboHomo, and the standardized, rationalized
machinery of economic escalation that now provides the apologetic engine for mass
migration. Behind the abortion debates, Supreme Court picks, culture wars, and media
theater, these are the non-negotiables of the System. You don't hear about them, and you
can't talk about them, because you can't vote on them.
This may be great for The US' Jewish plutocracy, but the United States is still in
economic competition with countries that don't give 2 cents for ZioGlob world (for example
China – which has just signed the RCEP – Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership, covering 15 Asian countries, after 8 years of negotiation and covering 2.2
billion people).
So the rest of the world looks on with interest, same as it did in 1923, when the German
Weimar Republic collapsed in an orgy of sleaze, corruption, debt and worthless money.
990. Jews are the scapegoats for all the deficiencies of low-IQ whites just as whites are
the scapegoats for all the deficiencies of low-IQ non-whites. Let me explain how that
works.
Why do we observe Jews at the forefront of many cutting-edge industries? (for example the
media/arts and financial industries are indeed rife with them). The low-IQ answer is, of
course, a simplistic conspiracy theory: Jews form an evil cabal that created all these
industries from scratch to "destroy culture" (or at least what low-IQ people think is
culture, i.e. some previous, obsolete state of culture, i.e. older, lower culture, i.e.
non-culture). And, to be sure, there is a lot of decadence in these industries. But, in an
advanced civilization, there is a lot of decadence everywhere anyway! It's an essential
prerequisite even! So it makes perfect sense that the most capable people in such a
civilization will also be the most decadent! The stereotype of the degenerate
cocaine-sniffing whoremonging or homosexual Hollywood or Wall Street operative belongs here.
Well, buddy, if YOU were subjected to the stresses and temptations of the Hollywood or Wall
Street lifestyles, maybe you'd be a "degenerate" too! But you lack the IQ for that, so of
course you'll reduce the whole enterprise to a simplistic resentful fairy tale that seems
laughable even to children: a bunch of old bearded Jews gathered round a large table planning
the destruction of civilization! Well I say enough with this childish nonsense! The Jews are
simply some of the smartest and most industrious people around, ergo it makes sense that
they'll be encountered at or near all the peaks of the dominant culture, being
overrepresented everywhere in it, including therefore in its failings and excesses! This is
what it means to be the best! It doesn't mean that you are faultless little angels who can do
no wrong, you brainless corn-fed nitwits! There's a moving passage somewhere in Nietzsche
where he relates that Europe owes the Jews for the highest sage (Spinoza), and the highest
saint (Jesus), and he'd never even heard of Freud or Einstein! In view of all the
immeasurable gifts the Jewish spirit has lavished on humanity, anti-semitism in the coming
world order will be a capital offense, if I have anything to say on the matter. The slightest
word against the Jews, and you're a marked man: I would have not only you, but your entire
extended family wiped out, just to be sure. You think you know what the Devil is, but he's
just the lackey taking my orders. Entire cities razed to the ground (including the entire
Middle East), simply because one person there said something bad about "the Jews", that's how
I would have the future! Enough with this stupid meme! To hell with all of you brainless
subhumans! You've wasted enough of our nervous energy on this stupid shit! And the same goes
to low-IQ non-whites who blame all their troubles on whites! And it's all true: Jews and
whites upped the stakes for everybody by bringing into the world a whole torrent of new
possibilities which your IQ is too low to handle! So whatcha gonna do about it? Are you all
bark, or are you prepared to bite? Come on, let's see what you can do! Any of you fucking
pricks bark, and we'll execute every motherfucking last one of you!
Blah, blah, blah. Cat circling the hot plate. Trump was galacticly stupid. He should have
told the Jews that I will give you Jerusalem and Golan heights in my second term. He would
have a second term.
The only point is here is this:
Jews see Iran as a mortal threat. Jews want Iran to be destroyed. For Biden the first point
on the agenda is destruction of Iran. Biden did promise Jews that he will destroy Iran.
That is why Biden did win.
Trump hesitated with his promise to destroy Iran that is why he lost.
So here is the conclusion question:
Was Biden serious when he promised to Jews destroy Iran, or he was only making fools from
them Jews.
That is the only outstanding question
From my understanding, the term "Globohomo" was originally meant as a shorthand for
"globalised homogenisation", wherein all national cultures would be eliminated in favour of a
universal culture, promotion of homosexuality is just one of the components of GloboHomo,
with things like rampant consumerism, substance use and liberalism being some of the other
things.
If you go to the newly built sections of Europeans cities, you will notice how they are
all the same (homogenous) with the same American fast food outlets and the same architectural
style.
Saturday during an appearance on FNC's "Justice," Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) questioned why
Democrats oppose any investigations into the integrity of the presidential election, despite
their past efforts on the 2016 presidential election.
The Ohio Republican congressman reminded Fox News viewers that Democrats dedicated for years
to the "Russia hoax" but do not want to allow four weeks for an investigation into this year's
presidential election.
For the past three or four days I have been wondering why the NY Post made this very sudden
turn to supporting Joe Biden. For months we have had brilliant articles by Miranda Devine ,
Michael Goodwin, and others all in support of Trump and the America we have known for many
years. Replies: @Realist
REPLY AGREE/DISAGREE/ETC. THIS COMMENTER THIS THREAD HIDE THREAD
For the past three or four days I have been wondering why the NY Post made this very
sudden turn to supporting Joe Biden. For years we have had brilliant articles by Miranda
Devine , Michael Goodwin, and others all in support of Trump and the America we have known
for many years, and all of a sudden the NY Post changed its views, but these columnists have
not changed. They are too knowledgable and are gifted with common sense. I look forward to
reading their columns or will the Post cancel culture them?
Any discussion of how to "work with" the Marxists is well, it just shouldn't be discussed.
You can't work with Marxists. Besides, Trump won the election. This will be proven over the
next few weeks.
'There's a war on organizing, collective bargaining, unions and workers': Biden wants to
undo Trump executive orders on federal workers Andrew Keshner 6 hrs ago
President Donald Trump used executive orders to put up roadblocks for unions representing
federal employees, and now President-elect Joe Biden seems poised to reverse those moves.
In May 2018, President Donald Trump signed executive orders mandating stricter deadlines and
procedures when federal workers collectively negotiated new contracts, curbing on-the-clock
time for union duties as well as giving some under-performing workers tight time frames to
boost their performance.
In January 2021, newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden is likely to pull back those same
orders, according to union members, who say the orders have weakened their ability to ensure
rank and file staffers are treated fairly.
The Biden transition team didn't respond to a request for comment, but Biden's campaign
website has signaled that the president-elect will address these issues: "There's a war on
organizing, collective bargaining, unions, and workers. It's been raging for decades, and it's
getting worse with Donald Trump in the White House."
The President-Elect, among other things, supports laws that would penalize companies trying
to interfere with worker organizing efforts, according to his website.
"This is not just about employees," said Tony Reardon, national president of the National
Treasury Employees Union. "Ultimately, this is good for American taxpayers to have federal
employees and agency leaders communicating and taking action together to solve problems before
there's a grievance and a lawsuit."
Reardon, who heads a union with 150,000 members, said he and his staff had heard from Biden
and his campaign in the months leading up to the Nov. 3 election. "The President-Elect, he was
clear with me that he is extremely supportive of labor unions and of workers' rights," Reardon
said.
There's a different point of view from management. "In some ways, you look at [the executive
orders] and go 'Why weren't these there before?'" said Scott Witlin, who represents
private-sector employers as a partner at Barnes & Thornburg.
There's nothing that's unreasonable on its face in the Trump administration orders, he said,
such as a
six-month limit on negotiations. "Six months would be an exceedingly long private-sector
negotiation," he said.
Video: City leaders warn of possible new restrictions as COVID spikes statewide (WWL-TV New
Orleans)
Play Video City leaders warn of possible new restrictions as COVID spikes statewide
Click to expand
In certain ways, the potential executive orders on federal workers are a narrow matter.
The federal government employed almost 3.8 million people in 2019, according to the
Bureau of Labor
Statistics . Of that sum, 1.15 million were represented by unions, the agency said, noting
that the category groups together union members and workers without union affiliation who have
jobs covered by union or employee association contracts.
But it's also a peek at the president-elect's larger views on organized labor.
Declining
union membership
Last year, there were 14.6 million salary and wage workers who were members of a union,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's just over 10% of the workforce, and a
10-percentage-point drop from 1983, the first year comparable statistics became available, the
agency said.
There's a range of reasons why union ranks keep thinning,
observers say . That ranges from the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act allowing "union shops" only when
a majority of workers voted for the idea, to globalization -- which sent off factory jobs -- to
state-level "right to work" laws that bar unions from collecting dues from non-union workers
covered in their contracts.
Though right-to-work opponents say those kinds of laws eat into a union's to support itself,
proponents say it's not fair to force workers
into unions that they don't feel are acting in their best interest.
Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs at the left-leaning think tank the
Economic Policy Institute, said Trump's orders focused on federal workers not because he had it
out for them especially, but because "he could accomplish those attacks through the stroke of a
pen."
The Trump administration orders "were designed in order to make it impossible for unions to
fulfill their representation obligations under the law," said Jacqueline Simon, public policy
director at the American Federation of Government Employees, a union comprised of 700,000
federal and District of Columbia government workers.
Reardon said the orders weren't necessary. "There is absolutely nothing about labor and
management sitting down together and collaborating in work that suggests they can't create
efficiencies." And there were already procedures to remove under-performing employees, he
added.
Various unions, including the AFGE and NTEU, sued over the orders. Ultimately,
the D.C Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the unions' challenges last year.
Reardon said he's seen the consequences of the new orders, which result in "sham"
bargaining. Some NTEU members work at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, he
noted. In the aftermath of the orders, Reardon said agency negotiators cut the talks short
because they were bound by the orders' rules on what could and couldn't be the focus of
talks.
The sides still haven't come to an agreement, said Reardon.
"HHS is working with employees and their union representation to improve the operations of
the department with the aim of making the federal government a better place to work and better
able to deliver the services to the American people," an HHS spokeswoman said in a
statement.
At this point, it seems unlikely that Trump is going to prevail in his legal challenges.
It's possible that he will, but what do you think is more likely? If he doesn't prevail,
however, Biden's "win" can actually be a tremendous win for us.
Why? Well, first let's address the question of who "we" are. I hate to sound like Joe Biden,
who seems not to know who he is or where he is or what he's talking about from moment to moment
(get ready for four years of hilarity, folks). But it's useful to remind ourselves of who we
are from time to time. We are White Nationalists.
A White Nationalist is
someone who believes that white peoples have a right to their own homelands. So that, as a
White Nationalist, I am a German nationalist, an English nationalist, a Scottish nationalist, a
French nationalist, etc . Or, at least, I support all those nationalisms. To be a white
nationalist in America is really to recognize that the core "American people" are the white
people whose ancestors built the country and who continue to pay for it. Thus, American White
Nationalism = American nationalism. To be an American nationalist is also to recognize that
more recent, non-white arrivals don't belong here at all; and that while our blacks have been
here a long time and some of them do sing, dance, and dribble well, they are mostly parasites
who contribute almost nothing to the society except grief.
Since it now looks impossible to go back to the good old days when we had blacks in complete
subjection, and since both blacks and browns out-breed us, American nationalists essentially
face two possible courses of action. The first is to remove non-whites from the country, which
seems impossible at this point, or to remove ourselves. This latter course would mean that we
all go back to Europe, which the Europeans won't allow, or that we effectively secede from the
USA and carve out our own white space (or spaces) within North America. It is this latter
option that now seems like it may be our only option, and something we must work
toward.
So, how does Trump's loss help advance us in that goal? To state the obvious, white
Americans will never work toward a white American homeland unless they are aware of
themselves as White Americans; unless they see themselves as a group with distinct
interests, and the moral right to assert those interests. "Awakening" white people has
always been our goal as White Nationalists -- awakening whites in America, and in
Europe. This awakening is far more important than any political figure, or any short-term
political goals. This awakening is and ought to be our top priority.
When I first got involved in this movement, almost exactly twenty years ago, there were two
questions that were constantly raised in my local "hate group": (1) When are white people going
to wake up? And (2) will it take some kind of societal collapse to get them to wake up? Most of
us thought that it would take such a collapse, but that this wouldn't happen in our lifetimes.
Well, my friends, now it has happened. The collapse has occurred, and Trump's loss has
brought it about.
The country was already fractured along political lines. Now it is completely broken.
Conservatives, the overwhelming majority of whom are white, have long known that the media are
biased to the Left and that the political establishment does not have their interests at heart.
But they still believed in "the system." They believed that it still might be possible to work
within the system and get somebody elected who would actually be their guy . Somebody
who could bring the jobs home, stop the tide of non-white immigration, clean up the streets (
i.e. , do something about black crime), combat the politically correct madness, and get
us out of the forever wars. The election of Donald Trump seemed to confirm this optimism.
But all the voices on the far-Right who labeled Trump "a distraction" have now been proved
correct. Trump actually wound up doing little for white people -- despite being continually
vilified by the Left as a white supremacist! Still, millions of whites not only continued to
support him, they carried on a love affair with the man. Trump was adored by his base like no
other American political figure in memory. Not even Reagan got this much love. The more vicious
and unhinged the attacks on Trump became, the more his base supported him. They knew that his
reelection would be no cakewalk, but they believed it was still possible.
They knew that the media and the Democrats would play dirty -- very dirty. But they trusted
the electoral process. Or, at least, they hoped for the best. For months there was talk about
voter fraud, primarily focused on the issue of mail-in ballots. But conservative whites still
had faith that the system would work for them, as it did in 2016.
Now their faith has been completely and irreparably shattered. And this is hugely
significant for us.
The first step toward real secession is psychological secession: seeing that though I
still live in it, this is no longer my country, and there is no longer any hope of making the
system work for me and those like me. This is exactly what the 2020 election has accomplished.
About 57% of white people voted for Trump in this election. And those many millions of whites
are now choking down a gigantic red pill. As we all know, the red pill is the path to
liberation.
Quoth Tyler Durden: "Losing all hope was freedom."
It seems that there is credible evidence that there was voter fraud in the election,
benefitting Biden. As I write this, Trump's legal team is preparing to fight it -- but, as I
have already said, I think that they will lose. Ultimately, it does not matter whether or not
there was fraud, or whether the fraud was enough to swing the election to Biden (two separate
issues). What matters is that white Trump voters believe that there was.
Trump voters are now, ironically, in sort of the same position as Democrats in the wake of
2016. No matter how much we would like to, none of us will ever forget the "Russian
interference!" and "Russia collusion!" hysteria that went on for the better part of two and a
half years, until the Mueller report more or less put the thing out of its misery (though not
entirely). The difference, however, is that that was all bullshit. And a significant number of
Democrats knew it. Trump voters actually have very good reasons to think that this election was
stolen.
Regardless of what we eventually learn about whether sharpies can cause ballots to be
misread, or whether a "glitch" flipped Trump votes to Biden votes, there is still ample reason
for the 70 million Trump voters to think that this thing was rigged. In the months preceding
the election, America saw a massive overreach of state and local government power in the form
of COVID lockdowns, the net effect of which was to ruin far more lives than it saved. Is it
paranoia to think that the intention here was to crash the economy and render Trump
unelectable?Consider: Virtually the entire media was not only against Trump, but made it their
personal mission to take him down by any means necessary. No lie, no distortion was too
ridiculous or too scurrilous. Leftists in government, journalism, academia, and the
entertainment industry openly declared that anything and everything was permissible in
order to take down the "existential threat" posed by Orange Man. This was the fertile ground
onto which were sowed the seeds of speculation about election fraud.
The lockdowns coincided with months of coordinated rioting billed as "protests" against
non-existent "racial injustice." The rioters somehow weren't subject to the rules of the
lockdowns, because apparently COVID takes a holiday when it is politically expedient. This
double standard was so obscene and so blatant, it enraged Republican voters (as well as a few
honest rank and file Democrats of my acquaintance).
The Left calculated, correctly, that Trump would do little or nothing to stop the rioting,
out of fear of looking too dictatorial in an election year. Trump's own calculation was that
allowing the riots to happen would give the Left plenty of rope with which to hang itself.
Trump was wrong; his inaction made him seem weak. The basic hope of the Left was that months of
economic and social chaos would fatally wound Trump, and that voters would be too stupid to see
that it was actually the Left that was to blame for it. In the main, it looks like they were
right about this.
But diehard Trump supporters correctly saw that the lockdowns and riots were an election
year strategy hatched by the Left. If they were not wholly designed by the Left to
damage Trump, they were at least manipulated for that purpose. The cherry on the cake came in
the weeks leading up to the election, in the form of big tech's censorship of news damaging to
Biden, including blocking the New York Post 's stories about Biden's involvement in his
son's shady business deals. This classically Orwellian move finally reached an extreme few
would ever have even thought possible, when at last social media began censoring the President
himself.
Given all of this, it would be unreasonable not to think that this election was
stolen. Trump's supporters believe this -- every last one of them. And they will never stop
believing it. Mark my words: this is never, ever going away. Trump voters will go to
their graves believing that the election was stolen, and feeling as passionately about it as
they do right now, less than a week after polls closed. They will go to their graves hating
Leftists (as they rightfully should), and believing that the system is broken beyond
repair.
"But," so your objection will go, "the fact that these white Trump voters will become
disillusioned with the system does not mean that they will become self-aware white
advocates."
My contention, however, is that what begins as disillusionment with the system will, in many
cases (a great many cases, I believe) lead to increasing racial consciousness, or open the door
to it. Take it from me -- from my own personal experience: once you have accepted that
one big thing is a total sham, you begin to wonder whether everything else is. And if
you keep going this way, you eventually begin wondering whether wrong is right; whether
everything we've ever been told is false and bad might be true and good.
And the fact is that white Trump voters are already far more racially aware than the
naysayers in the comments section will give them credit for. Trumpism is an implicitly white
phenomenon if ever there was one. And it is implicit only in the sense that its supporters are
too tactful and too fearful to name it for what it is -- not in the sense that they are
unaware of what it is. We all thought that the media and the Leftists had lost their
minds when they damned Trump and his supporters as racists and white supremacists. But they
weren't crazy. They grasped, much more clearly than Republicans, what the vector of the
Trump movement was -- where it might be headed. They correctly saw that a movement that offered
a home to millions of white Americans upset by non-white immigration (euphemistically called
"illegal immigration") might eventually give birth to self-aware white advocacy. When they
called the Trumpites "racists" it was like seeing the oak tree in the acorn.
As perceptive as the Left was on that particular score, they have, as we all know, been
remarkably deaf, dumb, and blind in other ways. Biden's share of the popular vote (if
legitimate) is by no means a landslide. There is no "mandate" for looney Leftism, and no
"repudiation" of Trump (indeed, Trump did expand his base -- though in one crucial area, as I
will shortly discuss, it shrank). But that won't stop Leftists like AOC, and many others, from
imagining that they have a mandate for all their craziness.
Therefore, expect the anti-white rhetoric to pick up steam. And, needless to say, this will
help the process along in a big way: white Trump voters will think for five minutes and realize
that they are at the mercy of a system that is demonstrably rigged against them and
wills their destruction. If they haven't realized it already. That image of the McCloskeys with
their guns facing down the brown hoard is unlikely to fade anytime soon. And what happened to
the McCloskeys has now happened to all white Americans: despised, cornered, and now disarmed.
(The literal disarmament is right around the corner, if the runoff elections in Georgia deliver
the Senate to the Democrats.)
We are nevertheless still at a point where whiteness remains implicit. Whites dare not speak
out in their own defense -- not explicitly as whites, anyway. Populist journalists like Tucker
Carlson, Ann Coulter, and Pat Buchanan, who are privately on our side, still speak in coded
language, avoiding open advocacy for whites. However, the coded language (as the Left also
correctly sees) is becoming easier to decode by the day. As many on our side have said, we will
make no real and substantial progress until we are willing to openly stand up for ourselves --
in person, in broad daylight, and without sock puppets and noms de plume like "Jef
Costello." Is that day imminent? I believe that it is.
What would it take? First, it would take white self-awareness -- and I have argued that this
is already there, emerging from its cocoon. Second, it would take anger . It would take
whites being pushed to a point where they are so angry they speak and behave imprudently
, damning the consequences. If one does it, he will simply be squashed; fired, censored,
canceled, deplatformed. If many do it, that's a different story. They can't fire us all. And if
that anger is great enough, they will fear us. They should. As Don Jr. recently tweeted , "70
million pissed off Republicans and not one city burned to the ground." But this may not last.
The election might just be the proverbial straw. The camel may be about to metamorphose into
the lion.
Already there are signs of uncharacteristic self-assertion on the part of angry Trump
voters. There have been large protests by Republicans in "swing states," including Michigan and Pennsylvania.
There has been violence. Continuing the lockdowns will exacerbate this. Everybody, not just
whites, has reached the breaking point with this COVID bullshit. Of course, now that Biden is
elected, it would not be surprising if COVID suddenly became a non-issue.
Here are some more predictions:
Trump has now moved over to Gab , a
free-speech platform that has embraced thought criminals of all kinds (so far). Trump's
supporters will follow him to Gab -- millions of them. They will read the other stuff and
become more red-pilled. You can almost predict this one with mathematical certainty.
Gun sales will increase as Trump voters scramble to arm themselves before Biden tries to
disarm them. Gun sales have increased enormously since the BLM riots began, so much so that the
stores cannot keep up with demand. Ammo sales have been so brisk it's now hard to find bullets
for those guns. (Yes, I do believe we
are headed for violent civil war .)
Conspiracy theories are going to be mainstreamed. This process was already underway, due
partly to the influence of "QAnon." I tried reading
the QAnon book , with the intention of writing something about it for this website. I
stopped because the thing was so stupid I couldn't get through it. If this stuff can be
influential among Trump voters, anything can. Alex Jones is all over Gab. The Trumpites who
follow their leader over to that platform will get a big dose of him -- and about 60% of what
he says is actually true. He was talking about Epstein's pedo island years ago.
One thing leads to another -- once, as I have said, a big lie is exposed, one begins to
question everything else. Who really runs the world? Who controls US policy in the Middle East?
What's Bohemian Grove all about? Exactly how long does it take to cremate a single body?
Inquiring minds want to know. Let a thousand conspiracy theories bloom! Every one of them helps
us, because every one of them undermines the system and the elites who run it.
White males are the only group Trump did not make gains with in 2020. Given his portrayal in
the media, the irony here is rich, as Jim Goad has noted. Had Trump
gotten more votes from white males, it looks like he would have outvoted even the dead and the
fake voters. As Gregory
Hood has pointed out, "the reason President Trump is in this position is because he
didn't do enough for white working-class voters ." He continues: "White working-class
voters are now the most important voting group in America. They will have decided two
presidential elections in a row. They will decide more."
The Republican establishment cannot be unaware of this. They've seen the same numbers Hood
has. If they did not realize it before, they realize it now. There will be absolutely no going
back to the Republican party of John McCain and Mitt Romney. Those names are hard to pronounce
now without gagging. That they were the Republican nominees in, respectively, 2008 and 2012 now
seems downright surreal. That is how much Trump has changed the party. To save that party,
Republicans will have to offer something to white voters. They will have to keep running the
Trump train, without Trump. (Though Trump is not going away; he will remain a huge part of
public life.)
Everyone thinks 2020 has been a terrible year. It is just the opposite. White nationalism
has taken a giant step forward.
To be an American nationalist is also to recognize that more recent, non-white arrivals
don't belong here at all; and that while our blacks have been here a long time and some of
them do sing, dance, and dribble well, they are mostly parasites who contribute almost
nothing to the society except grief.
The author makes a lot of cogent and well-reasoned points, but his delivery lacks nuance
and has a coarseness which suggests prejudice to the point of racism.
Not that I am accusing the author of being a racist at all – but in the field of
persuasion, a biased narrative produces polarisation, either confirming or disputing one's
preconceived beliefs.
I suggest adjusting the author's arguments to recognise the actual fundamental issue in
play, which is not skin colour or race or language, but CULTURE. Yes, no doubt, the
historical currents and ill-conceived government policies have herded different parcels of
humanity into differing contexts on the basis of their racial backgrounds, but while the
identifying characteristics (and idiotic government-enabled victim industries) may be
numerically associated with skin colour, the actual behavioural differentiations are
determined by the collective CULTURE adopted by each individual within their respective
communities.
Allow me a simplistic example here. By government policy, an Australian is recognised as
Koori (and entitled to all the government benefits, handouts, preferential treatment and
other assistance that Koori status attracts) if he/she can demonstrate that they have at
least 1/16 Koori blood. What a boon to the Australian "Aboriginal Industry", a
government-spawned victim industry par-excellence, whose client-base and professional
employment potential is thereby magically multiplied 10-fold compared a Koori threshold
limited to just full and half-bloods (do the math).
As would be expected, a great many people are all too eager to pile onto this "victim"
gravy train. Never mind that the bulk of them are white.
And the really warped thing about all of this, is that all those whiteys whose great great
grandmother or grandfather may have been a Koori, baited by the siren-song of government
entitlements and victim rights, all too often fall into the trap of government dependency and
economic despondency that afflicts so many of the victim industry's clientelle.
It's not language or race or skin colour, its CULTURE. Egged along by idiotic government
officials and vested interests.
Here in Australia, my view is that you're either Australian, or you're not. All other
considerations are secondary. That applies equally to foreign and domestic policy, and
equally to the native-born and immigrants. Until we come to understand and accept that
proposition, the NATION will be hobbled.
So too with the USA. Mind you, it appears to me that the USA's CULTURAL issues are rather
more entrenched and vulnerable to vested interests than in Australia (so far). If they can't
be resolved, then we may be looking at eventual disintegration into several nations,
irrespective of race.
Really, it's these exciting and dark times when real change happens. The Kali Yuga beckons
us all onwards! I look forward to that future thing which American Nationalism will give
birth to. I just hope it involves dragons, somehow, somewhere. Maybe on a flag.
Your premise of a "white homeland" in North America is problematic at best, since the
territory was already occupied by First Nations of indigenous peoples who clearly were the
first to make such a claim on these lands, which stood until the continent was stolen from
them by white people. A just reckoning of homelands begins with recognizing their prior
rights here first, and then assessing where in the world it is best to park our itinerant
white asses. But as you say, we've already forfeited our place in our actual white homelands
in Europe and elsewhere in the Old World. So maybe we can negotiate paying rent, on these
lands we occupy, to the poor survivors of the genocide we enacted to claim "our" home.
"Most of us thought that it would take such a collapse, but that this wouldn't happen in
our lifetimes. Well, my friends, now it has happened.'
Reminds me of Mr Twain & his comment that reports of his death have been greatly
exaggerated .
The author's race nationalism is sad, to say the least. As if "white" comes with a label.
(And never mind all the Legal/Property issues that would arise -- imagine sorting out an
Olympic sized pool of cooked spaghetti .)
"that we effectively secede from the USA and carve out our own white space (or spaces) within
North America. It is this latter option that now seems like it may be our only option, and
something we must work toward."
But having sorted out the labels "White", citizens can play " India 1947 -- the
Partion" : you know, that wonderful time when millions of Hindus moved south &
millions of Muslims moved north. Death toll somewhere between a couple of hundred thousand to
a couple of million. I wonder who will get the bulk of the Oligarchs ? Where will those
tribal Oligarchs feel more comfortable ?
Mexicans & Asians -- wonder whether they'll be welcome ? Turn away the Asians especially,
will go a long way to guaranteeing failure.
The saddest thing of all ? Assume all the race issues are settled -- & you still have 101
other political issues to deal with .Unless, of course, the author simply wants to transfer
the status quo to his new racial Eden .Wow, what a triumph that would be.
Of course Europeans and people outside of Europe of European descent are waking and
beginning to take our own side This is the inevitable reaction to our ( mostly ) hostile
elite, Politics as usual/ MSM etc are all in decline and no amount of censorship is changing
these trends. Matthew Goodwin and Roger Eatwell in National Populism The revolt against
liberal democracy are amongst many who see this happening. The trend is towards Nationalism
away from the Multiculti cult and its champions on tv etc. The silent majority in all White
nations are less silent with every passing year.
I've long considered myself a political exile. I left the US because I couldn't stand it
any more. The insanity of the laws, the always increasing police state was something I saw
but others apparently didn't.
If states start to secede and Texas is one of them, I'll move back. The Fed Gov is the
main problem and needs to totally disappear. When the USA goes the way of the USSR, then
you'll know there's a chance for freedom.
The history of race relations in the past 60 years or so has been based on your
assumption, that everyone is the same but environments create cultures that make them seem
different. It's a claim that's impossible to disprove, because you can define any traits as
cultural, and is therefore meaningless. Nevertheless, in practical real-life terms all you
have to do is look at how various groups behave in many different locations and even
different times, to see that something is at work besides culture.
And failing to acknowledge biodiversity leads to the absurd victimization industry that
has brought us to the brink of race war.
"warriors of the Powhatan "came unarmed into our houses with deer, turkeys, fish, fruits,
and other provisions to sell us". The Powhatan then grabbed any tools or weapons available
and killed all the English settlers they found, including men, women, and children of all
ages. Chief Opechancanough led the Powhatan Confederacy in a coordinated series of surprise
attacks; they killed a total of 347 people, a quarter of the population of the Virginia
colony."
Oh no those poor natives. Maybe they should have avoided a fight they couldn't win.
There's a reason we call them savages.
"The difference, however, is that that was all bullshit."
But, as the programmer Alberto Brandolini is reputed to have said: "The amount of energy
necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." This is the
unbearable asymmetry of bullshit .
There are so many massive lies out there that are still believed by many of the stupid
masses brainwashed by mass media, the universities, and a variety of other large
institutions.
You can't fix stupid.
So–my crystal ball is very foggy at this point.
(If you think about cultures in the history of the human race, all were based on a bunch
of lies. As Terence McKenna liked to say–nowhere is it written that we apes are
entitled to learn the truth about anything.)
@Etruscan Film Star in parallel with the whole racial profiling paradigm is the same idea
applied to religion, wherein George Dubya whipped up his "civilisational struggle" against
the Muslim world to facilitate American games of Empire. To the extent that any problem
actually exists, religion is a red herring. Here in Australia, Muslim people are amongst the
most genuine and charitable people that one can meet. In my experience, the only tiny
minority of Muslim people who have caused friction are invariably of Arab origin, and more
specifically from Saudi Arabia – an inherently tribal & chauvinistic culture (and a
key American ally in the Middle East – just sayin').
Race & religion are distractions. Compatible cultures can assimilate in a harmonious
society, while incompatible cultures cannot.
For the time being, as long as Jews play the gane of Whites vs Diversity, whites should
play a game of Jews vs Gentiles.
If Jews can lead a multicultural coalition against Whites, then Whites can lead a
multicultural coalition against Jews. This is their worst nightmare, and almost everything
they do is best understood as an attempt to prevent this.
This latter course would mean that we all go back to Europe, which the Europeans won't
allow, or that we effectively secede from the USA and carve out our own white space (or
spaces) within North America. It is this latter option that now seems like it may be our only
option, and something we must work toward.
Jez, they say I am a dreamer, and all I want is a free pony and some government
cheese.
I suspect that Australians are several decades behind Americans in discovering that your
perspective, which basically is what we called civic nationalism, is largely false and has
now largely failed. I don't have time to even sketch this, but you can look for critiques of
civic nationalism and for concepts like regression to the mean. I hope you can learn from our
experience.
@Ultrafart the Brave and snotty racist Europeans and Japanese kept the revolutionary
masses down. The opposite is the truth, it were the Europeans who were revolutionary folks
(French revolution/Enlightenment anyone) trying to spread modernism over racist, parochial,
reactionary, tribal darkie populations and the whole thing ended in tears and trumped up
charges against Whitey dreamt up by Jews, marxists and third World Nationalists/ elites. Same
with Japanese Empire which too was driven by the Pan Asian ideology. The Chinese too will be
rejected by the darkie masses in the future, they too will face trumped up charges for
"exploitation" and "oppression" in the future, it has already started right now.
I do not deny that there are differences between the races. However, breeding is not one
of them.
Ever since the end of slavery, American blacks have had moderate numbers of children,
essentially the same whites. Yes, really. Why do you think, after all these centuries,
pre-1965 American blacks are still hardly more than 10% of the population?
Actually the fraction of blacks in the United States is lower than it used to be –
the Grover-Cleveland cheap-labor immigration surge, that drove wages so low and profits so
high, was all from (at the time) white third-world Europe, and increased the white fraction
of the population. Because white europeans at the time bred more than black Americans!
So yes, during the 19th century and up through Mao, the Chinese bred like rabbits and
lived lives of total misery. After Mao, the Chinese fertility rate was allowed to moderate,
and now China is doing very well. Is there anything genetic in the Chinese people for either
high or or low fertility rates? No. This at least, is entirely cultural.
Are there genetic differences between the races? Yes. Is excessive breeding one of them?
No.
@Ultrafart the Brave in Western societies on average than MENA and South Asians, even the
African blacks, who have much more deeper cultures than New World blacks, they all integrate
fast into Western cultures but they tend to ebonyify everything. But they bring with them
some negative traits like tendency towards violence, crime, chip on the shoulder mentality,
melanin power mentality, seeing racism everywhere etc So culturally they integrate faster but
the skin colour difference creates resentments and temperament differences still exist. On
the positive side blacks are not clannish as the darker Eurasian semi Caucasoids and have an
individualistic tendency which does gel well with individualistic Northern Euros.
I was away from Polaris Parkway, just North of Westerville and Worthington, Ohio, for a
couple of months and things have deteriorated quickly.
This also happened to Epstein Best Bud, Les Wexner's pet project Easton Town Center, close to
New Albany Wexner's British Village Fantasyland.
The common factor in deterioration is wait for it
Blacks and Browns, managed by jews.
Philadelphia Block Busting, 60 years later, same demographic players.
@sb understand that the Australian aboriginals were not a uniform race across the
Australian continent. The Tasmanian Aboriginals were quite different to their continental
counterparts, but even the mainlanders were not racially homogenous. The racial makeup of the
native peoples of Papua & New Guinea are completely different again.
A broad analogy can be drawn with the various black races occupying the African continent
– their skin colour doesn't uniquely define their respective races. For an extreme
example, compare the Congo Pygmies of central Africa with the Rwandan Tutsis.
I do take your point, however – rather than qualify the Kooris as Australian for a
potentially global audience, perhaps it is simpler to just refer generically to native
Australians..
One might think so, but apparently not. Instead, in so many ways the Australian culture
seems to be marching in suicidal lockstep with the USA, like the mythical lemmings toward the
proverbial cliff.
An appalling example of this is the insidious slide of the Australian medical system over
the last few decades from a universally free model to a for-profit one infested with middle
men and insurance rackets, presumably on a trajectory towards a full-blown American-style
Big-Pharma business model with the poor folk thrown under the bus.
@Malla rt of thinking aligns somewhat with reports of homecoming head-chopping ISIS
psychos being sent to reeducation camps in Xinjiang, China. The local indigenous population
apparently is doing just fine, but returning extremists trained for genocidal wars in the
Middle East no longer fit in.
Here's a true story which helps to illustrate that the principle of cultural harmony
transcends race, and even species. I was raised on a farm, and on this farm were herds of
sheep and also some turkeys. One particular sheep somehow got it into her head that she was a
turkey. She would follow the turkey flock around all day, and at night, she would roost in a
tree with the turkeys. The turkeys didn't seem to mind, and the sheep seemed quite happy.
Compatible cultures.
The stolen election is like Jewish control of the media. EVERYBODY, even Biden voters know
this SELECTION/ELECTION WAS STOLEN, but like Jewish control of the media, we are demanded to
pretend it doesn't exist or never happened.
No Trump fan here, but I voted for the Orange Man because of the alternative. I still have
hope that Team Trump can turn this around. All the Jew/Israel butt kissing aside and the
broken promises and holding meetings with (c)rappers, Trump did expose the "normies" to the
FAKE MEDIA. Hell, that is more than any other modern day POTUS has done for Whites. Can
someone tell me when was the last time Whites had a true representative in the White House
that actually looked out for White Americans and was concerned about White civil rights? I am
pushing 60 and we haven't had one in my lifetime for sure.
So that, as a White Nationalist, I am a German nationalist, an English nationalist, a
Scottish nationalist, a French nationalist, etc.
I think if we take it as far as Hitler, we are also Chinese nationalists, and Japanese
nationalists etc – those nations can develop in their spheres – and so much the
better for them. But they may not force themselves on us (or others).
This whole article is based on the Susan Sarandon premise in 2016 when Bernie lost –
that a Trump win would inspire the base to elect a progressive, caring left wing politician.
This didn't turn out – the system got rigged for about as establishment a criminal as
could have been chosen.
Article 10 is not easy to execute. The right may have honour and guns, but the left is
TDSed, and rabies is one strong steroid to help with a fight!
In addition there is no real leader – one who could strategise a secession
effectively. Trump certainly couldn't. He'd be great as the PR guy, but not as the leader.
Until one is born, America is stuck within the belly of the US beast.
Author Costello said:
"Had Trump gotten more votes from white males, it looks like he would have outvoted even the
dead and the fake voters."
Nope.
Costello misses the point that the curious count stoppage was a pause to enable the left
to manufacture the votes that they then anticipated needing in lieu of the largely pro-Trump
turnout numbrs. And, any unanticipated pro-Trump surge could have easily been overcome by
having a reserve at the ready.
IOW:
Regardless of who had voted for Trump, they simply would have been overcome by the left
creating more fake votes for Biden.
I would add materialist values and urbanization to the blend. All my ancestry emanated
from Scandinavia. After checking out several major cities during the years of my young
manhood, I returned to a rural, homesteading life.
Working with my hands and body is important to my well-being. Seasonally, living on the
northwestern fringe of the Northwoods, winters are long and arduous -- a good time for
artistic and intellectual pursuits. The soul has its needs, as Thomas Moore pointed out in
his book "Growth of the Soul". My needs center on living close to the mother of us all.
Northeast Asians and Northwest Europeans share much in this perspective.
Not too many answers to why and to what purpose but still a brilliant article.
Generals love the war, soldiers not so much.
There is lingering question in my mind! The question is: Who loves more war, Israel , or
seventeen intelligence agencies with General staff.
But for the time being I am very much against any radical solution.
I am with Trump's "Stand down and stand by".
I think Biden also does deserve a chance to come up with solutions.
But if Biden starts a new war than everything will be justified and Final solution will
become inevitable.
@TG k up a feast. The younger children enjoy their own fun and games. The older ones help
their samesex parents. During the evening after supper, the bottles get passed around and
sometimes there is music and perhaps dancing.
The bulk of the Amish -- and the Mennonites -- emerged from an Anabaptist culture in
Switzerland and parts of Germany and during the late 17th Century many of them relocated to
Lanacaster County Pennsylvania, from which they have now colonized westwards wherever there
is the possibility of true country living. Not many of them migrate past the 90th Meridian,
where poor soil and semi-arid conditions are poorly conducive to agriculture and cozy country
living.
@Ultrafart the Brave s have manipulated much in America in the last 50 years and that is
the bigger reason for what are marketed as 'cultural clashes'. Most of them are bogus and
engineered.
Race & religion are distractions. Compatible cultures can assimilate in a harmonious
society, while incompatible cultures cannot.
Agree, again, I'd use the term: shared or accepted values.
(Fwiw, I'm willing to go the step further and view the author as a likely racist and
supremacist. Most people like that have lived sheltered lives and had little exposure to a
variety of peoples. Many of their assertions are simply empty and unaware of ahem the real
world.)
If Brexit ranks NINE on the Collective Self-Harm for No Good Reason scale, proposing a
civil war in the 21st century to create a "whites only" state in North America is so nutty it
breaks the dial.
But We'll give you MT, ND, SD, WY, IA, NB, KS, and Maybe OK. That way you can all go back
to growing crops and digging oil (ND) for your subsistence. Every place else is getting too
mixed for you.
Maybe if you're nice the Hawaiians will let you vacation on their islands occasionally to
get a break from long cold winters.
Though a lame and uninsightful article on the whole, the strategy of and desire for
secession is the healthiest conclusion that the author could have been reached. I would just
hope that when whites within the ethnostate inevitably conflict with the ethnogovernment that
he would also want for them to secede.
What a simple morality play for the banking elites (who own both parties through
"lobbying, i.e. bribery" sanctioned by the highest courts) to divide and conquer the
taxcattle.
You are arguing over who you pay Tribute to. This is a golden opportunity for mass civil
disobedience to overwhelm and bury the decrepit, imperial corporatist oligarchy.
The stone-age aboriginals who previously inhabited what is now America failed to defend
their lands from invasion. Sadly, we've learned nothing from their mistakes.
Ronnie Unz needs to weigh in here Give the little cretin credit for posting this of
course.
Ronnie you are about to get your brown invasion that you so crave good and hard. Of all
the things that the globalist elites want in electing this moron demented POS called Biden is
an open border
Here it comes Ronnie Won't you and your bro Cholo loving Reed be soooo very happy
Amnesty is going to be served up as one of the first acts of Shithead Biden's
administration
Rejoice Ronnie . More poverty crossing the border to cut your grass.. And a bigger mass of
people for the welfare state
Of course you think that maids and dry wall hangers are natural conservatives I beg to
differ Where i live in Virginia they are natural clients of our welfare offices. We are
ground zero for the Welfare Dreamers who come from Central America.
I don't have to gaze into my navel and dream up some statistics about this you insipid
moron I can walk down the street to the Socialist Service office and see it for my own
eyes.
Yes Ronnie White Nationalist failed thanks to shitheads like you . Now asshole enjoy
paying California taxes to support open door poverty
Virginia is we are now on par to have California style taxes to support the brown
wave.
Your Buddy Reed had a good plan for escaping that I believe he used to be a Virginian he
moved to where the cholos are leaving!
As to this article right!! Cucked whites are doing shit. They'll be called racists and
shrivel up like a daisy in a wind storm.
@Priss Factor he Jewish agenda. Why don't we have a Herve Ryssen here in the US? Why
don't we have an Alain Soral, publishing prolifically and SELLING books to the deplorable
French yellow vests? Why don't we have a comedian like Dieudonne, poking fun at the organized
community and its endless wailing about its victimhood? We need more strong voices, willing
to point out the fact that there is NO SUCH THING as "Judeo-Christian values"; the very idea
grew out of a poison, Scofield Reference Bible influenced swamp, a hideous swamp monster
feeding on bleating Christian Zionist sheep, baa baa baaing as their wealth and futures are
extracted by the oligarch Jews.
It seems, based on much video, as well as the geographic centers of this fraud, that
negroes played a disproportionate role in the illegal election activities. Now that does seem
counter intuitive, as negroes are overwhelming honest, law abiding citizens.
I can only imagine that it was some small group of Jews that bribed our colored brethren
to engage in this thoroughly out of character misbehavior that may well lead to violent,
bloody national upheaval.
If only we had employed a larger share of our negro population in the various lucrative
advertisement opportunities, thereby sparing them from a life of soul crushing poverty. We
might have saved the nation, had we been kinder to our minority Black population.
"A White Nationalist is someone who believes that white peoples have a right to their
own homelands." – White Americans forfeited this right the moment they began
bringing African slaves here. Advocacy for white nationalism in America is advocacy for
secession or genocide. If you have no stomach for advocating genocide of non-whites in
America you must advocate for carving out white homeland for white nationalists. This
homeland no long will represent America or be America, so you no longer will be American
white nationalist but white 'bantustan' nationalist. If you lucky the rest of America will
let you have casinos in your bantustan.
The karma of the U.S was always screwed from the day the vile white Euro invaders fucked
with the natives and if there should be statues they should be of the likes of Geronimo and
not white imperial scum.
May the spirits of all the slaughtered native North American Indians be smiling from ear
to ear at the potentially very dangerous division in the middle country of North America.
A very good article that raises a lot of valid points. White Supremacy is the ONLY way,
that's what (((they))) call us, so ride with it – wear their labels with pride. Onwards
and upwards!
"The goal of abolishing the white race is, on its face, so desirable that some may find it
hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed WHITE
SUPREMACISTS .Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and
the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as the white race is
destroyed."
– Noel Ignatiev, Jewish Harvard professor and co-founder of 'Race Traitor'
magazine.
What makes you think White Americans brought blacks to America? America didn't even exist
when black slavery commenced and the bulk of black slaves went to the Spanish colonies, not
the American colonies.
A just reckoning of homelands begins with recognizing their prior rights here first,
A just reckoning also requires a statute of limitations on questions priority and a
recognition of who actually built the country.
Besides, the 'native' tribes were already killing and displacing each other. They were
mutually hostile, not united. Why should the addition of one more tribe to that warring mix
– albeit a tribe whiter and more successful than the rest – make any difference?
Ironically, it takes a 'racist' to claim that it does.
Agree, although Jews have a few advantages that make them much better at it, namely a
couple thousand years experience operating as tiny minorities in others lands and a shameless
hyperethnocentric instinct evidently lacking in white gentiles.
I looked at gab but it didn't seem very user friendly, problem is also everybody needs to
cease using twitter and shift to gab at the same time, critical mass.
And where, amongst these face diapered morons and Covid fearing degenerates, will you find
freedom?
America's problems are far greater than issues of Race, Politics, or Culture. At the core,
the issue is complete Spiritual Collapse, manifested in craven cowardice, cringingly
lickspittle obedience, mindless group think, and resolute belief in imaginary events.
This isn't going to end well for anyone. The spiritual death of America is as permanent as
it is absolute.
This latter course would mean that we all go back to Europe, which the Europeans won't
allow .
You haven't been paying attention, sonny. The Europeans are busy trying to catch up with
America's comparitive advantage by importing masses of similar types.
Has anybody else besides myself noticed how fast Jared Taylor and his #1 prize writer,
Gregory Hood – have cucked and caved in and conceded that the DemonRats won the 2020
Presidential election?
And, how each of these guys have now gone into full concession mode and are trying to
persuade and influence their followers to join them in their cuckery and effeminate
willingness to become submissive?
Also, I was listening to a recent Red Ice podcast where they had a slew of allegedly
pro-white community spokesmen and women on to discuss the fraudulent and clearly obvious
attempts by the Demonic leftists to steal the election and they were pushing a meme that I
found more than a little bit disturbing.
It went something like this: Racially healthy Whites need to respond to this travesty by
'opting out' of the 'system'. This means that Whites need to stop participating; i.e., stop
voting completely.
Alex Linder once said, when discussing the suicidal mindset of Whites who were infected
with Christianity – and who we all have repeatedly heard on various talk radio call-in
shows come on the
radio – after another leftist anti-white agenda victory and say: "Well, I will just
continue to pray and leave things up to God" – Linder dubbed that kind of attitude by
Whites as nothing more than pathetic excuse for them to continue to 'do nothing' to help
themselves or their people. I agree.
This meme that 'Whites need to stop voting' is exactly the same kind of attitude. I am
willing to concede the point that voting is senseless as long as the system continues to
allow fraudulent and illegal chicanery to thrive and go unpunished. But, anyone who actively
promotes the idea that Whites should just completely opt out is pushing advice that is
exactly what our mortal enemies want most. It is a complete surrender to being ruled over by
non-whites and jews who hate our guts and who do not want to encounter any opposition to
their agenda to genocide our race of people.
Yes, the election WAS stolen, the democrats having admitted it themselves after four years
of trying to get rid of president Trump, as they said, "BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE"!! So rational
people are now to believe that they have suddenly become honest players in the 2020 election?
As the saying goes, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT THOUGHT /..Dr. Charles Fhandrich.
@Stonewall Jackson sympathizing with some of your sentiments, Stonewall, but your
mean-spirited discourse (directed towards our host, no less) is a textbook example of why
Comments Sections (and some commentators) get edited–and even banned. Why take this
route? It seems self-defeating.
Your disrespectful attitude undermines your appeal. It also diminishes this site.
Why not aim higher? Why not civility?
Ron Unz might be wrong here and there. But he is not a "moron". Making such claims makes
you look like one.
Ron Unz has given the world a forum where countless and controversial and conflicting
points of view are given oxygen and light. This is invaluable and rare.
This is probably the most profound and auspicious moment in modern American history. I
would like to see Trump and the Republican party seize this moment by creating a parallel
government. Imagine 71 million Americans standing solid and publicly announcing a resounding
"Fuck you!" to the Jewish commies and all their colored cohorts.
'Why should the addition of one more tribe to that warring mix make a difference?'
Because it was their homeland, unlike the Euro invaders of central North America and just
try asking an elderly Palestinian how that feels.
And the different tribes may have been at war occasionally but this can hardly be compared
to the mass slaughter of the Native North American Indians and their Bison(to try and starve
them).
@Ultrafart the Brave Most importantly, the lies attributing black dysfunction to white
racism must stop immediately, and the government has to stop shoving diversity down our
throats continuously.
Allow freedom of association, enforce the laws, stop making excuses for black dysfunction,
and limit if not eliminate further immigration into the West from the Third World.
Perhaps then there can be some hope for us living together with a modicum of peace and
prosperity.
But I agree with you that nothing is accomplished by referring to an entire group of
people in completely disparaging terms.
That being said, black dysfunction has been and continues to be a serious problem that
will not be resolved by blaming it on white racism.
@Frankie P , who are both honored as Prophets in Islam, but instead, Jews spit on hearing
their names and do the same while passing a Christian of any kind or a Christian Church in
Israel. They have no respect for Christians or any other religion.
It is time the Jewish lobbies and the American Government leaders as well as the evangelical
Christian leaders who mislead the poor American young into joining the military and believing
that they are doing something for God and Christianity by fighting Israel's wars were named,
shamed and arrested and tried for treason.
In a perverse sort of way, israel's favorite "war song" is "Onward Christian Soldiers"
There I've said it
Will the redpilled understand that America has done this to many other countries, with
many more dead, or will their new consciousness be limited to this particular event? Because
the redpilled ones were always enthusiastic about new military adventures.
If the warriors came unarmed, but wound up killing people instead, I'd wonder what took
place in the interval. Something tells me we're only hearing one side and only a small part
of the story.
As for avoiding a fight they couldn't win, what advantage would they have obtained if they
just bent over and took it in the cheeks without a fight?
Maybe the reason "we" call them savages is called projection.
BTW, here's an example of what failing to fight will get ya,
An elephant that had some tests performed on it was going to be culled. However, in the
end, they decided to release it back into the wild (within the reserve).
This elephant took it into it's head that it was an African buffalo!
It hung out with the buffalo herd, and started to emulate the buffaloes behavior.
Initially, of course, the buffaloes were a tad leery of their new, very large friend –
but eventually got used to him.
And the elephant provided plenty of muscle when it came to lions stalking the herd.
It seems like you got the Pocahontas version of history.
All I can say is that if some guys on horses abducted my daughter and then slowly tortured
and scalpted her to death, you can be sure I wouldn't hesitate to genocide each and every one
of those savages down to the last one. But let's not have facts interrupt your narcissistic
moral masturbating. Just don't come here, coz in the end we'll end up laughing at you.
@Majority of One watermelon, they pass around the gin and juice and sit around smoking
the chronic and endo. Guns and ammunition are then passed around and they all discuss that
nights or the next days activities.
The bulk of the Negroes emerged from the African bush, sold by their own and competing
tribes and have colonized all 52 states wherever there is the possibility of free living and
handouts. Not many of them migrate to rural areas where country living and hard work would be
considered racist and discriminatory.
We have to thank our black Bros and Sistas. Without their motto "there can be no
construction without destruction" the USA would never be what it is today.
Ahhh This white man has put in a convincing case for himself and people like him and he
has my total support. He and his people can have Wyoming and half of South Dakota, only half.
Want some cows and mules? Take them. Take some white women also if they agree to go. And you
must take Trump with you, he's white like you. Good luck.
White liberals cry crocodile tears when the jewsmedia reminds them how White settlers
stole land formerly inhabited by American Indians. But, the fact is, every people alive in
the world today stole the land they now live on from a weaker people. It's the history of
mankind. Further, every Indian tribe in America at the time of Columbus had stolen their land
from another tribe, and they continued warring and land stealing until the White man put a
stop to it.
This obsession with restitution and atonement, is replacing religion. Only a race too long
comfortable would consider giving away to the defeated all they have accomplished and hard
fought for.
Churchills jewish henchman, fake aristocrat and architect of the Dresden and associated
slaughters frederick linderman mused that the defining event of the 20th century would be
'the abdication of the white man'.
The seeds of annihilation were sown in the late 19th century, now comes the reaping, aided
ably by the mendacity, sloth and cowardice of our own peoples and leaders.
President Kushner or President Emhoff that is the question. Same old – Jewish
"White" Supremacy. The "white" supremacy game of our "free" Zion press forgets to say which
"whites" are supreme. Our "free" Zion press is right that there is a "white" group that is
supreme but do not go into details which one. Unz site is one of the few sites that notices
this "white" group that is supreme in the US and in the entire west.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, will leave his job as a
partner with a high-profile law firm to focus on his role in the new Biden
administration.
A campaign spokeswoman said Tuesday that Emhoff will sever ties with DLA Piper by
Inauguration Day. Emhoff took a leave of absence from the firm in August, when Harris was
named Joe Biden's running mate. Biden and Harris will be inaugurated Jan. 20.
Emhoff is working with the transition team to determine the issues he will take on as
the vice presidential spouse. He is the first man to hold that role, as Harris is the
nation's first female vice president.
thanks mr Costelo for showing your thought crystal clear.
I a south american, am not entirely a contradictor to your views. And even share a few of
them.
If you re a white US nationalist I am a Brazilian, no matter-what-color, nationalist.
A nationalist must necessarily abide by the Westphalia Peace and be a faithful son of the
1815 Wien Conference.
The first corolarium of a nationalist like you is , of course, abhorr and abolish globalism.
This concedes a few exceptions (such as worlwide communications) since they are already in
place and cannot be sensibly reverted.
NOTE 1:I do want to wipe out globalism. (though not for every small nation nation of the
world, which would turn not applicable and counterproductive) away from my country for the
next decades at least.
The second corolarium is that any self conscious country should cling and fiercely defend a
strong list of protectionist laws. And entirely renegotiate the rusty, hegemonic leaning WTO
rules. Not to quit it but to found a new WTO. This protection is what the US did all the the
19th century long, from top to bottom.
The third one that springs out as a consequence is that the STATE presence and adhesion to
state owned companies in key sectors is vital to any nationalism.
Now the big criterium to enlight and tell things apart is: the less develoloped a country is
the more
of state ownership and reliance it will requires.
So until my home country does reach a 40.000 dollar/year PER CAPITA income, with an
acceptable
income distribution, I will be a feroucious nationalist just like Costello.
It is taken for granted that small places like Singagore, Uruguay, Andorra, Bosnia or
seychelles can AT WILL make an option to globalize, to intenationalize, to sell themselves
out to neighbor or to the best bidder.
No half words, no subtle or figurative language. And nobody must keep a secret as to what to
do when a big , rich, established country the destroy this legitimate thir party Nationalism,
annex or dominate the so described national entity.
Revolution, no less.
@Random Anonymous ti" future, they needed to introduce the intermediate step of civic
nationalism, whereby anyone could be an American as long as they were willing to assimilate
into the dominant culture. Hence, Israel Zangwill's The Melting-Pot .
Thus, civic-nationalism represented the proverbial camel poking its nose through the tent
before entering it completely. Once Westerners became acclimated to having non-Westerners
living among themselves, the assimilationist approach slowly began to be transformed into the
multicultural framework, one in which the overarching objective of dismantling "white
supremacy" was slowly unfurled. This is where we find ourselves today.
Like sensible people, I think they understand that America is never going to be another
Orania. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orania,_Northern_Cape
It's possible to get a deeper appreciation of the roots of America's social crisis America by
reading Thomas Sowell who has uniquely, I think, shown that patronizing guilt-ridden whites
(those that were) over the decades bear a particular responsibility.
Well, if you can't see racism in this guy words I'm convincente that you're already a
totally blind racist.
There is NO white land in this continent, son. If you are that German, english, Nordic
white nationalist then you can surely Go back there to European origins and claim your
ancestors' lands. But one thing you can never claim is the right over stolen territory,
neither to define how long one have to occupy robbed land until be able to recognize others
as a "native white"
or INVADERS.
EVERY SANE HUMAN KNOWS WHAT IS BEHIND THIS FACADE OF ARGUMENT.
NO WAY ANY REAL NATIVE CAN CLAIM TO BE WHITE, LET ALONE CALL AFRICAN DESCENDENTS ("OUR
BLACKS" ) PARASITES AND THIA SPEAKS VOLUMES ABOUT THE SICK PREMISES THIS COLONIALIST
SUPREMACIST IS DEFECATING FROM HIS MOUTH.
Friday rush hour. Euston station [in London]. Who's here? Who isn't. A kaleidoscope of
skin colours. The world in one terminus. Barbara Roche can see it over the rim of her cup of
Americano coffee. "I love the diversity of London," she tells me. "I just feel
comfortable."
White Americans brought them here? All White Americans? Was a black or two parceled out to
each White American? Blacks were brought here before America was a nation. And not by White
Americans.
A huge number of White Americans came to America after White Americans abolished slavery.
Most black slaves weren't even brought to White America but spanish america. White Americans
must pay as a group right?
Congrats on being the lowest IQ writer to ever be published on this site. Glad to see Ron
Unz is doing his part to increase representation of the imbecile community.
"Nation" is a white concept. De-colonialize your brain, bigot! To the redskins, land
belonged to those who could take it, and Europeans honored that tradition in grand style.
Do you really believe the BS you just spewed? "So, things began to slide when welfare became
generous and English wasn't required, etc. All of that has been to the detriment of the black
population and the cause of many problems in that population." Just another excuse for blacks.
Blacks are parasitic criminals, they are going to complain welfare or not. Cut off welfare to
blacks then, they never deserved it anyway. The most undeserved race in the world.
This obsession with Tucker Carlson is as ridiculous as the obsession with Jordan Peterson.
Neither give two shits about anything white nationalist. Tucker was born into this life with a
jewish silver spoon in his mouth. The guy is worth $20+ million. The fact he hasnt left Foxnews
immediately after the networks recent debacle with election reporting shows where his loyalty
lies, like most jews (even though he's adopted) its with $$$$
Further, every Indian tribe in America at the time of Columbus had stolen their land from
another tribe, and they continued warring and land stealing until the White man put a stop to
it.
Of course they put a stop to it. Because they wanted a monopoly on all that. Same reason the
White Euro Christians put a stop to Germany's "lebensraum" ideas. The examples are nearly
endless.
We hyoominz are wunnerful, no? And religions and politicians are here to solve it all.
Uh -huh!
Just came across this interesting video of Enoch Powell debating Jonathan Miller on issues
around UK immigration. They both appeared on the Dick Cavett Show, which aired back in 1971
Not sure if the honourable Enoch Powell had known this trivia about Jonathan, but if he had
he should've put the following query to him:
"You seem to be an ardent proponent of promoting mass immigration into Britain. Are you just
as ardent a proponent of promoting mass immigration into Eretz Israel?"
If Jonathan had been injected with a truth serum, he would have likely responded:
"Don't be silly. Why would HaShem's chosen people wish to mix with the goyim of the world?
Sheesh, what a schmuck!"
While it is true that people of the same culture, race and religion live in more harmony in
their marriages, and probably in their society, there is no way to achieve that objective in
today's world of mass communication and mass transportation. Impossible. To even think about
something like that is a recipe for nothing better than frustration and despair. The Church
recommended that people of the different cultures and races and religions should not marry
because of the risk that it would interfere with the harmony in their marriage as they face
life's other trials. It's solution when the Christians came to the Americas was for them to
convert the nations and it's objective was to promote better like-mindedness and better harmony
that could sustain them as they lived together in the Americas.
This is what the globalists believe they can achieve without Christianity. Well, they can't,
because without Christianity, there is only self-interest, the opposite of Christianity, and
that is what they are affirmatively teaching at the moment, for self-interest is what they need
to promote disunity, for that provides the means for better control of society.
In my opinion, you had better find another way. Maybe you would be better off correcting the
vast majority of hispanics for believing they are something other than Caucasian.
Indians slaughtered each other on the regular, they enslaved each other on the regular, they
were not a peaceful people and quite savage. Indian tribes would often join up with the White
man to fight other Indian tribes.
Hey, are you a member of the same tribe that Lizzy Warren is from or are you a member of the
(((tribe.))) Come on, now, you really don't give two shits about Native Americans, you just
hate Whitey, don't you? Anyone can search my rather lengthy comment history and they will find
they I have a few posts claiming the American Indian is the ONLY nonwhite people who Whitey
owes a damn thing to, not a popular opinion, but it is mine and I will own it.
I have an excellent idea! Go to the south and find some white man, preferably someone who
hunts, and tell him he has to move because he's on "stolen land."
@Tucker aged what got us here in the first place? So certainly, completely disengaging is
what will further accelerate our demise. You have to wonder, maybe these organizations are part
of the gay op to further disenfranchise whites even faster?
This display of white weakness needs to end. If you believe in your right to exist and for
the sake of your children, never let them gain any more power, ever. If that means voting for
someone that also supports Israel, then so what? If you as a WN, ever think there have been
more 'pure and honest' politicians in the past, or are waiting for your perfect WN savior to
support in the future, then you are just stupid, sorry.
@christine drafting place – but not exclusive. I spent over 3 decades with Athabaskan
and eskimos – Inuit, Yupik, and a few Aleuts – since the Aleuts were the last
genocided tribe – during WW II when they moved all of them to the mainland – in
order own all their land – after the War. In the end, this is all planned by the Owners
– Illuminati- Deep State – Zionists etc. It doesn't matter if they genocide the
Nates – the whites, blacks, Browns – until all the tribes unite and take out the
Cancer – the Plan will continue. PS the Russians , when they owned Alaska – never
genocided the Native population – no matter what the media or stupid SE Nates –
say. I homesteaded in Alaska .
According to Wikipedia, Newsmax is co-owned by Christopher Ruddy and Richard Mellon
Scaife(heir to the Mellon fortune in Pittsburg). Ruddy is the son of a police officer in NYC
and a confidant of Trump. Per Wiki he graduated from Hebrew University of Jerusalem for
undergrad, but his first name suggests he's not Jewish. Is he? He describes himself as a
"libertarian conservative" and Reaganite.
October 28, 2020 Report: Biden Would Kill Upwards Of 159K Jobs In Mich.
According to a recent study, Michigan supports around 159,000 jobs in the oil and gas
industry, all of which would be eliminated under Biden's plan to achieve zero emissions by
2035.
The "redpilled" fully understand that America's foreign wars are a load of BS that profit
the military industrial complex and certain lobbying groups – but not the USA itself.
To you, a Jew is an American nationalist because he is not a recent arrival, unlike, say,
Ilhan Omar. I got your number you're not a nationalist but a paid up harlot masquerading,
sadly, as a White nationalist.
"Like what North America, Australia, Argentina predominantly was before mass non -White
migration"
Argentina? No mass non-White migration here, to speak of. This country since the white
arrival has always been a mestizo society.The same is true of much of Central and more
so South America. During this century in Argentina,there has been a substantial migration of
Bolovins, Peruvians and Paraguyans thanks to the Kirchners (our Clintons) " Patria
Grande " program that allowed them in, but it represents nothing on the scale of what has
been done elsewhere to the north. Here the issue is less a color issue than a class issue.
But We'll give you MT, ND, SD, WY, IA, NB, KS, and Maybe OK.
You'll need to get Canada's permission before you give away New Brunswick.
I imagine the "honesty belt" would quickly become a desirable place to live compared to
everywhere else, and the good solid folks in Honestan would again allow their resident shlomos
to open the floodgates.
In order to be taken seriously you need some kind of united front. Take a look at even small
minority groups such as the LGBTQ community, who maybe accounts for 3% of the US population,
but has grown into a unified political force.
There also needs to be a consequence if your group is wronged. We have daily mainstream
television shows that do nothing but make fun of White people and their traditions. The Muslims
behead anyone who dares draw a stick figure of Muhammad, let alone entire programming dedicated
to the denigration of their culture.
In order to defeat a bully, you need to punch them in the mouth. Right now many people are
hopefully waking up to the fact that there is indeed a bully, then identifying exactly who that
is, and finally taking some sort of action against the bully.
@Priss Factor anded by their "G_d" to Rule the World, tikkun olam , " (b)light
unto the nations " and 20 other descriptors for the megalomaniac tyrant known as the Jew,
who lusts to control blacks, whites and everyone else in slavery to itself.
I do agree with the author that we White Nationalists need to lose our fear of defending our
racial identity, but da' blacks ain't da' problem. The Jewish race / ideology that lusts to
destroy us ALL – IS the problem.
Talking about black / white racial tensions as if they were the source of our problems is
like worrying about dandruff on a cancer patient. So PLEASE, let's get to the point, shall
we?
Increased white nationalism leads to increased anti-white-nationalism. Genociding indigenes
makes white supremacists look evil. Trumpism leads to BLMism and Antifa. White wars of
aggression lead to brown refugees going to Europe. God will turn Europe and North America
black, red and yellow if He wants to, and He can do it by taking advantage of white people's
pride and letting them do stupid "white supremacist" things that make them look bad.
The pilpul by Miller is truly astonishing, comparing old British people to
immigrants!
People like Miller serve the purpose of trying to rationalise the decisions of the other
members of his Tribe, usually by gaslighting people into thinking they are crazy and nothing
out of the normal is happening. Hence you see these crazy metaphors and analogies drawn by the
likes of Miller in that clip.
"As many on our side have said, we will make no real and substantial progress until we are
willing to openly stand up for ourselves -- in person, in broad daylight, and without sock
puppets and noms de plume like "Jef Costello." Is that day imminent? I believe that it is."
In that case, let's have your real name practice what you preach!
"the bulk of black slaves went to the Spanish colonies, not the American colonies"
Could you please cite supporting evidence for this assertion? I think (but am unsure) it is
incorrect. One thingof which I am certain, however,is that the Spaniards abolished slavery far
earlier than the white Americans. Another is that Spaniards are also "white".
White males are the only group Trump did not make gains with in 2020.
Is that true? How does anybody know that? Exit polls?
After all these wildly inaccurate polls for four years, are we suddenly to believe polls
now?
Furthermore, consider this: The one group you can steal votes from if you're the Democrats
are the white males. This is where you would do it. You can't steal any from the column of
black voters -- since they vote 90% for you already there simply aren't enough to steal. You
steal them from the white males, it's a beautiful double-whammy. One, you get your stolen
victory; two, you demoralize the strongest group arrayed against you.
"In my experience, the only tiny minority of Muslim people who have caused friction are
invariably of Arab origin, and more specifically from Saudi Arabia – an inherently tribal
& chauvinistic culture (and a key American ally in the Middle East – just
sayin')."
Unfortunately, Arabs, in particular Saudis, are a horrible disease that needs to be removed
by all means, including thermo nuclear radiation therapy!
What I don't get, from the likes of sweethearts like Pedro
how does the fact that the Sioux were riding their horses across Colorado before we got
here, make it mean that Mexican half-Aztec / half Spaniards have a right to come and steal it
from *us* ?
If we stole it from the Sioux as he says, the presence of his lardbutt here means he is
accepting stolen goods, which means his sin is as big as -- or bigger than -- ours.
I keep telling blacks about jews and slavery in JUSA – they pretend they don't believe
what I am saying even though I provide evidence (from this website).
I guess they are more opportunistic than I thought and less brave, hoping their jewish masters
will somehow help them get more money from white people, so they don't want to bite the hand
they expect will feed them
To whom the land belongs?
At one time in world history all land did belong to dinosaurs.
So how to do justice about ownership of the land?
Human beings should kill each other until no human being left, and than the land will belong to
its rightful owners again, the animals.
Native Americans were the ones who had this right idea.
They were killing each other and eating each other.
..
Did somebody ask Dahmer if human flesh taste better than chicken?
Someone for the love of God please start an American Nationalist conference and invite all
people who have the tiniest shred of dignity left in this chemical plagued population.
The goal of the conference: to discuss starting a political party that will be a valid third
party option. Agendas to be fleshed out: donor registration, billboard campaigns, multi-state
speeches targeting smaller towns that have been boarded up, setting up a volunteer network of
security operatives to forcibly secure election integrity, etc.
This stuff isn't rocket science and I don't understand why so many people who have money and
claim to be for WHITE NATIONALISM have not pushed their people in this direction. BUT IF YOU
DONT HAVE MONEY and are interested in this let me share with you a secret to start it. Get 10
under-writers who will lend $5,000 for a total of $50k. $50,000 should be enough to get the
ball rolling. I would be willing to help $. If you sell enough tickets you can pay the lenders
back. Secure a venue and promote tickets to the conference across multiple platforms.
Just an idea for saving our people in this midnight hour.
"I suggest adjusting the author's arguments to recognise the actual fundamental issue in
play, which is not skin colour or race or language, but CULTURE"
I call BS. You are one of those people who believe that NURTURE is everything and NATURE
accounts for nothing. A very foolish mindset. A deluded mindset. Do some research and come back
after you have learned something from the real world and not from your Marxist professors.
It's not Jews (technically JewISH). It is the multitudes of all races around the world, who
have ignored the word of God, and chosen the JewISH (and Catholic, at the top) agenda, as the
preferred way of life.
This frank article confirms pretty much what I posted in DaLimbraw Library over a year ago
– https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2019/08/white-supremacy-is-it-time-to-face.html?m=0
– a summary of articles on Western Civilization with links provided. Requires some
serious reading!
History shows that WC was built on Christianity, Graeco-Roman law traditions and primarily in
Europe – meaning the White race. That's just fact!
White supremacy – if it ever returns – might just save our Western
Civilization!
I had an excellent exchange with a retarded mexican a while back, as the stupid pos was
blabbing that whitey "stole this land from the indigenous people," (HIS people -- -mexican
cretins.)
I said, "Oh really? Hmmm ..what tribe are you from?"
Empty stare.
"Are you Apache? Comanche? Sioux? The El Chapo tribe?"
@Ultrafart the Brave nd is to what they were mislead to believe I see it here with my
African friends, Swiss, other Europeans etc everyone I know has experienced this
So this kind of betrayal and feeling of being tricked also contributes to whether they
assimilate (and what there really is to assimilate into when the new host country has no
culture whatsoever to offer to anyone, including the natives – apart from shopping and
watching TV).
Plus add to this the feeling that say the 800 000 refugees imported last year understand that
Canadistan actually played a role in destroying their countries and their desire to assimilate
or to respect the new country diminishes even further.
"Ron Unz has given the world a forum where countless and controversial and conflicting
points of view are given oxygen and light. This is invaluable and rare."
@Majority of One
How an Amish Gentleman (he is really one) handles a racism issue, how he handles a triggered
lefty, chip on the shoulder, black "British" spoilt snobby urban London girl Sienna on some
bullshit "racist" incident. How wise the Amish are compared the "English" (non Amish White
American folk) around them!!!
One would be surprised (or not so surprised if you do not fall for typical Jew media/ history
stereotypes) that the most snobby arrogant person among the six British youth who went and
lived among the Amish in the USA in this British TV series was the black girl Sienna whose
parents are from Africa.
Check out the comment section, everybody hates Sienna.
So there are approximately 330 million people in America, and the latest vote count shows
that 150 million or thereabouts voted in this election? NO WAY IN HELL. To be honest I don't
think Trump received over 70 million LEGITIMATE VOTES much less Biden. I think they have Biden
at 75 or 77 million right now, can't remember which. LMAO. NO WAY IN HELL JOE BIDEN HAS
RECEIVED 75-77 LEGITIMATE VOTES.
Think about it people. Think of the people too young to vote, the people incarcerated, the
people who don't ever vote, the people so old that they just don't give a damn like the ones in
nursing homes, etc. Just the other day, I was talking to the Orkin man who sprayed my house,
and he stated he didn't even vote. Well, given I was flying a Trump flag maybe the guy was
being diplomatic or lying but who knows? I think another LIE in this STOLEN election is the
total vote count. I guess the people who stole the vote for Biden and manufactured that Biden
accumulated close to 80 million votes had to even up Trump's votes to make this fairy tale seem
somewhat believable.
First of all I don't identify as White nationalist. When I lived in a liberal city I
couldn't stand being around White people. I would much rather live in Mexico than around
liberal Whites. Urban Whites especially can be really annoying regardless of politics. They
want to be morally right and feel intellectually superior without having to do any work or give
any explanation as to why. They want to feel cosmopolitan and view any dissention as a thorn in
the side to their unexplained superiority.
Will White people be red pilled by this election? Nope.
We have the internet and most White people can't seem to be bothered with spending a couple
nights reading about how both Con Inc and liberals lie about race. Intellectual laziness
abounds.
Most of those Trump voting Republicans really believe that we can turn every Black family
into the Huxtables with the right level of minimal government/low taxes/etc. They really
believe this. It's shocking.
There is no silver lining with this election. It's a disaster.
Too many White people choose to live in a false reality where race doesn't exist. Our best
hope is that White egalitarian leftists breed out themselves off by having few or no children.
Then we'll probably have to align with Hispanics to end the welfare system. Don't get mad at me
for pointing that out. Go take it up with the moron conservatives still pushing Alisa Rosenbaum
fantasy over facts.
Two things can happen: that Trump wins (which would be something of justice), and that the
whites go looking for their places in the United States.
In fact, this is what has already happened in California for years: whites are leaving that
state.
God forbid! But IF Beijing Biden slithers his way into the WH the 1619 Project will be the
theme of the US Govt. Which, of course, means that we don't belong here..Well, if we don't
belong here then we can only go back to Europe. Who cares if the anti-white EU countries don't
want us? They've spent the last several years taking in destructive, horny, hostile
opportunistic welfare shopping scum if there's room for them there's room for us. Unless they
want us to stay here and be genocided like the S. Africans.
Concluding paragraphs to Chuck Baldwin's latest column, Almost No One Else Will Say It,
So I Must :
That's why Benjamin Netanyahu already congratulated Joe Biden on an election victory --
even before the election was firmly decided. He is keenly aware of the exponential rise in
Zionist power and influence that accompanies the Harris family rise to the White House.
Amazingly, many evangelicals continue to stupidly believe that Netanyahu (and Zionism
itself) is a friend of the United States and a friend of Christianity. What dupes!
In a real sense, the rise of the Marxist attack against America, personified in Kamala
Harris, can be, at least partially, attributed to the misguided support for Zionism among our
evangelical churches.
As I said, almost no one else will say it, so I must.
To bolster your argument against the Left, instead of identifying first as a "White
Nationalist" you should say, simply, that you are an Ethnic Nationalist. That makes your
argument harder to refute and highlights the logical inconsistency of the Left's argument,
which, at its core, is really just anti-White.
As I point out to people, I'm a Tibetan Nationalist and an Anglo-American Nationalist; a
Black Nationalist but also a White Nationalist. All ethnic groups are entitled to their
sovereignty, lands and control of their borders. Humans are tribal and need common cultural
ties to maintain social capital and build a functioning society. This should be common sense,
but somehow it's instead become taboo.
In other words, Trump made the same arguments Republicans have been making for 50 years.
Coincidentally, he also pursued the same policies Republicans have been pursuing for 50
years.
Longer viewer:
Folks are acting like elections have not been stolen in the past. Get real.
Folks are acting like our government has not been completely corporate-owned since Reagan. Get
real.
Folks are acting like the Talmudic syndicate has played no role whatsoever in this scam. Get
real.
Someone for the love of God please start an American Nationalist conference The goal of
the conference: to discuss starting a political party that will be a valid third party
option.
National Justice Party Statement on the 2020 Presidential Election
Everyone hates White people and yet everyone wants to move to White countries.
Leftists tell us this is because Whites are bad and have colluded against everyone. That is
the reason behind their success.
So build America in Africa without them? Why is this not the plan? Would it not prove that
egalitarians were correct all along? Funny how the plan of the leftist to move the third world
to White countries. There seems to be zero dissention along this line. All leftists agree by
their actions that assimilating White countries for their ideals is more viable than building a
new America without Whites.
Trump is taking on Big Ag. He's taking on the military as best he can; he hasn't started any
new wars.
Trump is taking on the U.S. multinational corporations who took the jobs overseas
(tariffs).
Trump is taking on the fraud in the election system. DNC's top election guru just resigned
(yeah, I bet he did!) Trump is exposing the algorithms in the Dominion Voting System.
Trump got 72 million votes. He owns the Republican Party now! They have been fighting him up
until this point, but they are now realizing that they are nothing without Trump.
If Trump were to start a third party, look out! How's that for leading?
The very first white man who tied to live with the Stone Age Siberian Savages was Etienne
Brule. He was part of Cartier's exploration team in the early 1600's.
When Cartier returned and inquired about Etienne he was informed that the Siberian savages
murdered, scalped and ATE him.
May the spirits of Siberian Savages be suffering the endless tortures they would visit on
their victims.
What makes you think the Chinese or Japanese would have left the Americas alone?
This is some egalitarian fantasy of the Americas remaining scarcely populated with warring
tribes. As if the rest of the world would have left it as a nature preserve.
It was never a country and in fact the tribes would align with warring European countries
against other tribes. That of course probably wasn't mentioned in your White guilt history
class. Numerous tribes used Europeans and their tools as a means of enacting revenge against
their traditional enemies. Read about the Blackfoot for a politically incorrect reality
check.
I like to think that the Indians were just exacting pure revenge against the gun toting euro
invaders and your wrong i am of irish white heritage and don't make me laugh about torture and
despicable human acts as i have seen those pictures of massive piles of bison that were gunned
down by invading euro scum that were attempting to starve the natives.
It doesn't matter who the president is, you know that Hillary Clinton didn't lose and Trump
didn't win, but here's the president, Obama didn't want to do exactly what you're doing now,
and he didn't want to launch an investigation. You are directly pushing America into a civil
war, by a "fraud of choice" that has no evidence. Indeed, you are pushing everyone into the
catastrophe of the Civil War. You know very well that everything Trump claimed was a lie, and
half the world was accused of lies, nowhere is evidence and the UN laughs at him, but you claim
that now Trump claims the truth once in his life, again without a dictatorship.
If Trump loses, the consequences would be dire.
We are interested in Trump winning.
On the other hand, the strength of the whites was their Christian and authentic religion. Not
their race. In the Middle Ages it was the Church that defended Europe from the Muslim
invasion.
Nowadays an infiltrator is seated in Pedro's See, Bergoglio does not think like a Catholic.
Only with that faith can our culture and our lives be saved.
Genocide not. The fake "indigenous people" / little dummies are everywhere and have a
complete free ride with plenty of taxpayers cash ("rent") to stay loaded on, to avoid any
personal responsibility.
And clearly, American Indians were "xenophobic" / "racist" in resisting European migrants.
recommended:
It seems rather odd and highly suspicious that so called NATIONALISTS CONSERVATIVES (whites)
propose cowardice in the face of aggression they all claim to be so outraged so contrived BUT
all of them propose INACTION now this is the main reason YOU/WE are LOSING America we bowed our
heads, weeping sorrowful and thats all The DEMS implemented 4yrs of on the ground campaign of
terror they were called BLMANTIFA a permanent campaign of terror And NOW the CONSERVATIVE
NATIONALISTS suggests stupidity separation, repatriation, secession ALL DUMB STUPID RANTS
UTOPIAS .WE MUST STAND OUR GROUND NOW NOW History, legality, morality, is on OUR SIDE and
people know it .THE MAIN THRUS SHOULD BE MUST BE MASSIVE RED STATES REVOLT 1776mII REDUX .By
the time dictator Biden finish his first year HE would had used his excutive powers, and in
coalition with BLUE/RINOS enacted a NEW CONSTITUTION, REDO THE ELECTORAL FRAMEWORKS so that NO
RED Nationalist will ever be elected again,,,never,,,so called ANTI TRUMP LEGISLATIONS which
really means ANTIWHITE laws an AMERICAN JIM CROW LAWS IN REVERSE dont you see the perils to
come its not about utopias, there is no tomorrow..unless WE FIGHT NOW mass revolts
peacefully???? 1776 II MILITIAS..
the Japanese too cannot live and do well in live in multiracial Ottoman-Byzantine like
societies.
Isn't there a large Japanese diaspora doing well in Brazil and Peru?
The Chinese too will be rejected by the darkie masses in the future,
I have a hard time seeing the Chinese falling for that shuck and jive unless they become a
completely Christian society, all the way to the top of the pyramid.
right now, less than a week after polls closed And, as the Biden camp continues to
vote
I don't know whether or not red-pilling Trump's fans will help, but it should already be
obvious to those with eyes open that too many people believe whatever they see and hear on TV.
It's entirely possible that most of the Trump supporters won't be red-pilled at all.
Even Americans who don't particularly like or trust Trump may be disgusted enough with the
blatant media push to declare Biden the winner, that they decide not to allow it any more. That
may be enough to get some of them to decide that waiting for government to "do something" is a
waste of time.
If the rioters decide to riot in celebration of Biden's win, or in outrage over his win
being revealed as fraud and rejected, some number of Americans could just decide to shut the
rioters down themselves. It wouldn't be that hard for armed Americans who know how to fight,
and there are hundreds of thousands of combat vets with recent experience who just might go
ahead and do it.
One thing's for sure, they won't be giving any warning on social media before they hit
back.
@christine and despicable human acts as i have seen those pictures of massive piles of
bison
They tortured the bison! The horror!
I guess you have never heard about Buffalo Jumps, then?
You may claim to be white, but it's clear you have had your empty head filled by Anti-White
delusional lies. The Siberians were so savage that during the French Indian wars the French
troops finally refused to fight alongside their Indian allies, because they were savage to the
point that the French viewed them as being similar to the THE XENOMORPHS from the movie
Aliens.
excellent. In The last 20 years they have changed deeply. Because only 17 years ago they
were all gung ho about destroying Iraq. Perhaps a bit of depleted uranium shot into Peoria will
cement their views.
@Bill lifetime. The only politicians who really gave a damn about Whites in my lifetime
were Dixiecrats, and probably most of them were good ole boy crooks who just talked a good game
but CAVED eventually. Hell, Strom Thurmond fathered a mixed race daughter IF I am not mistaken.
Tell me what did all the Presidents from JFK to Obama do to make this nation better? And
before you give the standard JFK horseshit, JFK was all for the multiracial plan for America,
and he sure supported integration of schools down South. Okay, let me hear what President in
the last century REALLY LOOKED OUT FOR WHITE INTERESTS OVER JEWISH OR NONWHITE INTERESTS. I got
time and I am all ears.
The point is whites did nothing that any one of those tribes wouldn't have done to all the
others if they had had the power to do it. (If anything, whites treated them much better than
they treated each other.) We might look at that from the vantage point of 21st century morality
and call it awful – just as we might with the Mongol or Islamo-Arab conquests – but
it would remain 'ancient history,' not something to constantly dredge up in order to instill
racial guilt and gain political advantage.
We'll see about the "red pilled" part, but even liberals out here, even ones who voted
Biden, are NOT convinced Biden-Harris won legitimately. And who knows? Maybe the criminal
psycho elites realized perhaps awakening a couple 'o hundred million gun owners was a but
premature and will "allow" Trump to retake the White House I mean, Biden's doing what Biden was
gonna do .make the whole damned thing look illegit. And NOBODY out here has anything but
distrust when it comes to Harris one liberal from Commie-fornia who lived there knows Harris is
evil.
Really it all come down to these–will we let them take our guns, will we let them
force vaccines on us, and will we let them burn this nation to the ground while forcing all
rural folks into stack 'n packs, Agenda 2030 style?
@utu o if there was ever a serious prospect it might happen, they would probably want to
separate as well. And why not? Ultimately, we're all better off living around people more like
ourselves than less like ourselves. (Duh)
And why would anyone be required to call himself a 'bantustan nationalist'? When
Mexicans arrive in America they don't suddenly cease to call themselves Mexican, so why should
Americans stop calling themselves American simply because of an altered political geography?
For an intelligent man, it's astonishing how quickly you transform into a blithering idiot the
moment you begin discussing issues that emotionally disturb you.
Good suggestion. Perhaps some can think of others. Either way, it's good because it's more
cultural than political, at least it sounds that way, and because it puts the focus exactly
where it belongs, on our basic freedoms.
One thing's for certain. Putting ideology and politics before race and culture, ie; Right =
White (and visa versa) will be like shooting yourself in the foot before running a marathon in
difficult terrain. In other words, it'd be a piece of unforgivable stupidity. And irreversible
as well. Since, if this is flubbed, a second chance will not come again.
I guess for some white yanks the truth about the birth of their country is a little too
close to the bone for their liking and a bit too raw and painful but the truth is the truth and
shame on all the euro invaders of all of the Americas in the past.
Try coming out to rural remote far west Texas .Austin isn't all of Texas. And I said rural,
not El Paso!
And, oh yeah, Midland-Odessa, Lubbock, Amarillo that is, all of Texas except El Paso westward
of the San Antonio-Austin lib-tard areas (including artsy-fartsy Marfa they may like Biden but
the don't like Harris if you know what I mean).
JSI is basically a criminal organization that wants power. Everything they say and do flows
from this. They are The People Of The Lie . The point is, you might be able to obtain
control of a culture or civilization through lies. But you can't run it that way.
And now we're back to the point you raise in your comment and what it directs our attention
to. It directs our attention to what we're witnessing, to what anyone can see as soon as they
stop talking about how powerful they are and how screwed everyone else is. Enough! No. What
we're witnessing is nothing less than The Pyrrhic Victory Of Jewish Supremacy Inc .
@christine I think your heart is in the right place, I and I respect that, but instead of
trying to right things that are ancient history how about focusing on what IS HAPPENING TO YOUR
PEOPLE RIGHT NOW. Whites are being slaughtered in South Africa. Little children being held
hostage while they watch their mother raped right in front of their eyes, entire families of
Whites being butchered by racist Black thugs. I am all for you pointing out how Whites were
guilty of mistreating the Native American, but I would also ask you to point that passion to
something that is going on RIGHT NOW, something that didn't happen long ago and can't be
changed. YOUR OWN PEOPLE are suffering, does that not bother you?
What a bad joke the dissident right wignat faction turned out to be.
Richard Spencer and the bugger accounts aligned with his views are doing nothing but
spamming straight-up system propaganda, a lot of which has migrated onto these pages.
The author Jonathan Van Maren seems to think the American electorate has realigned itself
with social conservatism + economic populism on the GOP side, and progressivism, elitism and
Big tech on DNC side. Based on this, he calls for the GOP to use social conservatism
specifically anti-abortion, anti-assisted suicide, pro medicare, pro social security to appeal
to a coalition of working class America including blacks and Latinos.
The main reason people like me voted for Trump is because of immigration and
non-interventionism which he promised on his campaign trail in 2016. We want to see America
end the endless wars and the endless immigration . I could care less about abortion,
assisted suicide, medicare or social security.
Once again, the social conservatives missed the boat and are now calling for more coalition
with Latinos, which probably means support for more immigration as George W. did, because
Latinos make good conservatives, right? When will these idiots wake up?! Have they been reading
Ron Unz's misleading articles on Hispanic crime? Ann Coulter was so right. The Republican party
is the stupid party, and it's because it's run by tone deaf "conservatives" that run webzines
like TAC and National Review.
Just read at The Duran: "Obama lackey John Pilger resigns from DOJ election crimes job."
Maybe Mr. Pilger knows something too? Maybe he resigned before being fired? Maybe those
Dominion Voting machines have been compromised using algorithms?
This is heating up. I actually believe Trump will win.
@Tucker y the Jews? Has it worked for European man, or, with its strictures to turn the
other cheek, has it made him a second class citizen? That was my thoughts when I saw so many
disgusting, pathetic whites bowing down and kissing the boots of BLM Supremacists this summer.
In any case, unless one is so hopelessly wedded to Christianity that his mind is closed, an
article written by Thomas Dalton, "Christianity: The Great Jewish Hoax," has taken the
Christian myth head on (National Vanguard, 9 Aug 2020). Indeed, as Israel-first Evangelicals
have taken control of Christianity in the US, we should ask if devotion to a Middle Eastern Jew
named Jesus is helping or hurting our cause.
@Richard B r with the foreigners; and this spirit of wear, principle of any cowardice, is
so natural in their hearts, that it is the continual object of the figures that they employ in
the species of eloquence which is proper for them. Their glory is to put at fire and blood the
small villages they can seize. They cut the throat of the old men and the children; they hold
only the girls nubiles; they assassinate their Masters when they are slaves; they can never
forgive when they are victorious: they are enemy of the human mankind. No courtesy, no science,
no art improved in any time, in this atrocious nation. -- Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs
(1756) Tome 2, page 83
@Ultrafart the Brave pon its introduction. Since then the government has provided tax
incentives to people paying for private insurance. Basically you pay a reduced medicare levy if
you have private insurance. The Australian medical system has it's faults like long waiting
times for elective surgery etc but it's still pretty good.
On the immigration front though Australia is in worse shape than the US. We have a much
smaller population and it doesn't take as much third world immigration to turn it into a third
world country. Especially since many use New Zealand as a back door into Australia. Australia
is already unrecognisable from even just 20 years ago. In another 20 it's likely to resemble
Brazil.
Trump has now moved over to Gab, a free-speech platform that has embraced thought
criminals of all kinds (so far). Trump's supporters will follow him to Gab -- millions of
them. They will read the other stuff and become more red-pilled. You can almost predict this
one with mathematical certainty.
Lots of conservatives are now departing Facebook and Twitter for other social media
platforms that are less restrictive. This will further separate the left and right in this
country, as they'll have even that much less in common. It will separate families, with
liberals staying on Facebook, and their conservative family members leaving, decreasing
communication between them, especially now with all the Corona bulls ** t being used to
suppress the association of people in meat-space.
But, anyone who actively promotes the idea that Whites should just completely opt out is
pushing advice that is exactly what our mortal enemies want most.
They are oddly quiet about it. Unlike everything else they want.
White people are going to need to get good at living in diaspora, since that's where we are
at now. We need to adopt tribal methods similar to the way other tribes operate. For example,
spending a little more to buy from our own people. Finding a way to brand white ownership.
Finding a way to associate said white ownership with white activism.
It is no good giving money to a local, vice signalling white traitor. It would be better to
get cheap products from a multinational, at least you get value for money. However, we need to
find ways of rewarding our own financially. We need to ensure that money goes out for things of
value – land, buildings, shares of companies, etc. Money comes in from the fruit of our
labor and intellect.
It isn't going to be easy because Jews have attempted to criminalize many of the things we
would like to do (specifically us, while giving other races/ethnicities a pass), but we can
find ways around that.
It will be easier to live in diaspora than via separatism.
The author is an idiot. To begin with, not all 70 million or so people who voted for Trump
were White. He received, what, 30% of the Hispanic vote. Also, approximately 20% of black males
voted for Trump.
Your guy just lost flatout. He was unpopular.
70 million means what? I call that pathetic compared to what Biden got.
Btw, you guys were able to be racist the last four years. Sit your butt down the next 4 years
because you White nationalists suck ass.
Urban Whites don't like you, period.
Whites invented everything? Even if that was the case, it came from URBAN WHITES. You mother
fuckers, whose ancestors are probably farmboys, only take credit.
What have rural whites achieved? Nothing besides taking credit.
Besides all this, due to immigration, most of the entrepreneurs and inventors are liberal
immigrants.
Bottomline is that liverals invented everything. Rural hillbillies did shit!
@randall r n that over the top cartoon character seriously to being with. He reminded me of
some of those (((actors))) who frequented those '90's talk shows like Donahue or Doprah Pigfrey
portraying "White Supremacists" or foaming at the mouth skinhead so called "neo-Nazis." haha. I
think they found out that half of those characters were Jews who worked for the ADL or at least
some them were. All portrayed the same old stereotype of an evil White racist who shocked the
audience by saying "niggers" or just portraying anyone who is pro-White civil rights as a
maniacal neanderthal. My gaydar always went off every time I watched a video of Spencer
speaking that MANUFACTURED horseshit anyhow.
Only the Christians. The rest can "go" back to Arabia.
Mohammedans are our enemy. Their prophet said so. Racially, Arabs are just poor, stupid
Jews– unless they live above oil, then they're rich, stupid Jews. The problem with your
analysis is that it isn't anti-Semitic enough .
And tell blacks that Jews exploit them for profits.
Tell Mexicans that Jews hog all the wealth.
They already know. They don't care. Just someone different to kiss up to.
@tomo istic culture that is foreign to them and which makes them feel alone and inferior.
So they respond accordingly. The same is true for young Canadians in general.
I agree that immigrants are no longer assimilating, but not because Canada lacks a strong
sense of national identity. The main reasons are demographic and technological. Immigrants now
arrive in such large numbers that they end up interacting only with each other. They can also
watch TV programming in their own language, via the Internet or cable TV, and communicate with
people back home via Skype or social media.
Assimilation takes effort, even in ideal conditions, so more and more immigrants are taking
the easy way out. They learn enough English or French for work, and that's usually enough.
@lavoisier he government has to stop shoving diversity down our throats continuously.
I think this is one area where most objective people can agree.
Idiotic attempts by governments at social engineering and correcting past injustices by
penalising the present population continue to be rolling disasters worldwide.
I would think the German people might eventually rebel against their perpetual financial
tribute to the Holocaust doctrine, if not for the current crop of self-inflicted immigration
problems engulfing Europe.
I also suspect that the "white supremacist" propaganda isn't a benevolent attempt to correct
society's problems. Rather, it looks more like part of a coordinated destructive strategy to
dismantle the existing society. Wielgus , says:
November 12, 2020 at 7:49 pm GMT • 1.0 days ago
Miller's maternal grandfather had sought to emigrate to the USA from Lithuania and got off
the ship at its destination, which he thought was New York. It was in fact Cork in Ireland. His
daughter, Miller's father, became a well-known novelist in Ireland.
For me its more about recognition of past evils and their karmic effect on a nation and the
color of skin doesn't come into it at all really but i do have a real soft spot for the native
North American Indian cause because i have had shamanic past life recollections of being one
and so i will always side with the Indians over the disgusting European invaders of North
America and i will never ever forget those photos i have seen of absolutely humungous piles of
shot Bison that were killed in an attempted genocide of the Indians and if the Indians scalped
many out of revenge then i hope that the pain was excruciatingly intense.
Here is something to consider: Liberals in general are happy people. Conservatives, on the
other hand, have a victim mentality.
You could see that conservatives had this victim mentality even under Trump.
Also, from my own experience, the conservative types have fucked up lives. Due to their own
issues, they lash out.
Could it not be that the reason you have a bad life is due to your own problems? Instead of
blaming immigrants or blacks and hispanics, consider looking at your own life.
"It came from urban whites". At the time of the greate innovative wave in the US there was
no such thing as "Urban" citizenry, as almost all major towns were located directly within
farming territory, and a cosmopolitan mentality was nowhere to be found, guys like Edison,
Ford,Tesla, held absolutely no connection to any sort of "Liberal" worldview.
Name a few of "Liberal" "Inventions" Come on give a list thereof.
You are a bloody ignoramous and full of shit up to your ears. You have no clue as to what
you are blathering about.
AJM "Mensa" qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army vet, and pro Jazz artist.
Logic is certainly not your strong suit. Why would people of any color capable of anything
worth mentioning bow down to a corrupt senile stuffed shirt?
@Questioner nk it would probably be best for you and all those who agree with you to
kill their family and extended family, and then blow their own brains out. Firstly, to atone
for "white guilt" and "white privilege" and secondly as a constructive means of reducing the
white population in these "stolen" Injun lands. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Of course, if you worthless cunts can't summon the nerve to do that, then you should at the
very least, REMOVE YOUR OWN WHITE ITINERANT ASS from this "stolen land".
@Muaddib The average Biden voter = anti-White and yes there are anti-White white people, I
call them WINOs short for White In Name Only or better yet, white traitor trash
I think liberals have went the way of the Dodo Bird. And no, racist Jews, who PRETEND to
love everyone Black, Brown, etc., anyone except Whites are only pretending to love POC to USE
THEM against Whitey. Case in point, in Israel they export African Jews all the time proving
that Judaism isn't a religion but a race. Nope, I doubt Sammy Davis Jr. would have ever truly
been welcomed to move to Israel. And there is no such thing as a nonwhite liberal, nonwhites
are tribal as hell and only out for themselves.
@Authenticjazzman ated? How about, uh, everything, including the internet you are using?
Yes, and immigants and minorities contributed.
If you don't like liberals, maybe you should start by turning off your computer.
But let me guess, you want to breathe the liberal air.
You brag about your Mensa score. And what did you achive with that? Hatred for liberals? So
what good was your Mensa? It was probably a fraud.
Look around you. The world has changed. You are basically an Amish in a sea of modernity.
This is what you get when you don't meet people of all types.
Just old, disgruntled and blaming others because your life wasn't ideal.
Yeah this is why they fill the waiting rooms of shrinks to be pumped full of psycho-drugs,
and resort to "screaming at the sky" when their political party loses an election.
Liberals are the most disturbed, troubled grouping of individuals to be found world-wide.
They are the nut-cases who stick themselves full of needles and pins , and dye their hair blue
so as to present their deranged worldview for all to see.
Again you are a hopeless moron and have no clue as to what you are blathering about.
Here is something to consider: Liberals in general are happy people. Conservatives, on the
other hand, have a victim mentality.
Yes, we've seen myriad examples of those happy, well adjusted, tolerant "Liberal" people
over the last four years. When they're not freaking out or breaking down, they're "lashing out"
in the form of assaulting, burning, destroying, looting, and murdering etc
Is the author of this article a coward – he attacks the weak blacks – and
ignores the overpowering Jews.
Blacks are not America's problem – Jews are.
Do blacks own and or control social media, print media, broadcast media, Congress, the
president, schools, Wall Street, and the Fed – or is it Jews. Be honest.
It is the Jews who siphon our wealth and divide us.
Jews control the cities that are devastated by black crime. Get the Jews out of control, and
things will improve. Guaranteed!
Societies need both a political left and a political right – the Jew control of the
left is killing America. (Actually, they control both.)
Jeff Costello needs to put on his big boy pants and attack the true evil in America.
Plenty in the US are pure Europeans. Many Nordic and German families are recent immigrants.
Old Colonials often have slight Native admixture. Bantu Africans, Aztecs, ect. need to return
all stolen territory aswell then.
And not so long ago Trump and Netanyahu were such buddies
That, my friend, was exactly why I posted that. Thank you for emphasizing the
point.
In case Wally doesn't get it, new boss is much the same as the old boss, and Netanyahu was
never a friend to either, not that it should come as a surprise to anyone. Netanyahu won't give
Trump a second thought after the "ingrovelation."
Huh?
Jews this and that. This is the problem with White Nationalists. You believe in conspiracy
theories.
Newsflash: Soros does not control anything. He is old, and about to die. He has money. He is
pretty much a moderate.
Qanon is stupidity. If any Mensa guy here believes in the stupidity known as Qanon, consider
a retest.
Comments like this, "while our blacks have been here a long time and some of them do sing,
dance, and dribble well, they are mostly parasites who contribute almost nothing to the society
except grief.", are all too common in white nationalist circles and gives the illusion of truth
to the Jewish propaganda about us.
One has to wonder if that is the intention. It basically says white nationalists hate everyone
but themselves which is exactly what Jews are saying about us in the propaganda system
This is not a closed site! Anyone can come in here and read these tacky remarks.
I think some of you need to follow the Jewish example which is hate the goy while you pretend
to help them
In case you didn't know, non-whites are about 50% of the population now and considering all the
fire power is in support of them against us. perhaps we can find another way to advocate our
predicament
I don't know their political views or what passes for a liberal but one thing is certain
WHITES have contributed more than all the other races combined. Henry Ford, Wright Brothers,
Tesla, Thomas Edison, etc., I don't think those guys were Jews or negroes.
My guess is YOU ARE NOT A LIBERAL, you are either an anti-White racist Jew, and or some
other form of anti-White degenerate who HIJACKED the term, "liberal." In your case the correct
tag would be, LIEberal.
I think the Irish band Clannad wrote songs about and in solidarity with the North American
Indians, so you could be right.
This genocide and the photographic images from it that i have seen will never be forgotten
by me and the color of the faces of the Europeans with guns doesn't come into it and if i
mentioned 'white euro scum' it was to differentiate between northern Europeans and those a bit
darker/olive skinned southern Europeans that invaded lands further south than todays U.S.A.
It's not language or race or skin colour, its CULTURE.
Hate to break the news to you, bossman, but "language, race and skin color" as well as
religion have very much to do with CULTURE.
The author makes a lot of cogent and well-reasoned points, but his delivery lacks nuance
and has a coarseness which suggests prejudice to the point of racism.
I'm afraid any jackass who accepts or gives credence to the enemy's descriptors of those who
naturally honor and favor their own race to others, does not really deserve to be taken
seriously.
Fwiw, I'm willing to go the step further and view the author as a likely racist and
supremacist. Most people like that have lived sheltered lives and had little exposure to a
variety of peoples. Many of their assertions are simply empty and unaware of ahem the real
world.
You shouldn't make personal statements about people you don't know. You could read more of
this author's work to discover his ideological evolution and that his views result from life
experience and not the lack of it.
The Indians didn't scalp out of revenge, they scalped because they were primitive
savages.
On or about the year 1,300 AD long before the Siberians saw a single white man, one tribe of
Siberians murdered, scalped, and ate every single one of the 498 women and children of the
losing tribe whose men the victorious Siberians had slaughtered.
And we know this because we found the bones of the women and children at Crow Creek in
1978.
Tell me, when you were a Shaman in your past life how much Man Corn did you eat?
@Peter Frost ly of all ages as well as tourist to hear their opinion – and I have
never met anyone who does not agree or has similar stories. People are very lonely here and
there is too much virtue signaling without any virtue. I spent a few months on a placement in
one of the biggest hospitals in Toronto – and what I have seen there confirms my
experience. Every day there was one or two teenagers (white) trying to kill themselves. That's
only what I have seen while on ER. I spoke to mental 'health' patients too.
There is far too much passive aggressive backstabbing here in Canada – definitely more
than I have seen anywhere (I've lived in London, LA, SF, DC, Serbia , Germany etc)
@Trinity ve equal rights. Immigrants have equal rights. DACA folks who came here due to no
fault of their own need to be given a chance to stay here, etc.
2. Social programs can be good for society. Think not just social security, but also healthcare
for all.
When you treat everybody with respect, by nature you are a happy person.
I will tell you something. If somehow all immigrants and minorities were kicked out, you would
still be unhappy. The reason is that you are by nature unhappy.
So think about where your life is. Whose fault is that? Put your ego aside. It was YOUR
decisions.
So why blame anybody else?
Trump did not do much to curb legal immigration especially H1B and international students
until the very end, a couple of months before the election. Now Biden is about to undo
everything and let the MexChindian third world horde wash over us. The dumb millennials who
complained about being unemployed or underemployed with massive student loan debt will have an
even harder time finding a job now. I've often wondered why these idiots still insist on voting
for Biden.
Another regulatory change, now in the proposed rule stage, would eliminate the H-1B visa
lottery in favor of prioritizing applicants earning higher wages.
"It basically will again ice out anyone who's entry-level," said Sharvari Dalal-Dheini,
director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Many
international students use the H-1B visa as a pathway for staying to work in the U.S. after
they graduate.
The least Trump could do on his way out is to finalize this crucial rule as a parting gift
to his base which largely stuck by him. It took him long enough to finally get to this. He
should've cancelled H1b and OPT on Day 1. If he had done that he might have won the
election.
@christine frican children and women, as well as adult males being slaughtered in South
Africa by marauding racist genocidal Blacks?
Hmm, IF you are TRULY concerned about injustice in a demonic world, why aren't you concerned
about Whites?
Do you feel for the Whites who endured the Holodomor? Did you know that Genrikh Yagoda and
Lazar Kaganovich, two chief architects of the systemic starvation of MILLIONS of Ukrainian and
Russian Whites were Jewish?
The FACT THAT YOU DID NOT ADDRESS WHAT IS HAPPENING IN SOUTH AFRICA, just shows me that you
are MORE ANTI-WHITE than someone who really cares about humanity, truth or justice. Hell, you
probably are not even (((Irish.)))
That you americans vote for that mafioso, is beyond comprehension.
You are so extremely stupid, and I am sorry to say, you bring it on all of us!
Why do you even vote for Bidén!?
Vote for Trump and after half term, create a more representative party.
The freest country in the world, and you just let it happen.
Anyway, I dont believe the official result.
You americans have not been that stupid.
Take the banner of Christ!
And reject zionism.
And reclaim youre country!
The world is waiting.
Complete drivel. As a German-American of almost two centuries of heritage, I don't identify
with your labels, priorities or prejudices.
If you're concerned about certain colors of people having more children than you, the
solution is simply to be generous with the Creator with your families. Have more children.
We're dealing with serious control freaks here people. I wish people would just realize that
the COMMUNISTS stole the election and are about to go full Bolshevik on us.
YT is already petrified by blacks at work. One slip up, and it's off to the HR gulag
archipelago, then full termination. Anyone who is not a "true believer" in the Revolution, will
be scheduled for termination.
Amazing how history repeats itself. YT has been so programmed to think of everyone as
"nice," that they can't even come close to imagining that Satanic Marxist pedophiles just stole
a national election.
As if anyone could make peace with such Hellspawn.
That's the facts, Jack. Who gives a Fiddler's fuck if it offends your delicate
sensibilities?
White Christian European people, and White Americans in particular, will apologize when
every other race, nation and religion are duly scrutinized and exposed for their "crimes" and
"atrocities".
Which will most likely happen in the reign of Queen Dick lol
We are not now, nor will we EVER be, ashamed of our history or our people, despite the best
efforts of the Jew Globalist Left.
I would not count on the GOP, even with a 52 vote majority, to stop any attempt at
immigration reform by the Dems. There are enough RINOs in there including both of the R from
Utah(Mike Lee, Mitt Romney), Marco Rubio, Lindsay Graham, Lisa Murkowsky, Joni Ernst, to name
but a few, who could easily go with the Dems on reform.
Mike Lee (R-UT), one of Trump's faves, has been trying to push through the Indian green card
bill S. 386 for at least the last two years. The bill was originally to give employment based
greencards, some 140k per year, to Indian nationals only for the next ten years. After
being blocked 3 times by 3 different senators – Perdue(R-GA), Dick Durban(D-IL), Rick
Scott(R-FL), the bill has morphed into a monster.
With each blockage, the bill keeps getting changed to include more and more beneficiaries.
In its final iteration, it will now 1) up the per country limit for family based greencard from
7% to 15%, 2) completely eliminate the per country cap of 7% for employment based visa, 3)
remove an offset that reduced visas available for Chinese nationals, 4) Reserve a
percentage(didn't say what %) of EB2 and EB3 visas (both for high skills) to nationals from
outside the top two countries (which I am guessing are India and China), with max of no more
than 85% from any single country.
Most importantly, the latest iteration of this bill will treat any Indian who has applied
for a green card as already having one, with all the benefits of a greencard while they wait,
incl. being able to travel, change jobs.
More Americans need to wake up to this type of treasonous bills being pushed by GOP
senators:
There is many Jews here but I see nothing untrue about stating the fact that Blacks
contribute very little. You've stated nothing Blacks contributed and merely whined about Whites
doing what every non-White race does more than Whites. No race has been more of a
"schwartze-lover" than Whites. Whites should be more honest about race and stop believing
Blacks are magical. Whites should not tolerate any bad behavior from Blacks or any non-White
race for that matter.
This is a joke, right? Millions of non-whites are simply going to get up and leave their
homes, jobs, schools, neighborhoods so that Whites can have a little patch of paradise? Has our
dear article author been hitting the crack pipe again?
I got news for you. The world is not flat. Leeches do not suck disease out of humans. The earth
is brown, no longer yellow, red, black, and white. It gets browner every day.
As for a shared culture and a homeland, the whites were the only race dumb enough not to
preserve theirs. Japan is almost 100% Asian. China is Asian. Africa is black. India is Indian.
The USA is a mixture of everything. Europe is a mixture of everything. The whites were the only
race with the inability to preserve a homeland. Hence they are too shortsighted to deserve
one.
Whites need to get increasingly audacious using insulting humor of the Charlie Hebdo, or SNL
kind. It's free speech, right? I feel empowerment growing among Whites during the Voter Fraud
Saga and I think there will be a lot less self-censorship from now on. The hate speech laws
need to be brought to court so that a charge of "racism" has to be substantiated, or otherwise
ruled as a federal hate crime. Who started the whole Racism Industry? Could it have been Jewish
intellectuals in their pursuit of the cultural and economic genocide of Gentiles?
@Felix Krull or more items according to specified parameters.
In common usage, though, "discriminate" is taken to mean the unfair treatment of one party
compared to another. Again, typically regarded as an uncivilised activity. And again, this may
be pertinent within a given context, but is not automatically true.
So, strictly speaking, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with "racism".
However, IMO the author uses language which suggests disdain for black Americans (for
example). If that is an expression of "racism", then it would be in the colloquially "bad"
context.
Regardless, IMO the emphasis on the racial dimension limits the article's perspective. Is
"Trumpism" just a white movement, or is it an American movement, or is it something more (or
less)?
"The Stolen Election Will Red-Pill 70 Million Americans"
Here's a real "red pill" for murkans [and the rest of the world], stated 3 different ways:
"Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure" Robert LeFevere
"Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to
differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a
professional-criminal class." Albert J. Nock
"Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and
counterfeiting [central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very cores,
100% corrupt criminal scams which cannot be "reformed"or "improved",simply because of their
innate criminal nature." onebornfree
@anon He's the one the people voted for, not them, and they are just waking up to this now.
It's the same type of diversion the Democrats just tried to pull off with Antifa and BLM.
They got everybody looking at "White Supremacy", racial and identity issues so that you
wouldn't be looking at the money the elites are skimming off the top. I'm sure they could have
cared less about the POC.
The elites are fighting Trump hard; they don't want him changing anything. They knew it
would be mainly "Whites" voting for Trump, so they invented this White Supremacy bullshite.
Yes, the people who voted for Trump ARE interested in immigration, and so is Trump.
stick themselves full of needles and pins , and dye their hair blue so as to present their
deranged worldview for all to see
Yep, that describes it. I understand that a lot of people cannot help being stupid, but I
never understood why people want to aggressively advertise their stupidity. Perverted
exhibitionism, maybe?
Costello seems a strange choice of nom de plume for a white nationalist. I at least identify
the name as Shepardi Jew. The J word never comes up in the article with its problematic issue
of where Jews fit in a white nationalist homeland. Has anyone noticed the only high profile non
retired public figure left with a wasp name and is not black is Homer Simpson? I am of course
exaggerating but the signs are there. With the demise of the white wasps has come the fall of
foundation America. The non wasps don't really share its cultural sentiments. Its sobriety is
lacking except among the best black people who share its names. I am thinking of Ben Carson.
Homer Simpson is a cartoon of a simple slobbish white American. There is no public movement to
remove him of course. So it isn't really surprising America is going the catastrophic way of
her sourthern neighbours.
Q Anon is clearly JFK jr. His crash and recovery was prophesised in the Nostradamus Quatrain
for July of 1999. He carries on the legacy of the Kennedys since grandfather Joe as does his
cousin Robert Kennedy.
Brother Nathanael's latest instalment is a doozy, FAKE NEWS, FAKE ELECTION :
https://www.bitchute.com/embed/LRQK9TfcNJM2/
Hardest-hitting passage:
Cackling Commie Kamal, who humped her way to the top, married Big Tech lawyer Jew, Douglas
Emhoff, a few years back.
The Jew would be "First Man" and you can kiss your First Amendment goodbye.
Big Tech -- (with Emhoff's impending high position and legal conniving) -- will be free to
ban all 'hate speech,' which is 'speech' Jews 'hate' to hear.
And the entire Jew-owned media and their leftist political machine operatives will decide
all elections from henceforth now and forever.
You are about to enter the Twilight Zone -- a Jew-ruled, Jew-ruined, Jew-controlled
America.
@DaveE an mean the need for white unity & power. Or it can mean white power as the
basis for world domination. Nationalism need not be imperialist but often took an imperialist
turn in the past when a nation became very powerful.
In contrast, 'liberation' emphasizes the need for whites to seek emancipation from the current
power that dominates the West and the World which is Jewish Power. (Even 'white national
liberation' sounds better than mere 'white nationalism'.) White Politics that only focuses on
whites and white power is less likely to be appealing than White Politics that seeks freedom
from the actual tyranny that rules the world: Jewish Supremacist Power or JSP.
[MORE]
I think more likely, whites will sink into despair and return to a state of apathy for
politics. I don't see any Republican being able to generate the kind of enthusiasm Trump did.
Tucker Carlson does not have the financial backing or the personality cult. Josh Hawley and Tom
Cotton are two Zionist social conservatives who will revert back to the GOP's standard
abortion, abortion, abortion and say nothing about immigration or non-interventionism to rouse
enough interest from Trump's base.
The only way for white nationalism to stay alive is if Trump stays politically active
through outlets like Newsmax TV and Gab.com ,
and return for another run for office in 2024. However he needs to be very careful. Once he
leaves office he will no longer have the kind of security protection given him as POTUS. There
had been many assassination attempts while he's in office (at least 6 I've heard of), he could
put himself in great danger if he continues to stay in the limelight to position himself for
2024.
As far as a separate whites only nation within the US, look at states that are probably the
whitest – Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, all are heavily (D). A fat lot of good that
does. TX will be (D) by 2024, too many Hispanics and CA transplants, like AZ and NV. Whites are
too splintered, thanks in large part to single white women, who voted 62% in favor of Biden,
compared to married white women who went for Trump 55%. White women are marrying and having
children at an ever lower rate due to lack of eligible men. White women graduated from college
at 60% to 40% compared to white men. As most women only want to marry up, college educated
women rarely want to date much less marry non-college educated men. Due to height issues, most
white women would only date white men or occasionally, black men. Asian and Hispanic men are
too short and unromantic. Meanwhile more and more white men are marrying Asian and Hispanic
women. White women are running out of men to date, marry and start a family. More unmarried
white women means more white votes will be going for Biden.
October 25 (November 7 NS): The October Revolution begins when the Bolsheviks take over
Petrograd (also called the November Revolution if following the Gregorian calendar).
@Thomasina two months before this election that he proposed some rule changes to H1b, and
still none of those rules have been finalized and probably never will. He made these tech
plantation owners many times richer through the stock market, while they treated him with
contempt and helped bring him down. What an idiot!
If Trump had cancelled H1b, OPT, L1 and all other work visas and forced our employers to
hire and train US workers on Day 1 as he promised, he might have won by a landslide by now. The
only group that went down in votes for him in 2020 is white men, because too many feel betrayed
by him in immigration. All he cares about is taking care of Jews and blacks, both Jews in
Israel and on Wall Street. He trusted wormtongue too much, and that's his downfall.
Richard Pilger is (was) the top DOJ Official investigating voter fraud who resigned after
Barr authorized federal prosecutors to pursue "substantial allegations" of voter irregularities
before the election outcome is certified. He is a swamp rat, a cretin, one of many who should
have been drained from the swamp long ago.
John Pilger, on the other hand, is a hero, a filmmaker and journalist with a long, excellent
record of shining light on malfeasance and bad behavior of politicians of every stripe.
The culture of the Chosen people does not understand the concept of compassion. This is
why the world has been in a very sad place for the last hundred or so years since
12.23.1913.
@Priss Factor the white race and goyim in general. Just ask the Palestinians about the
nature of Jewish Power.
Spot on here. Don't expect Biden to let up though. The Jew owned media (both msm and
"conservative" media e.g. Zerohedge, Breitbart, National Review, Fox News) will keep up the
pressure. I see a future, perhaps in two decades, where East Asian immigration to the US will
come to a screeching halt, and most likely even go into reverse as more East Asians return to
their homelands because Jews, negroes, homos, trannies, stupid white women, Latino drug gangs,
Muslim terrorists, Sub Saharan African welfare leeches, Indian H1b slaves with their
clannishness, collusion with Jews and caste-ism make the US an increasingly unlivable hellhole.
Oldtradesman ,
says:
November 13, 2020 at 12:28 am GMT • 19.6 hours ago
I won a lottery given by the renters, and was given free transatlantic transport.
Your line's post-African existence and ability to publicly complain like little girls owes
much to the transatlantic slave trade. Thank the niggas who sold your ancestors into slavery,
nigga.
There's plenty of majority-white states you can move to if Pale Skin is so important to you.
Go to West Virginia, for instance.
Majority-white states with conservative governments tend to be dull, economically depressed
and stagnant. The same will characterize the imaginary white secessionist state you
fetishize.
It's amazing to me that someone could speak with such satisfaction about other people being
subjugated simply because of their color. But then again, animals like you have no morals nor
any decency.
That's why the vast majority of whites in this country will say "no thanks" to your ugly
message.
A lot to unpack by the author, who is simply stating things we already have heard
previously.
"A White Nationalist is someone who believes that white peoples have a right to their own
homelands."
You do have your own homelands. It's just that in a number of cases, you invaded other
homelands for gimmedats and free stuff.
"So that, as a White Nationalist, I am a German nationalist, an English nationalist, a
Scottish nationalist, a French nationalist, etc. Or, at least, I support all those
nationalisms."
And what about Eastern and Southern Europeans? Why no example of you being a Polish
nationalist or a Slavic nationalist? Remember, these groups were deemed to be other than
heritage Americans–dirty, filthy papists who should have never entered our shores with
their alien mannerisms.
"To be a white nationalist in America is really to recognize that the core "American people"
are the white people whose ancestors built the country and who continue to pay for it. Thus,
American White Nationalism = American nationalism."
The reality is that American nationalism is defined by each person and group how they view
it.
"Since it now looks impossible to go back to the good old days when we had blacks in
complete subjection"
Slavery and Jim Crow laws were decidedly anti-American nationalism, and were patently unjust
and immoral.
"white Americans will never work toward a white American homeland unless they are aware of
themselves as White Americans"
We are aware of ourselves as white Americans, just not in the manner you prefer. Do we not
have agency? Must we submit to your definition of what is and what is not a white
nationalist?
"that we effectively secede from the USA and carve out our own white space (or spaces)
within North America. It is this latter option that now seems like it may be our only option,
and something we must work toward."
It will take a fight. Will you be front and center, or far away from the hostilities?
"The country was already fractured along political lines. Now it is completely broken Now
their faith has been completely and irreparably shattered. And this is hugely significant for
us And those many millions of whites are now choking down a gigantic red pill. As we all know,
the red pill is the path to liberation."
What you are doing here is ASSUMING. The "us" is not "we". It's only those people who you
know for absolute certain are on your side.
"It seems that there is credible evidence that there was voter fraud in the election"
More like accusations that need to meet the burden of proof.
"Take it from me -- from my own personal experience: once you have accepted that one big
thing is a total sham, you begin to wonder whether everything else is."
So why would we want to be duped like you?
"It would take whites being pushed to a point where they are so angry they speak and behave
imprudently, damning the consequences."
LOL. I've heard this argument for the past 40 years! It's always a "well, we are upset now,
but just want until we really get mad, then we will put heads on pikes". Either put up or shut
up.
The situation is somewhat better for young whites whose parents were immigrants. Their
family structure is more stable, and they have a possible escape route. I know several who have
"returned" to Europe, even though they were born here. But it's stupid and ignorant to tell
old-stock Canadians they have that option. My ancestors left England in the 19th century, and
the ancestors of French Canadians left France in the 17th and 18th centuries. We're
indigenous.
I agree that "people are very lonely here" but that's relatively recent. The breakdown of
the family began in the 1960s and became "normal" in the 1990s. Again, it has nothing to do
with climate or geography -- other than the fact we're next door to the United States and its
culture.
tomo, I have been thinking a great deal about income inequality lately (especially the
relative income hypothesis (i.e., all of our social problems are caused by differences in
income)). I would love to hear your comments on this question given your wide ranging
experiences around the globe. Would life really be better for us all if we
Scandanavianized?
Brazil (Portugal) was the largest consignee of African slaves in both absolute numbers and
on per capita white colonizer basis. The Anglo North American mainland was far less of a slave
based economy. Brazil was also the last nation in the Americas to outlaw slavery -- and it was
done without 600,000 white men slaughtering each other and burning the defeated side's country
to the ground.
"I think more likely, whites will sink into despair and return to a state of apathy for
politics."
If you are someone who "doesn't want to get your hopes up" or "is afraid to be disappointed"
or "is concerned that it might be a trap" or "seriously hope you're wrong", or sees doom in
every direction, then this is not the place for you. I'm not saying that you're a bad person or
that anyone here wishes you ill. I'm simply stating a simple fact: this is not the place for
you. No one here is interested in your fears, your worries, your psychological vagaries, or
your concerns.
My ancestors didn't own slaves, but it wouldn't matter if they did. The statement remains,
Troof's post-African line owes its very existence and ability to complain like little bitches
to the transatlantic slave trade. Falsify it or fuck off, traitor.
The Dems were quite determined to remove Trump from office by hook and by crook. First by
the fabricated Russiagate fake story When they did not succeed by impeachment. Now today by a
fraudulent election. They, the MIC appear to have succeeded. We are back in the Bush/Obama
era.
Your point about the slaughter in the USA is well taken. Nevertheless, I believe it was
unnecessary and that the war there wasn't truly about slavery. Hell, I lived in an African
nation for three and a half years and saw some slavery first hand; that was 40 years ago, mind,
and the slaves were by and large as happy as clams. WASPy culture is peculiar if you ask me,
which of course you didn't, but even so Who are the "slaves" now in the USA? Hmmm?
Corvie's "moral authority" is equivalent to the Negro chieftain who sold Troof's Negro
ancestor into slavery in exchange for pretty rocks and trinkets, and less than the
"white-debils" who bought him.
@Corvinus those people worried about kissing Black ass are either COWARDS like all those
white traitor trash rich kids or Jews who really use Blacks as pawns. More than likely that
rich leftist self hating white trash is the person who owned slaves or some Jew who blames it
all on Whitey. Either way, Whites have been enslaved themselves by Arabs and are in some ways
slaves today in their own land.
You worried about Blacks, sucka, why does Israel push out Black Jews? Jive talkin', sucka,
keep it a hunnert up in here, turkey. Why did Leo Frank try to blame a Black man for his crime?
lololol. Cue the Bee Gees "Jive Talkin" for all the (((trolls))) up in here. Yo, playa, we gotz
dis.
"Because it was cheaper to have nigger's do it, so your type could purchase it."
I know, it is the inherent nature of Southrons to be lazy. It's in born.
"You are a disgrace, Corvie,"
I'm not the one who has made empty threats of violence on a opinion webzine against a woman
(snicker snack). You said, "Nancy, you are definitely the type of Irish I would have no trouble
killing, along with Joe Biden and John Brennan". You've sunk to a new low.
@Montefrío he bulk of black slaves went to the Spanish colonies, not the American
colonies"
Could you please cite supporting evidence for this assertion?
All the academic accounts I've read indicate that only about 5% of the African slaves shipped
across the Atlantic were sent to the mainland English colonies that became the United States,
while the rest went to areas of Latin America and the Caribbean. However, these latter included
Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch colonies, as well as Spanish ones. The reason their need
for slaves was so enormous was that the death rate in the plantations producing sugar and other
lucrative crops was extremely high. Rogue , says:
November 13, 2020 at 2:15 am GMT • 17.8 hours ago
Did lactase persistence originate in southern Africa?
Egalitarian response:
Oh but that's the exception along with any other non-cognitive changes we might accept if you
prove they exist. But we won't talk about them and will keep telling children that everyone is
African.
Imagine if other fields of study had to follow this insanity.
American wolves don't exist unless you are talking about DNA changes in American wolves that
separate them from European wolves. But other than those changes that would denote a different
subspecies they don't exist.
"""But all the voices on the far-Right who labeled Trump "a distraction" have now been
proved correct. Trump actually wound up doing little for white people -- despite being
continually vilified by the Left as a white supremacist""""
At least the author got that right. Trump was elected to remove the illegal aliens (almost
all of them non-white) and he did practically nothing in 4 years. It would have been easy to
make them self-deport by taking away their jobs and freebies but he didn't do it.
Thank you, sir, particularly for the multi-national breakdown, so to speak.
When all is said and done, it was an ugly business, but long ago was long ago, and imho it
has little to do with the world today. I'm Irish, and "we" weren't well treated long ago
either, but we don't whine or whinge much. I wish that were true of others whose ancestors
suffered hard times.
Me? At 74, life is wonderful! May it be so for all here!
The Stolen Election Will Red-Pill 70 Million Americans is what the Establishment/Trump hope
actually means The Stolen Election Will Keep 70 Million Americans on the Republicrat
Plantation
Imagine thinking rich white conmen like Trump give a shit about you as a "white nationalist"
or that Trump or GOP are against non-white immigration. Hahahahahahhahaha
Delusional. Trump wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. He and everyone around him have
already made it clear you racist cracka ass niggaz aren't welcome in his circle or the GOP.
Oprah Winfrey, Lil Pump, Lil Wayne and Kanye have more clout with Trump than you clowns. You
should ask yourself why that is.
You, average white guy are no better than a dindu or a beaner in the eyes of rich
capitalists. In fact you're less to them because you demand a living standard and wages that
the beaner doesn't.
Let me know when Trump invites some homeless white veterans or any poor cracka for that
matter to fill his hotels, you know since he cares so much for the white race. Yall should
really take a look around if you believe these rich white guys are your allies. "White
nationalism" is a hoax.
The rich white capitalist will stab you in the back every time, history has proven this over
and over again, you're nothing but wage slaves, tax donkeys and cannon fodder to them,
cracka.
Every election is stolen by the rich capitalists that own all the candidates and all the
media. The CIA and Wall St run the country, not puppet politicians
This is not your country. It is up for sale to the highest bidder, welcome to capitalism.
There are despots in Saudi Arabia that "own" more of this country than you losers. Poor low IQ
right wingers, keep believing those fairy tales your owners like telling you. Hahahahaha
@Anonymous ards possessors of illicit drugs, but no -- Hunter is special!). Biden loves,
loves the bomb, and he supported all 'humanitarian" interventions (mass-slaughters) on behalf
of the war profiteers and zionists. Or perhaps you are fond of the murderous Clinton, and the
Schiff-Schumer-Nadler triumvirate of traitors working diligently to destroy the US Consitution?
Do you really believe in the patriotism of McCabe, Strzhok, Comey, Brennan, and Dm.
Alperovitch? Too much FakeBook can be detrimental to one's cognitive function.
The woke crowd of 'progressives' is too much into the cheap revolutionary rhetoric
skillfully inserted into their brains by Bernays' pupils working for MSM.
The whole premise of the multi-cult Left is that divers racial minority groups,
sanctimonious yankees and perverts join together under the aegis of Jewry to socially
marginalize the rest of society. You cannot listen to these people for more than a minute
without hearing them vent hatred against the NORMAL people. There's a reason the Jews are so
dead-set against the way the white world was not too long ago. It's normal, it's sane, and they
DON'T FIT IN. Their depraved appetites and megalomania don't fit in with Western, Christian
Civilization.
@Corvinus s))) and many of them looked and acted like Corvinus.
Slavery is ANCIENT HISTORY and your kind was very well involved in it, same as a lot of
pompous Yankees who claim they fought to end slavery, blah, blah. The fact of the matter is
that only a tiny percentage of Whites ever owned slaves in the South. Poor Whites weren't
treated much better than Blacks for that matter, maybe YOUR ANCESTORS OWNED SLAVES, Corvie,
just like good ole SJW Anderson Cooper.
Fact is Blacks are not exactly saints when it comes to the African Slave Trade
themselves.
How about we stick to this century, (((Corvie.))) I don't see or hear Whites whining about
being enslaved by Arabs.
The MSM, FakeBook, Twitter, and Google must be demolished, considering their willful
treasonous activities during the American color revolution (Russiagate).
By their vicious attacks on the First Amendment, the MSM, FakeBook, Twitter, and Google have
rivaled the Lobby. Or perhaps they are, in reality, an extension of the Lobby.
It took your self righteous Yankee retards four long bloody years and eight successive
commanders to defeat the "Lazy Southrons". Despite having a GDP five times as large and nearly
twenty times the amount of military age males lol
All the while devastating the homes, towns and cities of the people in the South.
This next time around, you will get a taste of war and hate, Mr Corvinus.
Of course, I doubt a pussy ass bitch like you will stand and fight.
@Muaddib synonymous with abolishing social standards. We see the poisonous fruits of giving
everybody respect rather than on conduct: an inability to use force in the face of rioting and
looting instead focusing on people who call others harsh names, rewarding family breakdown,
government debt, women screaming in the streets through bullhorns demanding that other people
pay for their fornication, an unwillingness to condemn homosexuals for deliberately spreading
AIDS for fear of being homophobic.
I will tell you something. If somehow all immigrants and minorities were kicked out, you
would still be unhappy.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
Its a good place to start
Robert Putnam said in his book Bowling Alone that the more diverse a society, the less trust
there is between people. He also found that in diverse communities, even whites distrust other
whites, which makes them even more alienated, because the immigrants at least form their own
ethnic communities. This is what is happening now in all Western countries. Whites are
increasingly alienated in their own countries and societies due to over immigration, leading to
depravity, depression and suicide. It's why birthrate is so low in Western European countries.
It's also why immigration must stop, not just to bring back homogeneity and kinship, but to
reduce the population so each life means more.
Again, you're asking gimme dat while oblivious to the fundamentals. Social programs aren't
payed for by the government the government doesn't make profits, it spends other peoples money
which it collects at gun point . In order to satisfy you thirst for privileges the
government has to literally rob someone else at gun point. Don't people have the right not to be
robbed? Again, only criminals think the "right" to rob is more important than the right not to
be. Moreover, the "good social programs" now stand at $185 Trillion of debt and other
liabilities. Do you know what that number means? Nothing "good" about it. annamaria , says:
November 13, 2020 at 3:23 am GMT • 16.7 hours ago
@Muaddib MSM? The dimwit wokes who avoid like a plague any discussion on Obama/Clinton's
'humanitarian interventions' in faraway countries, which resulted in a multitude of dead
civilians, many of them children.
Biden is ready to intensify the illegal war against Syria (why his progeny has not joined
the 'moderate terrorists' White Helmets is a mystery, don't you think so?). The old corrupted
opportunist would begin a hot war with Russia without understanding what he is doing.
Sure, the MIC has been terribly unhappy with Trump -- not much of 'humanitarian
interventions' during the last four years.
I suggest adjusting the author's arguments to recognise the actual fundamental issue in
play, which is not skin colour or race or language, but CULTURE.
Culture is everything! Culture determines how you treat your neighbor.
Hmm -- the average black in Mississippi has more Euro white Christian culture in him, then
the average white in NY City. Hence NYC's dysfunction.
Anti-Christian Jews are responsible for black disfunction in NYC – period!
@Muaddib -- are you a whiny liberal of lgbtq variety, demanding a special bathroom and
denouncing white privilege a la hypocritical Meghan Markle (and her ridiculous duke 'just
harry'), or you used to be a 'conservative' but it was too boring for you? You know, family
responsibilities, decent education, work ethics
California is the most liberal state in the US. But for some reason, Californias have been
fleeing California like crazy. And you know what, the happy Liberal Californians have been
fleeing to conservative states, without being invited. Last year, "the negative migration was
the 9th year in a row for California."
Ron Unz allows a base, boring, bitter troglodyte like you to post your rude and insulting
garbage on HIS site where he accepts no advertising and runs out of his own pocket so all
viewpoints can be discussed with a light hand and open mind.
I agree with the article but this election isn't actually over outside of the CNN
newsroom.
If the powers that be want to weaken the right they will give Trump his (obvious) win but
only after deluding democrats into thinking that they won the election. I think we are
watching that play out right now.
@Muaddib Some of the 'immigrants' were from the Soviet Union where they received a
fantastic education for nothing. The development of the Internet was conducted under the
watchful eye of intelligence services; the involved have profited handsomely on the enterprise.
Long before the 'immigrants' and their handlers made the killing, there were brilliant people
like Ada Lovelace, Turing, and others who have prepared the ground for modern information
technology.
Today, the woke profiteers ('liberals') at FakeBook and Google religiously follow the diktat
of the CIA/FBI that serve war profiteers and financial Squid. These 'liberals' have been
betraying the interests of human society at large.
@christine what is now North America wanted to stay in the stone age. They live in houses
and drive cars. If whites had never came to what is now North America the people living here
would still be stone age. It took Europeans over 6000 years to go from the iron age to the
industrial age where we were when we founded the USA. There is no way the natives who were
stone age would have been living modern lives.
Colonization was white people going around the world pulling stone age people into the
modern world. Whites are non whites benefactors and only morons cannot see this.
You are not a good thinker. You should be posting on a cooking or sewing site. Politics is
beyond your ken.
@christine your enemy in a hide bag over a roaring fire and letting them roast to death.
The ant trap: coating your enemy in a sticky resin from trees and restraining them over ant
mounds
The head bury: burying your enemy at low tide and allowing the tide to roll in and drown
them.
The horse pull: tying each arm and leg to four separate horses and letting them go four
separate ways.
But our Anglo Western criminal justice system of the 8th Amendment, bonds, free lawyers ,
probation, counselors and medical care in prison is much more savage.
Karma? The crystal ball it's fuzzy but an image is coming in wait .I see a dung beetle in
your future.
I'm not the one who has made empty threats of violence on a opinion webzine against a
woman (snicker snack). You said, "Nancy, you are definitely the type of Irish I would
have no trouble killing, along with Joe Biden and John Brennan".
Why do you respond to "empty," traitor?
Either the threat was empty or it wasn't.
It certainly wasn't a personal threat.
Looks like a threat against a "type of Irish."
What I see is a cucked, traitorous e-activist misrepresenting a threat to pose as a
chivalrous defender of e-womanhood.
This might not be directly relevant, but let me tell you a story.
The Island of Hispaniola was the site of the only known successful slave revolt in history.
So far, so good. The victors where blacks and whites ('hispanics'). Well, that did not work out
well. The whites ('hispanics') revolted and carved out their own nation, it's called the
Dominican Republic. The blacks were left in their own nation, it's called Haiti. The Dominican
Republic has problems, in particular a very high murder rate, but compared to most of the rest
of the world, is not doing so bad. Haiti is an unspeakable cesspool of poverty and filth.
Of course, the Dominican Republic has a viciously effective border control policy preventing
Haitian blacks from moving in. Why doesn't our corporate press complain about this anti-migrant
xenophobia? Maybe rich Americans like the beaches in the Dominican Republic as they are.
Is that something that could – or should – happen in the Untied States? Probably
not, circumstances are different. But still
Christine: I too have experienced at least one native prior lifetime and my home is almost
exactly halfway between two reservations. Friends. Currently I'm reading a book you would
likely enjoy–perhaps thoroughly: "Listen to the Wind: Speak from the Heart" by Roger
Thunderhands Gilbert, who is Metis and has been very close to both the Apache and Lakota
cultures. Publisher is Divine Arts Media.
Always love the comments here, a great range from bright to not so bright to downright dim.
But no matter who you are I'm sure you'll all agree we went from being Bozos on the bus to
being Dr. Zeke's lab rats.
@James Scott t (which liberals are not) all of the stone age people currently living in
Christendom . ride in cars, use computers and cellphones, travel in jets .have access to the
white man's brilliant technology ..it's like we allowed them to jump into our time machine so
they could fast forward into the future we created.
You could also add that we have the patent on high trust culture based on Christian values
of industriousness, honesty, fairness, and decency ..though much of this is being wrecked by
Jewish multiculturalism.
If not for the subversion of organized Jewry, whites would still have the respect of the
stone age non-whites instead of their hatred and contempt.
However, IMO the author uses language which suggests disdain for black Americans (for
example). If that is an expression of "racism", then it would be in the colloquially "bad"
context.
Black Americans kill, rape and steal in huge disproportion to their numbers. Why should I
not disdain that?
You shouldn't make personal statements about people you don't know.
He put himself and his views out there, as any author does, and this is a Comment Board. I
made my comments and observations. Are you new to venues like this? That's how they work
@Muaddib onestly about their failures? They don't support it. In fact they despise free
speech.
Social programs can be good for society. Think not just social security, but also
healthcare for all.
Social programs can be good for society. But liberalism is not about finding good programs.
It is about trying to denigrate and demoralize White people in an attempt at creating equality.
Most liberals are White but they see themselves as the "good Whites" and all other Whites must
be taken down. Liberals are nihilistic egalitarians. They will do anything for equality. They
would sacrifice our children just for some fleeting feeling of equality that doesn't exist.
@Muaddib ily life but in your mind all progress is held back by those other Whites .
I saw that all the time. Urban Whites get "celebrate diversity" bumper stickers and then hang
out with Whites 99% of the time.
More inventions came from WW2 than any other period and Whites on both sides during that
time would think that today's urban egalitarian Whites are total morons.
P.S. your women aren't sexually attracted to you if that wasn't obvious by how they boss you
guys around.
I lived around urban Whites for years. What a soulless and pathetic existence the typical
urban White male lives. The homeless Blacks seem happier than you guys.
The father of Jonathan Miller's mother wanted to emigrate to the USA but got off in Ireland
instead, when it was under British rule. Miller gave an account of this during an interview. I
can't recall whether his grandfather got off in Cork by mistake or whether the person who
arranged his ticket cheated him and others by putting them on a boat to Ireland rather than New
York. For Miller this was an amusing anecdote he told on TV.
At any rate the mother of Jonathan Miller was one of the relatively few Jews living in Ireland,
although Miller himself was born in England.
You've never been around any American Indians or their national autonomous homelands aka
rezess have you? As a group, they're probably the most contented of all definable American race
and ethnic groups. At least they're not endlessly bitching whining and kvetching like the rest
of us.
You should spend a year driving around their rezess and talking to them. Try to fit in as a
tourist or something. Don't be rude and just inform them you're some kind of social scientist
studying their exotic oppressed abused soon to be genocided tribe. Don't insult them. Be
polite. They are regular people just like the rest of us.
We weren't Americans and America wasn't America when the Africans were brought over. We were
English citizens subjects living in separate English colonies known as Massachusetts
Connecticut Virginia Maryland etc.
If only the vile white northern Euro invading scum had come with pipes of peace instead of
guns and i find it poetic justice how guns and more guns and yet more guns are the scariest
part of modern central North America.
May the spirits of those that suffered genocide and holocaust at the hands of gun wielding
invading Northern Europeans be smiling from ear to ear at todays United Gun States of
America.
They are the nut-cases who stick themselves full of needles and pins , and dye their hair
blue so as to present their deranged worldview for all to see.
You forgot the utterly worthless dye disfigurement known as tattoos. All this probably has
roots related to the mutilation known as circumcision as well.
@tomo
Talk to them about Louis Farrakhan. He has the Nation of Islam ( https://www.noi.org/ ] eating out of his hand. The videos are out
there.
Louis names the Jew without disaster resulting. Tell them about The Secret Relationship
Between Blacks and Jews, a splendid book, available from Amazon – at a price or direct
from the https://www.noi.org/final-call-news/
@Peter Frost e US along with the breakdown of the family, loss of the work ethic, a rampant
sneering at honesty, and almost total lack of basic civility. One of my sisters attributes a
lot of that to the effects of casting infants into daycare where it's "dog eat dog" from the
beginning and which I believe is reinforced by years of exposure to the sinecure and benny
seeking bureaucrats in the baby sitting and brainwashing institutions known as schools.
We have ourselves to blame for our choices both as individuals and as a society and we can
whine all we want about blacks and others, but in the end we're paying for our worship and
pursuit of "cool," or self absorption, or whatever.
No, I agree -- a purely "racial" response should not be tried. It will lead to
failure (which is not to say that things like race, culture, values, beliefs etc are not
important)
I suggest you also do a search on the infamous Jew, Aaron Lopez, and work out why he chose a
Spanish name to hide behind rather than an Anglo-Saxon name.
The large majority of TrumpBoomers are screaming at the sky right now with this fraud cope,
because it is inconceivable that a wave of brown, angry youth and affluent whites like myself
have eclipsed them as a voting bloc. The white working class has been melting down worse than
the 2016 SJW trannies for a week now.
Yes of course i would be polite and come in peace and i would make sure not to point a rifle
or pistol at them and start shooting them and then start raping their women and children and i
wouldn't slaughter any livestock that they may have to try and starve them because what decent
white Northern European would do that in central North America anyway?.
If i came in peace and harmony like this they would naturally be far more likely to respond
in kind and share with me what they may know about nature/god, just like what their wonderful
ancestors learnt about from their use of plant medicines/entheogens/sacraments like the Peyote
cactus for example that was used by the Apache Comanche and Kiowa tribes but if i was pure evil
and slaughtered them then of course i wouldn't get to learn from their wisdom and i would
deserve to remain in complete darkness (spiritually speaking) just like most everyone alive is
in the U.S today.
His daughter, Miller's father, became a well-known novelist in Ireland.
Who is the subject in this sentence? Was it someone's daughter or Miller's father who became
a well-known novelist in Ireland? The structure of your sentence makes it unclear.
As I said originally, that doesn't automatically make the author a "racist" in the "bad"
sense, but the suggestion is implicitly there for anyone who wants to make it.
Maybe the author is being emphatically practical in his analysis. FWIW in the past
Australian experience, cohesive immigrant populations have taken at least a couple of
generations to fully naturalise in Australian society. And there does seem to be a lot of
cultural clashing going on in the USA. So maybe a coarse exclusionary approach to reclaiming
power for the American people is the shortest path to a solution (albeit with potential for
collateral damage).
Or maybe one has to read between the lines to get the full sense of what the author is
trying to say.
@christine igners; and this spirit of wear, principle of any cowardice, is so natural in
their hearts, that it is the continual object of the figures that they employ in the species of
eloquence which is proper for them. Their glory is to put at fire and blood the small villages
they can seize. They cut the throat of the old men and the children; they hold only the girls
nubiles; they assassinate their Masters when they are slaves; they can never forgive when they
are victorious: they are enemy of the human mankind. No courtesy, no science, no art improved
in any time, in this atrocious nation. -- Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs (1756) Tome 2,
page 83
Was it EVER possible to pronounce Mitt Romney's and John McCain's names without gagging?
News to me
Also I disagree with the main premise that can be expressed in the ironic Russian saying:
"They are fucking us, and yet we are just getting stronger". Unfortunately it doesn't work like
that. Success begets success, failure begets failure. With the machinery of state in the
DemocRATs' hands, will they really allow their enemies to take back the levers of power? Last
time was a fluke because Hurricane Donald had caught them by surprise.
@Rogue ck of critique of their own past, lack of any sort of conciliatory moves towards
past victims, dooms them.
And this when the entire world rejects globohomo (and usury) with disgust. They have all
sorts of potential allies a home and abroad, and do not use them. Having lived in the Detroit
area for decades, for example, I can tell you that local Muslims are ready-made allies. They
are hardly the only ones. Count any working Latino and all people of Asian descent in this
group, as well as all people of Eastern European descent. They even have allies among working
blacks for christ sake. You are in the fight of your lives, and you don't even think about
allies.
I would say productive non-executive suite Whites are the new slaves in the Waspy-Jewy Anglo
world. But Brazil isn't that far behind either with all of its Sherwin-Williams color sample
shade cards being used in its own affirmative action programs.
Unlike the profitable fables of holobiz, the Jewish rabid hatred towards Palestinians and
the destruction of Palestinian lives is true. Thievery, sadism, torture of teenagers in Israeli
prisons, desecration of Palestinian cemeteries, the intentional handicapping of Palestinian
children Are you ready to talk about the Jeiwsh State's crimes against humanity, committed in
the context of international law? (The US and Israel 'are joined at the hip' according to US
Congresspeople). If not, then your 'righteous' diatribes are cheap.
And don't forget to check the amazing results of the Obama/Clinton's color revlution in
Ukraine.
@Truth irst son of a bitch who was foolish enough to bring over the African for cheap labor
( yes, the African did receive a wage in food, shelter and medical care), these fools using
Mexicans for dirt cheap labor are ruining this nation because of greed and the love of money.
That poor beaner busting his ass for 12 bucks an hour? Don't worry about him folks, he's living
large because he's more than likely being paid cash or he's gaming the system and receiving all
kinds of freebies along with a regular paycheck. I drive by a chicken processing plant daily
that employs nothing but our friends from south of the border and I see some damn fine trucks
and other nice looking vehicles.
The white working class has been melting down worse than the 2016 SJW trannies for a week
now.
Is that right? So why were there no massive chimpouts and looting? Why was it not necessary
to board up the stores, as it would have been had not the ZOG stolen the election?
Stupidly, I think Trump tried to win over the corporate elite, Big Tech, Big Ag, etc.. Maybe
bad advice from his son-in-law? Didn't listen to his intuition? Who knows.
If he is reelected, he will not make the same mistake twice. I think they know this too.
@christine ringing a force of about five or six to one against his enemy; kills helpless
women and little children, and massacres th e men in their beds; and then brags about it as
long as he lives, and his son and his grandson and great-grandson after him glorify it among
the "heroic deeds of their ancestors."
If you came in peace, do you think the Stone Age Siberians would have also shared their vast
knowledge about the Wheel? Or metal smelting? Or writing and math?
People like (((Christine))) always bring up atrocities committed against Indians and they
make some valid points, HOWEVER, as we saw, (((Christine))) had nothing to say about Whites
being butchered by racist Black homicidal maniacs in South Africa nor did she address the
Holodomor. This leads me to believe that (((Christine))) the self proclaimed "Irish" lass is
more than likely just a (((troll.)))
And of course, people like (((Christine))) don't talk about so-called Jews stealing the
Palestinians land and brutalizing Palestinians, instead they focus on ANCIENT HISTORY. And
these people will never talk about Black guys executing little white boys or Black guys
snatching a little white boy from his white mother and throwing the kid off a balcony. Or how
about when a black woman kidnapped a white boy in Texas and burned him to death with a
blowtorch. Oh, yeah, lets focus on ancient history, which unless you lived back then no one
really knows what the damn truth was, we know we certainly can't rely on (((historians))) or
mainstream (((history books.))) Unless things change, 100 years from now, people will be
reading about how 3 Black women sent America to the moon.
Obvious LIES that will be told or have been told
6 million Jews were gassed in concentration camps during WWII
Germany started WWII
the official 9-11 narrative
Osama Bin Laden was killed * that dude probably was dead years before he was claimed to have
been killed, the guy was in poor health.
James Earl Ray did not kill MLK * the dude said so on his death bed, why would you still
keep holding on to the same story if you were going to die anyhow?
And when it comes to Presidential elections.
JFK didn't beat Nixon
Dubya didn't beat Gore
And Joe Biden sure as hell didn't beat Trump, hell I would admit that if I hated Trump's guts.
Don't like Gore, voted for that sorry sack of shit, Dubya, but no way in hell, Gore lost.
Some more code words we can start using ((( ))) for are (((SJW))) or (((military industrial
complex.)))
@Ultrafart the Brave people too, patriotic or otherwise. White nationalism is a political
stance, of course it will exclude people who are not white nationalists, duh!
Indeed, one bad thing leads to another. Once the dynamics are set in train, it will take
generations to unravel (if ever).
What "bad thing" lead to blacks people committing heinous amounts of murder, robbery and
rape? Slavery? Colonialism? Affirmative Action? Must be something whites did, right?
As I said originally, that doesn't automatically make the author a "racist" in the "bad"
sense.
You have not explained what's bad about racism. And what are those quotation marks for?
You've never been around any American Indians or their national autonomous homelands aka
rezess have you? As a group, they're probably the most contented of all definable American
race and ethnic groups. At least they're not endlessly bitching whining and kvetching like
the rest of us.
Aldey, having lived in the most Indian state in America for the last 17 years, I can assure
you that that is patently ridiculous.
Some things never change. As Mark Twain wrote in his Essay about The Noble Red Man;
He is ignoble–base and treacherous, and hateful in every way. Not even imminent
death can startle him into a spasm of virtue .
With that Twain appears slightly ahead of his time. He could have just as accurately been
describing other "Reds," such as the Bolsheviks and their supporters most of whom could have
taught the Indians a thing or two about terror and torture especially the mass varieties.
I drive by a chicken processing plant daily that employs nothing but our friends from
south of the border and I see some damn fine trucks and other nice looking vehicles.
Whites are storming ballot counting centers instead of looting their own businesses. Whites
routinely chimp out, they just pick different targets. Look at the devastation around Hockey
arenas when teams win the Stanley Cup.
As far as the election being stolen, well, you sound like a crazed conspiracy nutter.
They are ALWAYS hiring, breh. Maybe you can tell some of da homies. But I doubt da homies
could cut the mustard. I worked with tons of Mexicans and El Salvadorans and I can tell you
from experience they really look down on lazy negroes. My gawd, some of the things I heard
these Brown folks say about Black folks had me blushing crimson. I went from Donald Trump
orange to the color of my favorite soda, cherry red. Cue: You Can't Always Get What You Want by
Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stoooooooooones.
The Second Guy: Kamala Harris' husband, Douglas Emhoff, is Jewish; he will not only be the
"second gentleman" (caveat: No one has settled on a term for the job), he will be the first
Jewish second spouse. Emhoff has been vocal about his Jewish identity, and it will be
interesting to see how that plays out in a role that has been used to advance education
initiatives.
Yet, there do remain groupings of well-rooted people who are able to cope with a clinically
insane "white" culture which surrounds them physically and throughout most electronic mediums.
Their struggle is huge, yet they persist in reconnecting with traditional tribal values, with
powwows, drumming fests and even -- gradually -- re-learning their indigenous languages.
There are still waaaay too many European-descended people in my area who retain an ignorant
, discriminatory and even prejudicial attitude towards these, our neighbors and in some cases,
potential teachers. But those who reach out do tend to reach those who also reach out. So hope
remains.
HATER -- perhaps not without some viable personal reason/s, but nevertheless one incapable
of discriminating between individuals and devolved into rank prejudice.
I spent time on the other side of the wall early seventies, and I will never forget the dead
eyes of the oppressed citizenry and the morgue-like atmosphere of the grey cities, and these
lunatic Democrats are now pushing to create such a scenario in the US
Excellent article and explanation of procedure, Mr. Redmayne-Titley. On Tucker Carlson's
show about six weeks ago, Tucker had on guest Darren Beattie to describe the specific type of
color revolution that the Democrat Party appeared to be planning to proceed ahead with to
usurp this election:
Tucker's show tonight will be as clear as could be as to which Tucker he is going to be
selling to his huge audience: independent journalist or Fox News/DS apparatchik. I will be
watching and hope that he will continue to be the voice of much of the people, though his
letting up on the Hunter Biden story was troubling to say the least.
Even with Pennsylvania and Georgia, the 2 most likely to flip imo, trump would still lose,
unless he miraculously flips Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, or Michigan.
The fix was in no doubt and trump won all those states fairly, but its a tall order and
I'm skeptical that trump can pull it off.
Thanks to the Trumpet, the CIA/FBI/NSA, etc., have now been able to clearly identidy the
sections of the populace that feel their pure whiteness is being victimised,
Were you in a coma for a number of years? For 20 years, starting with William Binney
through Edward Snowdon and Dave Montgomery, there have been warnings that the alphabet
agencies have been illegally spying the US citizens. Montgomery pointed out they spied on
Trump before he became a candidate.
The Trumpian corporate party's biggest sin was trying to get in on the Republocrat –
Demican Uni-party corporate party action.
Never gonna happen.
I believe that US are truthful when they talk about "free" elections. Theoretically, the
only way you can get something "free" in life is – if you steal it, or if somebody
gives you something as a gift. This "election" has fulfilled both of these 2 criteria. First
the deep state stole the election from Trump and then they presented it as a gift to Biden.
So it's all good. It was a free election for Biden, Trump got robbed – but hey, you
can't please everybody.
Karma's a biatch. All those color revolutions in Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran, Hong Kong,
propped up in one way or another by Mike Pompeo when he was head of CIA continuing into
Secretary of State, is now coming back to haunt Trump. Good job appointing that fat fuck.
If Trump loses, it would be his own doing in some ways. He has failed to roll back legal
immigration esp. H1B/OPT until a month before the election, and spent most of his time
catering to the Zionist filth with all the nauseating sycophantic overt pandering to Israel
and the Wall Street Jews. Wormtongue's pandering to the blacks by letting all the drug
dealers out of jail is backfiring big time too. 92% of blacks still voted for Biden so fuck
you Kushner.
If Trump somehow survives this and actually comes back to win, I hope he learned from his
mistake in the first term. Instead of spending all 4 years pandering to Jews and blacks who
didn't vote for him, spend his time taking care of those who did vote for him, his white
voting base, and we want an end to H1B, OPT, EB5, L1, illegal immigration. No more green
cards for the next 40 years! Begin mass deportation. Most importantly, fire Pompeo and
Javanka!
Many thanks, Mr. Redmayne, for this overview-cum-dissection of the recount scenarios.
That all of these counting-stopping orders took place in swing states defies
credulity.
Surely poll workers were being paid to continue counting throughout the night. Not to go home
and catch 40 winks. Lord knows we have plenty of night-time workers in this 24/7 country.
It is ironic that in the context of the USA's overseas military disasters, the common
advice when the home team is obviously getting pounded has been "Just declare yourself the
winner" and get the hell out.
Seems like the Dems are using this playbook and hoping they can create a new reality by
declaring it so.
The spectacle of Joe Biden calling for "unity" after the shitshow following 2016 is
rich.
I doubt that this richness is going to be lost on the "losers" in this election.
The country is very n eatly divided between blue urban and red countryside. I would not
county on "unity" rearing its head anywhere in redland.
The only people loyal to Trump is the working class. No one else gives a damn whether he
lives or dies, including the vast majority of Republican officials and office holders
concerned only with keeping what they have.
Yes, the disgusting PC CBC reporters display their contempt for Trump at every turn, and
are complicit in obscuring Democrat misdeeds, whether by uncritically parroting the Maddow
ravings on Russiagate or ignoring the influence peddling of Dems from Biden to HRC. CBC
reporters are repeatedly characterizing charges of election fraud as groundless. Clearly they
are unaware of Pelosi's admission of how the public is misinformed, with her description of
'leaking' fabricated allegations to MSM insiders, then using the subsequent MSM reports as
'evidence' of veracity.
@GMC ciders). The not-so-youthful Obamas the Fraud and the badly aged Clintons have been
liberally using revolutionary rhetoric a la Che Gevara, never mind that the Obamas and
Clintons are major war criminals guilty of the mass slaughter of civilian populations
(including the multitude of children) in the brown countries of Syria and Lybia and non-brown
countries of former Yugoslavia and Ukraine. They, Obamas and Clintons, are murderers,
cannibals. Yet for the 'progressive' wokes, the history of the US is not known and is not
interesting for knowing. The wokes like the keto diet, mild psychedelics, cool outfit, and a
special set of words, including 'solidarity, social awareness, political correctness,
LGBTQIA' and such to stroke gently their, wokes,' egos. The aroma of rot is in the air.
@The Alarmist ake-sure-trump-supporters-receive-accountability
Emily Abrams can not forgive Trump for being so ineffective in the Middle East. Unlike the
Obama/Clinton administration, Trump has not started a new War for Israel. And for this, Trump
and "anyone who took a paycheck to help Trump" must be punished.
Meanwhile, the reality is hitting up:
After Attorney General Bill Barr authorized federal prosecutors to pursue "substantial
allegations" of irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, the head of the DOJ's
Election Crimes Branch [Richard Pilger] has decided to resign.
Vote fraud is as American as apple pie. Just remember how JFK and George W. Bush manged to
sneak into the White House. America has always bee a banana republic, now it has just become
more evident.
BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Election Night Data from All States Shows MILLIONS OF
VOTES Either Switched from President Trump to Biden or Were Lost -- Using Dominion and Other
Systems By
Joe Hoft
Published November 10, 2020 at 6:32pm
2080 Comments ,
BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Election Night Data from All States Shows
MILLIONS OF VOTES Either Switched from President Trump to Biden or Were Lost -- Using Dominion
and Other Systems By
Joe Hoft
Published November 10, 2020 at 6:32pm
2080 Comments ,
BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Election Night Data from All States Shows
MILLIONS OF VOTES Either Switched from President Trump to Biden or Were Lost -- Using Dominion
and Other Systems By
Joe Hoft
Published November 10, 2020 at 6:32pm
2080 Comments ,
So despite the help from the massive software "glitch", Biden fraud machine had to dump
late night dump ballots all for Biden only in a hurry. How bad did he lose? It almost looks
like most of his votes are fabricated. I would not be surprised if he were 20 points behind
in legal votes.
I think the ballot dumping was the side show to keep us from finding out about the vote
switching and deleting. How can this be verified, and how can this be seen on the machines
now?
Badass American of Indian decent (actually was born in India I believe but family came
here legally when a young child). Ran for senate in Massachusetts as a Republican and was/is
a big Trump supporter. Blew the doors off the Covid 19 scam, not that it wasn't real but how
it was being treated and handled by MSM and the Socialist Democratic Party, ie, by those who
hyped the whole thing.
EventBrite just told everyone that "March for Trump" was cancelled. It is NOT
Cancelled.
The Elites / Big-Tech / MSM (including Fox) are TERRIFIED We Will Show Up - doing everything
possible to shut us down.
Don't let them. Break their Narrative.
Get to DC or the nearest contested state-house This Weekend, or we hand Biden the WH.
CORRECTION!! We hand the WH to Kamala, the most leftist (socialist) senator in the Senate!
She falls right in line with Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro, Fidel,Stalin and other
(in)famous dictators politically. If you are a veteran, have a CFL, have made a firearms
purchase from a dealer, etc. - your personal information WILL be found and used to confiscate
your arms if these socialists gain enough power. They have already stated that they will
rejoin the 'climate accords,' restart 'fair trade' with China, move our embassy out of
Jerusalem, restart nuclear 'cooperation' with N. Korea, pass 'common sense' gun laws to
protect our citizens (never mind the THOUSANDS of gun laws now on the books that are NOT
ENFORCED,) tear down 'Orange Man Bads' border fence, open up our borders to all comers, and
amnesty all illegals now in the nation - and that's just for a start.
You are so right ....but the Marxists better ask the British what happened when General
Gage sent British regulars to DISARM AMERICANS at CONCORD . THAT is when the Revolutionary
War turned into a REAL SHOOTING WAR .
Avoidance of War is Not Peace. While I am praying for Honest Election Results that = Trump
Victory, the NWO Deep State must be stopped Now.
Marxist democRats and Quisling repubs are Bought and Paid for by their NWO Oligarch
Masters.
Never Submit, Never Surrender.
If they mean to have CW, then let it begin with this Coup if it is accomplished in Jan of
21
He also doesn't believe AIDS is caused by HIV... really?! And that we should expand the
USPS by having them set up and regulate a national email service. Broken clock, twice-a-day,
etc.
H.I.V was found to be nothing more than Biologically Inactive Gunk by Nobel Laureate
Professor and Cancer specialist Doctor Peter Duesberg and his work was backed up by Nobel
Laureate Doctor Carey Mullin. The H.I.V hypothesis proposed by the Fraudulent Doctors Gallo
and Anthony Fao-Chi[ yes! That Fao-chi] never passed the Koch Postulates, so they turned to
the MSM to pressure the Reagan administration into acceptance of their Hypothesis and that is
the most important part of the H.I.V Hypothesis...
Yesterday on hannity's radio show, John Solomon was severely downplaying the software
problems. Never trusted that guy. Does anyone ever say, "hey, you have to check out Just the
News?!". NOPE.
John Solomon was an integral part of uncovering the SpyGate scandal. Just because he says
something you disagree with does NOT make him a partisan hack.. He's one of the last
investigative reporters left in the U.S.
He speaks the truth and the truth is that as of now we have zero evidence of wrongdoing
other than hearsay. "Data passed around" analyzed by some guy does not cut the mustard in
court. Actual proof is needed and as of now we are just spouting BS. I am not delusional as
most of you and understand that as we sit we are losing big time. He does not say everything
I need to hear......WAAAAAAAA.
I don't really trust him after watching him on Lou Dobbs A LOT. He squirms out of tough
questions. I agree about the investigation into obamagate with Sara Carter. Why is he now
putting a liberal (UNTRUE) spin on the software problems?
No spin, Just the truth. The evidence as of now would get thrown out of court as it is
hearsay. Get the data looked at by a real analytics team not some random guy sitting in his
basement.
He ran hard against Pocahontas up here in MA. Brilliant man! Someone had to step up with
indisputable proof and stop this charade now! OT: Watched a bit of Tucker Carlson
tonight...the bosses got to him. He's talking about senile Biden's virus response. No Tucker,
President Trump is in charge.
I agree! Tucker was singing the praises of FNC several nights ago about their truth
telling...what garbage! Tucker can go too with FNC, I'm done with them!
I read an email on the laptop from Tucker to Hunter the day after he said that on his
show. It was just thanking Hunter for writing a letter of recommendation to Georgetown for
someone. Nothing bad, but Tucker would not touch the photos on the laptop of incest with
underage family members.
"... ...BIDEN, SPEAKING DURING SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: Within 100 days, I'm going to send to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people. And all of those so-called dreamers, those DACA kids, they're going to be immediately certified again to be able to stay in this country and put on a path to citizenship. ..."
This is a corporate takeover of the country. Joe Biden's transition advisers include
executives from Uber, Visa, Capital One, Airbnb, Amazon, the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation and the
nonprofit run by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Are you surprised? No, you're not.
...According to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal, at least 40 members of the Biden
transition team announced earlier this week either were or are registered lobbyists. You won't
be shocked to learn that the government of China looks on at all this and is highly pleased. A
weak, divided America obsessed with narcissistic identity politics is good for them and very
different from them.
... Joe Biden has announced that as president he will not deport a single illegal alien from
this country in his first 100 days. It doesn't matter who they are, it doesn't matter what
they've done. It doesn't matter whether they were convicted of crimes such as rape and murder
or not. Literally, they can all stay here.
This is great news if you're Silicon Valley. The tech companies wanted this because they
rely on cheap labor. But for the rest of us, what's the upside exactly? By the way, if you live
anywhere along the U.S.-Mexico border, good luck to you. Also, don't bother locking your doors
or pining for a border wall or thinking that immigration restrictions might improve your
life.
...BIDEN, SPEAKING DURING SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: Within 100 days, I'm going to send
to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people.
And all of those so-called dreamers, those DACA kids, they're going to be immediately certified
again to be able to stay in this country and put on a path to citizenship.
TUCKER CARLSON PROVIDES COMPLETE TOTAL PROOF OF WIDESPREAD DEMOCRAT VOTE FRAUD THAT STOLE
THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Paul Craig Roberts
Tucker Carlson is the ONLY honest media figure in the United States. No wonder the
presstitutes want him arrested. I am concerned that the criminal Hillary DNC will have him
assassinated. You are simply not permitted to tell the truth in the United States. To tell the
truth in the American media is a capital offense.
This had to be posted on Parler because Twitter, FaceBook, and YouTube will not permit the
Fox News report on Vote Theft to be posted. What more evidence do you need that there is a
conspiracy to steal the presidential election from Trump? If the treasonous and criminal
Democrats get away with their coup against democracy, the United States is finished as a
country. No Trump voter will ever again think of the US as his/her country.
The Dem/ Main Stream Media Complex is infuriated that President Donald J. Trump will not
concede the 2020 election. This is a Sign of Contradiction that he is
doing the right thing. This does not yet mean that Trump won enough votes in key states, as
Tucker Carlson has noted, but we also can't say with confidence that Trump lost [ Tucker
Carlson Says There's Not Enough Fraud to Change Election Results, by Jacob
Jarvis, Newsweek, November 10, 2020]. And here appears to be solid evidence that there
was at least some wrongdoing -- far more so than for the Russia Hoax that paralyzed
Trump's Administration for three years. The same neoconservatives who are demanding Trump
concede would be insisting the U.S, invade another country to "bring democracy" if we saw its
government behaving this way. Ultimately, the entire battle is about who is sovereign in this
country -- American citizens or the Dem/ MSM complex, including Big Tech oligarchs. They
ensured it was not a "free and fair" election, and President Trump should never concede.
Let's consider the almost hysterical fury from the MSM telling us that President Trump has a
duty to admit defeat because Biden "won."
In fact, of course President Trump isn't doing anything illegal. No one has won or lost.
Senate Mitch McConnell may be afraid to defy Trump because he doesn't want to lose the two
Senate seats in
Georgia and thus, his status as Majority Leader. But he's absolutely right when he says
that the Electoral College determines the winner and, until that happens, "anyone who is
running for office can exhaust concerns" [ Mitch McConnell says Electoral College will determine 2020 election, by Lisa
Mascaro, Fox6 Milwaukee, November 10, 2020]. The Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore
that settled the 2000 election didn't come to an end until December 12, 2000.
Media outlets "declaring" the winner have no legal significance, especially when their
projections seem to be based on polls that have proven to be inaccurate [ Professional
pollsters blew it again in 2020. Why?b y Matthew Rozsa, Salon, November
4, 2020].
As of this writing, Arizona, Alaska, Pennsylvania, Georgia are all undecided. North Carolina
was just called for Trump
(and underwhelming Chamber of Commerce GOP senator Thom Tills managed to win a narrow victory
over Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham [ Cal
Cunningham concedes to Thom Tills in North Carolina Senate race, by Evie
Fordham, Fox News, November 10, 2020]). Joe Biden's lead in Arizona is narrow and
shrinking dangerously.
President Trump has a strong legal case in the key state of Pennsylvania, where it appears
that the state Supreme Court simply created a new power to count votes that arrived
after election day. The U.S. Supreme Court (without Amy Coney Barrett) deadlocked over
this, but the Trump campaign will almost certainly take this case to SCOTUS again [ Byron
York's Daily Memo: The election lawsuit Trump should win, by Byron York, Washington
Examiner, November 10, 2020]. As Senator Ted Cruz has said, there has thus far not been a
"comprehensive presentation of evidence" [ Ted Cruz: Trump Election Fraud Allegations Will Be Resolved In Court, Not By Persuading You
Or Me, by Tim Hains, RealClearPolitics, November 10, 2020]. Republican
leaders in Pennsylvania have already called for a recount "in any counties where state law was
broken" [ Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda, Pennsylvania State Senate, November 6,
2020].
However, there are more fundamental issues at stake. Thanks to the Sem/ MSM complex's
campaign of COVID-19 hysteria, the country engaged in a massive experiment with mail-in voting
[ Are We Sure About All Those Mail-in Ballots, by Josh Hammer, The American
Mind, November 10, 2020]. Different state requirements add to the confusion. There have
been specific claims of outright fraud, notably the inclusion of dead people on the voter
rolls, reports that local officials gave voters instructions that would invalidate their
ballots, and open theft of ballots [ On Electoral Fraud in
2020, by Pedro Gonzalez, American Greatness, November 9, 2020].
Critically, in several of the states where President Trump is launching legal challenges, the
common factor is a company called Dominion Voting Systems. In one proven case, a "glitch" in
its system awarded 6,000 votes to Joe Biden rather than President Trump [ Republicans expand probe into Dominion Voting Systems after Michigan counting snafu, by Zachary Halaschak and Emily Larsen, Washington Examiner, November 8, 2020].
One former Deputy Attorney General for Michigan says counters in Detroit outright provided
fraudulent ballots to non-voters [ Ex-Michigan Deputy Attorney General Alleges Detroit Counters Assigned Fraudulent Ballots To
Non-Voters, by Kyle Olson, Breitbart, November 9, 2020].
The truth or falsity of these claims must be shown in court. Of course, anti-Trump groups
are trying to prevent any legal challenges by individually targeting the law firm that
President Trump is using [ Inside the
Lincoln Project's new campaign targeting Trump's law firm, by Greg Sargent,
Washington Post, November 10, 2020]. No one seems to have considered that such a
strategy ensures that most Trump supporters will -- correctly -- consider a Biden
Administration utterly illegitimate.
Twitter and other social networking oligopolists are currently putting their thumb on the
scale by censoring posts or by claiming there are "election integrity" issues with posts they
dislike, even posts by President Trump himself [ Tucker Carlson: Big Tech Took Part in 'One of the Worst Forms of Election Tampering, by Mary Chastain, Legal Insurrection, November 10, 2020].
This control of information both before and after the election renders democracy pointless.
If Tech oligarchs can control what the voters see and hear, we might as well put them in charge
and dispense with Election Day altogether. It would be simpler and less time consuming than
going through a farce where both the exchange of information before an election and tabulating
of votes on Election Day itself are apparently too much for the world's sole superpower.
If this is the way the system works, then, as President Trump has been claiming for years,
it is "rigged" and illegitimate. If this is how it is going to be, whatever the Regime on the
Potomac says in future should be considered as foreign to the Historic American Nation as
governments based out of Brussels, Moscow, or Beijing.
Indeed, one can't help but wonder whether the historic American nation would fare better
under outright foreign occupation than a hostile elite which considers itself our rulers and
treats us with open contempt, if not hatred.
President Trump and outraged Republicans do have a card to play even if all the legal
challenges fail. State legislatures must certify a state's electors before the College can vote
for the next president. If state delegations believe the vote has been corrupted, they can send
their own competing slate of electors [ Donald
Trump's Stealthy Road to Victory, by Graham Allison, National Interest,
November 6, 2020].
President Trump also has powers that he can use to change the political environment,
especially by destroying hostile institutions and declassifying documents that the Deep State
really doesn't want to be made public [ Reflections on the late
election, by Curtis Yarvin, Gray Mirror, November 8, 2020].
If a rigged system is going to take President Trump down, he can take it down with him.
Arguably, if President Trump had the will to do something like that, he would not be in this
mess. He did not bring Big Tech to heel. He did not ensure that the bureaucracy was filled with
people loyal to him. He kept hiring people who were his enemies and then acted surprised when
he was rewarded with treachery. He governed like a conventional Republican while talking like a
nationalist, the worst of both worlds [ The Tragedy of Trump, by Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, November 16, 2018].
Nonetheless, with his back to the wall, Trump can and should fight. Even now, he has a
popular movement behind him -- all he needs to do is lead them against the System that they
thought they had defeated in 2016.
The reason I want to see Trump win is to see if anyone like Brennan or Comey end up in
jail. If not then it's proof this is all smoke and mirrors on behalf of the usual
suspects.
A new issue has turned up in Pennsylvania putting another 100,000+ ballots in line for
exclusion: (1)
Over 51,000 ballots were marked as returned just a day after they were sent out -- an
extraordinary speed, given U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivery times, while nearly 35,000
were returned on the same day they were mailed out. Another more than 23,000 have a return
date earlier than the sent date. More than 9,000 have no sent date.
"Since October 1, the average time of delivery for First-Class Mail, including ballots,
was 2.5 days," USPS said in an Oct. 29 release.
Impossible and improbable return dates indicate there's something wrong with either the
database or the ballots.
Objective facts show that Trump won Pennsylvania.
-- Will the system work?
-- Or, will the Blue Coup cause the Constitution to collapse?
Why should he concede when he won the elections? In fact, Dem crazy policies and senile
half-dead nominee resulted in them losing votes. Apparently, they believed their own lies,
taking their own psyop "polls" at face value. Massive fraud needed to push their corpse ahead
was so crude and ham-handed because it was perpetrated in a hurry. If the fraud stands, the
US is kaput. If Trump succeeds in insisting on real results, the US would keep sliding down
slowly. Either way, the direction is down, the only difference is the speed.
@Verymuchalive US elections because you back both horses. It doesn't matter about where
the "Jewish" vote goes. It's not about ordinary Jews. It's the Zionist power structure and
the big money: Adelson for the Repubs, Saban for the Dems = both bases covered.
Even a not sufficiently Zionist like Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish himself, is blocked
because he's not subservient enough to be a minion and horror of horrors, supports a few
basic Palestinian human rights and a more balanced policy.
It's easy. They only have to cover 2 bases because there are no viable 3rd parties nor
will there ever be under this system, nor is it a direct vote anyway. There will be no change
as long as this duopoly persists.
I absolutely agree with this author's conclusion, the president should fight.
Absolutely, he won the elections. However, he thinks that the fight is for him, but in
reality it is for the American electoral system in particular and the whole political system
in general. If this obvious fraud is allowed to stand, the Empire is doomed. If true result
is recovered, the slide down would be slow.
If those clever wascally Ds so easily rigged the Prez race for Joey Depends, then why
didn't those same clever wascally Ds also rig a few more Senatorial races and capture the
Congress?
@nsa ad to manufacture hundreds of thousands in each swing state. Apparently, the supply
of the cheaters was insufficient, and dishonest poll workers were available only in several
places (hence the turnout in some places went way above 100%). Sloppy job. Next time they
might prepare better. Say, they had more time manufacturing all those mail-in ballots from
dead people (naturally, all dead people voted for half-corpse). If mail-in voting remains on
the books next time, I expect a lot stronger turnout among the dead.
A single frog is worth more than Joey Depends and Poor Widdle Donnie put together
Now, that is true, but the frog was not on the ballot. It could have won.
The presidential
election was on Tuesday and we still don't know the outcome. If you followed the Florida
recount 20 years ago, you probably assume you've got some idea of how this will play out.
Officials in contested states will carefully count all the available votes, supervised by
bipartisan observers from both campaigns, to reassure all of us it's on the level. If they find
irregularities or they see questions of fraud, we'll all get to learn exactly what those
allegations are and how they were resolved. That's what we did in 2000. Remember hanging chads?
We put them on TV so people could see the ballots for themselves.
In the end, the dispute between Al Gore and George W. Bush continued all the way to the
Supreme Court. It took 36 days to resolve and every one of those days, if you remember them,
seemed like a month. That process was excruciating, it required patience and calm, but in the
end, it was well worth it.
For the record, the news organizations in this country covered every moment of it. No one in
any newsroom in America even considered censoring information about what was happening. That
would have been regarded as grotesque and immoral. Then, as now, almost everyone in the media
was a partisan Democrat. But in 2000, they understood that preserving the public's faith in the
system was more important than getting Al Gore or anyone else into the White House. So they
pushed for openness and transparency in the process, and thank God they did.
A lot has changed over two decades. It's entirely possible now that someday soon the news
media will decide to shut this election down. Believe it or not, they effectively have the
power to do that. Let's say officials in Philadelphia produce a large number of newly counted
votes. The Pennsylvania secretary of state hastily ratifies them, puts a seal of approval on
them and then declares Joe Biden the winner.
Winning Pennsylvania would put Joe Biden over the threshold of 270 electoral votes, so Joe
Biden is now the president-elect. But how many of the 69 million Americans who voted for Donald
Trump this week would believe that and accept it at this point? Not very many. Not that anyone
cares, and of course, the fact that no one cares is the reason they voted for Donald Trump in
the first place.
I think Tucker Carlson is wrong. I believe there are enough fraudulent votes to
change the result -- if the recount is done honestly. WI, MI, GA, PA could all flip, even AZ
and NV. The DNC is run by End Justifies Means people who believe everything they do is
justified due to Holocaust, Slavery, yada yada.
MSM is working hard to try to make this a foregone conclusion. Each day we hear about
Biden this Biden that, Biden's Transition Team, Biden's New Cabinet, Biden's Foreign Policy,
Biden's Trade policy Instead of feeling discouraged, I hope this actually gets Trump and his
lawyers fired up to push for recounts. He just filed a new lawsuit in MI. There is no reason
why the recounts have not started in WI, GA and PA. It's total BS. The longer this drags on,
the harder it'll be to overturn the results. They need to press on.
Going forward the GOP needs to push hard for a Voting Integrity Act that mandates all
voter registration must be approved by social security office to verify citizenship status. I
suspect a high number of voters esp. in blue states like CA and WA are non-citizens, from
tens of thousands to millions, since the DMV asks everyone to register to vote and never
check their citizenship status. In WA the ballot used to ask people to confirm they are US
citizens before signing the ballot with indication of fines/jail time for non-citizens who
vote, but they've removed that warning entirely in all ballots since 2016.
The Voting Integrity Act should include a mass audit of the voter registration in every
state, with a national database that detects people who are registered to vote in more than
one state. Even if Trump doesn't prevail due to mass cheating in the recounts, the GOP needs
to put this Voting Integrity Act in place or they will never win another election.
Also, Mayor Giuliani has claimed mamy Cases of Fraud and is Filing Lawsuits as Trump's
Lawyer.
Also, Tucker Carlson has also claimed that his Team have verified a good number of
Reported Incidents.
Statistical Analyses Claimants are coming forward as well.
Those who claim that there were none or not enough - including you, B - need to read
around a bit more and wait before making presumptive assessments when we don't have All the
Claim Cases, related Data, and Votes Affected.
Personally, I've seen enough to believe this Election is Compromised. Dominion are
allegedly vested by the Pelosis (which alone raise a few Red Flags for a RICO
Investigation).
It may be Prudent to Not only Hold Audits; but Redo the Federal Election Seats (WH and
Congress) again with Federal Ballots Monitored by Federal Personnel.
Biden should have been sent to Bethesda/Walter Reed/Hopkins for an Alzheimer's/Dementia
Review Panel (put my Own Mother through the Drill every several years prior to her going to
her Nursing Home); and Hunter should have been Arrested for Crack/Child Molestation while
being further investigated for MoneyLaundering/RICO with Pops.
Giuliani is Confident Here As Well. One thing for Certain, B, is that Giuliani has an
Outstanding Reputation as a Federal Prosecutor; and Does. Not. Bπ££$#!+.
Around. When it comes to Criminal Cases.
I'll rely on Giuliani's Assessments more than anyone else's on this Matter.
Look either way the Banker Oligarchs win. Why fight over the scraps, neither one party or
leader represents the little guy (defined these days as those with less than 100m USD in
assets).
A new issue has turned up in Pennsylvania putting another 100,000+ ballots in line for
exclusion: (1)
Over 51,000 ballots were marked as returned just a day after they were sent out -- an
extraordinary speed, given U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivery times, while nearly 35,000
were returned on the same day they were mailed out. Another more than 23,000 have a return
date earlier than the sent date. More than 9,000 have no sent date.
"Since October 1, the average time of delivery for First-Class Mail, including ballots,
was 2.5 days," USPS said in an Oct. 29 release.
Impossible and improbable return dates indicate there's something wrong with either the
database or the ballots.
Objective facts show that Trump won Pennsylvania.
-- Will the system work?
-- Or, will the Blue Coup cause the Constitution to collapse?
In today's episode of America's Next Zionist President, we have an insider giving us all
an accurate description of our beloved US constitutional republic and democracy which we must
fight to protect:
For rational people, the media's outlandish bias and presumptive misinformation will not
end well for their handlers. True, in a fake new soylent green economy, businesses don't need
customers and politicians don't need constituents – you can just manufacture them, and
pay yourself with your own money by decree. But reality has a way of eventually creeping in
(as you gag on your fake beyond meat burger).
The reality here is that we need to take a step back from the media frenzy and recognize
rule of law. Concession cannot even be legally possible for several weeks as it stands today.
And the only excuse for Biden falsely claiming victory is that he is too senile to observe
Constitutional law.
The Don is done. Lindsey and Mitch and their Dem co-conspirators will be thrilled to get
back to business as usual. Motives aside he did change things a bit in between hiring and
firing everyone in sight.
To much of a rocky ride Washington doesn't like that no criminal enterprise does.
Don't cry for Don he'll bounce back this is a man who lost three casinos then went on to
hawking steaks and finally ended up as President. A real life 21st. century Jack Armstrong.
He can write a book play some golf, Melania can go on doing her Eva Gabor impersonation and
Don Jr. and Eric can do whatever it is they do. And as for us we're all on a slow boat to
China most likely to work at one of those Sino-Ivanka Fashion Inc. factories.
Big Brother has spoken. Even Fox News has kicked Trump's ass into the shithole and called
the election for Biden. Tucker Carlson may also be looking for the exit or he has been
instructed to change his tune if he wants to keep his job which in all likelihood he will
comply. Trump lovers and sympathisers better face up to the bitter reality and take to the
hill to prepare a defense against brutal persecution by their enemies who will come after
them with unimaginable passion right after Jan 20, 2021. They already have THE LIST and names
are being added to it fast and furious. Bread and circus, people!
Come on, get real. American voters were presented with two donkeys and puppets of Israel
as candidates. Millions voted for one or the other of two donkeys both of whom dance to the
beat of Jewish drums. Come to think about it, which American president in recent memory has
not outfawned his predecessor on Israel? Jewish power owns us. End of.
Tucker Carlson said, " At this stage , the fraud that we can confirm does not
seem to be enough to alter the election result." That's a far cry from, "There's not
enough fraud to change the election results." Newsweek's paraphrasing is, therefore, itself
fraudulent and part of the gigantic Democrat gaslighting campaign to convince the nation Joe
Biden is the legitimate winner. It should not be repeated here without the actual quote and a
caveat.
This also goes to the wider issue of trying to be reasonable and fair when dealing with
Democrat cockroaches who are anything but. They will unfailingly distort measured and
diplomatic language. It's best to make no concessions to them.
I don't give a rat's butt about trump or biden. As far as I'm concerned they'll always be
two draft dodger/shirkers and nothing more. Interesting how both of them hid in college in
the 60's and refused to serve as privates in the army but think they should be able to have
the power to send men in harms way.
Actually, the Zionists and the Jewish vote generally were overwhelmingly for Biden. They
were very hostile to Trump. Why would they do this if Trump were a Zionist minion ? Because
he's not.
Trump wants to normalise relations with Russia and pull US troops out of the Middle East,
including Syria. These moves are very much opposed to Zionist aims and the interests of
Israel. Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu was very quick to recognise Biden as the winner. That's
because Biden really is a Zionist minion.
@Roacheforque every TDS normie discussed it like it had a real chance of occurring
despite not having thought out how exactly how such a ridiculous event would take place on a
practical level. Added to which the 'homey' comments coming from diaper Bill and Kameltoe
Harris have a overly saccharine flavour to them, more likely scripted with great thought put
in as opposed to spontaneous quotes from some gosh darn nice people who want to heal the
nation such that anyone trying to prevent them from doing so necessarily must be evil.
If the Zerohedge article is accurate, thank you for posting it. If it has weaknesses
perhaps some poster could point them out. It is the most sane thing that I have read on the
topic since the 3rd.
No Surrender! President Trump Should Not Concede -- No Matter What
Sure just like Hillary should not have conceded in 2016, when they had strong evidence of
electronic vote rigging.
Look either way the Banker Oligarchs win. Why fight over the scraps, neither one party or
leader represents the little guy (defined these days as those with less than 100m USD in
assets).
The Zio Banking elite wins hands down right now Biden or Trump. At least Biden might keep
some social services like Soc Sec, Medicare, and Obama Care!!!! Yes the public deserves to
get something for paying all these taxes not just the Oligarchial super rich who were openly
looting the Fed budget under Trump. The unthinking and unemployed working/middle class,
especially the Whites amongst them seem to put their crisis of identity ahead of their well
being. Daaah.
What did Trump (led by his handlers Kushner/Ivanka) do for the little guy except fill
their heads with racial antagonisms and anti-government innuendo (some true but most false).
For sure he fulfilled every Zio-Israeli fantasy at the expense of US interests. Yes, no
problem for the unquestioning MAGA types, but where did he lead America to, to the precipice
of a pending national disaster?
So stop tearing down the constitutional republic, preserve what the general public still
has left to protect their individual rights and economic well being. Obviously the elite is
pushing for civil unrest so they can bring on a military and dictatorial regime, where all
sorts of new control straps can be implemented.
Kirkpatrick you are shameful for stoking the embers of civil unrest! Nobody is calling for
unity and statesmen like leadership these days on RU report. Biden is looking much more
leader like than cry baby Trump. Trump as you like to say -- -- -- -- – YOUR
FIRED!!!!!Man-up and get out and move on and get a life.
Only idiots and fools still want to carry Fake and Slimy Politicians on top of their
shoulders. Find some brains and lobby for your own interests, no politician in this system
will work for you unless forced to by their electorate.
[Reflections on the late election, by Curtis Yarvin, Gray Mirror, November 8, 2020].
Because I began my journey to 'red-pilled' awareness thanks to Curtis 'Mencius Moldbug'
Yarvin, I naturally clicked on the link and read his piece. One has travelled far since
reading his 'Unqualified Reservations' blog way back on 2007-08, and I now agree with much of
Andrew Joyce's recent critique of Yarvin ( https://www.unz.com/article/jews-in-the-cathedral-a-response-to-curtis-yarvin/
)
However, I frequently chuckled while reading Yarvin's piece linked by James Kirkpatrick,
and marvelled anew at the quality and brilliance of his insights. In this regard it rather
took me back in time twelve or so years.
A sample or two:
After describing how Trump could legally take full and absolute personal power for the
length of his second term, Yarvin points out that what is required amounts to nothing less
than 'regime change', and states that 'A true regime change must be a revolution in every
sense of the word Of course, since the right is order and the left is chaos, the left-wing
revolution is a butcher and the right-wing revolution is a surgeon. If ours needs to keep its
bandages on for a few days, theirs can barely be sold as hamburger. And even before her
stitches are out, America feels and looks better than ever.'
He goes on:
'One lesson that should be appreciated by all sides in all civic conflicts is that force
is not another word for violence. Force is the opposite of violence. Violence is bad, and
force is good. Violence is chaos, and force is order. Violence is slow and force is fast.
'If you can win by force, what are you waiting for? Do it immediately. If you can't win
without violence, you probably can't win at all, and you probably shouldn't try. Much
bloodshed could be saved if all young persons were educated with these simple and timeless
Machiavellian principles'.
And earlier, he explains the role of elections in a 'democracy' as being to assess the
power of each side's support, and that this power ought to reflect actual physical strength
and or courage, remarking:
'The fundamental purpose of a democratic election is to test the strength of the sides in
a civil conflict, without anyone actually getting hurt. The majority wins because the
strongest side would win. Better to measure that by counting heads, than knocking heads; and
counting heads produces a reasonable guess as to who would win a head-knocking contest. Same
outcome, fewer concussions: a Pareto optimization.
'But this guess is much better if it actually measures humans who are both willing and
able to walk down the street and show up. Anyone who cannot show up at the booth is unlikely
to show up for the civil war. This is one of many reasons that an in-person election is a
more accurate election. (If voters could be qualified by physique, it would be even more
accurate.)
'My sense is that in many urban communities, voting by proxy in some sense is the norm.
The people whose names are on the ballots really exist; and almost all of them actually did
support China Joe. Or at least, preferred him. The extent to which they perform any tangible
political action, including physically going to the booth, is very low; so is their
engagement with the political system. The demand for records of their engagement is very
high, because each such datum cancels out some huge, heavily-armed redneck with a bass
boat.'
Your obsession with Jews is really misplaced here. As soon as anyone starts blaming the
Jews, that person has immediately branded himself unfit for further comment.
Trump had four years to do something about election fraud. Didn't do a thing. Kinda funny
Trump and those Senator Georgians that sucked up to blacks thought blacks would actually vote
for them. Georgia and trump lost! Maybe taught them a lesson! I doubt it. Georgia has been
overrun with Hispanics and absolutely flooded with H-1B Indians for years too . The GOP has
committed suicide and taken the rest of America down with it. But hey, they made a few bucks
doing it! Maybe trump can do another publicity stunt with a rapper to save his campaign.
The problems with the election are just a mirror image of the problems with this country.
Fake money, fake border, fake pandemic, fake scholarship, fake news, fake food, fake votes.
Did I miss anything?
@TheTrumanShow ll decide. and failing that, the congress shall decide.. If a candidate
interferes with that constitutional process, changes or alters it to suit a personal
circumstance, he or she invites the crowd operated guillotine, i fear.
I agree the election process in many states is subject to corruption.. but Trump had four
years to change that process. like most things he did not provide the leadership needed to
get the masses to help him do just that.. Now Trump complains ..to the very people who
expected more from him .. and seeks to circumvent their intentions. I hope not?
I learned long ago: the pilot that does not pay the mechanic, pays the undertaker, when
the engine quits at 15000 feet.
I am an Australian living in an Australian country town. My email address is recognisably
Australian. I have never lived in the US. I have never even been there in fact.
Yet I have been inundated with election propaganda from the Democrats (from the other side
nary a peep).
Recently an organisation that goes under the name "Fight for Reform"invited me, as a "Top
Democrat in your state", to sign a card to congratulate "Joe and Kamala" testyifying that I
too had been crying "tears of joy" about their election.
When I didn't react I was asked, virtually the day after, why I hadn't done so. They were
"running low on support from"registered Democrats" "so please
Well, if you think that Biden and Harris will serve Israel any less than Trump, then you
should be willing to purchase my Jewless estate of 500,000 acres in NY, which comes with 6000
square foot fully restored 19th century house, a 2500 square foot guest house, and a horse
barn. It also comes with both a real pond and a ce- ment pond. I'm asking only
$600,000. It's a steal of a bargain.
In other words, according to you, the Jews as individuals, organizations, or as a people
may never be blamed for anything. Methinks it is YOU wearing the brand that says "unfit for
further comment".
Ultimately, the entire battle is about who is sovereign in this country -- American
citizens or
LOL! I haven't seen the words "sovereignty" and "American people" in the same sentence for
quite some time. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not simply restricted to American people,
as it applies to all peoples of the West.
We must muster the will to shift this balance of power.
Whining about jail time over tax laws is why Trump has to fight? He can tell us
deplorables it is for us. Its not. It will be about preserving his empire. As much as I want
the corrupt PA democrats to finally get theirs in this legal process, I support Trump in his
fight for himself. If you twerps are allowed to destroy someone like a President Trump, just
imagine what you will do to a mere lunch lady for using the wrong pronoun. Please for once in
your miserable life admit your side is not made up of good people but rather a whole bunch of
totalitarian dictatorial wannabes. Scarily you keep moving the goalposts of your endgame
because every victory is never enough to satiate the rumble in your hollow souls.
By Caitlin Johnstone , an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website
is here and you can follow her on
Twitter @caitoz
'Trump
derangement syndrome' didn't come from Trump. It came from abusive media trying to spin the
evils of his presidency as somehow worse than any other US president's.
The word "coup" is being thrown about in American liberal media today, not because US
liberals suddenly became uncomfortable with the fact that their nation constantly stages coups
and topples governments around the world as a matter of routine policy, but because they are
all talking about (you guessed it) Donald Trump.
To be clear, none of the high-powered influencers who have been promoting the use of this
word actually believe there is any possibility that Donald Trump will somehow remain in office
after January of next year when he loses his legal appeals against the official results of the
election, which would be the thing that a coup is. There is no means or institutional support
through which the sitting president could accomplish such a thing. This is not a coup, it's a
glorified temper tantrum. Trump will leave office at the appointed time.
The establishment narrative managers are not terrifying their audiences with this word
because they believe there is any danger of a coup actually happening. They are doing it
because it's their last chance to use Trump to psychologically abuse their audiences for
clicks.
... ... ...
It is not Trump himself who's been making people feel terrified of a tyrannical Russian
agent ending democracy in America and ruling with an iron fist, it is years of shrieking,
hysterical coverage about Trump from the mass media.
Without all the deranged and persistent fearmongering, driven by a disdain for Trump's
unrefined narrative management
style and an insatiable hunger for ratings and clicks, it would never have occurred to
Americans that they should be more terrified of this president than of any other sh***y
Reaganite Republican. The Russian collusion narrative which dominated most of Trump's
presidency
turned out tobe essentially
nothing . The concentration camps, millions of deportations and armed militias driving
non-whites out of the country that we were promised never came; he never even
came anywhere close to Obama's deportation numbers and his
support from minorities actually went up. He hasn't been any more warlike than his
predecessors overall, and by some measures arguably less so. Most Americans actually reported that
their lives had improved over Trump's term before the pandemic hit.
If people had just been given raw information about Trump's presidency, they would have seen
a lot of bad things, but things that are bad in the same way all the horrible aspects of the
most destructive government on earth are bad. They wouldn't have known to be horrified and
anxious and have headaches and irritable bowel syndrome. They would have handled themselves in
about the same way they always handled themselves during the administration of a president they
didn't like.
Instead, they were psychologically terrorized. Made frightened, sick and traumatized by mass
media pundits who only care about ratings and clicks, as was made clear when CBS chief Les
Moonves famously
said that Trump is bad for America but great for CBS. Dragged through years of Russia
hysteria and Trump hysteria with any excuse to spin Trump's presidency as a remarkable
departure from norms, when in reality it was anything but. It was a fairly conventional
Republican presidency.
In reality, though most of them probably did not realize it, this is what Americans were
actually voting against when they turned out in record numbers to cast their votes. Not against
Trump, but against this continued psychological abuse they've been suffering both directly and
indirectly from the mass media. Against being bashed in the face by shrieking, hysterical
bull***t that hurts their bodies and makes them feel crazy, and against the unpleasantness of
having to interact with stressed-out compatriots who haven't been putting up well with the
abuse.
It wasn't a "Get him out" vote, it was a "Make it stop" vote.
Meanwhile, another pernicious effect of making Trump seem uniquely horrible has been
retroactively making his predecessors seem nice by comparison, which is why George W Bush now
enjoys majority support among Democrats
after years of unpopularity. Their depravity is hidden behind a media-generated wall labeled
"NOT TRUMP" . And when Biden steps into office, his depravity will be hidden from view in the
same way, neutering all mainstream opposition to his most deadly and dangerous
actions .
The First Rule , 5 hours ago
I certainly hope this isn't True. You should never surrender to Evil.
Too many people succumb to the psychological warfare that has been raging against us for 5
decades. It is very difficult to break free from the indoctrination regardless of
intelligence or education. The backbone of the DemonRat organization is a very strong emotion
that overcomes all logic and reason. It is HATE. Today it is called by the gentle name of
Identity Politics. Nevertheless, it is still a HATE based psychological manipulation. Women
need to HATE men. Blacks need to HATE everyone. Whites need to HATE themselves. Everybody
needs to HATE Trump.
Did anybody vote FOR Biden or Harris?
The DemonRats have the Deep State covering, aiding and abetting their insurrection. As we
have seen, the stupid white people support the peaceful protests and are played like a violin
by the professional agitators likely trained by the CIA & FBI. The BLM aristocracy claims
to be "trained Marxists". Trained by whom? Nobody asks.
The cops are used like trained dogs to attack everyone who opposes the BLM/Antifa
sanctioned riots to the point where citizens are afraid of the cops and the BLM/Antifa people
use the cops for target practice, and the cops just take it. Nobody really respects the FBI
or the cops anymore.
Then there is the constant 24/7 drum beat of propaganda from the MSM and social media
driving people crazy.
Welcome to the world of Kamala Pelosi.
With Trump gone, who will they hate next?
DemonRats: The Party of Lies & HATE
Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of
your own choosing.
- Orwell
archon , 2 hours ago
Every time Maddow speaks she reminds me that we're living in clownworld. Lets not forget
this is coming from people who spent the last four years attempting their own coup.
cankles' server , 4 hours ago
I'm not sure if twitter deleted but here's the youtube link
Rubert's media empire was just a stepping stone for gigs like a sitting board of director
with Genie Oil. Even with that Fox News has always been neocon. If most conservative types
weren't enamored with supporting the troops, who will be just like the cops in supporting the
establishment in any civil war, then they would have known Fox News was controlled opposition
for the deep state.
Rupert Murdoch's heirs are #NeverTrump Libtards. They have been systematically
installing SJW Globalists for some time. The day-to-day programming has flipped to Fake
Stream Media propaganda. It is no surprise that they went full TDS for election coverage.
The above link will provide you with a FREE KlowdTV subscription to OAN and eleven other
channels for the remainder of 2020. Easy to do, two quick steps. DUMP FOX! Pass it on.
Tucker Carlson may also be looking for the exit or he has been instructed to change his
tune if he wants to keep his job which in all likelihood he will comply.
Yes, Carlson's program last night was decidedly more milquetoast than the night before.
His choice of topics was much more mundane. Perhaps he has gotten the word.
Tucker Carlson is toeing the Fox editorial line by claiming not enough fraudulent votes to
change the outcome. The only question is how was he coerced into making this statement -- was
it the carrot or the stick? Both? The stick would be he gets fired from Fox. The carrot would
be he gets major pay raise, promotion, or even getting help set up as front runner for
2024.
TC is no longer to be trusted. I have felt that about him for some time as his website
Daily Caller started toeing the Zionist line with increasing hostility towards China this
past year. He's now just controlled opposition like Stephen Miller, Breitbart.
Note that Carlson did NOT say, as the article falsely states, "Tucker Carlson Says There's
Not Enough Fraud to Change Election Results", he said:
At this stage, the fraud that we can confirm does not seem to be enough to alter the
election result . We should be honest and tell you that. Of course, that could change,"
he said, on his Fox News show Tucker Carlson Tonight.
I believe Carlson will spotlight the fraud claims on his program tonight.
"... The grouping is thus; 1) Coastal Elites/Wall Street/City of London/Private Banking/Atlantacism/Libertarian Free Market Economics aka finance capitalism ..."
"... The middle of America is land power, and is opposed to Atlantacism, rim theory, blue water navy power projection, importation of third world people, and export of jobs and factories. ..."
Indeed, one can't help but wonder whether the historic American nation would fare better
under outright foreign occupation than a hostile elite which considers itself our rulers and
treats us with open contempt, if not hatred.
Russia or China would not flood the historic American nation with "third world people" in
order to chase after a dollar. A good argument could be made that China or Russia would be a
better government for Heartland America than the "international" coastal elites.
The coastal elites are wedded to finance capitalism. This group of people want a thin veneer
of Oligarchs (themselves) controlling a mixed race, or brown population in their factories.
Finance Capital wants to make illicit gains. Finance capital could care less about improving
labor ability of the native population.
The grouping is thus; 1) Coastal Elites/Wall Street/City of London/Private
Banking/Atlantacism/Libertarian Free Market Economics aka finance capitalism . (In short,
the coastal elites are for an "international world order" with them in charge, with them making
their finance nut with usury, rents, and unearned income. Lying and cheating is ok, because
only money matters. Their capital is fungible, meaning it can fly anywhere in the world to make
gains, and to them labor has legs and is also fungible, to then lower prices – to make
gains.)
Land Powers, such as China and Russia are not "international" in their thinking. Although
they do some power projection into blue water as a form of defense. They are interested in
improving their sovereign population.
The middle of America is land power, and is opposed to Atlantacism, rim theory, blue
water navy power projection, importation of third world people, and export of jobs and
factories.
The American system of economy of the founders was the first industrial capitalism, and the
"credit of the nation" went toward infrastructure, public health, and improving the
commons.
The Jew and English finance capitalism method, first combined together in 1694, and has
always been at war with heartland America. The parasite is dug in deep.
By C. J. Hopkins , award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist
based in Berlin. His dystopian novel, ' Zone 23 ', is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. His essays and other works can be found at,
and he can be reached via, cjhopkins.com
or consentfactory.org . OK, so,
that was not cool. For one terrifying moment there, it actually looked like GloboCap was going
to let Russian-Asset Hitler win.
Hour after hour on election night, states on the map kept turning red, or pink, or some
distinctly non-blue color. Wisconsin Michigan Georgia Florida. It could not be happening, and
yet it was. What other explanation was there? The Russians were stealing the election
again!
But, of course, GloboCap was just playing with us. They're a bunch of practical jokers,
those GloboCap guys. Naturally, they couldn't resist the chance to wind us up just one more
time.
Seriously, though, while I enjoy a good prank, I still have a number of liberal friends,
many of whom were on the verge of suffering major heart attacks as they breathlessly waited for
the corporate media to confirm that they had successfully voted a literal
dictator out of power. (A few of them suffer from IBS or other gastrointestinal disorders,
so, in light of the current toilet-paper shortage caused by the Return of the Apocalyptic
Plague, toying with them like that was especially cruel.)
But, whatever. That's water under the bridge. The good news is, the nightmare is
over! Literal Hitler and his underground army of Russia-loving white supremacists have been
vanquished! Decency has been restored! Globalization has risen from the
dead!
... ... ..
Meanwhile, the GloboCap propaganda has reached some new post-Orwellian level. After four
long years of "RUSSIA HACKED THE ELECTION!" now, suddenly, "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS
ELECTION FRAUD IN THE USA!"
That's right, once again, millions of liberals, like that scene in ' 1984' where the
Party switches official enemies right in the middle of the Hate-Week speech, have been ordered
to radically reverse their "reality," and hysterically deny the existence of the very
thing they have been hysterically alleging for four solid years and they are actually doing
it!
... ... ///
Marian1637 7 hours ago
I can not comprehend
that democrats do not blame Putin for Biden winning!
Reilly 3 hours ago
Very funny, bravo!
Nothing like a bit of slapstick, with a dose of reality also in the middle of a waking
nightmare about to happen. ;))
DeoGratias 4 hours ago
One correction : it is not GloboCap it is
GloboComs. The objective of communism is to create two classes of a society : rulers and
workers. Thus GloboCaps are GloboComs.
Winter7Mute 5 hours ago
A reliable way to make people
believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished
from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact. I'm not even
sure if most journalists or reporters know what their even talking about, when writing these
articles.
Vidarr Kerr 5 hours ago
There is such a thing as Too Much Sarcasm.
EarthBotV2 Vidarr Kerr 4 hours ago
I disagree. The liberazi "thinks" with the gut -- as in "What does your gut tell you?"...
"... But while they now have the power, globalists do not have solutions to the country problems, and the crisis of neoliberalism (which started in 2008) will continue, the far-right nationalism will stay and may even gain strength. This suggests that in 2024 is somebody like Tucker Carlson will lead the ticket. And Tucker is a more dangerous opponent to neoliberal Dems than Trump ever been. "Trumpism without Trump" will live, so to speak. ..."
Interesting piece by Beinart about the obvious question that isn't being asked: Why did
Trump lose? After all he had the advantages of incumbency, until February the stock market was
booming, wages were rising, things were going great.
Answer: because he was not nearly radical enough. Because he was a weak leader who was
captured by the Republican elite (not the other way round). Also (rather ironic this) because
he was and is a terrible negotiater. He continually caved into the likes of Mitch McConnell,
and, well the rest is history.
Question: will 'super Trump' in 4 or 8 years time manage to follow the Eastern European
template and create a genuine populist party? (economically social democratic, particularly
concentrating on pensioners: extremely hostile to immigration, skeptical of environmental
issues, culturally conservative?). If so the future is the Republicans' but it's a big if.
...he was a weak leader who was captured by the Republican elite (not the other way
round). Also (rather ironic this) because he was and is a terrible negotiator. He
continually caved into the likes of Mitch McConnell, and, well the rest is history.
All true. But Biden victory in some ways looks like Catch 22 for neoliberal Dems (Will the
Democrats Ever Make Sense of This Week? – New Republic):
In sum, if the results we have hold, Joe Biden will win the election and preside over a
divided Congress. A chastened and anxious Democratic caucus will continue to hold the
House.
A triumphant Senate Republican caucus will obviously destroy his major legislative
agenda. Biden will assuredly turn to policy by executive action, just as Barack Obama did
late in his legislatively stymied administration.
When he does, Republicans will do all they can to send those actions to a 6–3
conservative Supreme Court Biden will be unable to pack or meaningfully reform.
In defeating Trump, Democrats will have avoided their worst-case scenario. Instead, they
will have won the worst possible Biden victory, a political situation that will be a
nightmare all its own.
Trump, with his "national neoliberalism," was an anomaly in its own right. And such things
do not last long. So this is a kind of "return to normal" -- return to power of the
"internationalist" faction of Oligarchy who is linked to globalization (and constitutes the
majority of the US oligarchy), which was unexpectedly defeated in 2016 and since then foght
tooth and nail for the return to power. And such "normalization" is the most logical outcome
of the 2020 elections and is to be expected.
But while they now have the power, globalists do not have solutions to the country problems,
and the crisis of neoliberalism (which started in 2008) will continue, the far-right
nationalism will stay and may even gain strength. This suggests that in 2024 is somebody like
Tucker Carlson will lead the ticket. And Tucker is a more dangerous opponent to neoliberal
Dems than Trump ever been. "Trumpism without Trump" will live, so to speak.
That may spell troubles for the well-being of the PMC (professional and management class)
to which we all belong.
I would add that the fact that Biden victory legitimized Russia-gate and abuse of their
power by intelligence agencies is also a problem. I suspect that Neo-McCarthyism, in the long
run, might backfire.
Fox News Channel's Tucker Carlson says Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is "happy to sell out his voters with an amnesty deal" after
he suggested finding "common ground" with Democrats on immigration.
During a segment Friday night, Carlson called out Graham -- who just won reelection in South Carolina --
for suggesting to the Senate Republican caucus that their agenda next year could include working with Democrats on amnesty for
11 to 22 million illegal aliens. Carlson asked:
Who's excited to greet our new corporate overlords? Who plans to collaborate, particularly who on the right side, the Republican
side, the side that said it was defending you. Who's happy about all of this? That seems worth keeping track of just so we know
who we're dealing with here.
I was particularly interested in the comments of Lindsey Graham who just won reelection in the state of South Carolina because
conservatives voted for him the people around Trump put a great deal of pressure on Lindsey Graham to send them money, so after
a day or two, he made a great show of sending them $500,000.
But then on the issues that matter, Lindsey Graham immediately ran away from the ideas that he claimed to support and said
that he would be happy to sell out his voters with an amnesty deal, like within hours of the election.
You have a deeply flawed party that refuses to protect its own voters and represent their legitimate interests but they are
the only hope that this country doesn't descend into something unrecognizable. It puts 70 million decent people in a tough spot.
Already, America First conservatives and immigration reformers are
pushing back against Graham's comments.
"The new base of the Republican Party is the American working class, of all races. 'Common ground' on immigration reform is code
for amnesty, and amnesty is an insult to the millions who voted GOP in the election," Bostonians Against Sanctuary Cities President
Lou Murray told Breitbart News.
Currently, there are about 20 million Americans who are jobless or underemployed, mostly due to the Chinese coronavirus crisis,
but all of whom want full-time jobs.
Economists have found that their
job opportunities and wages can be easily diminished by
high immigration levels.
One particular study by the Center for Immigration Studies' Steven Camarota revealed that for every one percent increase in the
immigrant portion of American workers' occupation, their weekly wages are cut by perhaps 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born
American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by potentially 8.75 percent, since
more than 17 percent of the workforce is foreign-born.
The high immigration policy is a boon for giant corporations, real estate investors, Wall Street, university systems, and Big
Agriculture that can cash in on an economy that offers low wages to a flooded U.S. labor market.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
To start one's own party is not so easy and outright impossible under the current conditions. If the majority of GOP supports
him then the best course would be to purge and reinvigorate GOP: he should issue a call of action to his supporters and create the
situation when those who use their membership to their own benefits will be forced to step down or cancel the membership. By purging
I don't mean filling it in with 'yes-men': they don't have to be obliged to love Trump; criticism is essential, but these people
have to be able to differentiate between the personal and common when on service. They all have to be loyal to the America First.
If you call yourself 'Republican' then behave like one or choose another party. Such RINOs are materially motivated - they never
couldn't build a career in the Dems Party, especially now, with the Squad; they can't start their own Party - nobody will vote them,
because they'll be the party of traitors and sell-outs. Benny Too Too
deploritarian •
2 days ago
No your corrupt corp fraud media did it to him along with hussein osama's weaponized US agencies! Now go back to watching CNN
lying hate media to get even more stupid
With 25 Million Illegal Aliens in our Country the Democrats have an absolute Lock on this and future Elections by enabling them
to Vote. No Voter ID laws, Sanctuary Cities awarding them all Privileges of US Citizens from Drivers Licenses and access to all welfare
state programs. We are not a Sovereign Nation any longer. ANITFA called it in their Protests "No More BORDERS. Democrats support
this Treasonous Group because it gives them perpetual control of Washington.
Elibar deploritarian •
2 days ago
Better European papers? LOL! I live in Europe and can tell you they're every bit as lying and partisan as the MSM EVERYWHERE!
Practically every European national broadcaster and newspaper gets s o r o s funding, unless you happen to read Hungarian. For instance,
the long defunct Italian Radical party's radio station was close to collapse due to lack of support. They are now back on air admitting
the Hungarian pos gave them almost 400,000 euro if they supported 'immigration'. Read the Beano, it's far more informative.
The GOP will stand with Trump, and Trump will be legally reelected. The Michigan Legislature
just convened a special session to consider the widespread ballot stuffing, technical
"glitches," and other suspicious activity in their election. Everyone in Michigan knows that
Trump and James won that election in a landslide.
The Democrats all stopped counting in numerous states on election night to give them time to
"create" some extra mail-in Biden votes.
The legislature, controlled by the GOP, will invalidate the election if there is evidence of
fraud. They have the Constitutional right to instruct the electors. America will not let the
Democrats steal an election the way they do in Venezuela. THIS JUST IN: The Wisconsin
legislature, controlled also by the GOP, has been called to investigate voter fraud too!!
Milwaukee had an unprecedented 91% return rate, more than any precinct in history by 20 points.
No fraud? We'll see. TruLogix Dennis
Mastin •
2 days ago
Yeah good luck. The work has been done. The ballots removed are long gone. GOP is to blame
this was obvious and they put nothing in place to stop this knowing it was most likely part of
the plan with all of the dems fighting tooth and nail for mail in. Bullet2354 Avery Bierce •
2 days ago • edited
In places like Michigan, more republicans requested Absentee Ballots than Democrats...
And More republicans returned their Absentee Ballots than Democrats....
The 20% could be mostly Biden... but 80-20%. Dems did pick up votes... but so did Trump!
And while I know you feel some republicans did not like Trump... all polling done this year
shows 89-94% of Republicans were supporting Trump - actually much higher than Dem support for
Biden...
- the Trump 'Voter Enthusiasm was off the charts"..... Biden had historic LOW 'voter enthusiasm
most of the summer.
Also - many Bernie People (about 25% in spring) stated they would never vote Democrat after
what the DNC did to Bernie in 2016 and 2020. Maybe the came back to Biden - but I don't know...
I did not see Bernie people rallying for Joe at all.
I think the "ILLEGAL BALLOT ISSUE" IS NOW WHAT THE FOCUS is moving too...
Voting Laws were abused... Late ballots, fake registrations, 'the dead,' ghost mail in
ballot.... -and intentionally and illegally manipulated ballots - even poll workers admitting
they tossed Trump votes because they hate him so much...
Of course, support for Biden isn't in issue. Exasperation with Trump is clearly the
issue.
Independents don't generally support Trump this year.
I don't think many Bernie people would vote for Trump. That doesn't make much sense.
Yes, clearly Trump wants lawyers to argue about ballots being illegal. I guess he thinks they
might be able to show enough ballots were illegal, and that most of the illegal ballots were
for Biden. Ball is in their court on that, I guess. But in court, Trump won't be able to argue
in the form of tweets that say "we've been hearing about so much fraud." Time to put
up.
Court challenges are coming.... that is for sure...
Supreme Court already has the PA rulings and is looking at that.
I do think overall Election Integrity has been compromised... at almost every level and
every step of the process. Ghost ballots sent out, Mail in ballots sold for cash, 'the dead,'
Fake Ids', out of state voters voting multiple times, dates and signatures altered, ballots
trashed by partisan poll workers, ballots altered, software 'errors' (that seem to favor one
party about 100% of the time) ...
It is too much.... I have seen a few poll workers arrested for trying to slide multiple
votes through a machine - and I though 'well just few votes won't matter' - but now... the
Trust is broken...
If anything good can come of all this - I hope the "Voting Process" is overhauled 100%...
maybe even to the level of BlockChain.... Bullet2354 Mike •
a day ago
My concern is not the actual count... however.
My concern is that Voter Laws were abused... significantly.
illegal votes counted, illegal processes used - a really corrupted vote system..... The Law
was not followed.
2016 MI was bad enough with the failed RECOUNT.... Detroit has always had massive counting
errors, bribery scandals, constant inconsistencies, pay to vote schemes, 'walking around money'
- and the STATE has know this for 60 years! ... yet never moved to fix it. I think it has grown
'out of control' in 2020.
I used to 'give a little' for a few fraudulent votes here or there.... a few Dead people get
a ballot... a few data base errors.
This year - the Fraud has crossed the line.
I don't trust the count. - VOTE INTEGRITY HAS COLLAPSED.
By Graham Hryce , an Australian journalist and former media lawyer, whose work has been
published in The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Sunday Mail, the Spectator
and Quadrant. It's only when you compare what is happening in America to the likes of
Australia, which also recently held elections, that you appreciate just how alarming the
situation in the US is. Civil war is a real possibility.
Despite the fact that America and Australia are both liberal democracies sharing a common
cultural heritage, key aspects of the US presidential and congressional elections appear
extraordinary from an Australian perspective.
To paraphrase Tolstoy: all happy democracies may resemble one another, but every unhappy
democracy is apparently unhappy in its own way.
In recent months, elections have taken place in three Australian states and territories. In
each of these contests, the incumbent government has been returned with an increased majority,
while in America, President Donald Trump has been narrowly defeated by Joe Biden.
Leaving aside the disparate results, the following important differences between the
Australian and the American elections are clear: Firstly, the comparative irrelevance of
Covid-19 as an issue in the American election. Secondly, the dominance of a crude populist
pro-capitalist ideology (favouring business interests and profits over lives) in the American
electoral contests. And finally, Trump's predictable and completely unprincipled response to
his defeat.
These differences augur badly for the future of democracy in America – in fact, they
indicate that it may be in its death throes. In Australia, however, recent events have
strengthened democracy, enabling a perspective to emerge which comprehends the disaster that
may be about to engulf the US.
The outcome of the recent elections in Australia turned on the issue of how incumbent
governments had handled the pandemic. Australia is a federal polity, comprising six states and
two territories, with a population of some 25 million. To date, it has recorded 27,000 Covid-19
cases and 900 Covid-19-related deaths – one of the best outcomes of all Western
democracies. America, by way of contrast, has seen 10 million cases and chalked up over 250,000
deaths.
Australia's remarkable result has been achieved by an early federal government closure of
national borders, strict state government lockdowns and the closure of state borders.
Each of the recent Australian elections was fought on the coronavirus. The Queensland result
is the most instructive. The state's Labor government imposed strict lockdowns and closed its
borders very early on in the pandemic. The conservative parties opposed this, and the two
Trump-like populist parties – One Nation and the Palmer Party – spent the election
campaigning for the immediate lifting of all restrictions and opening of the state borders.
Last week, the Queensland Labor government was returned to power with an increased majority,
and the One Nation and Palmer Party populist vote – primarily the vote of an older
demographic – collapsed and crossed over to Labor.
The situation in America could not be more different. Trump refused to adopt a national
policy to deal with Covid-19. He ignored and/or minimised the risk of the spread of the virus,
promoted untested cures and belittled the advice of his own public health experts. He also
consistently opposed all lockdown measures and other efforts by state governments to control
the pandemic, and blatantly lied to voters, telling them that the virus was under control when
it has continued to spread at an alarming rate.
Despite all this, Trump only narrowly lost the presidency, and, more astoundingly, the
Republican Party easily retained control of the Senate. The 'blue wave' in favour of Biden and
the Democrats – predicted by almost all pollsters – did not
materialise.
One explanation for the relative unimportance of the coronavirus in the US elections is the
dominance in America of a crude pro-capitalist ideology that favours the interests of business
and the economy over the health of the American people. This ideology has political adherents
in all Western democracies (including Australia), but only in America could mainstream
politicians fervently embrace it and hope to win office.
And Trump and the Republican Party did this when the Covid-19 second wave was sweeping
through Europe, compelling political leaders there (including conservatives like Boris Johnson
and Emmanuel Macron) to reintroduce strict shutdowns and other measures to deal with it.
Fifty years ago, the historian Louis Hartz, in the Liberal
Tradition in America , portrayed America as a nation trapped in a liberal, pro-capitalist
ideological straitjacket that prevented it from dealing effectively with the social and
economic challenges that confronted it. Hartz's analysis seems even more relevant now than it
did then.
The most extraordinary aspect of the US election, however, has been Trump's – and the
Republican Party's – refusal to accept defeat. It is this that portends, more than
anything else, the demise of American democracy.
Not surprisingly, Trump has reacted to his defeat by alleging that Biden "stole the
election" by means of widespread electoral fraud. Trump maintains that he won the election.
Even before the counting of votes had concluded, he commenced a number of legal actions –
most of which are doomed to failure – challenging the results in various states.
Donald Trump Jr.
urged Republican supporters to "go to total war" to keep his father in office.
Trump's former adviser, Steve Bannon (who is currently facing criminal charges)
called for the beheading of senior public health officer Anthony Fauci and the FBI
director, Christopher A. Wray.
Powerful Republican politicians, including Senator Lindsey Graham, have vigorously supported
Trump's response to his defeat. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican powerbroker, predicted
that Biden's victory would generate a build-up of rage that would keep Trump in power.
Republican Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis has
urged members of the Electoral College – whose votes determine the outcome of the
presidential election – to break with convention and give their votes to Trump, despite
the fact that voters in their states preferred Biden. This unprecedented suggestion, which has
not been disavowed by Trump and his supporters, constitutes a serious attack on the mechanism
at the heart of the US presidential electoral process.
It also offers Trump a way to stay in power – because if the Electoral College does
not conclude its deliberations by mid-December, it falls to the Republican-dominated Congress
to decide who becomes president.
Trump and the Republican Party have plunged America into an extraordinary political crisis
that will not be resolved for some time. Trump will not voluntarily give up office, and it is
uncertain how this impasse will be resolved.
The president's response to his defeat has astounded conservative Australian politicians.
When asked to comment this week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison could only say that he was an
observer of and not a participant in the US democratic process. Some of his colleagues,
however, have been severely critical of Trump.
More ominously, the Covid-19 pandemic is intensifying dramatically in America, with 100,00
new cases now being recorded each day, along with 1,100 deaths. This ongoing health crisis can
only exacerbate and intensify the current political crisis.
At the weekend, we saw protests in major American cities. Most disturbingly, armed Trump
supporters massed outside an Arizona voting centre in an attempt to stop the count. Such events
could become more common as the political crisis intensifies. It is inevitable that both sides
of the intractable political and ideological divide in America will become increasingly more
irrational in the coming months.
It is all very well for the Democratic Party elites to criticise Trump and his supporters
for believing in conspiracy theories about the pandemic and mass electoral fraud. But these
elites have themselves been peddling equally irrational views about catastrophic climate
change, critical race theory and identity politics for decades. After all, whose world view is
really more irrational, Trump's or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's?
Joe Biden's
victory speech on the weekend was predictable and bland. It is all very well to announce
"a time to heal" and tell Americans "to remain calm and patient" and that "the
purpose of our politics is not unending warfare." But these are just meaningless platitudes
in the current circumstances.
Whatever happens, Biden will not be sworn in as president until January 20 next year. He
cannot begin to deal with the pandemic until then, when it will be too late, nor can he do
anything about the civil unrest that will engulf America. And even if Biden does take office as
president in January, the Republican-dominated Senate will no doubt block his entire
legislative program – such as it is.
America today is in a very similar position to that which it was in in the 1850s in the
lead-up to the Civil War. It is deeply divided over fundamental issues of principle, which have
calcified to the degree that rational debate is no longer possible. The political system,
previously based on compromise, has become so ideologically divided that compromise is no
longer possible.
In such circumstances, civil war becomes a very real possibility. But any coming war will be
very different from the American Civil War of the 1860s. That war was fought, in effect,
between two nations with regular armies.
The coming civil war in America will be a disorganised bitter social conflict fought in
cities by armed groups of citizens on the barricades, much like the European revolutions of
1830 and 1848 – with one important difference. The insurgents in the European revolutions
were fighting for democracy – whereas the participants in America's coming civil war will
be engaged in a war to destroy it.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
So neoliberal Dems gaslighted everybody with Russiagate for four years, staged Ukrainegate,
and now cry for unity. Funny, is not it
For four years, Democrats branded Donald Trump an illegitimate president and treated him as
such. Then-President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden plotted with FBI Director James Comey a
way to oust Trump's pick for national security advisor, Michael Flynn.
Now they face the results of the attempt to depose Trump via color revolution (aka
Russiagate), the result of neo-McCarthyism hysteria and cry uncle. To paraphrase Tolstoy: all
happy democracies may resemble one another, but every unhappy democracy is apparently unhappy in
its own way.
Wayne Dupree has been to the White House to talk to President Trump about race relations
and appeared at election events for him. He was named in Newsmax's top 50 Influential
African-American Republicans in 2017, and, in 2016, served as a board member of the National
Diversity Coalition for Donald Trump. Before entering politics, he served for eight years in
the US Air Force. His website is here: www.waynedupree.com . Follow him on Twitter @WayneDupreeShow
I've participated in eight elections including this one, and I've never before witnessed the
open hostility and vitriol that's been aimed at President Trump.
No president was ever abused like Trump was from day one. The Republicans didn't cooperate
with Barack Obama at all, but any thinking person can see the difference between the way Obama
was treated and the way Trump has been treated. The past four years have set a dangerous
precedent, and you know what they say about karma.
Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer refused to work with President Trump
on anything, but now the socialists want the Republicans to work with them. Interpretation: we
want the Republicans to work with us as long as they believe everything we believe and do
everything to help us, even if, in their eyes, it destroys America. No dissent will be
accepted.
You really have to wonder about this arrogance from the Democrats and their call for unity,
don't you? Joe Biden is calling for unity because he doesn't want to face the constant
scrutiny the Trump administration faced. After all, do you think the hundreds of millions he
received in campaign contributions didn't come with strings attached?
Right now, there's not enough critical thinking for unity to happen; our emotions govern too
many of us. The media have played on that for four years. They convinced millions of
Americans they would have to be insane to consider re-electing Trump, even though most
Americans are sick of the establishment politicians and their big empty promises, sick of their
endless and expensive foreign wars, sick of a sluggish economy, and tired of the outsourcing of
American jobs.
How can unity happen when the rift between liberals and conservatives is larger than ever,
and the two sides envision this country's future in vastly different ways? How will half of
the American population ever again trust their sources of news and information when nearly
every outlet has lost all pretense of objectivity? Every bit of reporting has become an opinion
piece.
In marriage, they call these irreconcilable differences. It may not happen in my lifetime,
but this country would do well to consider a peaceful separation.
Our national media have failed us. And that's all media, including social. They caught us
all hook, line, and sinker. Why? Money. We are such a gullible species. The more people hear an
idea promoted, the more it sounds true. This is why our country is divided. We rely too heavily
on our media for information, true or not. They manipulate us with their words like modern-day
bards. Journalism is indeed dead, and it's been replaced by sensationalism. But it all boils
down to who's really at fault. To find that out, look in the mirror. Yes, we all let this
happen to us.
I wouldn't blame people for believing phony news. Think about it: why do companies spend
literally billions of dollars on commercials? Companies use commercials to change our buying
habits, and they work extremely well on a subliminal level. Likewise, the mainstream and
social media use misinformation, distortions, deceptions, and omissions to change people's
voting behavior on that same subliminal level. The only way to ensure legitimate elections in
the future is to destroy mainstream and social media's hold on our country.
In the past four years, the behavior of the Democrats has been that of junior high school
bullies with no adult supervision. What all men want most is power, and the Democrats will do
anything to get it. We can't take their low road, but should stand against their further
attempts to turn this into a one-party nation. We need a broad spectrum of ideas to keep our
country strong and our citizens cared for.
One party does not have all the answers, nor can they dictate to the other parties how to
worship, think, or even eat. When I was young, I was a Bill Clinton Democrat. I walked away
before the Obama administration and never looked back. I believe more and more people are doing
that, and, by the 2022 midterms – well, watch out, Dems!
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, analysts on both the left and right noticed that
President Trump had the potential to grow his base of white working-class voters. Five
Thirty-Eight's
David Wasserman noted that over 44 million non-college-educated white voters who were not
even registered to vote before the 2016 election concentrated heavily in the Midwest, including
2.6 million in Pennsylvania, 2.2 million in Ohio, 900,000 in Wisconsin, and 500,000 in Iowa.
All the Trump campaign needed to do was locate them and register a fraction of them, and it
would be smooth sailing till election day.
Rather than employing a strategy that looked to find the missing white working-class voter,
the Trump campaign devised a plan to drive support from minority voters. They released both the
Platinum Plan for black Americans and the American Dream plan for Hispanic Americans, promising
hundreds of billion dollars to revive their communities and a series of other identity-driven
policies.
This was successful to a point. The Hispanic turnout in Florida and Texas were large enough
to deliver Trump a much larger victory than most people expected and helped keep Arizona and
Nevada competitive even as he shed voters in the suburbs and among Independents as well as
college-educated whites. Among black voters, exit polls showed Trump received 19 percent of the
black voters between 25 and 44 years-old. However, he didn't budge the number of older black
Americas who make up a majority of voters in their racial group.
That plan was always doomed to fail due to the small share of minority voters in the Midwest
that were up for grabs. There weren't enough Hispanic voters or black Americans willing to flip
to the GOP in those states. So they relied on their pool of existing voters and resting their
fate on a ground game.
To the Trump campaign and the Wisconsin Republican Party's credit, they ran a fantastic
operation in the state. The President's campaign increased his support and turnout in 22 of the
23 counties he flipped from President Obama in 2016. Even more astonishing, only two of those
counties had turnout under 90 percent. Some counties like Price, Marquette, and Pepin had close
to 95 percent turnout.
In the county of Kenosha, which saw race riots and acts of violence from Black Lives Matter
supporters and members of Antifa, Trump increased his margin from .3 percent in 2016 to 3.2
percent in 2020, becoming the first Republican to win the county in back-to-back elections
since 1928.
The ground game and high level of support from working-class white counties couldn't make up
because the missing white vote stayed missing. In the 23 Obama-Trump counties, the number of
registered voters declined by nearly 8,000 voters from January 2017 to November 2020 even
though the population increased in these areas.
So Trump's campaign had to work harder with a smaller group of people. Most of the
non-college-educated white Wisconsinites that didn't vote in 2016 remained untapped in 2020.
For over three years, the campaign spent hundreds of millions of dollars chasing phantom voters
in deep blue states like New Mexico rather than looking at their natural base sitting
underneath their nose.
Had those funds been redirected to registering and turning out between five and ten percent
of those non-college-educated white voters they missed in 2016, they wouldn't have to worry
about suburbanites defecting to Biden. Fears of voters fraud or illegal vote count wouldn't
have been a concern if they just reached out to their natural constituency.
There's a good chance that the same story could be told in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and
Minnesota. This election wouldn't have been close if they only worked on registering the people
most likely to vote for them, rather than banking on minority voters who just weren't in the
Rust Belt.
As a boomer, I learned very early how evil and corrupt the democrat party can be. Never
voted for a democrat traitor my entire life. Maybe get a little experience under your belt and
you'll learn. Unless you're already a straight up Commie.
As Tucker said it's fact that Detroit and Philadelphia have a history of rigging elections.
doesn't prove they're doing it this time, but people worried about it are as far from crazy as
it gets.
Why are Democrats descending into entitled rages at demands for transparency, or even just
explanations of what they are doing? We told to be patient with the mail-in vote for weeks,
then they are totally impatient and seething outraged hatred with working through our concerns
about fraud. Their protesters are already taking to the streets chanting "count every vote,"
which is where Trump's slogan, "every legal vote" comes from. Did they have the same emotional
outbursts in the past times when we know for a fact they were rigging urban elections?
Trump was an outsider. The deep state won. There's never been such a relentless,
full-spectrum media propaganda campaign against a president such as this. Americans are
mostly dumb media creatures, especially the ignorant young who are infantile consumers of
Facebook and other twaddle. Corporations such as Apple poured hundreds of millions into BLM
and other front groups. And don't forget the massive terror campaign in the streets.
Capitalist globalism has retaken the presidency.
The white men who failed to vote for Trump in this election are incapable of grasping the
concept of 'Incrementalism'.
How do you think the Frankfurt School's virulently anti-White Cultural Marxists managed to
achieve the success that they have achieved since the 1960s? These subversive termites did
not go full bore and try to shove their anti-White, anti-Western agenda down the throats of
an America that, at the time, was still almost 90% White European. Instead, they began their
steady 'march through the institutions' using stealth tactics – relying on
incrementalism. One tiny step at a time, so as to not alert their target of destruction
– White Americans.
Trump is not the savior of White America – he proved that over the last 4 years.
But, he was a step in the right direction and these White males who were not 100 percent
satisfied by his performance while in office lack the intelligence and patience that is
necessary for TeamWhite during this fight for our very survival.
Our objective is to make sure that the Trumpism – populism, nationalism, rejection
of globalism, rejection of massive third world immigration into the USA, and a cessation of
fighting endless wars for Israel's sole benefit – these concepts must not be dumped by
the GOP. If a Republican politician starts spouting globalism – or supporting amnesty
– or calling for more wars – he or she needs to be thrown OUT of office as soon
as possible and replaced by a Trumpist candidate.
Brad Griffin is an extremely low IQ, dangerously clueless, checkers playing retard who is
too stupid to comprehend the strategy of the anti-White enemy and he thinks he can throw a
hissy fit and somehow boost the amount of respect that other pro-White people have for
him?
It is due to sanctimonious morons like him that the White race is in the existential
crisis situation we now find ourselves in. These 'absolutists' and 'purists' are going to be
the death of our race of people.
By the way, there have already been observations elsewhere on the fact that White men
supported Trump less than before. Not a revelation.
I had no idea if he would lose White men prior to the election, but I thought it a
possibility. I'd see him stand up there at rallies in front of a massive sea of White people
and he'd start bragging about all the shit he'd done for Blacks, Hispanics, and Women, but
nary a mention of White men.
And what's with his hangouts with Kanye West? Saying he's the least racist person in the
room. And the Platinum Plan? Is this shit why we elected you, chief?
I guarantee that no White men were thrilled to hear about blacks being let out of jail.
The more blacks in jail, the better. They need to be kept where less of them can procreate.
If I were POTUS, I find out which crimes black women were good at and increase the penalties
for those, so we could lock up the breeders.
The election is being stolen but once again the establishment dramatically misread the lay
of the political landscape among the American population. The adjustments that were made
ahead of time to the paperless electronic voting machines were not sufficient to overcome the
votes for Trump and so the establishment has to fall back on much more difficult and risky
approaches to cooking the count. To help cover this more challenging and time-consuming
operation the "Mighty Wurlitzer" has the mass media chanting in chorus that the Trump
Administration's charges of fraud are "baseless" before investigations can be done to
determine if the charges have a basis.
There will be no "revenge" against the Democrats. If the American public accepts
the results of the fraud then the establishment (Democrats and Republicans) will heave a
"Huuuge" sigh of relief for dodging the bullet and things will return to
"normal" as they were with previous presidents as figureheads for the State. There
will be nothing remotely like the ludicrous "Russiagate" hysteria that the mass media
indulged in against Trump. Something truly baseless will have to be found for the Republicans
to rant at the Democrats about like Obama's birth certificate, but the real issues will be
dropped like hot potatoes by both "teams" .
The establishment will then try to restart "Project for a New American Century" .
This is bad news for Syria as the "Assad Curse" will start getting more exercise
again. This is also bad news for Russia as the PNAC crowd are entirely certain that the
Russians are bluffing about engaging the Empire kinetically. They are Russians, after all,
right? You just have to push them hard enough like Reagan did and they will roll over.
At least that is what the PNAC crowd thinks. The PNACers rely for their brainpower on the
PMC ( "Professional, Managerial class" ), who as c1ue pointed out are "...
the middle managers, doctors, lawyers, MBAs, tenured professors, finance types and what not
who are divorced from the actual hands-on labor." That part about being "divorced from
the actual hands-on labor" is important because it means they have nothing mooring them
to reality.
[Aside: I have often mentioned that economics is the keystone social science, and
contemporary economics being based around vacuous capitalist apologetics renders the entire
realm of the social sciences a limp and constantly shifting mass of liquid shite with no
predictive power and only serving to sell pop culture self-help books. Psychology is where
the social sciences bump up against the biological sciences. This is how economics plays such
an important role in real (not pop) psychology. One's occupation; how one makes a living; how
one puts food on the table, is the core of human identity (skin tone isn't anywhere close).
The more that individuals fulfill employment roles that are entirely socially constructed and
the further they are from direct involvement in the process of transforming natural resources
into tangible items humans use for living, then the more tenuous and, to put it politely,
more "abstract" and subject to reinterpretation their association with physical
reality becomes. This is why c1ue 's PMCs, despite being very intelligent and highly
educated, can make such profound mistakes that get hayseed farmers scratching their heads in
amazement.]
The PNAC gang (Biden/Harris is their front) will now "shirtfront" Russia and
"get in their face" . They will escalate until they succeed at their plans. Trump's
escalations were almost entirely symbolic and meaningless, but the PNACer's escalations will
be kinetic. When Iran is once again forced to retaliate against the empire and
missile-strikes some US assets, the PNAC people will escalate and respond with ten times the
violence where Trump had ordered the empire to stand down.
Unfortunately for the empire, America's economic decline is systemic; it is baked into
capitalism. It cannot be reversed. While Trump hastened the empire's diplomatic decline and
poisoned its "soft power" , Biden/Harris will hasten the empire's economic
decline.
As for the Fort Detrick flu, the mass media will now try to downplay it in order to get
workers back to making the elites some profits, but the cases and fatalities will continue to
increase. There will be no more effective countering of the pandemic by Team Blue than Team
Red because the US simply doesn't have the tools, either medically, culturally, or socially,
to do anything about it.
Four years of the deep state/establishment exposing itself in panicked hysteria, only to
now fade back into the background with nothing gained from those four years. I wonder how the
posters here who think it was all part of an elaborate plan will spin their tales of the
omnipotent empire now that it can no longer be said "Trump hasn't started a war YET
but he will once he cements his image as 'Glorious Leader'!!"
Biden/Harris being installed in such an obvious manner is not a display of the
establishment's power, but rather is proof of their weakness and incompetence.
Financial oligarchy fully controls neoliberal Dems and this "scholar" does even use the term neoliberalism to describe the US elections.
What a jerk.
"Mitt Romney and Donald Trump agreed on basically every issue, as did Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And yet, a bunch of people
changed their votes. And the reason that happened was because the salience of various issues changed." -- that a false, phoby statiment.
Election for Obama and for Hillary were conducted at the different stages of the crisis of neoliberalism. In Hillary case voters ejected
the candidate from neoliberal establishment.
David Shor got famous by getting fired. In late May, amid widespread protests over George Floyd's murder, the 28-year-old data
scientist tweeted out a study that found nonviolent
demonstrations were more effective than "riots" at pushing public opinion and voter behavior leftward in 1968.
Many Twitter users -- and
(reportedly) some of Shor's colleagues and clients at the data firm Civis Analytics -- found this post insensitive. A day later,
Shor publicly apologized for his tweet. Two
weeks after that, he'd lost his job as Civis's head of political data science -- and become a byword for the excesses of so-called
cancel
culture . (Shor has not discussed his firing publicly due to a nondisclosure agreement, and the details of his termination remain
undisclosed).
... ... ...
So there's a big constellation of issues. The single biggest way that highly educated people who follow politics closely are different
from everyone else is that we have much more ideological coherence in our views.
If you decided to create a survey scorecard, where on every single issue -- choice, guns, unions, health care, etc. -- you gave
people one point for choosing the more liberal of two policy options, and then had 1,000 Americans fill it out, you would find that
Democratic elected officials are to the left of 90 to 95 percent of people.
And the reason is that while voters may have more left-wing views than Joe Biden on a few issues, they don't have the same consistency
across their views. There are like tons of pro-life people who want higher taxes, etc. There's
a paper by the political scientist
David Broockman that made this point really famous -- that "moderate" voters don't have moderate views, just ideologically inconsistent
ones. Some people responded to media coverage of that paper by saying, "Oh, people are just answering these surveys randomly, issues
don't matter." But that's not actually what the paper showed. In a separate section, they tested the relevance of issues by presenting
voters with hypothetical candidate matchups -- here's a politician running on this position, and another politician running on the
opposite -- and they found that issue congruence was actually very important for predicting who people voted for.
So this suggests there's a big mass of voters who agree with us on some issues, and disagree with us on others. And whenever we
talk about a given issue, that increases the extent to which voters will cast their ballots on the basis of that issue.
Mitt Romney and Donald Trump agreed on basically every issue, as did Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And yet, a bunch of people
changed their votes. And the reason that happened was because the salience of various issues changed. Both sides talked a lot more
about immigration, and because of that, correlation between preferences on immigration and which candidate people voted for went
up. In 2012, both sides talked about health care. In 2016, they didn't. And so the correlation between views on health care and which
candidate people voted for went down.
So this means that every time you open your mouth, you have this complex optimization problem where what you say gains you some
voters and loses you other voters. But this is actually cool because campaigns have a lot of control over what issues they talk about.
Non-college-educated whites, on average, have very conservative views on immigration, and generally conservative racial attitudes.
But they have center-left views on economics; they support universal health care and minimum-wage increases. So I think Democrats
need to talk about the issues they are with us on, and try really hard not to talk about the issues where we disagree. Which, in
practice, means not talking about immigration.
... ... ...
The problem is that swing voters don't trust either party. So if you get Democrats to embrace Abolish ICE, that won't get moderate-
ish , racist white people to support it; it will just turn them into Republicans. So that's the trade-off. When you embrace
unpopular things, you become more unpopular with marginal voters, but also get a fairly large segment of the public to change its
views. And the latter can sometimes produce long-term change.
But it's a hard trade-off. And I don't think anyone ever says something like, "I think it was a good trade for us to lose the
presidency because we raised the salience of this issue." That's not generally what people want. They don't want to make an unpopular
issue go from 7 percent to 30 percent support. They want something like what happened with gay marriage or marijuana legalization,
where you take an issue that is 30 percent and then it goes to 70 percent. And if you look at the history of those things, it's kind
of clear that campaigns didn't do that.
... ... ...
But ultimately, when people hear from both sides, they're gonna revert to some kind of partisan baseline. But there's not a nihilism
there; it's not just that Democratic-leaning voters will adopt the Democratic position or Republican-leaning ones will automatically
adopt the Republican one. Persuadable voters trust the parties on different issues.
And there's a pretty basic pattern -- both here and in other countries -- in which voters view center-left parties as empathetic.
Center-left parties care about the environment, lowering poverty, improving race relations. And then, you know, center-right parties
are seen as more "serious," or more like the stern dad figure or something. They do better on getting the economy going or lowering
unemployment or taxes or crime or immigration.
... ... ..
What's powerful about nonviolent protest -- and particularly nonviolent protest that incurs a disproportionate response from the
police -- is that it can shift the conversation, in a really visceral way, into the part of this issue space that benefits Democrats
and the center left. Which is the pursuit of equality, social justice, fairness -- these Democratic-loaded concepts -- without the
trade-off of crime or public safety. So I think it is really consistent with a pretty broad, cross-sectional body of evidence (a
piece of which I obviously tweeted at some point
) that nonviolent protest is politically advantageous, both in terms of changing public opinion on discrete issues and electing parties
sympathetic to the left's concerns.
As for "the abolish the police" stuff, I think the important thing there is that basically no mainstream elected officials embraced
it.
... ... ...
But there's always a mix of violent and nonviolent protest; or, there's always some violence that occurs at nonviolent protests.
And it's not a situation where a drop of violence spoils everything and turns everybody into fascists. The research isn't consistent
with that. It's more about the proportions. Because the mechanism here is that when violence is happening, people become afraid.
They fear for their safety, and then they crave order. And order is a winning issue for conservatives here and everywhere around
the world. The basic political argument since the French Revolution has been the left saying, "Let's make things more fair," and
the right saying, "If we do that, it will lead to chaos and threaten your family."
But when you have nonviolent protests that goad security forces into using excessive force against unarmed people -- preferably
while people are watching -- then order gets discredited, and people experience this visceral sense of unfairness. And you can change
public opinion.
... ... ..
So, as a result, campaigns centered around this cosmopolitan elite's internal disagreements over economic issues. But over the
past 60 years, college graduates have gone from being 4 percent of the electorate to being more like 35. Now, it's actually possible
-- for the first time ever in human history -- for political parties to openly embrace cosmopolitan values and win elections; certainly
primary and municipal elections, maybe even national elections if you don't push things too far or if you have a recession at your
back. And so Democratic elites started campaigning on the things they'd always wanted to, but which had previously been too toxic.
And so did center-left parties internationally
... .....
Many on the left are wary of the Democratic Party's growing dependence on wealthy voters and donors. But you've argued that the
party's donor class actually pulls it to the left,
as big-dollar Democratic donors are more progressive -- even on economic issues -- than the median Democratic voter. I'm skeptical
of that claim. After all, so much regulation and legislation never crosses ordinary Americans' radar. It seems implausible to me
that, during negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Obama administration
fought to export America's generous patent protections on pharmaceuticals to the developing world, or to expand the reach of
the Investor
State Dispute Settlement process, because they felt compelled to placate swing voters. Similarly, it's hard for me to believe
that the primary reason why Democrats did not significantly expand collective-bargaining rights under Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton,
and Barack Obama was voter hostility to labor-law reform rather than the unified opposition of business interests to such a policy.
So why couldn't it be the case that, when it comes to policy, a minority of big-dollar donors who are highly motivated -- and reactionary
-- on discrete issues pull the party to the right, even as wealthier Democrats give more ideologically consistent responses to survey
questions?
... ... ...
David Broockman showed in a recent paper
-- and I've seen this in internal data -- that people who give money to Democrats are more economically left wing than Democrats
overall. And the more money people give, the more economically left wing they are. These are obviously the non-transactional donors.
But people underestimate the extent to which the non-transactional money is now all of the money. This wasn't true ten years ago.
So then you get to the question: Why do so many moderate Democrats vote for center-right policies that don't even poll well? Why
did Heidi Heitkamp vote to
deregulate banks in 2018
, when the median voter in North Dakota doesn't want looser regulations on banks? But the thing is, while that median voter doesn't
want to deregulate banks, that voter doesn't want a senator who is bad for business in North Dakota. And so if the North Dakota business
community signals that it doesn't like Heidi Heitkamp, that's really bad for Heidi Heitkamp, because business has a lot of cultural
power.
I think that's a very straightforward, almost Marxist view of power: Rich people have disproportionate cultural influence. So
business does pull the party right. But it does so more through the mechanism of using its cultural power to influence public opinion,
not through donations to campaigns.
So, in your view, the reason that Democrats aren't more left wing on economic issues isn't because they're bought off, but because
the median voter is "bought off," in the sense of responding to cues from corporate interests?
... ... ...
So I think people underestimate Democrats' openness to left-wing policies that won't cost them elections. And there are a lot
of radical, left-wing policies that are genuinely very popular.
Codetermination is popular. A
job guarantee is popular. Large minimum-wage increases are popular and could literally end market poverty.
All these things will engender opposition from capital. But if you focus on the popular things, and manage to build positive earned
media around those things, then you can convince Democrats to do them. So we should be asking ourselves, "What is the maximally radical
thing that can get past Joe Manchin." And that's like a really depressing optimization problem. And it's one that most leftists don't
even want to approach, but they should. There's a wide spectrum of possibilities for what could happen the next time Democrats take
power, and if we don't come in with clear thinking and realistic demands, we could end up getting rolled.
... ... ...
The Senate is even worse. And much worse than people realize. The Senate has always been, on paper, biased against Democrats.
It overrepresents states that are rural and white, and mechanically, that gives a structural advantage to Republicans. For 50 years
or so, the tipping-point state in the Senate has been about one percentage point more Republican than the country as a whole. And
that advantage did go up in 2016, because white rural voters trended against us (it went up to 3 percent).
... ... ..
I think one big lesson of 2018 was that Trump's coalition held up. Obviously, we did better as the party out of power. But if
you look at how we did in places like Maine or Wisconsin or Michigan, it looked more like 2016 than 2012. Donald Trump still has
a giant structural advantage in the Electoral College.
The old guard wants us to lay down and take it, but this election is far for over. It's time
to fight, and Trump is our man.
Mitt Romney would have conceded by now. John McCain would have conceded Tuesday night.
George Bush would have called it quits, and then invaded Iraq for good measure. Thank God in
heaven for Donald J. Trump.
Speaking late Thursday from the White House, President Trump predicted that, if all legal
votes (and only legal votes) were counted, they would show that he has won the election.
Over the past few days, former Vice President Biden has consistently made similar claims,
without the caveat that votes must be legally cast. As has become the norm when conservatives
voice concerns over a questionable election, the president's observations and forecast were
quickly "fact-checked" by the mainstream media and censored by Big Tech platforms -- while
Biden's went unchecked.
The facts, we are told, show a clear Biden victory. Any suggestion to the contrary, any
attempt to investigate reports of Democratic misconduct, is dismissed as right-wing
conspiracizing, or the petulant protestations of a sorry bunch of sore losers. (Russiagate, it
seems, has been memory-holed.) The decent thing, they say, would be concession -- take the
numbers at face value and call it a day. To his great credit, it looks like Trump will do no
such thing.
This election has essentially come down to six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada,
Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Of these six, only Arizona and Nevada really remain question
marks. Michigan and Wisconsin have already been called for Biden by most sources, and
Pennsylvania and Georgia are expected to follow close behind. Even if Arizona and Nevada both
went for Trump in the end -- the latter seems likely, while the former is a long shot --
victory in the other four would secure Biden a comfortable electoral college win at 289. It can
hardly be ignored that the major blue cities in each of these states -- Atlanta, Detroit,
Philadelphia, and Milwaukee -- are all dominated by strong, old-school, Tammany-style machines.
It can hardly be forgotten that urban Democratic machines are not exactly known for the
integrity of their elections.
This is the question being asked by Trump and other right-wingers: not whether some massive
conspiracy has been orchestrated at the national level, with Biden pulling the strings from a
basement in Delaware, but whether the substantial misconduct that has long defined city
political machines is influencing outcomes in these four key locations. This is not a question
on which we can play it safe and civil. We need a full court press to get answers from people
who have shown themselves unwilling to provide them.
Pay attention to the mainstream argument: Trump's claims have not been conclusively proven,
and so the mere suggestion is considered far beyond the pale. For many, the president's
assertion that 1) misconduct has been observed on a large scale in all of these key locations
and 2) this misconduct will be challenged in court, is the conclusive proof they need that we
are sliding into the dictatorship they predicted four years ago. The concerns are rebuked with
the usual dismissals -- unfounded, unproven, unsubstantiated, "without evidence" -- and the
narrative that Biden is the clear winner tightens its grip with every word out of every
anchor's mouth. But more than enough preliminary evidence has been provided in each of these
places to justify -- no, demand -- investigation.
The fundamental reason all these claims remain "unsubstantiated" is that the very people who
reject them on this basis are the ones who are supposed to be substantiating them -- and
they have absolutely, entirely abandoned this basic duty. Anyone who tries to look into the
evidence is denounced as a kook or (in Trump's case) a caudillo. We can hardly expect an honest
accounting of what's happened in the blue cities when talking about what's happened in the blue
cities has suddenly become the eighth deadly sin.
This is why -- besides his unique perspective and approach drawing together the broadest
coalition a Republican has built in sixty years -- Trump is actually the perfect man for the
moment. The entire media establishment is aligned to declare a Biden victory prematurely, with no
intention of investigating election inconsistencies. Local and state governments in the places
that matter are hardly more reliable -- Michigan Attorney General Jocelyn Benson is an alumna of
the SPLC, and Pennsylvania AG Josh Shapiro promised four days before the election that Trump
would not win the state. The docile functionaries and milquetoast figureheads of the pre-Trump
GOP could not have handled the fight ahead -- and likely would have run from it.
In fact, we know that they would have, because that's exactly what they're urging Trump to do
now. If you Google "trump+thursday+speech" or any similar query, it's going to take a whole lot
of digging to actually find the speech Trump delivered on Thursday. What you will find instead
are abundant "fact-checks" of the speech that don't actually check any of the facts, and page
upon page of ritual denunciations by the chattering classes.
These denunciations are hardly limited to the left-wingers behind the anchors' desks at every
major network. CNN is proudly touting a clip of Rick Santorum, former Republican senator from PA
and current senior political analyst at that esteemed news source, expressing his shock and
disappointment that the president would call into question certain aspects of the election.
Santorum voiced his hope that "Republicans will stand up at this moment and say what needs to be
said about the integrity of our election." (The irony is apparently lost on him.)
Similarly, Scott Walker, who was one of the first to exit the Republican primary field in 2016
and lost his reelection bid for governor of Wisconsin in 2018 to Democrat Tony Evers, has issued
a number of tweets insisting that a recount -- which the Trump campaign has already called for --
would be pointless. He has observed that, in normal elections, recounts have done very little to
alter tallies. There's no sense to this line: this is not a normal election. Delays in ballot
counting alone are enough to cause concern. Add to that the occasional full stops, after which
huge quantities of Biden ballots conveniently appear. Add to that Wisconsin's level of voter
turnout -- not over 100%, as some online rumors earlier suggested, but still near unbelievably
high. It would be the farthest thing from a surprise if a more careful inspection really did
shake things up this time around.
The same is true in Michigan, where Biden has made similarly stunning gains in witching-hour
ballot dumps. On top of that, the transposition of a few thousand Trump votes to Biden in Antrim
County has now been chalked up to a glitch in the tabulation software -- software that happens to
be used in 46 other counties. We now know there is a problem with the way the votes are
counted, and even the slightest chance that even the smallest repetition of that glitch has
occurred elsewhere demands the strictest scrutiny be applied to the Michigan vote.
All this and more can be said for Pennsylvania and Georgia, the two states most vital to the
president's reelection. Pennsylvania in particular is playing fast and loose with mail-in
ballots, and dubious rules changes need to be challenged in court. Philadelphia has a reputation
for machine-style corruption that puts Daley-era Chicago to shame. Election workers there have
also repeatedly blocked GOP poll watchers from observing the process they are legally entitled to
oversee. The same thing is happening in Detroit, where cardboard has actually been placed over
the windows to prevent people from seeing inside the central counting location. If you have
nothing to hide, right?
The president has every reason not to take the narrative at face value. This doesn't mean we
throw out the election, and it doesn't mean we're undermining democracy. It means we need to
exhaust every avenue and turn over every stone. Everything that can be brought before a court
needs to be, and every ballot that raises red flags needs to be explained. Put the screws to
every machine operative from Milwaukee to Atlanta, and make sure every word holds up.
Somebody needs to give a very good answer as to why the number of ballots left to count in
Fulton County keeps changing every time we go to sleep -- and changing by margins that boggle the
mind. Force the people who run the machines to speak, and see how long their story lasts.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Declan Leary is the Collegiate Network Fellow at The American Conservative and a
graduate of John Carroll University. His work has been published at National Review ,
Crisis, and elsewhere.
The fundamental reason all these claims remain "unsubstantiated" is that the very people
who reject them on this basis are the ones who are supposed to be substantiating them --
and they have absolutely, entirely abandoned this basic duty.
This is such a bizarre sentence. Why would government officials, investigators or
journalists or whoever be duty bound to substantiate the existence voter fraud.
They've basically done the opposite actually, and debunked the claims. Nearly every
single case of claimed voter fraud has been shown to be inaccurate, a lie, simply misleading
and/or a misunderstanding.
"Suitcases" of ballots? Actually it's photography equipment of local news broadcasts. Poll
watchers getting "pushed out" of wards? Because PA law says you are legally only allowed a
set amount of pre-certified watchers in each precinct, who must wear face masks. "Dead
voters" appearing in ballot rolls? Could exist, doesn't matter though because votes are
crosschecked with databases, and even if you died on the way home from dropping off your
mail-in ballot , your vote will be deleted, let alone if you're some potential fraud
voter who died 30 years ago.
In fact, here's a good nice long Twitter thread explaining most of the major accusations
flying around social media:
I'm just going to reply to my own very long post with an addendum:
The example of Detroit is given in the article as if papering the windows over was some
heinous thing. The reason why we have to protect the identity of poll workers is intimidation. We
already have a situation in Fulton County, GA where some enterprising conservatives have
doxxed a poll worker and actually sent the poor man into hiding.
His license plate number was posted onto Twitter, and he is now hiding at a friend's
house, because conservative activists falsely accused him of throwing out
ballots.
You are a liar. You obviously have never actually WORKED an election. I have. Several,
in fact.
I have personally witnessed ballot fraud on a large scale, coupled with utter
incompetence. Palm Beach county, 2012.
I oversaw the correction of 60,000 "defective" absentee ballots. Each correction table
was to be staffed with 1 Dem, 1 Repub, who cross-checked each others work. The corrupt
Supervisor of Elections harassed and threatened Republican workers and monitors. Nasty as
hell. Corrupt as hell. AND SHE NEVER FOLLOWED HER OWN INSTRUCTIONS, AND WHEN CHALLENGED
POLITELY, SHE THREATENED TO THROW ALL REPUBLICANS OUT OF THE ELECTIONS SITE.
I PERSONALLY witnessed CORRECTED ABSENTEE BALLOTS taken to the back where the voting
TABULATORS were, and watched as each ballot was removed from the box, examined, and some
were thrown in the trash can. And I had seen a lot of ballots with Romney marked for
President, with a straight Dem ticket down-ballot races all Dem. This is a BLUE
county.
I reported this, and nothing was done. Cowardly Republicans do this... Nothing. I
often wonder how many other blue cou ties have threatened Republican poll watchers &
workers.
Your slander of decent people means NOTHING, except that you are a liar of gigantic
proportions. Go over to Daily Kos, where you can fellowship with your vile compatriot
scumbags.
I support the view that it is entirely possible for a county full of good people to
lean hard against the "other side" in a hot disputed election. In 2014 and 2016 the
polling place was a strange church miles away; the workers there had a hand-lettered sign
posted that demanded driver licenses as ID, even though State law did not demand that
form of ID alone. This year I was one of the people who were locked out of the voting
process; the details do not matter, but it happened, and I refused to kowtow to the
system to get my registration card renewed. My county went 80% for Trump, so in fact my
lone vote would not have mattered for much anyway.
No doubt some people were denied the right to vote. Historically, the right to vote is
denied blacks and latinos more often than whites. But to make a blanket claim of a stolen
election, just the President, mind you, is an extraordinary claim that demands
extraordinary proof. Trump does not even claim that any of those down ballot Repubs,
candidates who did just fine for themselves, were denied votes. Just him.
If the democrats rigged the election then why didn't they give themselves the Senate?
Why did they lose seats in the House? And why did they not take back a single statehouse?
Trump lost because the DNC opened their arms to the Bush-era neocons from the Lincoln
Project. They're all republicans that voted for Biden and down ticket republicans and now
Biden will be putting them in his cabinet. If the election was rigged then you can thank
the those republicans for betraying their party, but the DNC is incapable of rigging
anything without help from the other side.
Your mistake is conflating "Republicans" and "republican voters." Not the same thing.
Trump was sent to DC to deal, among other things with the "Republicans."
Why didn't they give themselves the senate? A couple of hundred thousand ballots with
a 100% tally for one side were manufactured to influence one election. Only one really
mattered. Several million Americans were impoverished and terrorized all year long to
ensure this result.
In any case, they don't need the Senate -- the "Republicans" will simply roll
over. They always do. Cocaine Mitch is already signaling his intent to do so.
I saw his spokesperson the other day said any Biden cabinet picks will have to be
approved by him. Doesn't sound like Mitch is rolling over at all. We're going to see the
Lincoln Project repugs (Bush era neocons) in his cabinet and giving the MIC a seat at the
table again.
Just another 4 years of Bush/Obama policies. I think we can agree that both
sides lost this election and that's sadly not new either.
Maybe its time the for
"fringes" to unite against the center.
Speaking as a progressive myself, I dont feel like we united as much as we stayed
home. No one in the 2016 election was representing anything we wanted. The only thing
that united us was our hatred of Hillary. ;) hahaha
We can't unify under either established party. I'm talking about really uniting and
taking both out with a real populist platform (healthcare, ending our wars and getting
money out of politics), all things most Americans are in favor of. What do we have to
lose at this point? There's something horribly broken with our government when every 4
years both sides are left frustrated when the will of the people is never represented in
our supposed representative democracy. We gotta try something different.
Fox News has aired video of certified poll observers in philly being prevented from
entering polling places. but keep running interference- its obvious you wouldn't care if
you KNEW fraud had taken place...
Other Murdoch-owned news companies have done much worse! In England, his reporters
spoofed a call from a dead girl's phone, giving her parents false hope. They bugged and
bribed politicians, pretty ugly stuff. Here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
Fox News is a subsidiary NewsCorp, peddler of tabloid propaganda , promulgated by an
Australian plutocrat Rupert Murdoch, who is no friend of the USA. He has been ripping us
apart now for decades for his profit, power, and ego. He has made the GOP his b**ch. Note
how recently he has turned on Trump (not that I mind).
Why would government officials, investigators or journalists or whoever be duty bound
to
the existence voter fraud.
What a ridiculous thing to say. Those who claim to "speak truth to power" have as
their function the investigation and reporting of charges of voter fraud.
Instead, they are nothing but rank partisans, licking the government hand that feeds
them, and simply memory-holing anything that might damage their boy or be thought helpful
to their opponents. Liars and frauds, every last one.
simply memory-holing anything that might damage their boy or be thought helpful to
their opponents.
Whatever you want to claim about lefties with "TDS" or whatever you want to label
them, this sentence is literally a word-for-word description that applies to Trump
supporters.
Just endless ranks of simpletons who will thrust off every piece of evidence and
correction to their accusations.
Write out a comment to debunk things being misconstrued, twisted or lied about, and
Trumpists will waste your time blathering and ranting on about "rank partisans" without
even a hint or lick of irony and self-reflection about how their entire post is actually
about themselves.
I can just as easily dismiss you the same way, but the idea that FB, Twitter, CNN, and
yes -- even Fox -- aren't nakedly partisan is ridiculous nonsense. The least you could do
is pretend to understand what got Trump elected in the first place.
Wall St and the MIC work hand and hand with our corporate media, an industry that's
dominated by 6 corporations. They're not liberal nor conservative, they are only
motivated by money and power and keeping the population divided so that they dont unite
and come for them all.
One only has to look at the Citizens United Supreme Court decision to see how far down
the US has fallen. Now a corporation is a person? If that is so, can't they get
20-to-life when they kill someone? Can't they get the death penalty? NO, they can't; but
they can get all the good things that come from that ruling, without any of the negatives
at all.
Not every last reporter is a rank partisan, but many of them prefer the easy route to
a paycheck. Look up Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Tom Engelhardt, and others like them.
There are honest historians like Howard Zinn and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. There are also
honest whistleblowers who get a bad rep, like Chelsea Manning, Eric Snowden and Julian
Assange. There are still a few journalists of the old school in the world. But they have
to be careful less they find themselves charged with treason under an old law, and spend
the balance of their lives locked down 23 1/2 hours per day in a tiny cell in a US
SuperMax prison.
Excellent article. I am very happy Trump is pushing to open up this election to legal
review, public inspection, recounts, bipartisan review of the ballots, process
violations. We were supposed to be patient and wait for the count, why not the recount.
What is the hurry. If he lost, fine, I want to know that, not just trust anti-Trump,
Democratic activist officials telling me that. There are so many oddities - the Biden
surges coming after down time, always so conveniently. Software turning Republican votes
into Democrat votes. The dead voting. Blocking access to GOP observers. Given the
closeness of the results in the key states that are determining the outcome, it is not
that hard to turn things one way or the other.
The state legislators decide when the mail in ballots are counted. For Florida,
Oregon, Colorado they are counted when they come in and are verified as legal votes. For
Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin the legislature decided they could not start
processing the ballots until election day, thus it is impossible get a count of those
ballots before the in person voting was counted.
Barr is asking, "how many people who sent late-arriving mail-in ballots also showed up
to vote on election day?"
It matters because it's the law we all agreed to, and you need to respect the process
to retain the other side's confidence, which your side has not done.
But one thing which may be behind the law is these 100%-Biden ballot dumps that don't
vote for congress. Do you see what's behind Barr's question? Mail-in ballots make ballot
stuffing almost trivial because you can just dump them into the mail. The one problem is
that each envelope has to have a registered voter's name on it, and that name is compared
to who voted in person. To get the mail-in vote counted, and to avoid suspicious
patterns, you need to put a name on there that didn't vote in person. That's much easier
to do after the polls close, and you have collected all the signature books to start
doing the mail-in count.
Maybe they wouldn't have had to skip steps in the process if Trump should have
appointed someone better than DeJoy, and maybe Congress (Republicans in particular)
shouldn't have spent the better part of the last two decades screwing with the USPS.
Delays in ballot counting alone are enough to cause concern. Add to that the
occasional full stops, after which huge quantities of Biden ballots conveniently appear.
Add to that Wisconsin's level of voter turnout -- not over 100%, as some online rumors
earlier suggested, but still near unbelievably high. It would be the farthest thing from
a surprise if a more careful inspection really did shake things up this time
around.
Yeah, what kind of insane ballot-counting system would allow the poll workers to
sleep ? They should be legally required to mainline stimulants until their work is
done! And the only honest way to deliver counts is to transmit each individual ballot one
by one to the state: sending counts in batches must be evidence of fraud! And how is it
possible that after vocally discouraging his voters from voting by mail, there are
relatively few Trump mail-in votes? Very suspicious! Oh and by the way, turnout in
Wisconsin was quite normal:
jeez, it is amazing how uncurious everyone has become...
Uncurious? The uncurious are the people who take videos shared by Steven Crowder, or
whatever right-wing grifter they like, and believe them as gospel truth without verifying
it.
I have literally spent the better part of my precious Friday evening reading and
watching a trove of claimed voter fraud incidents, and I have yet to find a substantially
supported example.
But...duh? You absolutely do have some ballots thrown out in every
election, because they're improperly marked or otherwise somehow invalid. That's not a
conspiracy, that's literally what poll workers have to do. I don't get it, if we think
there are dead people voting (per the above conspiracy) wouldn't we want the workers to
throw them out? Or do we not want them throwing them out? Can't have it both ways!
It doesn't exactly take a brainiac to realize what's happening in the video. The man
on the right is holding a damaged ballot, and reading off the marked selections to
the woman on the left so that she can transcribe the damaged information to a new,
undamaged ballot. You then mark the serial number for the new ballot onto the original,
damaged ballot to keep them together.
And of course, as an extra bonus, the video is zoomed in purposefully to crop out the
bipartisan poll-watchers that are standing right by this duo to make sure that they're
properly transcribing the votes.
This is literally election 101 stuff, but apparently people don't know how it
works.
Come on, you can literally verify or debunk this on the County website. Yes, one claim
going around is that Wards 273 and 274, which was located at the Spanish Immersion School
reported 200% turnout.
Ward 273 had 671 registered voters, and 612 actual voters; Ward 274 had 702 registered
voters and 611 actual voters.
So congratulations, you bought into another easily disprovable lie. I've also seen
claims that the 272nd, 277th, 269th, 234th and 312nd Wards overrated, but you can check
and see that none of that is true either.
And, all of these claims are leaving out an important detail anyways: Wisconsin has
same-day voter registration. It is possible , albeit perhaps unlikely, to have
higher voter counts than number of pre-registered voters because of that.
Ballot harvesting is real:
https://dfw.cbslocal.com/20... This is but one example in my state, and we're also aware of certain places sending
out unrequested ballots. They all deserve jail time.
Let's say I was. Would that make any of the proof I linked untrue? Or is truth only
something that comes out of a party-flag waving conservatives' mouth?
And no, I'm not. I've pretty openly stated multiple times that I voted ASP in the
Presidential race, and both R/D in various spots down the ballot.
Oh, and just in the interest of fairness, there were some conspiracies going
around on the left too on election night. One that I saw was that 300,000 ballots were
undelivered. While yes, many thousands of ballots were likely undelivered, what was
happening wasn't that they were undelivered,
it was that the USPS was skipping scanning the ballots to expedite delivery. That's
why DeJoy likely won't actually get in trouble, because postal branches were
specifically going out of their way to hand-pick ballots and expedite their delivery.
The reason a recount doesn't change anything is because it's just that--a recount.
They take all the ballots that were counted before, and count them again. They're not
looking at whether any ballots should have been thrown out. Fraudulent ballots that were
counted the first time around are counted again.
A recount won't do anything about what the Democrats pulled in Milwaukee.
I also don't understand it. Hasn't the mail-in envelope with the signature and the
voter's name already been thrown away? How will they remove the votes by dead people?
I have heard they're using some procedure intended for ballots that won't scan to
conceal ballots with missing or invalid signatures by copying them at desks that are
supposed to have bipartisan teams. I guess they throw out the original ballot when they
do that to prevent the recount from checking signatures properly?
I guess they throw out the original ballot when they do that to prevent the recount
from checking signatures properly?
No, they do that to prevent any possibllity of the original being mistakenly counted
twice.
As you yourself pointed out, the copying takes place in front of a bipartisan team of
watchers. So for your fantasy to have any validity, you have to believe that BOTH parties
are conspiring together to rig the vote. In which case, your vote is irrelevant, anyway,
right?
If you really care about this, then instead of believing all of these ridiculous
conspiracy theories, why don't you try to actually become educated about how the process
works, and next time volunteer yourself to become a certified poll watcher? Then you will
KNOW the truth.
Those checks were made before the ballot was accepted and counted. They include
checking that it was a legal ballot sent to a specific person. And that the signature
matched that of the registered voter. Only after those checks is the ballot removed from
its envelop. While there may be a few mistakes there aren't anywhere enough to be
material to the final results. The ballots from in person voting are similarly
dissociated from the voters' information.
A big thank you to Mr. Maheras commenting below. Listen to him. He is our savior.
I am close to 80 years old. Old conspiracy advocates began to make extraordinary
claims about most everything when photographs would appear in newspapers. Rorschach
tests. Then came videos , or movie clips on TV. Think the Kennedy tape. Pretty soon we
had personal video equipment. And now cell phones. All Rorschach tests. But those crazy
conspiracies were the fringe long time ago. True belivers. Ideologues. But not the
Republican party leaders.
About 30 years ago the new world order, illuminati, the Bilderbers, now the Davos all
became the subject of the go to conspiracy advocates. Take your pick. One or all . But
one thing for sure, a cabal is taking over the world. Throw in a few Clinton, or Obama
conspiracies. Catch a sighting of Elvis for good measure.
Now all rolled into the Qanon cabal. Democratic pedophilia scum raping children. What
they all have in common is that they are right wing conspiracy advocates. And they all
are foolish.
This article fits in with those conspiracies. And by right wing
advocates naturally. When Clinton lost , her margin of defeat was similar to Trump's
projected defeat. Clinton and the Democrats never asserted fraud. Nor suggested
conspiracies. The political system worked, Trump won.
Now we have a reputable magazine publishing similar outlandish conspiracy theroies to
the ones mentioned above. All without a scintilla of proof. The President of the United
States for months has been setting his base up to claim fraud. And he has. And they have
blindly bought into it.
Long way to tell you that the greatest disappointment of my lifetime is the validation
by conservatives of these kooky ideas. 30 years ago even conservatives would call these
conspiracy peddlers nut jobs.
Now we have a nut job in the white house. The birther in chief. And he just gets
worse. But no one in the Republican party, except for a few tepid critics, will call the
Predident out.
This is the same guy who saw videos of Muslims dancing on 9/11. Or an inaugural crowd
rivaling the largest gathering of human beings ever assembled in the whole history of
mankind. The greatest. The most perfect and strongest
I have never been so disappointed in my President. He has enabled Mr. Leary to peddle
his nonsense. And tragically Leary believes his blather. This is truly heartbreaking. But
it is the world that Leary and his ilk will have to live with.
Me, l'll be gone. Forgetting my own name soon. Someone tell me that what I just read
is a part of my onset dementia.
Lifelong stutterer? What a load of crap. Just watch some old videos of Joe in his
arrogant days on the senate judiciary. He and his good buddy Ted Chappaquidick Kennedy
didn't stutter when they were trashing Clarence Thomas and Judge Bork. Hey it's your
right to vote for a lifer politician who's way past his prime and suffering from a tragic
disease. Climate change - right. More likely God's judgement on a godless nation.
Now we have a reputable magazine publishing similar outlandish conspiracy
theroies
As someone who started reading TAC a long time ago when it really WAS a reputable
magazine, I'm afraid that particular ship started sailing several years ago, and is
almost out of the harbor by now. There was a time when you could come here to find
intelligent, educated, and thoughtful conservatives setting out their views and being
unafraid to engage with responses from all across the entire political spectrum. Now,
Larison is the only one left who consistently meets that description, a couple of others
dabble in reality once in a while, and the rest are descending into Breitbart levels of
paranoid lunacy.
I look forward to seeing the evidence of fraud in a court of law rather than just
circulating on twitter where the standards are somewhat less stringent.
And the president said BEFORE the election that any election he lost would necessarily
be rigged/corrupt. So of course that evidence was going to be found if he lost.....
You can put this is the same category as all these white guys who lost a job because
they were white men. Of course the couldn't possibly make these claims in a court where
discovery could happen and their BS would be exposed.
1. He is a victim/martyr to his right-wing constituency, in much the same way that Erdogan
has always portrayed himself as a 'man of the people' and representative of the poor
conservative rural Turks and still an outsider in comparison to the secular urban elites.
This 'otherness' or being separate from the establishment/elite/'swamp' is very good for
Trumps' image. Even though he is a billionaire and has been part of the US elite for
decades.
2. With the economy going to go through problems due to covid and other issues, Trump can
try and attribute blame for the then incumbent Biden/Harris regime and free himself of any
blame and say that he has better answers.
3. He may well go on to forming his 'Trump TV' with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura
Ingraham as is the current chatter amongst some and be seen as the de facto 'leader of the
opposition', a term not really used in the (dis)United States but common in many/most other
countries.
The United States is a monopoly two-party fascist system. It is a nexus of profiteering
corporate power, and a two-party cabal of American Exceptionalism. The idea the Democrats are
'commies' is laughable and shows how deeply red the Kool Aid runs. The Democrats just told
the Bernie wing of the Party to shut-up or leave. And why not? The Democrats will tally up a
five million vote plurality over Trump by playing to the right. It got them a President
without a Congress. Thank the "Karen" constituency. Mission Accomplished.
Sure, bring on Tucker as the next Trump, or Don Jr or whatever other celebrity fascist you
want. This particular bell of Pavlov's doesn't work on all the dogs. There is a seething
anti-fascist sentiment out there against for-profit healthcare, politics and war. Before a
4th Reich takes hold in the USA, a Civil War will be fought and the left, verified by study
after study, is more intelligent as a group.
The foreign policy of the USA is fully bi-partisan. Did a Democrat make a peep about the
all the weapons-based 'peace deals' Trump made with the Oil Kingdoms? No. Do the Dems
disagree about regime change anywhere the USA contemplates it? No. Do the Dems want to get
rid of anything but bad manners? No.
So please, knock off the existential BS about Dems 'stealing' the election. Stealing what
exactly? The high ground of plausible deniability? Hilarious.
The result of this election can be summarized with one phase "Strange non-death of
neoliberalism."
Joe Biden win is a win the tech companies, the big banks, Beijing, as well a PMC
class.
likbez 11.07.20 at 5:37 pm ( )
It's entirely possible that Biden will be a 1 term President, and this is something that
Democrats should have given some thought to. But they had other, sillier, things on their
mind, and, well, here we are.
They don't care. It is return to business as usual -- classic neoliberalism with the
classic neoliberal globalization on the agenda. And this is all that matter to them.
The people behind Joe Biden are Clinton classic neoliberals. Who ruled the country since
1990th with a well known result.
It is unclear what will happen in 2020 as Biden is a weak politician clearly unable of
dealing with the current crisis the country faces. He is kick the can down the road type of
guy.
And some start speculate that Dems the might get Tucker Carlson in 2024 as the opponent to
Kamala.
(2) From an American perspective, Republican control of the Senate means that the Dems
have limited scope to carry out grandiose economic and social experiments. Which I doubt
Biden is much interested in anyway. (Incidentally, the idea that Biden or Copmala is in any
way a "socialist" is yet another far-fetched MAGA fantasy just ask the folks at Chapo Trap House ). The idea that he came to
power via fraud will not be quite enough to delegitimize the Biden Presidency – it's
not like George W. Bush's narrow and contested victory over Al Gore in Florida remained
much of an issue after a couple of months – but it certainly wouldn't hurt
Republicans to have that as an additional rhetorical tool.
(3) Most consequentially, this substantially discredits American soft power and its
"democracy promotion" efforts.
Who exactly is Joe Biden , the man who may be
our
president come Jan. 20? The truth is, as of right now, we don't really know.
We have no clue what Joe Biden actually thinks, or even if he's capable of thinking. He
hasn't told us and no one's made him tell us for a full year. In fact, it's becoming clear
there is no Joe Biden. The man you may remember from the 1980s is gone.
What remains is a projection of sorts, a hologram designed to mimic the behavior of a
non-threatening political candidate: "Relax, Joe Biden's here. He smiles a lot. Everything's
fine." That's the message from the vapor candidate.
So who's running the projector here? Well, the first thing you should know is that the
people behind Joe Biden aren't liberals. We've often incorrectly called them that. A liberal
believes in the right of all Americans to speak freely, to make a living, to worship their God,
to defend their own families, and to do all of that regardless of what political party they
belong to or what race they happen to be born into or how far from midtown Manhattan they
currently live.
A liberal believes in universal principles, fairly applied. And the funny thing is, all of
that describes most of the 70 million people who just voted for Donald Trump this week. Most of
them don't want to hurt or control anyone. They have no interest in silencing the opposition on
Facebook or anywhere else. They just want to live their lives in the country they were born in,
and it doesn't seem like a lot to ask. So by any traditional definition, they are liberal.
However, our language has become so politicized and so distorted that you would never know
it. What you do know for certain is that the people behind Joe Biden are not like that at all.
They don't believe in dissent. "You think one thing? I think another. That's OK." No, that's
not them at all. They demand obedience to diversity, which is to say, legitimate differences
between people is the last thing they want. These people seek absolute sameness, total
uniformity. You're happy with your corner coffee shop? They want to make you drink Starbucks
every day from now until forever, no matter how it tastes. That's the future.
Now, if these seem like corporate values to you, then you're catching on to what's
happening. The Joe Biden for President campaign is a purely corporate enterprise. It's the
first one in American history to come this close to the presidency. If a multinational
corporation decided to create a presidential candidate, he would be a former credit card shill
from Wilmington, Del., and that's exactly what they got. What's good for Google is good for the
Biden campaign and vice versa. We have never seen a more soulless project. They literally
picked Kamala Harris as Biden's running mate, someone who can't even pronounce her own name.
Not that it matters, because it's purely an advertising gimmick.
We watched all of this come together in real time. We stood slack-jawed in total disbelief
as a man with no discernible constituency of any kind rose to the very top of our political
system, as if by magic. It's possible in the end that Joe Biden himself never convinced a
single voter of anything over the entire duration of the presidential campaign, but he didn't
have to. Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination because he wasn't Bernie Sanders. He came to
where he is today because he isn't Donald Trump. It's the shortest political story ever
written.
Now, whatever you may think of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, they did it the
traditional way. Each one of them had the support of actual voters. Living, breathing people
loved them, believed in them, vested their hope in them, and, by the way, agreed with their
ideas, which they articulated clearly.
But corporate America hated them both. They couldn't be controlled, particularly Donald
Trump, whose complete unwillingness to submit made him the greatest possible threat. That's why
they hate Donald Trump, because he won't obey.
It's insulting to say that Joseph R. Biden won this election, if that is what comes to pass.
The tech companies will have won. The big banks will have won. The government of China, the
media establishment, the permanent bureaucracy, the billionaire class -- they will have won,
and not in the way that democracy promises. If a single person equaled a single vote, a
coalition like that could never win anything. There aren't enough of them.
But as a group, they have something that Donald Trump's voters sadly do not have, and that
is power. They have lots of power and they plan to wield that power, whether you like it or
not. It's all starting to look a lot like oligarchy at this point. The people who believe they
should have been in charge all along now may actually be in charge.
So what does that mean for the rest of us? Will corporate America declare victory and back
off? Can we speak freely again? Will they take the boot from our necks? Can we have America
back now that the Great Orange Emergency has passed? Well, the mandatory lying orders finally
be lifted?
Those are the questions we'll be paying attention to, since we plan to stay in this country.
And one other thing while we're at it, who's excited to greet our new corporate overlords? Who
plans to collaborate, particularly of those on the right side, the Republican side, the side
that said it was defending you? Who's happy about all of this? That seems worth keeping track
of, just so we know who we're dealing with here. Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of
FOX News Channel's (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network
in 2009 as a contributor.
@Beckow
ow quality Indian workers far less interesting to the profiteers that then get the same low
quality code and have to pay white/east Asian male wages.
It's funny how the tech companies are all about diversity until it means higher costs.
It will also be funny when the token blacks people hiring programs by the tech companies
mean that peak-diversity signaling, token hire Jamal realizes he'll be working with nothing
but Indians that hate anyone would who is not brainwashed by Jewish propaganda and speak
nothing but Hindi to each other and whom you can't understand when they actually try to speak
English,
Excellent analysis, entirely plausible. Lacking any survey of broad opinion, I'm apt to
project my own view as Trump's Waterloo: that while the political damage of poorly managing
the pandemic was mostly washed out by the emerging view that the economic damage (including
the rioting) of the severe course favored by the left has been more harmful than the virus, a
decisive fraction of his core demographic nevertheless arrived at the view – despite
the ceaseless scolding insistence of this by much of mainstream media – that their
president is indeed glaringly ill-suited for public office.
Perhaps it is due to living near Philly, but there is always fraud. Democrats are good at
it, and Republican Inc. loves it. Can't have any honest, straight shooter interrupt the long
standing political graft. Of course the Donald isn't really an honest man. Had he kept that
5% of the 2016 white male vote, any cheating would have been impossible. But hey we have
still have Israel first with President Kamala. Whew on that. However I don't look forward to
being uncomfortable in my house due to the Paris Accords mandates.
In defense of Maga, there are so many professional agitators in their ranks besides Qanon.
Call them dumb, but they really desperate for something called hope. Maybe that is the reason
I tend to think Trump was the bait to reel them in for the sporting catch and kill.
@prime
noticer Trump's a business man, not a career politician like Biden or Hillary. The system
wants the latter. Soros funds BLM, antifa, ect. It's safe to say the system was against
Trump. Much of his own party of sellout politicians weren't with him. Trump got through the
cracks once, the deep state wasn't going to let that happen again. To get 8 years in office
you have to be a total puppet. The Bush's, Clinton, and Obama were all hand-picked puppets.
Trump wasn't in the club. Trump as President was an accident they had clean up, even if he
was more than willing to betray the White men that voted him in and submit to the beast.
It is obvious why (((they))) wanted Trumpstein out, Trumpstein, despite being a cuckold to
the Zionist was threatening to bring our brave young men and women home, protect our borders,
and his base was about 98% White at the lowest. And many of those were common everyday
working class Whites, you know, the people who really made America great, the people who
actually grow food, build buildings, work and produce automobiles in factories, drive trucks,
you know jobs that are REAL JOBS, JOBS THAT ACTUALLY PRODUCE SOMETHING.
(((They))) didn't really hate Trump, they hated the typical Trump voter. Actually it has
already been pointed out, Trump did very little for the average White other than give them
hope, he really didn't deliver that much. Trump became uber popular by just giving the people
crumbs, now can you imagine how popular a man or woman will be when they come out of nowhere
and give the people the hundred per cent truth. It will take a fearless man or woman, someone
with nothing left to lose, because that is the way it has always been. I NEVER expected Trump
to do much, after all, this guy is the typical NYC businessman, think of who this guy has had
dealings with in his lifetime, hell, look at his in-laws. For all his, "I am not a
politician" rantings, Trump spent his life around politicians and pictures are all over the
place with Trump & Bill Clinton golfing together, Trump and Ghislane, Trump &
Epstein, Trump with his friend Baby Nut&Yahoo, etc. Sounds like the typical politician to
me. Trump was NEVER a man of the people and it will take a real man of the people to set
things right in America.
@Ano4
emonized, censored, attacked, and even murdered. I am glad to have sat this one out, between
who knows how many men like me and those 5% we brought this supposed contest to a standstill
and caused a nation of cope.
Wignats gave him 2016 and we turned 2020 into a shitshow in answer to his betrayal. Trump
only has himself to blame for doing almost nothing to stop censorship, clean up the FBI/DOJ,
prosecute Antifa, end birthright citizenship, end H1B, so many other opportunities
squandered. Trump supporters should start working toward something productive for their
interests.
Harris/Biden like Trump/Pence are Israel Firsters, so really all this hoopla over a
transition is not really called for when you think about it. Matter of fact, the 1st and 2nd
Amendment will continue to be under attacked just like it was with Trumpstein, now more than
ever. Anti-White racism will continue until Whites start standing up for their rights the
same way as everyone else. Trumpstein was never the savior for America, face it. Maybe things
will become so bad IF Harris/Biden take over that this country and Whites will gain a spine
again. Until then, new boss, same as the old boss, more or less. Still as bad as the Orange
Man was, IF you are "White" and voted for Harris/Biden, you have to be legally retarded.
Thanks to all the WINOs and white traitor trash out there. Brilliant you bunch of
retards.
A nice splash of cold water on the sadly losing side in the 2020 election. What you say is
mostly true. There are some significant points you don't acknowledge, such as the idea that
massive numbers of mailed ballots will certainly result in unauthorized votes being counted.
It's hard to say how many that is, but I suspect, like you, that it can't have made a
difference of hundreds of thousands across all the states necessary for a Trump victory.
Blame the phony virus for most of these results and I insist that shutdown policies have
been a gross overreaction designed to make Trump powerless to campaign.
Finally, one simply has to admit that Trump was unprepared to be an effective President
and never learned how. Saying things that sound populist over and over isn't governing.
We have a nice wall that's 400 miles long down on the Mexican border and that's about it.
At some point in the fast approaching future, it will have a plaque on it saying, "I am
Ozymandias Trump. Look on all that I survey."
Well?
What kind of pathetic miserable 17 intelligence agencies, with support of democratic party
and Judenpresse would be , if they would not be able to fix the election such way that their
mischief cannot be found. And on top of it Covid with mail in voting was a surefire help.
.
But than you sleep in the bed you make.
Very misleading and dis-informative post. It ignores the Democrats' history of fraudulent
elections and manipulation of Americans. From the beginning and before the elections, the
Democrats said that they will do everything to remove Trump from the White House, by violence
if necessary.
In reality, the only times the Democrats won fair elections were by JFK and Obama recently.
The reasons were because of the efficient and highly successful advertising campaigns
(propaganda) to manipulate Americans. In fact, Obama won a prize for his efficient
advertising campaign to con Americans and "win" the elections. He was far more criminal than
his predecessors.
I think calling it Harris (Biden) administration is a bit childish. Harris will have about as
much effect on policy as Pence had during last 4 four years. Certainly nothing like Cheney.
And she won't be the Dems candidate in four years.
Chris Sweeney, UK reporter, says" Britain died for me, its become a Covid-obsessed police
state."He further writes that the courageous spirit that defines Britain is disappearing. Do
you feel the same about the US. I do. The response to the lockdown and masks etc. sends brave
loggers here in the Catskill into a state of child-like fear . Who said there is a sucker
born every minute.
Calm down folks, the elected officials in the US have been puppets of the elite for the
entire history of the country.
The problem we're facing is within the elite community and far above any government's
control.
They didn't legalize drone striking "terrorists" any where on the globe by accident.
This means the elite are terrified of the fact that the internet and Trump both have exposed
them for the morally bankrupt, greedy, mass murdering psychopaths they truly are.
The accidental presidency of Trump made them realize that their useful idiots(elected
officials) where more idiots than useful and that they had to use the state sponsored
monopolies in the press as well as their privately controlled publicly funded covert
community to steer the narrative away from actual reality into their alternative commoditized
version of reality.
Trump was never trying to defend America from the elite for the common man. He was trying
to exploit the elite who had rejected him and his father for decades as well as cash in on
their predicament in order to pay off his debts and start his own reality TV network.
I agree Trump was useful and informative but in the end he, like us is just along for the
ride.
Don't do anything rash and don't for one second think a regime change in America is a rare
occurrence. Remember the Kennedy's ?
The only way to win is to not become one of the elite's useful idiots by lashing out
against another citizen. Poor and middle class only get the illusion they help decide
policy.
The policy is decided and auctioned off within the billionaire funded think tanks and sent to
the useful idiots in DC to be rubber stamped in order to trick you into thinking the
legislative branch is legitimate. These people could f*ck up a two car parade and prove it
over and over again.
Stay sane folks, the motives haven't changed in centuries and the elite are far more
scared of us than they are the other elite's because they all know they're all cowards.
Read Yves's opening. Will get to the article in a bit.
My immediate thought is that "we the people" think of the Democratic Party through the
nostalgia of FDR and all the various power collations he, his wife and his teams pulled
together to prepare the country for war. His and their legacies lasted for almost 40 years. A
golden age for a significant portion of the bottom 80%. Hell, even the top 20%.
Those legacies go back even further since they were seeded decades before that with blood,
sweat and tears by the PEOPLE not the parties. Different parties in different time periods
did significant things for the "greater" good. They also did sh$tty things too. People are
flawed.
We won't get anywhere until we can convince a "significant" section of the top 10% that we
need to change course and re-educate them on how that might be done. We like to blame
"donors" and that's true to a point. But the 10% are part of that donor class. They go
through a similar educational system. Similar social clubs. They see who makes it big and
what it takes. Internally they believe that playing "fair" against the lower classes is
mostly for suckers if the recent college scandals are anything to go by. So they play by
different rules for different classes. That whole tragedy v. crisis mode of thinking.
They've created this cannabilistic system and and even if they know deep down how
horrible it is, they don't allow themselves to dwell on it or consider that they might not
really "deserve" what they have. I suspect they believe that getting off the treadmill means
giving up what they think they deserve to have or are already terrified of losing.
So I'm left with stop thinking about the public faces of the political coin aka political
parties and start asking how one changes enough of the top 10% where it makes enough of a
difference where someone can have enough space to cobble together an FDR styled
collation?
Remember the Roosevelts were Republicans before the FDR branch moved over to Democrats.
The only point being that the parties morph as their membership decrees.
I don't know the detailed history of ND and FDR, but I suspect that FRD managed to show to
the top 0.1% that sharing even 10% of their wealth downwards makes a significant chance of
them surviving more than one generation.
The problem we have now is not necessarily that we have 0.1%, but their attitude, which
these days is formed by the fact that a lot of them are really "employees" – i.e. so
called top management, be it for corporates, or even hedgies, PEs etc – basically, not
having any long-term interests in what they do, except for money. Money became the ultimate
status symbol, because it's fungible, so what matters is not what one is or does, but what is
the net worth. Until we break this, I don't see a way that will not end in a revolution
(which I doubt will solve anything long term. There's a reason it's called revolution).
+1. One of the more insidious aspects of neoliberal "philosophy" is the notion "there is
no society, their are only individual men and women".
Why have long-term community interests if one is merely a free agent in an entirely
individualistic atomized world? Hobbes's quote about life being "solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short" seems the essence of neoliberal "philosophy." The old philosophical
tension between "the one" and "the many" still exists; the neoliberals simply ignore the good
claims of both.
I am seeing quite a few references to a $15/hr minimum wage as a target for a "living
wage". I feel this is merely misdirection from the real problems with our money system.
First, let me say that I fully support the idea of a "living wage". After all, I grew up
in the 50's, when a single wage earner was able to buy a modest house, own a car, and provide
for the average family, including medical costs, college plans, etc. Those days have long
gone due to the ongoing debasement of the currency. Thus, it doesn't matter what you
establish as the minimum wage this year, by next year it will have to be raised again (and
again, and again, . . . ). So, why pick a $15 number when $20, $25, etc. are in the future of
an inflating currency.
To suggest a way to break this cycle, please abide with me as I relate a personal
anecdote.
In the late 60's I was negotiating a job with a particularly cantankerous cheapskate. I
told him that I would work for him for $1/ hour. He got really elated and was ready to
formalize the position when I continued ". . . but that dollar has to be a silver dollar." He
broke off negotiations immediately. I didn't care. I really didn't want to work for him.
Silver was still cheap in those days.
Anyway, look at the price of a silver dollar now, and ask yourself if that would be a
"living wage" today. (The melt value of a silver dollar (about .77 oz) is around $20
excluding any premiums or numismatic value.)
I contend that debasement of the currency (the US dollar) by removing all silver (and
copper) from coins and gold backing from the paper dollar has caused more of the economic
problems (IMHO) of the average person we see today.
Another entirely succesfull election for the FIRE sector – they must have enjoyued the
theater of it all – after they got Biden on the ticket – they knew – no
matter which way the country voted that they had the election in the bag. They had the Smurfes
fighting over the small stuff – to plan
You had Trump – a lifelongh con-man and preditor – physically and figuratively a
self admitted ++++y grabber, a coward, spoiled rich-boy narssisist who used bone spurs to duck
service and probably has not read or understands the constitution.
Then You had Biden – always a FIRE sector champion who come to run like he was fresh
fished and landed doing a slimy fish dock dance.
Well the real fight for the future of democracy and the planet is sided between the creditor
class and the rest of us Smurfs
Its the same fight going back thousands of years in hundreds of countries
Banking in the hands of private interests is more dangerous than a standing
army
In my view – the fight is not between the Dems and Repubs – it is the People,
freedom and Democracy against the Speculators, vested interests and Finance – who have
demonstrated its contemp of People, the Planet and Democracy
Plus 1. Nailed it.
Anyone who thinks that the single party system with 2 factions will provide anything for the
99% is an idiot. The repugnants/democraps, employees of the FIRE sector oligarchs, have been
playing "good cops/bad cops" with middle class/working class forever. It's a tactic that's
been used since "civilization " began. There was a time when the western world's dominant
language was Latin. We know what happened there.
This is the essence of it. When you actually drill down, the things both Democrat and
Republican voters want much the same things and that is more collectivism. They want more
collectivism on social matters and they want more collectivism on economic matters. They want
society back.
Both the social 'conservatism' and economic 'progressivism' on offer tend to be welded to
highly unpopular opposites. If you want immigration control (Which is both a social and
economic issue but only framed in social terms effectively) and an end to insane post-modern
SJW identity politics, you're obliged to also vote for people who will further deregulate the
economy and give tax cuts to the wealthy. If you want social democrat politics you're obliged
to vote for people who will further promote insane anti-social solidarity post-modern SJW
politics and unending mass migration that are counter-productive, perhaps fatality so, to
their social democratic agenda. (See AOC and her wishes for literal open borders and full
Nordic-style social democrat welfare state)
The currency of a system of economic redistribution within a democracy is the willingness
of those with resources to give to those without. The 'progressive' Democrats in the US are
hooked on this ideal of expanding welfare but that doesn't empower the poor because they're
depended on those with resources to support taxes to give them it. Industrial policy and
immigration restriction (Both to decrease job competition and to make the recipients of
resource redistribution more sympathetic to those with resources) to actually shift the real
wealth and power in society is far more important.
A synthesis on at least immigration restriction and progressive economic policies like
banking regulations, trade reform and industrial policy would be highly popular and is
entirely open ground to take. In 2016 Trump became the first person to make that offer in
stark form in 40 years and despite all the ammo the media and intellectual class were able to
throw at him, he beat Hilary Clinton. Bernie and Corbyn both understand this synthesis and
have spoken of it in the past but now are trapped in political apparatuses that make any
mention of immigration and the economic and social interests of the native working class
totally impermissible. Worse, they wed them to an ideal of ever expanding immigration that
will rip apart any social solidarity needed for socialist or social democrat policies since
the new group interests of the native working class will be battling the newcomers for social
and economic space.
A great deal of American 'Libertarians' are actually quite community oriented and are
infact just not in favour of their taxes being redistributed to outgroups whom they don't
have any sense of social solidarity with. Ask them what should be done in their community and
they start sounding like Bernie Sanders. They view the Federal government as an alien thing
that will take from them and give to alien outgroups.People will say they're being 'duped'
but I think those people just don't understand that people are born out of ethnic groups not
class groups, ethnicity is more important and we might expect it to be so given human
evolution.
The US is essentially another colony to the multinationals who can set up domiciles in tax
havens, bribe politicians to enact favorable laws, and lobby for spending to enrich
themselves. That's the reality, not the liberals versus conservatives. They also have the
benefit of an unelected body that can enrich them through printing money which gives them
more power to stop other fiscal stimulus. It's evident in much of the world where this is
going on in the West. It is a variation of the Economic Shock Therapy applied by the West,
except that the oligarchs are spared from the economic shock.
Wow! Today's
Global Times editorial about the election and its outcome is very perceptive in
its entirety making it very hard to determine an excerpt. I decided on the center 4
paragraphs as they're a coherent whole:
"Every society has internal divergences and contradictions. The design of the US system
indulges and even encourages the fermentation of contradictions. Mechanisms help maintain the
balance between interests and power. For a long time, this performed relatively well, but new
challenges are changing the conditions of US mechanisms, and changing relations between the
effectiveness of US mechanisms and the difficulties US society faces.
"The fundamental change is that the US has been consuming its accumulated advantages
against the backdrop of globalization. Its pattern of interests has been fixated, and the
overall competitiveness of the country has been sliding. The welfare it has made for the
people cannot match people's demands and expectations. The mechanism that distributes
interests solidifies and further erodes social ability of promoting unity.
"In the internet era, identity politics is rising. People can easily feel that their
rights are deprived because they are from a certain social class. Maintaining social unity
has become an increasingly arduous and sensitive task. Obviously, the US needs political
reforms more than many other countries to enhance its ability to promote unity.
"But in the past four years, the Trump administration, incited by the US election system,
has pushed the country into a risky path where it enhances division to boost the existing
pattern of political interests. There are so many social woes in US society, be it between
different races and classes, between new immigrants and old ones, and between different
regions, let alone partisan. But now the objective of society has been cast on Trump's
reelection. This objective has to a great extent squeezed the room of US society to pursue
maximum common interests."
But I really insist reading the entire editorial.
In an op/ed
by a professor at the Center for American Studies of Fudan University, we learn what some
close observers from outside see as the primary contradictions within the Outlaw US
Empire:
"There are two main contradictions in the US. First, contradictions between the whites and
ethnic minorities. The advantageous position of the whites continues to decrease and they
would lose their dominance over the country in the future. This makes their tolerance and
confidence in ethnic minorities decrease as well. The ratio of the population of ethnic
minorities is rising. This increases their demand for equality and rights.
"It is normal for ethnic minorities to demand for corresponding political, social,
economic and cultural positions, but this will pose a severe challenge to the cultural,
religious and racial nature of the US. As the US population continues to lose balance,
related conflicts will break out or even become a periodic and escalating crisis.
"Second, contradictions between elites and ordinary people. Supporters of the Democratic
Party are mainly demotic elites who benefit from globalization and liberalization of the
global economy, and those who support the Republican Party are middle- and lower-class
people, and religious conservatives. This is very clear in the county-based electoral maps.
Trump-supporting counties that are vast, under populated and economically backward, surround
cities and counties that support the Democratic Party, while Democrat-dominated counties and
cities use their economic and population advantages to lead the political pattern in some
states. The contradictions between elites and ordinary people will not end with the
election."
Not stated clearly IMO is that these contradictions are Centrifugal in their affects on
the overall society thus impeding attempts to reform the polity and gain control over the
forces exerting actual control that are beyond government.
@vig #85
Sorry: PMC refers to the Professional, Managerial class.
It could be considered the Petit Bourgeoisie in the Marxist sense except these aren't
shopkeepers. They're the middle managers, doctors, lawyers, MBAs, tenured professors, finance
types and what not who are divorced from the actual hands-on labor.
They mostly work for large corporations and government/non-government institutions like state
governments (at the higher levels), think tanks and nonprofits.
@vig #85
And to clarify further: there is a professor at Stanford University named Victor Davis
Hanson. He is both a tenured professor in early Western history (Greek) and also a farmer -
4th or 5th generation in the San Joaquin valley in California.
What Hanson has talked about at length was that the urban elite - the people in the cities
and along the East and West Coasts of America - have been enjoying a different reality than
the rest of the country.
In particular, the opening up of the American economy to China, India and the rest of the
world has created new markets for companies like Boeing, Facebook, GE and the like - which
benefits these areas and demographics.
However, this same action has also exposed American farmers, manufacturers,
non-MBA/PhD/Master's/etc to low priced labor and mercantilist economic policies in these
other countries.
The example Hanson uses is his own farm. In the 1980s, the price for raisins was $1200/ton
and the market was largely in Europe.
With the advent of the EU, Greek farmers got subsidies from the EU such that they took over
the EU market for raisins. The price for raisins fell to $400/ton.
Hanson doesn't say that this could/should be prevented; what he says is that it is a travesty
that there were no voices in the US at least pushing back against these obviously
anti-competitive economic policies. The lack of such voices meant that the forces of
globalism could run rampant and destroy entire sectors of the American economy at amazing
speed. In particular, the US leadership = oligarchs plus PMC class chose to sell out the rest
of the country in order to enrich itself.
This is 100% obvious to anyone who looks at the details of what has happened in the last 30+
years: China went from 6% of the US GDP in 1984 to near parity (or beyond) in purchasing
power terms today.
Postmodernist, in this context, usually means something like 'based on self-confident
assertions that have no connection with reality'. Or 'based on truthness '.
On the eve of the election, for example, Politico published a fawning
profile of Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who is laying the groundwork to become
speaker of the House in a future Republican majority. An ideological mirror of her father, she
and her cohort long for a restoration of the early 2000s Bushite foreign policy of
globe-trotting regime change and democratic nation building administered by a national security
state in Washington D.C.
Their cause, however, is as infertile as their past efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is
because despite his poor record, Donald Trump has created a permanent and growing disconnect
between the War Party and the GOP.
There is no need to sugarcoat how Donald Trump has squandered four years of opportunity in
foreign policy. His promises to bring the troops home have not materialized and remain
"promises" to be kept at a permanently delayed date. He has intensified U.S. interference in
Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and Venezuela. He's overseen the continued deterioration of relations
with Russia, while leaving North Korea at the diplomatic altar. And he's brought the United
States and Iran into a first exchange of direct, open conflict.
A big-picture assessment, however, requires not looking at how Trump failed to bring what
restrainers wanted, but how he succeeded in destroying what they needed gone.
Trump's election caused the departure of the most loathsome of the war peddlers -- including
Bill Kristol, David Frum, Jamie Kirchick, Steve Schmidt, and Max Boot -- from Republican ranks.
United under the banner of "Never Trump," for four years they used every inch of column space,
every CNN interview, and a small fortune to cleave off a portion of the Republican base that
they believed would be happy to return to the world of 2006.
The result? Exit polls show Trump winning 93 percent of the Republican vote, a higher
percentage than he won in 2016. As an election post-mortem summarized,
Never Trump hawks "basically do not exist anywhere outside of the Washington Beltway or cable
news green rooms -- and after tonight's results, we shouldn't have to see them on TV or even
see their tweets ever again."
That the average American has the same respect for the War Party's minions as they have for
a tobacco executive should come as no surprise.
Polling continually shows a supermajority of Americans ready and eager to withdraw from
Iraq and Afghanistan. That includes 77 percent of Republicans, 40 percent of whom want to
decrease military engagement with the rest of the world as well. These voters are a vanguard
that will stop any future Bushite ascendance, whether from Nikki Haley or the spawn of Dick
Cheney.
Slowly, Republican members of Congress are beginning to reflect the wishes of their voters.
One year ago this month, I wrote about the
emerging cadre of antiwar conservatives in the House of Representatives. While most broke
under pressure to support Trump's escalation with Iran, not all did. It's a more active and
vocal Republican contingent than has existed for decades and it's growing fast. Following
Tuesday's results, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming will join Rand Paul and Mike Lee in the U.S.
Senate, while Nancy Mace of South Carolina will lock arms with Representatives Thomas Massie
and Matt Gaetz. Both women are vetted and proven war skeptics who are determined to challenge
Liz Cheney at every turn.
Beyond government, the creative destruction brought by the Trump presidency in conservative
circles has given a new lease on life to restrainers long excluded from the Beltway's
incestuous institutions. That includes the continued ascension of publications like The
American Conservative , which has become a wheelhouse for the
most important foreign policy conversations happening on the right; Tucker Carlson, whose
program has become the highest rated in cable news history, no doubt aided by his antiwar
opening monologues; the Quincy Institute, which is dragging other think tanks kicking and
screaming into dialogues about shifting U.S. positioning overseas; and activist organizations
like BringOurTroopsHome.US , a
collection of right-of-center veterans who are lobbying to end the country's unconstitutional
wars.
The American empire was formed over the course of a century, and currently encompasses over
850 overseas military bases. Hundreds of billions of dollars are exchanged every year through
facets of the military-industrial complex, while thousands of very powerful people make their
cushy salaries off the current imperialistic system (and will fight tooth and nail to keep it
that way).
One election was never going to change that. Donald Trump was never going to be a miracle
worker. But he's kicked in the door and let us in, even if we wish he'd tidied up better before
he left.
We have principled leaders in government. We have the infrastructure. And most importantly,
we have the voters. Liz Cheney and her misbegotten hangers-on may not realize it yet, but their
heyday has long past. It's our party now and we're going to bring America home.
Hunter DeRensis is the communications director of BringOurTroopsHome.US and a regular
contributor to The American Conservative . Follow him on Twitter
@HunterDeRensis.
A vote for Trump is a vote against America's ruling class
On Saturday night, President Trump held a campaign
rally in Butler, Pa. Butler is a town 35 miles north of Pittsburgh, and it's like a lot of
places you'll find in this country once you head inland from the coasts.
Butler is a former industrial town -- they made Pullman rail cars there for many years --
but it's been losing population for decades. There are still a lot of nice people in Butler and
for $60,000 or so, you can buy a decent house there. It's a place you might be happy in.
But our professional class is not impressed by Butler. They don't consider Butler, Pa. or
places like it to be the future. To them, places like Butler are embarrassing relics of a past
best forgotten. The men of Butler may have built this country, and they did, but they mean
nothing to our leaders now. You can be certain of that because when large numbers of people in
Butler started killing themselves with narcotics, no one in Washington or New York or Los
Angeles said a word about it.
Trump supporters hold up four fingers as they chant 'Four More Years' at President Trump's
campaign rally in Butler, Pa. Saturday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
There have now been so many opioid deaths in Butler that a few years ago, residents built an
overdose memorial in the middle of town. MSNBC didn't cover that.
So given all of that, it was interesting how the people around Butler feel about Donald
Trump. Between 10,000 and 15,000 people came out to see him Saturday night, depending on whose
estimate you believe. Pictures of the rally site showed a sea of people obscuring the horizon,
the kind of image you would see of a visit from the pope.
When was the last time a political speech drew that many people? Well, the media didn't ask.
Instead, they attacked the rally as a "superspreader" event. OK, we'll leave the epidemiology
to CNN.
But the questions still hung in the air. Why did all those people come? They must have known
that Donald Trump is the most evil man who hass ever lived. They've heard that every day for
five years. They know that people who support Donald Trump are also evil, they're bigots,
they're morons, they're racist cult members. They know that Americans have been fired from
their jobs for supporting Donald Trump, not to mention kicked off social media, belittled by
their kids' teachers and shunned by decent society. Only losers and freaks support Donald
Trump.
People in Butler knew all of that. But on Saturday, they went to the Donald Trump rally,
anyway. Why exactly did they do that? We should be pondering that question deeply as we watch
Tuesday night's returns and as we live through the aftermath of them.
Millions of Americans sincerely love Donald Trump. They love him in spite of everything
they've heard. They love him, often, in spite of himself. They're not deluded. They know
exactly who Trump is. They love him anyway.
Trump addresses the crowd at his rally in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
They love Donald Trump because no one else loves them. The country they built, the country
their ancestors fought for over hundreds of years, has left them to die in unfashionable little
towns, mocked and despised by the sneering halfwits with finance degrees -- but no actual
skills -- who seem to run everything all of a sudden.
Whatever Donald Trump's faults, he is better than the rest of the people in charge. At least
he doesn't hate them for their weakness. Donald Trump, in other words, is and has always been a
living indictment of the people who run this country. That was true four years ago when he came
out of nowhere to win the presidency. And it's every bit as true right now, maybe even more
true than it's ever been. It will remain true regardless of whether Donald Trump wins
reelection.
Trump rose because they failed. It's as simple as that. If the people in charge had done a
halfway decent job with the country they inherited, if they cared about anything other than
themselves, even for just a moment, Donald Trump would still be hosting "Celebrity Apprentice."
But they didn't. Instead, they were incompetent and narcissistic and cruel and relentlessly
dishonest. They wrecked what they didn't build, and they lied about it. They hurt anyone who
told the truth about what they were doing. That's all true. We all watched.
America is still a great country, the best in the world, but our ruling class is disgusting.
A vote for Trump is a vote against them. That's what's going on in those pictures from Butler.
That's what's going on in this country.
The elites may control who gets nominated but no matter how flawed or repugnant their
candidate is or how obvious that the candidate was chosen for them the flocks that follow the
candidates act as if they did the choosing.
Trump was given 10 times the free advertising than all the other primary candidates
combined and yet his followers think they picked him.
And Biden will go down in history as the candidate who got more popular votes than any
other candidate ever has and yet he is about as popular as a hemorrhoid.
"... One camp within the elites recognizes the danger and seeks reforms , but the reforms are too little, too late, and in any event, the elites who cling most ardently to the past stability fight the reform movement to a standstill. ..."
"... So take your pick, America: what's the closest analogy? A sclerotic Politburo of elders living in the past, an elite fiddling while the nation disintegrates, or an elite so out of touch with reality that it claims inflation is zero while the populace can no longer afford bread? ..."
Rome, the USSR and Revolutionary France are all compelling analogies due to the hubristic
cluelessness of their fractured elites as the pretensions of stability collapsed around them.
Even though Nero didn't actually fiddle while Rome burned and Marie Antoinette didn't gush "Let
them eat brioche" when notified that the peasants had no bread (or more accurately, could no
longer afford it), these myths are handy encapsulations of the disconnect from reality that
infested the elites in the last years before the deluge of non-linear chaos overwhelmed the
regimes.
While historians gather evidence of tipping points such as pandemics, ecological damage,
invasions, droughts, inflation, etc., the core dynamic is ultimately the loss of social
cohesion within the ruling elites and in the social order at large.
As a generality, the permanence of the status quo is taken for granted by elites, who then
feel free to squabble amongst themselves over the spoils of wealth and power. Distracted by
their own infighting, the elites are blind to the erosion of the foundations of their
power.
As coherence in the elites unravels, the ties uniting the elites with the masses unravel as
well.
One camp within the elites recognizes the danger and seeks reforms , but the reforms are too
little, too late, and in any event, the elites who cling most ardently to the past stability
fight the reform movement to a standstill.
As social cohesion unravels, systems that once seemed immutable (i.e. linear ) suddenly
display non-linear dynamics in which modest changes that would have made little difference in
the past now unleash regime-shattering disorder.
So take your pick, America: what's the closest analogy? A sclerotic Politburo of elders
living in the past, an elite fiddling while the nation disintegrates, or an elite so out of
touch with reality that it claims inflation is zero while the populace can no longer afford
bread?
They all lead to the same destination.
richsob , 1 hour ago
I know a lot of history and I think we will go the route of Rome. We will have a slow
slide into total failure from a debased currency, an over extended military, tax revolts,
unmanageable immigration and an internal war among the elites.
HRH of Aquitaine 2.0 , 1 hour ago
My name is an indirect reference to France and the French Revolution.
When Pelosi was photo'd in front of two massive Sub Zero fridges with gourmet ice cream,
that was the equivalent of "let them eat brioche." She is fvucking clueless. A tool that is
barely coherent, much like Joe.
People see through it. The greed of the politicians, and their apparatchiks, the
bureaucrats, is obvious to anyone willing to look. FFS apparatchiks can retire with six
fixure salaries after being a government employee! People are sick to death of their
arrogance, their greed, their out-and-out abuse of the taxpayer!
The other analogy, which I think is valid, is to ancient Rome. I was a philosophy major /
Latin minor so took quite few courses involving the classes, reading the classics, or
translating them. I also spent a semester in Rome, tramping through the Forum and walking
underground and overground. In 1997 Rome was a beautiful city, mostly safe.
Anyhow, ancient Rome ended up debasing their currency, literally. Which the US (and other
central banks) are doing with excessive money printing.
Excessive taxation drove away the tax base of ancient Rome. The first jingle keys event
was there. Why? Taxes were too high. People will work hard if there is a profit incentive and
they are able to earn a good return from their labor. Once that incentive was gone, people
abandoned their farms and property and left. Where did they go? Away. Away from the tax
collectors, which were richly rewarded for any taxes they were able to collect. I suppose at
the end, the collection methods became quite brutal. At that point, when it is your money or
your life, you throw the tax collector your money and flee with your life. You walk away from
land that you love and start over.
Never an easy choice to abandon one's land and home. But that is exactly what
happened.
Central bankers and governments, along with the common citizen, would do well to heed
historical precedents.
MAOUS , 31 minutes ago
I see it more like The Godfather Part I & II. We were betrayed by the stupidest
simpletons of our own family (citizenry) that sold us out for trinkets, false promises of
grandeur and propaganda from Rival Mafia Families who wanted to rub our family out, kill our
leader and take over. "I didn't know until today, it was Barzini all along." Yeah, but Fredo
was the turn coat that made it all possible. Meet the simpletons of our Family known as your
fellow American voter. "A Republic, if you can keep it." We lost it, kiss it goodbye. Say
hello to the new Black Hand on the block.
Omega Point , 1 hour ago
One of the best articles on ZH in a while. The elites are so full of hubris, they behave
as if the state of affairs since the post-WWII era has always been the state of affairs
throughout history and are immutable. They believe that they are cause of America's
dominance, not the individuals who built this country on whose goodwill they are now quickly
draining.
I think we're like Rome. Currency debasement, no border security, massively corrupt
politicians, most of population on welfare, and games and circuses to distract from the
rot.
The elites will soon be surprised how quickly things will decline, just as shocked as the
Romans when the Visigoths came through the city walls and looted the Imperial City in 410
AD.
play_arrow
sbin , 1 hour ago
The USSR was very similar with decrepit old party hacks ruining everything.
Unfortunately American exceptional lunatics will try to destroy the world before excepting
reality.
Never been a group so corrupt and delusional with so much destructive weaponry.
Dr Strangelove is more appropriate.
RKKA , 1 hour ago
In the summer of 1941, the 4th Panzer Division of Heinz Guderian, one of the most talented
German tank generals, broke through to the Belarusian town of Krichev. Parts of the 13th
Soviet Army were retreating. Only one gunner, Nikolai Sirotinin, did not retreat - very
young, short, thin.
On that day, it was necessary to cover the withdrawal of troops. “There will be two
people with a cannon here,” said the battery commander. Nikolai volunteered. The second
was the commander himself.
On the morning of July 17, a column of German tanks appeared on the highway.
Nikolai took up a position on the hill right on the field. The cannon was sinking in the
high rye, but he could clearly see the highway and the bridge over the river. When the lead
tank reached the bridge, Nikolai knocked it out with the first shot. The second shell set
fire to the armored personnel carrier that closed the column.
We must stop here. Because it is still not entirely clear why Nikolai was left alone at
the cannon. But there are versions. He apparently had just the task - to create a "traffic
jam" on the bridge, knocking out the head car of the Nazis. The lieutenant at the bridge and
adjusted the fire, and then, disappeared. It is reliably known that the lieutenant was
wounded and then he left towards the withdrawing positions. There is an assumption that
Nikolai had to move away, having completed the task. But ... he had 60 rounds. And he
stayed!
Two tanks tried to move the lead tank off the bridge, but they were also hit. The armored
vehicle tried to cross the river not across the bridge. But she got stuck in a swampy shore,
where another shell found her. Nikolai shot and shot, knocking out tank after tank ...
Guderian's tanks rested on Nikolai Sirotinin, like the Chinese wall, like the Brest
fortress. Already 11 tanks and 6 armored personnel carriers were on fire! For almost two
hours of this strange battle, the Germans could not understand where the gun was firing from.
And when we reached the position of Nikolai, he had only three shells left. The Germans
offered him to surrender. Nikolai responded by firing at them with a carbine.
This last battle was short-lived ...
11 tanks and 7 armored vehicles, 57 soldiers and officers were lost by the Nazis after the
battle, where they were blocked by the Russian soldier Nikolai Sirotinin.
The inscription on the monument: "Here at dawn on July 17, 1941 entered into combat with a
column of fascist tanks and in a two-hour battle repulsed all enemy attacks, senior artillery
sergeant Nikolai Vladimirovich Sirotinin, who gave his life for the freedom and independence
of our Motherland."
"After all, he is a Russian soldier, is such admiration necessary?" These words were
written down in his diary by Chief Lieutenant of the 4th Panzer Division Henfeld: “July
17, 1941. Sokolnichi, near Krichev. An unknown Russian soldier was buried in the evening. He
alone stood at the cannon, shot a convoy of our tanks and infantry for a long time, and died.
Everyone was amazed at his courage ... Oberst (Colonel) before the grave said that if all the
soldiers of the Fuehrer fought like this Russian soldier, they would have conquered the whole
world! Three times they fired volleys from rifles. After all, he is a Russian soldier, is
such admiration necessary? "
Ordinary people were ready to defend and die for the USSR. And who is Gorbachev, who
destroyed the USSR. A traitor who betrayed everything and everyone. A stupid dilettante who
imagines himself a world-class politician. The main drawback of the USSR was that the power
was too concentrated in the hands of one person, who was trusted without question. But when
people realized where he was leading the country, it was too late.
Max21c , 2 hours ago
It's a mix between Nazi Germany and its criminality and thievery and persecution
machinery, and Bolshevist Russia and its criminality and thievery and persecution machinery
and many third world banana republics and their criminality and thievery and political
persecution machinery.
Face it Washingtonians are evil.
ZeroTruth , 1 hour ago
Americuck in and of its entirety is just a criminal organization. I know a restaraunteur
that started his business in the Bay Area selling drugs using a fleet of vehicles that had
hidden compartments everywhere. Each vehicle was capable of holding up to half a key of yay
and powdered molly already grammed up. Drivers were issued burner phones and given orders via
dispatcher.
Last I checked, he had 7 restaurants that did amazing business and those vehicles were
still on the road providing the other service. That's just one of the many I know of and it's
small time compared to what the US government is doing.
ZeroTruth , 1 hour ago
Americuck in and of its entirety is just a criminal organization. I know a restaraunteur
that started his business in the Bay Area selling drugs using a fleet of vehicles that had
hidden compartments everywhere. Each vehicle was capable of holding up to half a key of yay
and powdered molly already grammed up. Drivers were issued burner phones and given orders via
dispatcher.
Last I checked, he had 7 restaurants that did amazing business and those vehicles were
still on the road providing the other service. That's just one of the many I know of and it's
small time compared to what the US government is doing.
DeeDeeTwo , 2 hours ago
The elites, Big Tech, Media and Deep State threw the kitchen sink at this election and did
not move the needle. Regardless of who is next President, nothing changes. This is a tribute
to the stability of the American system. In fact, the pendulum is swinging against the
subversives who are becoming increasingly reckless and discredited.
TBT or not TBT , 2 hours ago
What did Huxley call the future country depicted in Brave New World?
300 election don't count comments not one comment about the future of America? All I see
here is who shall be king of the mountain. What is it that our leader (whoever it is, should
do)?
1. Reduce military spending by 50% per year for each of the next four years.
2. Close 50% of the military bases each year, over each of the next four years
3. Standardize national examinations for high school and undergraduate degrees pass the
examination
receive the BS or BA.. degree.. eliminate any all accreditation requirements, people can
study wherever
whenever and how ever they wish. Tutorials not bureaucratic institutions will prepare the
students for
the examinations.
4. eliminate copyright and patent laws so as to reduce the wealth gap and so as to return
America to
from monopolism to capitalism.
5. fix the constitution so the governed have a powerful, meaningful say in not just in how
uses the
government to govern, but also so the governed have a powerful say in what it is those who
are elected
to the government must accomplish why they are in the employee of our elected government.
6. Find a way to get the USA activities subject to human rights courts.
7. Paint all of the white people black in order to eliminate race as condition of
life.
A list of goals and objectives should be put forth on what the elected are supposed to
accomplish in the next four years. In that way, it will not matter who is the President, what
will matter is did he or she accomplish what it was they were elected to do?
There is nothing in China like the military-industrial complex of the United States that
structurally fosters militarism and imperialism with its powerful "lobbies" and think
tanks. The mandarins of the United States are prisoners of a network that greatly
complicates their adaptation to the new world. Its powerful and efficient propaganda
apparatus ("information & entertainment") presents the United States' two-headed,
single-party political regime based on the money aristocracy as a democracy.
That is really well put.
"The mandarins of the United States are prisoners of a network that greatly complicates
their adaptation to the new world"
Nevada will put Joe Biden over for the Presidential win..
Tonight.. Now the question is. How long will Biden last until Harris becomes the Queen of
Spades of Pentagon?
See? Twitter is cool with allowing this posting by David Litt, former Obama speechwriter,
*today* 5:34 pm Nov 4 of a democrat ballot "curing" (post Nov 3 ballot harvesting) assistance
operation in Georgia over the next three days (Wed, Thurs and Fri)
Attention everyone in or near Georgia: We need YOUR help today! This race is not over
and we need every single vote to be counted.
It is all hands on deck and all eyes on Georgia!
Join us today for a virtual training to learn how to knock doors to help voters cure
their ballots. We need you in this fight with us today and tomorrow and Friday. We've come
so far, this is how we bring it home. See you in the virtual training room and out knocking
doors soon!"
"The guy at the source of the whole kerfluffle acknowledges that the 130,000 magical votes
Tweet was based on incorrect data"
-Posted by: _K_C_ | Nov 5 2020 3:50 utc | 306
I'm not so sure about this, _K_C. His explanation for the late night MI Biden vote bump
"kerfluffle" still smells sketchy to me. Given the stakes, could someone have gotten that guy
to "flip" his statement after the fact?
"... Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent books are Bernie and the Sandernistas: Field Notes From a Failed Revolution and The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink (with Joshua Frank) He can be reached at: [email protected] or on Twitter @ JSCCounterPunch . ..."
+ The outcome is still in play, but if Biden loses, we're going to hear a lot of Malarky
about why and most of it will be bullshit. (When I called it a night, at 2am Left Coast Time,
Biden had come back to claim to a narrow lead in Wisconsin.)
+ I predicted in my column last Friday that the polls were underestimating Trump's support
(or voter indifference to Biden) by 3 percent. It looks more like 5 to 6 percent in many of the
decisive states. In Wisconsin, for example, Biden was favored by 8 percent. At 2Am, he was
leading by 0.3 percent. The elite consultants and pollsters may have fucked up more profoundly
than the Democrats who relied upon their statistical sorcery.
+ In the midst of a killer pandemic and mass unemployment, the Democrats could have offered
the nation a universal health care plan, a moratorium on evictions and a guaranteed basic
income. Instead, they believed that the key to victory over Trump was to meld neoliberal
economics with a neoconservative foreign policy. I don't know where they got this idea.
Probably, the same place Obama got his health insurance plan, the Heritage Foundation.
+ The Democrats' candidate voted for the Iraq war, NAFTA, the destruction of welfare, helped
instigate the war on drugs, wrote federal crime laws that incarcerated two generations of young
black & brown Americans and has preached austerity his entire political career. I'm not
surprised by the inconclusive results of an election which should have been a sure thing.
+ I've long argued that Biden was a weaker candidate than HRC, who was terrible. At least
HRC had a rationale for her campaign. Biden had none. The argument was that Biden wasn't hated
as much as Hillary. Perhaps. But most people just didn't feel anything about him. Which is
fatal for a politician.
+ Look on the bright side. Just think how much money the DNC will raise off of a Biden
loss
+ Trump's 2am speech was worthy of Somoza's infamous declaration, "Yes, you won the
election. But I won the counting."
+ Trump says he will be going to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop ALL vote counting across the
country. "As far as I am concerned, we have already won," Trump says.
+ Trump says a sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise those who voted for him. Sad,
indeed.
+ By contrast, Biden's passive speech sounded like Tsar Alexander's the night before the
battle of Austerlitz, completely unaware of the concussive force that's going to hit him in the
morning .
+ Biden is speaking, but saying nothing. Biden should never speak. Ever.
+ Recall how Biden spent most of the early primary season telling people, most of them young
progressives, to vote for someone else if they didn't like his reactionary policies?
Surprise!
+ Biden, who spent much of the year recruiting war criminals from the Bush administration,
did worse with Republicans than HRC did in 2016.
+ Remember the Zoom election simulation the New Yorker did that got Jeffrey Toobin so
excited? Do you think this was the scenario that triggered him?
+ The Biden campaign preferred to court the exiled neocons who started the Iraq war, than
Hispanics and progressives. They may not lose, but they probably deserve to
+ Back in May, the Biden campaign announced that they didn't consider Latinos a key part of
their " path to
victory. " This kind of arrogance yielded the predictable results.
+ Hispanic voters per early 2020 exit polls:
Florida:
2016: Clinton +27
2020: Biden +8
Georgia:
2016: Clinton +40
2020: Biden +25
Ohio:
2016: Clinton +41
2020: Biden +24
+ The results from Starr County, Texas, the most Latino county in the United States (96%
Latino) and the second poorest in Texas, with a poverty rate of 33%. In 2016, it went for
Clinton by 60 percent. In 2020, Biden won it by only 5 percent, with >98%
reporting.
+ The argument against Bernie was that he'd never win the Cuban exile vote in Florida.
+ I guess that Ana Navarro gambit was a bust
+ Biden kept saying this was a fight for the "soul of the nation". What if the nation never
had a soul and it was actually a fight for health care, jobs, and a livable climate?
+ We were told that this election was all about "saving democracy" and in order to save
democracy, the Democrats had to rig their primaries for Biden.
+ I was never a big fan of Sanders. But he gave people policies to vote for. Biden ran away
from all them and offered nothing of substance on his own. The best he had to offer was Kamala
Harris, a hard-ass former prosecutor who progressives distrusted and the right could race-bait
and caricaturize as the second coming of Angela Davis.
+ Still, it's easy to proclaim that Bernie would have won. It's a proposition that can't be
proven. But he would have been shackled by the same party apparatus that failed to win the
senate and lost ground in the House. Until the Democratic Party itself is reconstituted, it's
electoral fortunes are going to continue to erode.
+ Had the feeling the night might go south for the Democrats when the first crop of exit
polls came out showing that 48% of voters believed the
COVID pandemic was under control .
+ Trump, at 63,085,022 votes, has already amassed more votes than in 2016.
+ According to the early exit polls, Trump did better in 2020 with every race and gender
except . white men!
Change from 2016:
White Men -5
White Women +2
Black Men +4
Black Women +4
Latino Men +3
Latino Women +3
Other +5
+ Clearly, this election would have been a Trump rout without the intervention of COVID.
+ This symbolizes the entire night Republican David Andahl, a North Dakota legislator who
died of COVID-19,
won re-election .
+ Good news for the squad, plus Cori Bush, who also won. Their victories are, of course,
also good news for FoxNews, which can spend the next two years scaremongering
them
+ 26 out of the 30 nationally-endorsed Democratic Socialist candidates won their
elections.
+ Meanwhile, Scott DesJarlais slept with subordinates, prescribed opioids for his young
lover-patients and pressured one to get an abortion, still won in Tennessee, running as a
pro-life, family values Republican
+ Looks like the awful Prop 22 will pass in California, cementing drivers' status as
independent contractors as Uber, Doordash and other gig companies prevail in their $200M bid to
defeat legislation making them employees.
+ Memo to Justice Barrett: "Louisiana has passed Amendment 1, which establishes there is no
constitutional right to an abortion."
+ Georgia is still in play and could go for both Biden and Q, thus spawning a decade's worth
of new conspiracy theories
+ It turns out, the only debate Biden seems to have won was the one that was canceled.
+ The Democrats can't blame the Greens this time (though I'm sure they'll find some reason
to hurl insults at Susan Sarandon), having gotten them kicked off the ballot in key states.
Perhaps they'll blame the Libertarians for not pulling enough votes from Trump.
+ Go figure .Trump did better in counties with high COVID death rates than he did in
2016.
+ Trump stomped Biden in Florida, yet the state overwhelmingly passed a $15 minimum wage
referendum.
+ Florida Polls are the statistician's version of Florida Man
+ Biden had hopes of winning Iowa, but this once Democratic state is slipping further and
further away
2000: Gore by 0.32%
2004: Bush by 0.67%
2008: Obama by 8.5%
2012: Obama by 5.6%
2016: Trump by 9.3%
2020: Trump by 8%
+ It was a good night for drugs. Oregon becomes the first state to decriminalize low-level
drug possession and to legalize the use of magic mushrooms.
+ South Dakota, Arizona, Montana, New Jersey all legalized marijuana at the ballot box
tonight, a policy which isn't supported by either major party.
+ This polling reinforces my view that if Biden loses, it will be because he spent too much
time campaigning and not enough time staying out of sight "Two-thirds of voters say their
choice for president was driven by their opinion of President Trump," according to
AP VoteCast .
+ The EU is keeping Americans on
the no fly list , which is probably prudent given all the celebrities who've vowed to flee
the States in the event of Trump's reelection.
+ All Quiet on the Lincoln Project Front?
+ The Lincoln Project raised $67 million. Republican Voters Against Trump raised another $10
million. 93% of Republicans voted for Trump in 2020, up from 90% in 2016.
"... The financial elites disproportionately lavished their support on the Democrats. The oligarchs understood more clearly than certain elements of the left where their class interests reside. "Wall Street," Politico ..."
"... While the outcome of the presidential election is uncertain, the legitimacy of the ruling class has surely been sullied by the arguably ugliest campaign in recent history. The elite club must now figure out how to anoint their new emperor without further damaging their image. The hiccups over their transfer of power is their dilemma and our good fortune. ..."
The polls closed with "
no winner yet in cliffhanger presidential election," as of Wednesday evening. Despite a
period of uncertainty, which is typically the nemesis of
Wall Street , the Dow climbed 0.9%, the S&P 500 opened 1.5% higher, and the Nasdaq
Composite jumped 2.6%.
The explanation is that the financial elites know that they win regardless of who occupies
the Oval Office, which is something that some
leftists , who had advocated temporarily subordinating an independent working-class
alternative to campaign for the leading neoliberal candidate, did not firmly grasp.
Trouncing the contender that Noam Chomsky hyperbolically called " worse than Hitler " would be a blow to overt
white supremacy. But bedrock institutional racism, entombed in the US carceral state, will
still endure and the tasks of the left will remain.
Legitimizing neoliberal rule
The left's vote was not needed to ensure a Biden victory. But it was needed to justify
voting for the "lesser evil" based on the false narrative of TINA – "there is no
alternative."
The Revolutionary Communist Party, normally marginalized by the corporate media, received
banner headlines
when it declared for Biden. The "paper of record" for the Democratic wing of the two-party
duopoly, TheNew York Times, opportunistically posted an op-ed by a
self-described socialist because it pleaded , "leftists should
vote for Biden in droves."
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) readily
acknowledged "there is no choice at the top of the ticket that would advance our movement
or constitute a 'victory' for democratic socialism." But that did not deter them from jumping
on the Biden bandwagon. DSA seemed more worried about Biden losing than about Sanders being
excluded by the DNC.
It is not the left's responsibility to strategize how the Democrats could have run this or
future campaigns. Incidentally, a Biden/Harris victory would preclude a liberalish Democrat,
such as a member of the Squad , making a run as
the Democratic standard bearer for next 12 to 16 years.
The contribution of those parttime leftists who campaigned for Biden was not to put him into
the White House – they didn't have the numbers to do that – but to help legitimize
neoliberal rule. Their preemptive political surrender obscured the failure of a political
system incapable of addressing the critical issues of our times.
Politics of fear obscured critical issues
Fear was the operational motivator for
apocalyptic fantasies of a fascist coup, which served to obviate a progressive agenda. A
tanking economy, a still uncontained pandemic, and unprecedented protests against racialized
police brutality were attributed solely to Trump's watch, instead of being understood as also
endemic to the neoliberal order.
Neither presidential candidate advocated comprehensive healthcare in a time of pandemic,
with both in effect opting for
triage of the most vulnerable –
people of color and the
elderly . The two wings of the duopoly mainly differ on this existential health issue over
the advisability of wearing
face masks .
Climate catastrophe remains an existential threat. Biden may throw a few more crumbs than
Trump in the direction of the alternative energy industry. But both candidates contested to see
who was more enthusiastic about fracking
, while they agree that tax cuts and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry will be continued.
Biden's predecessor, whom he served as VP,
boasted "we've added enough new oil and gas pipeline to circle the Earth and then some."
The next four years portends a choice of someone who denies global warming or another who
believes in the science but does not act on it.
The
financial elites disproportionately lavished their support on the Democrats. The oligarchs
understood more clearly than certain elements of the left where their class interests reside.
"Wall Street," Politicoreported ,
grew "giddy about Biden," because Uncle Joe would best help recover their legitimacy while
carrying their water. The financiers also hedged their bets with contributions to Trump. Along
with the DNC, they understood that another four years of the current occupant would be better
than a Bernie Sanders presidency for the owning class.
Game of Thrones
While the outcome of the presidential election is uncertain, the legitimacy of the
ruling class has surely been sullied by the arguably ugliest campaign in recent history. The
elite club must now figure out how to anoint their new emperor without further damaging their
image. The hiccups over their transfer of power is their dilemma and our good fortune.
It may be too early to tell, but the widely feared Trump coup has yet to be realized. The
Proud Boys, with their mail-order munitions, have yet to replace the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Nervous leftists, apprehensive about a Trump coup, are calling upon labor to wage a
general strike to install a neoliberal into the White House. Joe Hill would find that
ironic at best.
While "President Donald Trump has cast doubt on whether he will commit to a peaceful
transfer of power," CNN revealed
, "the secretive process to prepare a would-be Biden administration has been underway for
months with help from top Trump officials (emphasis added)."
Biden may now be less unpalatable than Trump, but Uncle Joe had the advantage of not being
in power for the last four years. He may not look so hot after another term of neoliberal rule,
characterized by increasing austerity for working people, entrenched institutional racism,
oppressive surveillance and security state measures, and an aggressive imperialism abroad.
Substantial differences exist between Trump and Biden, but those differences do not extend to
which class they serve.
Recovering the left alternative
With record turnout ,
never before have so many voted for so little. Now is auspicious for alternatives to the
two-party duopoly.
As reported
by Alan Mcleod, Trump's abysmal approval rating of 42% is barely edged out by Biden's of 46%.
Two-thirds of prospective Democratic voters polled claim they would be voting against Trump
rather than for Biden; only a quarter of the prospective Republicans are voting so much for
Trump as against the Democrats. Biden way squeak through on the appeal of not being Trump, but
that will wear thin quickly.
With both major parties continuing to abandon the interests of working people, the left must
either take the initiative or surrender it to a growing right wing. Rather than this being the
time when never before has there been a greater need to support the lesser-evil Democrats and
give them an
extraordinary mandate to rule , this is a time to leverage the ruling class's loss of
legitimacy to articulate a left alternative.
Taking a left initiative, despite the loss of legitimacy of the ruling elites, is
challenging. With a Republican victory, the left has historically gotten absorbed into a
resistance that devolves into an assistance – the
graveyard of social movements that is the Democratic Party. With a Democratic victory, the
illusion of hope and that anyone's better than Trump are false excuses to "give Biden a
chance." After campaigning for the Democrat, it will be problematic for these same left forces
to credibly do an about-face and fight him. As for an independent electoral left, more rigorous
party registration rules targeting left alternatives, recently imposed by Democrats , foreshadow fewer left
choices on future ballots.
However, the
majority of working people support a progressive agenda, which has been ignored and
suppressed by the duopoly:
Effectively addressing global warming
COVID safety over economic activity and economic relief
Ending forever wars and sanctions, while de-escalating the threat of nuclear
conflagration
National healthcare program modelled after Medicare
Opposition to the militarization of the police and preservation of civil liberties
Reduction of income inequality, stronger anti-trust laws, and fairly taxing wealth
These were among the critical issues that were lost in the distracting political theatre of
the 2020 campaign and the basis for a renewed left initiative.
If one cares about the stability of the United States then they should have been wishing for
a decisive victory in yesterday's election. A decisive victory for whom you ask? Perhaps in the
long run that could be relevant, but in the short term it really doesn't matter at all, the
main thing is that someone needs to walk away as the undisputed champion for the sake of
America.
Not only has the United States had a very solid track record of stability due to having the
best possible geopolitical location on the planet, but also in part thanks to the wisdom of
those within the two-party system to value said stability over a temporary victory time after
time.
Image: is getting rid of Trump really worth killing the golden goose? For some apparently
it is.
As a teenager any thinking American will quickly wake up to the fact that with " Hanging Chads ", Gerrymandering , and rumors of
the dead and non-citizens voting, that our electoral system is at least highly and deeply
flawed if not completely illegitimate. With all the "irregularities" that happen in November it
seems to young minds that this is simply a massive farce that needs to end.
However, as one gets older we can see the wisdom in both American parties constantly
cheating and yet acknowledging every election as legit, even during the bizarre final moments
of the battle like those between Bush and Gore in Florida . The two-party
system must have gotten the picture that both teams are going to do anything they can to win
and that this is perfectly natural. But in turn, just because both teams cheat there is no
reason to declare the competition to be illegitimate as a whole, lest we repeat the U.S. Civil
War or the early days in the Russian Revolution in which many factions fought till there could
"be only one". Accepting that both sides can and will cheat but they must acknowledge the
winner is critical for American stability and perfectly reasonable to those of us with grey
hair.
Image: The dangerous electoral situation at the time of writing (source: Fox
News)
The issue at hand in 2020 is that this old wisdom of how to play the game in Washington is
dying or dead. Both sides are signaling to the other that they will not acknowledge a peaceful
transfer/retaining of power . And
just a day before voting, suburban soccer mom extremist Nancy Pelosi said that the House is
ready to decide who will become President if the elections are "disputed" i.e. they are
prepared to bureaucratically make Biden become President of the United States. This type of
rhetoric could have big consequences for America as a whole.
With ballots still left to be counted, Trump says, in his usual exaggerated assuredness,
that
'Frankly, (his side) did win this election' and is already making plans to go to the
Supreme Court. This seems to be really jumping the gun, perhaps he knows about things happening
behind the scenes that we do not, or he is simply no better than Pelosi when it comes to
keeping their yap shut.
Image: Nancy Pelosi does not seem concerned about risking American stability for a
presidential party victory.
So far the official threats that we have heard are all focussed on using bureaucratic
procedures against each other, but with BLM, Antifa and other forces already out on the streets
and possibly awaiting orders, certain observing forces could throw gasoline on the fire at any
moment. Violence on a non-organized/revolutionary level has already started (as expected) with
4 Trump
supporters being stabbed .
This is why the results of the election as they stand at this moment are the worst they
could possibly be – as a strong victory for either would almost certainly guarantee the
United States would remain stable for at least another 4 years. The "score" we are seeing right
now is fertile ground for Color Revolution like action.
We should not forget that Color Revolutions happen almost always in connection with hot
election cycles and take place in the nation's capital with full media support on the side of
the rebels. All these check boxes are currently ticked and if cooler heads don't prevail
Americans will get to experience the lifestyle, violence and fear they brought to the former
Soviet Union after it lost the Cold War via the CIA's/State Department's Color Revolutions.
It is imperative for cooler heads on both sides to remind their colleagues that America did
not become a super power due to "exceptionalism" but instead thanks to location, certain
opportunities (WWII), and select wise policies.
Then again if you are an Accelarationist, well, it looks like your moment has finally come.
The Right and Left are playing chicken and it doesn't look like anyone is going to blink.
Not that long ago the United States came close to total dissolution.
The financial system was bankrupt, speculation had run amok, and all infrastructure had
fallen into disarray over the course of 30 years of unbroken free trade. To make matters worse,
the nation was on the verge of a civil war and international financiers in London and Wall
Street gloated over the immanent destruction of the first nation on earth to be established not
upon hereditary institutions, but rather on the consent of the governed and mandated to serve
the general welfare.
Although one might think that I am referring now to today's America, I am in fact referring
to the United States of 1860.
The Trifold Deep State
In my past
two articles in this series, I discussed how a new system of political economy was
established by Benjamin Franklin and his disciples in the wake of the war of independence
driven by protectionism, national banking and internal improvements.
I also demonstrated that the rise of the thing known as today's "deep state" can also be
understood as a three-headed beast which arose in its earliest incarnation under the leadership
of arch traitor Aaron Burr who established Wall Street, killed Alexander Hamilton and devoted
his life to the cause of dissolving the union. After having been caught in the act of sabotage,
Burr escaped arrest in 1807 by running off to England where he live in Jeremy Bentham's mansion
for 5 years, only to return to oversee a new plot to break up the union that eventually boiled
over in 1860.
The three prongs of the operation that Burr led on behalf of British intelligence and which
remains active to this very day, can loosely be described as follows:
The Eastern Establishment families sometimes known as the Essex Junto who took control of
Hamilton's Federalist Party. These were Empire Loyalists who remained within the USA under
the illusion of loyalty to the constitution, but always adherent to a British Imperial world
order and devoted to eventually undermining it from within. These were the circles that
brought the USA into Britain's Opium trade against China as junior partners in crime and who
promoted the dissolution of the union as early as 1800
under the leadership of Aaron Burr.
The "Virginia Junto", slave owning aristocracy which also worked with Aaron Burr in his
1807 secessionist plot and whose alliance with the British Empire was instrumental in its
rise to power from 1828-1860. This was the structure that soon returned to power, after the
civil war, under the guiding hand of such
Mazzini-connected "Young Americans" as KKK founder Albert Pike and the Southern
establishment that later executed nationalist presidents in 1880, 1901 and in 1963.
Some Uncomfortable Questions
The story has been told of Lincoln's murder in tens of thousands of books and yet more often
than not the narrative of a "single lone gunman" is imposed onto the story by researchers who
are either too lazy or too corrupt to look for the evidence of a larger plot.
How many of those popular narratives infused into the western zeitgeist over the decades
even acknowledge the simple fact that John Wilkes Boothe was carrying a $500 bank draft signed
by Ontario Bank of Montreal President Henry Starnes (later to become Montreal Mayor) when he
was shot dead at Garrett Farm on April 26, 1865?
How many people have been exposed to the vast Southern Confederacy secret service operations
active throughout the civil war in Montreal, Toronto and Halifax which was under the firm
control of Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin and his handlers in British
intelligence?
How many people know that Boothe spent at least 5 weeks in the fall of 1864 in Montreal
associating closely with the highest echelons of British and Southern intelligence including
Starnes, and confederate spy leaders Jacob Thompson and George Sanders?
Demonstrating his total ignorance of the process that controlled him, Booth wrote to a
friend on October 28, 1864: "I have been in Montreal for the last 3 or 4 weeks and no one
(not even myself) knew when I would return".
On The Trail of the Assassins
After Lincoln was murdered, a manhunt to track down the intelligence networks behind the
assassination was underway that eventually led to the hanging of four low level co-conspirators
who history has shown were just as much patsies as John Wilkes Boothe.
Days later, President Johnson issued a proclamation saying :
"It appears from evidence in the Bureau of Military Justice that the murder of Abraham
Lincoln [was] incited, concerted, and procured by and between Jefferson Davis, late of
Richmond, Va., and Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay, [Nathaniel] Beverly Tucker, George N.
Sanders, William C. Cleary, and other rebels and traitors against the government of the United
States harbored in Canada."
Two days before Booth was shot, Secretary of War
Edwin Stanton wrote : "This Department has information that the President's murder was
organized in Canada and approved at Richmond."
Knowledge of Canada's confederate operations was well known to the federal authorities in
those days even though the majority among leading historians today are totally ignorant of this
fact.
George Sanders remains one of the most interesting figures among Booth's handlers in Canada.
As a former Ambassador to England under the presidency of Franklin Pierce (1853-1857), Sanders
was a close friend of international anarchist Giuseppe Mazzini – the founder of the Young
Europe movement. Sanders who wrote "Mazzini and Young Europe" in 1852, had the honor of being
a leading member of the
southern branch of the Young America Movement (while Ralph Waldo Emerson was a
self-proclaimed leader of the
northern branch of Young America ). Jacob Thompson, who was named in the Johnson dispatch
above, was a former Secretary of the Interior under President Pierce, handler of Booth and
acted as the top controller of the Confederacy secret service in Montreal.
As the book Montreal City of
Secrets (2017), author Barry Sheehy proves that not only was Canada the core of Confederate
Secret Services, but also coordinated a multi pronged war from the emerging "northern
confederacy" onto Lincoln's defense of the union alongside Wall Street bankers while the
president was fighting militarily to stop the southern secession. Sheehy writes: "By 1863,
the Confederate Secret Service was well entrenched in Canada. Funding came from Richmond via
couriers and was supplemented by profits from blockade running."
The Many Shapes of War from the North
Although not having devolved to direct military engagement, the Anglo-Canadian war on the
Union involved several components:
Financial warfare: The major Canadian banks dominant in the 19 th century were
used not only by the confederacy to pay British operations in the construction of war ships,
but also to receive much needed infusions of cash from British Financiers throughout the war. A
financial war on Lincoln's greenback was waged under the control of Montreal based confederate
bankers John Porterfield and George Payne and also JP Morgan to "short" the greenback.
By 1864, the subversive traitor Salmon Chase had managed to tie the greenback to a (London
controlled) gold standard thus making its value hinge upon gold speculation. During a vital
moment of the war, these financiers coordinated a mass "sell off" of gold to London driving up
the price of gold and collapsing the value of the U.S. dollar crippling Lincoln's ability to
fund the war effort.
Direct Military intervention Thwarted: As early as 1861, the Trent Crisis nearly
induced a hot war with Britain when a union ship intervened onto a British ship in
international waters and arrested two high level confederate agents en route to London. Knowing
that a two-fold war at this early stage was unwinnable, Lincoln pushed back against hot heads
within his own cabinet who argued for a second front saying "one war at a time". Despite this
near miss, London wasted no time deploying over 10 000 soldiers to Canada for the duration of
the war ready to strike down upon the Union at a moment's notice and kept at bay in large
measure due to the bold intervention of the
Russian fleet to both Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the USA . This was a clear message to
both England and to Napoleon III's France (who were stationed across the Mexican border)
to
stay out of America's war.
Despite Russia's intervention, Britain continued to build warships for the Confederacy which
devastated the Union navy during the war and which England had to pay $15.5 million to the USA
in 1872 under
the Alabama Claims.
Terrorism: It is less well known today than it was during the 19 th century that
confederate terror operations onto the north occurred throughout the civil war with raids on
Union POW camps, efforts to burn popular New York hotels, blowing up ships on the Mississippi,
and the infamous St Albans raid of October 1964 on Vermont and attacks on Buffalo, Chicago,
Sandusky, Ohio, Detroit, and Pennsylvania. While the St Albans raiders were momentarily
arrested in Montreal, they were soon released under the logic that they represented a
"sovereign state" at conflict with another "sovereign state" with no connection with Canada
(perhaps a lesson can be learned here for Meng Wanzhou's lawyers?).
Assassination: I already mentioned that a $550 note was found on Boothe's body with the
signature of Ontario Bank president Henry Starnes which the failed actor would have received
during his October 1864 stay in Montreal. What I did not mention is that Booth stayed at the St
Lawrence Hall Hotel which served as primary headquarters for the Confederacy from 1863-65.
Describing the collusion of Northern Copperheads, anti-Lincoln republicans, and Wall Street
agents, Sheehy writes: "All of these powerful northerners were at St. Lawrence Hall rubbing
elbows with the Confederates who used the hotel as an unofficial Headquarters. This was the
universe in which John Wilkes Booth circulated in Canada."
In a 2014 expose , historian Anton Chaitkin, points out that the money used by Boothe came
directly from a $31,507.97 transfer from London arranged by the head of European confederate
secret service chief James D. Bulloch. It is no coincidence that Bulloch happens to also be the
beloved uncle and mentor of the same Teddy Roosevelt who became the president over the dead
body of Lincoln-follower William McKinley (assassinated in 1901).
In his expose, Chaitkin wrote:
"James D. Bulloch was the maternal uncle, model and strategy-teacher to future U.S.
President Theodore Roosevelt. He emerged from the shadows of the Civil War when his nephew
Teddy helped him to organize his papers and to publish a sanitized version of events in his
1883 memoir, The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe. Under the protection of
imperial oligarchs such as Lord Salisbury and other Cecil family members, working in tandem
with Britain's military occupation of its then-colony Canada, Bulloch arranged English
construction and crewing for Confederate warships that notoriously preyed upon American
commerce."
The Truth is Buried Under the Sands of History
While four low level members of Booth's cell were hanged on July 7, 1865 after a four month
show trial (1), the actual orchestrators of Lincoln's assassination were never brought to
justice with nearly every leading member of the confederate leadership having escaped to
England in the wake of Lincoln's murder. Even John Surrat (who was among the eight who faced
trial) avoided hanging when his case was dropped, and his $25 000 bail was mysteriously paid by
an anonymous benefactor unknown to this day. After this, Surrat escaped to London where the
U.S. Consuls demands for his arrest were ignored by British authorities.
Confederate spymaster Judah Benjamin escaped arrest and lived out his days as a Barrister in
England, and Confederate President Jefferson Davies speaking to adoring fans in Quebec in June
1867 encouraged the people to reject the spread of republicanism and instead embrace the new
British Confederation scheme that would soon be imposed
weeks later . Davies spoke to the Canadian band performing Dixie at the Royal Theater:
"I hope that you will hold fast to their British principles and that you may ever strive to
cultivate close and affectionate connections with the mother country".
With the loss of Lincoln, and the 1868 death of Thaddeus Stevens, Confederate General
Albert Pike established restoration of the southern oligarchy and sabotage of Lincoln's
restoration with the rise of the KKK, and renewal of Southern Rite Freemasonry. Over the
ensuing years, an all out assault was launched on Lincoln's Greenbacks culminating in the
Specie Resumption Act of 1875 tying the U.S. financial system to British "hard money"
monetarism and paving the way for the later financial coup known as the Federal Reserve Act of
1913 (2).
While the Southern Confederacy plot ultimately failed, Britain's "other confederacy
operation launched in 1864 was successfully consolidated with the British
North America Act of July 1, 1867. The hoped-for extension of trans continental rail lines
through British Columbia and into Alaska and Russia were sabotaged as told in the
Real Story Behind the Alaska Purchase of 1867.
Instead of witnessing a new world system of sovereign nation states under a multipolar order
of collaboration driven by international infrastructure projects as Lincoln's followers like
William Seward, Ulysses Grant, William Gilpin and President McKinley envisioned , a new age
of war and empire re-asserted itself throughout the 20 th century.
It was this same trifold Deep State that contended with Franklin Roosevelt and his patriotic
Vice President Henry Wallace for power during the course of WWII, and
it was this same beast that ran the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. As New
Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison demonstrated in his book On the Trail of the Assassins (1991 ),
Kennedy's murder was arranged by a complex assassination network that brought into play
Southern secret intelligence assets in Louisiana, and Texas, Wall Street financiers, and a
strange assassination bureau based in Montreal named Permindex under the leadership of Maj.
Gen. Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. This was the same intelligence operation that grew out of
MI6's Camp X in Ottawa
during WWII and changed its name but not its functions during the Cold War. This is the
same British Imperial complex that has been attempting to undo the watershed moment of 1776 for
over 240 years.
It is this same tumor in the heart of the USA that has invested everything in a gamble to
put their senile tool Joe Biden into the seat of the Presidency and oust the first genuinely
nationalist American president the world has seen in nearly 60 years.
Exclusive: How The Bidens Made Off With Millions In Chinese Cash
New
documents show that as regulators closed in, Hunter struck a fresh deal with his Chinese partners
World Food Program USA Board Chairman Hunter Biden speaks at the World Food Program USA's Annual McGovern-Dole Leadership
Award Ceremony at Organization of American States on April 12, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for
World Food Program USA)
The Senate's
report
on
Hunter Biden's activities released several months ago, which was
spun
by
the New York Times as having shown "no evidence of wrongdoing," nevertheless had several important gaps in the business
activities of the troubled son of the former vice president.
Draft legal documents and 2017 bank records obtained by The American Conservative show at least $5 million was transferred to
Hunter and Jim Biden from companies associated with the Chinese conglomerate CEFC, with millions coming after the company had
come under legal scrutiny both in the United States and China.
CEFC official Patrick Ho was arrested in November 2017 and charged by the Southern District of New York with corruption, and
was convicted last year. In addition, on or about March 1, 2018, CEFC Chairmen Ye Jianming was arrested in China for economic
crimes and hasn't been seen since. CEFC assets in China were seized by Chinese state agencies. In the U.S., major
beneficiaries were Hunter and Jim Biden.
What the following documents show is that as regulators moved to seize CEFC's assets, Hunter Biden attempted to take control
of the company founded in partnership with it. Instead, after striking a deal with two CEFC employees in the U.S., the funds
were disbursed over the next six months to his and his uncle's companies until it was all gone, in total at least $5 million.
2017 Bank Records
On August 5, 2017, the Bidens and CEFC entered into a 50-50 limited liability company agreement (Hudson West III) between
Owasco, Hunter Biden's company, and Hudson West V (CEFC). The Sep 22, 2020 report from the Senate Judiciary Committee (the
"HGSAC Report") surmised an agreement like this, but a copy can be seen, for the first time
here
.
In early 2017, CEFC was ranked as one of the top 500 corporations in the world.
Hudson West III set up two bank accounts with Cathay Bank, with the first set up on or about August 5.
A
company associated with CEFC deposited $5 million into the account on August 8; no contribution was made by the Bidens.
On
Nov 2, 2017, CEFC Limited deposited a further $1 million into the account. (Subsequently, the Hudson West III account shows a
wire of $1 million back to CEFC Limited on Nov 21, followed a few days later on Nov 27 by a credit memo for $999,938. The
HGSAC Report interpreted the Nov 21 wire transfer as a return of the $1 million, but appear to have omitted consideration of
the credit memo apparently reversing the return).
The
net result is that CEFC and its affiliates deposited almost exactly $6 million into Hudson West III in 2017.
In the 5 months between August 8 and Dec 31, 2017, Hudson West III disbursed almost $1.6 million to Owasco (Hunter Biden) in
wire transfers and credit card binges by the Bidens. The transfers appear to have been structured as $165,000 in monthly
payments, plus two other payments of $400,000 and $220,387.
Collated
screengrabs from Hudson West III bank statements showing payments to Owasco (Wells Fargo Clearing Services LLC)
The HGSAC Report reported on the $99,000 credit card spree by the Bidens in early September 2017, but, in addition to that
spree, there was an additional $77,700 in credit card sprees, making a total of $176,700 for the five month period.
Figure
2. Screengrab from Hudson West III bank statements showing credit card disbursements
Total expenditures by Hudson West III in the five months were $1,947,439, of which $1,522,000 went to the Bidens (via Owasco
and credit cards).
Hudson
West III bank accounts contained more than $4 million in cash at the end of 2017.
March 2018 Deal
Shortly after the arrest of CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming on March 1, 2018, there appears to have been a rolling seizure of CEFC
assets. Even with the profligate spending by the Bidens, Hudson West III would still have had about $3.5 million in cash in
March.
On March 26, a Chinese-American employee who was fiercely loyal to Hunter suggested to him that Hunter and the two CEFC
employees in the U.S. (Mervyn Yan and Kevin Dong) figure out a way to appropriate the Hudson West III cash before it was
frozen by Chinese regulators or receivers:
you guys (You/Mervyn/Kevin)
figure out a way to have the money transferred to the right U.S. account before any restriction levied by Chinese
regulators or appointed new boss in charge of manage the enterprise Ye left behind.
In fact, Hunter had already begun the process of appropriating Hudson West III cash before a receiver could arrive. On March
18, Hunter's lawyer sent a letter to Mervyn Yan proposing that Hudson West V (the proximate CEFC entity) assign its interest
in Hudson West III to Owasco (Hunter), a transaction which would give control of all the cash to Hunter (see
here
,
and
here
).
On or about March 30, 2018, Hunter and the two Chinese appear to have worked out a different arrangement. Among the newly
available documents are redlined versions of an assignment agreement in which Hudson West V assigned its 50% interest in
Hudson West III to Coldharbour Capital Inc., with Kevin Dong the proposed signatory for Hudson West V, Mervyn Yan for
Coldharbour Capital and Hunter signatory for Owasco's consent to the assignment.
The HGSAC Report does not appear to have had access to these documents: they noted that ownership of Hudson West III at some
point was 50% Coldharbour, but does not appear to have been aware of the prior ownership of this interest by Hudson West V or
the assignment to Coldharbour in late March 2018.
During the next six months, the cash was completely drained into the accounts of Owasco and Coldharbour, spent on consulting
fees and expenses. According to the HGSAC Report, total payments from Hudson West III to Owasco amount to an astonishing
$4,790,375 by September 2018, when the Hudson West III accounts were totally depleted. In November 2018, Hudson West III was
dissolved by Owasco and Coldharbour.
From the 2017 bank records, we know that $1,444,000 had been transferred to Owasco in 2017 (excluding direct payment of credit
card sprees); thus, transfers to Owasco in the first eight months of 2018 were approximately $3,345,000.
The assignment of Hudson West V's interest in Hudson West III to Coldharbour and the dissipation of cash to the Hudson West
III managers would probably not have stood up to a determined receiver appointed by the Chinese parent company, but there
doesn't appear to have been any attempt by the parent company to stop or control the dissipation of Hudson West III's cash
reserves.
Lion Hall (Jim Biden)
Invoices
Included in the newly available material are invoices to Owasco and, separately, to Hudson West III from Jim Biden doing
business as Lion Hall Group. The HGSAC Report stated that, between Aug 14, 2017 and Aug 3, 2018, Owasco sent 20 wires totaling
$1,398,999 to Lion Hall Group. The newly available documents show that Jim Biden charged Owasco $82,500 per month as a
"monthly retainer for international business development":
Readers will recall that Hudson West III bank statements showed regular monthly payments of $165,000 for the last 5 months of
2017. The corollary is that Hunter split this regular monthly payment from Hudson West III 50:50 with Jim Biden. The HGSAC
Report notes that the payments to Lion Hall Group had been flagged by Owasco's bank (Wells Fargo) for potential criminal
activity. The new documents contain an inquiry email from Wells Fargo compliance, together with a reply from Hunter which was
unresponsive on the key compliance questions. By the time that Wells Fargo raised its compliance concerns, the Hudson West III
cash had been exhausted and with it, presumably the stream of 50-50 payments to Uncle Jim.
As noted above, in addition to the regular $165,000 monthly payments, Owasco received other large transfers in 2017 and
presumably in 2018. It is not known whether Uncle Jim split these 50-50 as well, or whether this was a side transaction by
Hunter.
Concurrent with this flood of
money from CEFC, Hunter continued to receive a lavish stipend from Burisma. Nonetheless, by the end of 2018, Hunter had
hundreds of thousands in tax liens. In March 2019, despite having received millions from Chinese business interests, Hunter
even had to plead with former partner Jeffrey Cooper to email him $100 for gas so that he wouldn't be stranded on the highway.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arthur Bloom is editor of The American Conservative online. He was previously deputy editor of the Daily Caller
and a columnist for the Catholic Herald. He holds masters degrees in urban planning and American studies from
the University of Kansas. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The
Spectator
(UK),
The Guardian, Quillette, The American
Spectator
,
Modern Age, and Tiny Mix Tapes.
email
Not by the Conservative press. But certainly by the Liberal press. I was born in a country
where all the news sources were owned by one of the political parties. Now I live in a
country where we have the
de facto
situation. In
America we are very good at setting the standard as the
de
jure
state of affairs, while ignoring the
de facto
state
of affairs. Every country has its share of hypocrisy. But there are few places, if any, where
it is institutionalized as America. We need to do much better. Despite what the Conservatives
say, the Liberal press used to try to do journalism. But they have given up.
I'm old enough to remember when CNN was a pretty middle of the road news organization.
But Fox came along and proved that naked partisanship, half-truths, innuendo, and
brightening up the hate centers of the brain was a far more profitable way of doing
business. CNN just had to compete.
We do have the Fox "News" Network (Most watched cable news channel, or so the
continually brag, and with TV/cable being where most Americans get their news from that
makes them a pretty big player) and One America "News" Network. Ad in the Sinclair
Broadcasting Network--they have no problem sending out canned od-eds supporting Trump
so they should have no ideological objection to pursuing this story. Perhaps they could
do some investigating and reporting instead of filling their airtime with
unsubstantiated accusations made by others that they take at face value.
Not to mention there are some print sources--The Washington Times, the NY Post, the
Orange County Register, Des Moines Register, etc.
Right? Between Fox News, the Murdoch owned papers, Breitbart, the Daiky
Caller/Wire, and Sinclair, the idea that right isn't represented in the media is
frankly insane. Even Q Anon has a better reach in Facebook than the NYT and they
are a pure distillation of conservatism.
"There is no conservative media" is an idea about as tethered to reality as
conservative media is in general.
This is news. Hunter Biden is most likely a crook. And a well-known watchdog group has just filed a
12-page complaint with DOJ requesting an investigation. Also check out this TV appearance on
Newsmax.
Hunter Biden is most likely a crook. But what a person "most likely is" is not news. I used
to watch Newsmax because it is good to hear about stories that the liberal press doesn't
cover. And it is good to get varying perspectives on news events even if the liberal press
covers them. But I can't take tv news any more. They are all mostly useless for people like
me who detest both political parties. I watch only Newsy. You should try if you are really
interested in news.
"watchdog group" you say? And that is supposed to me make me think that there is a difference
between that and the Republican Party? The liberals pioneered that trick. Now everyone uses
it. That is, name (effectively) an arm of the Democratic Party a "watchdog" and that is
supposed to give it credibility. But the trick is subject to our First Law of Politics.
Whatever tactic one party deploys, as long as it is successful, the other party will deploy
it. No matter how much they denounced it previously. At best, they will rename it. But
usually, they don't bother.
In any case, unless this "watchdog group" is alleging a crime there is no basis for a DOJ
investigation. What is the criminal accusation?
I'm not gonna lie, I didn't even waste my time reading this piece. Arthur seems to have all of a
sudden become interested in corruption (which likely didn't even happen) in a way he expressed no
interest in for the last 4 years. Forgive me if I don't vote him as an honest broker.
It's just so weak. This isn't an October surprise -- this is like a turkey surprise casserole
served two weeks after Thanksgiving. Even if this were a game-changing piece of reporting, it
seems a dubious tactic to release it on the morning of the election on a website that
probably gets less views than some random 16 year old dancing on Tik-Tok.
TAC's pivot over the last couple years into Brietbart territory is embarrassing. A lot of rightwing
media and personalities held out for awhile on Trump, but eventually saw where the wind was blowing
and jumped in the deep end. I hope no one on the principled right or left ever lets them forget it.
No shelter for scoundrels....
Thanks for publishing this. I hope more such pieces appear here in the next few weeks. TAC's regular
readers from the Left don't like it. Good. Rub their noses in it.
I was mentioning Hunter Biden and his Ukraine dealings back in 2014 but I don't have a public forum
outside email and social media and no one thought it of interest till his dad was running for
president against a man who by many accounts has been a crook his entire adult life, and proud of
it.
So Hunter failed to register as a foreign agent. Isn't that what Mike Flynn got busted for
along with some other Trump campaign officials? And hasn't Trump demanded his people all be
forgiven for their transgressions cause it wasn't really a bad thing?
Out of curiosity, among the hundreds if not thousands of websites you could be reading right now,
apart from thousands of decent monographs and works of fiction, why are you spending time this
morning at this "nutjob site," going so far as to login to the comments section to express to the
other presumably "nut job" readers that you're better than them?
This speaks VOLUMES about your worth as a human being. When you wake up around 3 AM over the next
few nights, it'll hit you. Let it sink in. Let it marinate. From such truths character is built.
It's pretty extreme. TAC comment section has become unusable bickering and taunts even after
blocking half the content. I don't know what they are hoping to accomplish other than
confirming our worst guesses about their character.
Exclusive? Of course! No one in their right mind would print it. And the enemy of the state-fake news
outlets are all looking for scoops and looking to win major awards and prizes for breaking a
story-----and for some reason all of these thousands of journalists did not get this "exclusive."
all unproved nonsense.Where is the indictment, when, after all Trump and Barr woprk hand in hand...simply
BS stuff to support Trump. Should Trump lose, watch the legal stuff that he will confront. Now worry
about that
When did this site turn into The Tucker Carlson show ? Please return to the thoughtful conservative
thought that you are know for. Sign of the times I guess and how internet culture can demean us all.
It's the same delusion they engaged in with Trump. They overweight the feelings of their in
group and underweight the population as a whole. Tucker doesn't actually have many viewers in
the scheme of winning a national election. He couldn't appeal to moderates.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want
to hear."
- George Orwell
The American people remain eager to be persuaded that a new president in the White House can
solve the problems that plague us.
Yet no matter who wins this presidential election, you can rest assured that the new boss
will be the same as the old boss, and we -- the permanent underclass in America -- will
continue to be forced to march in lockstep with the police state in all matters, public and
private.
Indeed, it really doesn't matter what you call them -- the Deep State, the 1%, the elite,
the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance
state, the military industrial complex -- so long as you understand that no matter which party
occupies the White House in 2021, the unelected bureaucracy that actually calls the shots will
continue to do so.
In the interest of liberty and truth, here are a few hard truths about life in the American
police state that will persist no matter who wins the 2020 presidential election. Indeed, these
issues persisted -- and in many cases flourished -- under both Republican and Democratic
administrations in recent years.
Overcriminalization will continue. In the face of a government bureaucracy consumed with
churning out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value
systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, we will all continue to be
viewed as petty criminals, guilty of violating some minor law. Thanks to an overabundance
of 4,500-plus federal crimes and 400,000-plus rules and regulations, it is estimated that
the average
American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it. In fact, according to
law professor John Baker, " There is no
one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime
." Consequently, we now find ourselves operating in a strange new world where small farmers
who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community are
finding their farms raided, while home gardeners face jail time for daring to cultivate their
own varieties of orchids without having completed sufficient paperwork. This frightening
state of affairs -- where a person can actually be arrested and incarcerated for the most
innocent and inane activities, including feeding a whale and collecting rainwater on their
own property -- is due to what law scholars refer to as overcriminalization.
Jailing Americans for profit will continue. At one time, the American penal system
operated under the idea that dangerous criminals needed to be put under lock and key in order
to protect society. Today, as states attempt to save money by outsourcing prisons to private
corporations, imprisoning Americans in private prisons run by mega-corporations has turned
into a cash cow for big business. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public
prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to
maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years. Such a
scheme simply encourages incarceration for the sake of profits, while causing millions of
Americans, most of them minor, nonviolent criminals, to be handed over to corporations for
lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism. Thus,
although the number of violent crimes in the country
is down substantially , the number of Americans being jailed for nonviolent
crimes such as driving with a suspended license is skyrocketing .
Endless wars that enrich the military industrial complex will continue. Having been
co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government
officials, America's expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more
than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour) -- and that's just what the government
spends on foreign wars. That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the
1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe. Incredibly, although the U.S.
constitutes only 5% of the world's population, America boasts almost 50% of the world's total
military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations
combined. In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on
health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that
these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with
enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense. Consider that since 2001,
Americans have spent $10.5
million every hour for numerous foreign military occupations, including in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Police shootings of unarmed Americans will continue. No matter what our party politics,
race, religion, or any other distinction used to divide us, we all suffer when violence
becomes the government's calling card. Remember, in a police state, you're either the one
with your hand on the trigger or you're staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. At least
400 to 500 innocent
people are killed by police officers every year. Indeed, Americans are now eight times
more likely to die in a police confrontation than they are to be killed by a terrorist.
Americans are 110 times more likely to die
of foodborne illness than in a terrorist attack. Police officers are more
likely to be struck by lightning than be made financially liable for their wrongdoing. As
a result, Americans are largely powerless in the face of militarized police.
SWAT team raids will continue. More than 80,000 SWAT team raids are carried out every year
on unsuspecting Americans for relatively routine police matters. Nationwide, SWAT teams have
been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere
community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an
orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling. On an average
day in America,
over 100 Americans have their homes raide d by SWAT teams. There has been a
notable buildup in recent years of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal
agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the
Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety
Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Education Department.
The government's war on the American people will continue. "We the people" are no longer
shielded by the rule of law. While the First Amendment -- which gives us a voice -- is being
muzzled, the Fourth Amendment -- which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten,
broken and spied on by government agents -- is being disemboweled. Consequently, you no
longer have to be poor, black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in
America. All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class -- that is, the
citizenry -- of the American police state. As a de facto member of this so-called criminal
class, every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent. The oppression and injustice
-- be it in the form of shootings, surveillance, fines, asset forfeiture, prison terms,
roadside searches, and so on -- will come to all of us eventually unless we do something to
stop it now.
The rise of the surveillance state will continue. Government eyes are watching you. They
see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact,
when you wake up in the morning, what you're watching on television and reading on the
internet. Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in
order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when
and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line. Police have been outfitted with a litany of
surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric
data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to
detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which
perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving
police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike -- including homes. Coupled with the
nation's growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software,
soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
The erection of a suspect society will continue. Due in large part to rapid advances in
technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so
that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm
in which all citizens are suspects. This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and
frisking people who are merely walking down the street and where there is no evidence of
wrongdoing. Making matters worse are Terrorism Liaison Officers (firefighters, police
officers, and even corporate employees) who have been trained to spy on their fellow citizens
and report "suspicious activity," which includes taking pictures with no apparent aesthetic
value, making measurements and drawings, taking notes, conversing in code, espousing radical
beliefs and buying items in bulk. TLOs report back to "fusion centers," which are a driving
force behind the government's quest to collect, analyze, and disseminate information on
American citizens.
Government tyranny under the reign of an Imperial President will continue. The
Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers: to serve as Commander
in Chief of the military, grant pardons, make treaties (with the approval of Congress),
appoint ambassadors and federal judges (again with Congress' blessing), and veto legislation.
In recent years, however, American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage
war, unilaterally kill Americans, torture prisoners, strip citizens of their rights, arrest
and detain citizens indefinitely, carry out warrantless spying on Americans, and erect their
own secretive, shadow government. The powers amassed by each past president and inherited by
each successive president -- powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler
-- empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond
any real accountability. The grim reality we must come to terms with is the fact that the
government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned. More than terrorism, more than domestic
extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a
greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called
dangers from which the government claims to protect us. This state of affairs has become the
status quo, no matter which party is in power.
The government's manipulation of national crises in order to expand its powers will
continue. "We the people" have been the subjected to an "emergency state" that justifies all
manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security.
Whatever the so-called threat to the nation -- whether it's civil unrest, school shootings,
alleged acts of terrorism, or the threat of a global pandemic in the case of COVID-19 -- the
government has a tendency to capitalize on the nation's heightened emotions, confusion and
fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state. Indeed, the government's answer
to every problem continues to be more government -- at taxpayer expense -- and less
individual liberty.
The bottom line is this: nothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering
of the American people. Unless we do something more than vote, the government as we have come
to know it -- corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special
interest groups -- will remain unchanged. And "we the people" -- overtaxed, overpoliced,
overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and
blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us -- will continue to trudge along a
path of misery.
As I point out in my book
Battlefield America: The War on the American People , these problems will continue to
plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we're the only ones who
can change things for the better and then do something about it. If there is to be any hope of
restoring our freedoms and reclaiming control over our government, it will rest not with the
politicians but with the people themselves.
After all, Indeed, the Constitution opens with those three vital words, "We the people."
What the founders wanted us to understand is that we are the government.
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There is no government without us -- our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our
physical presence in this land. There can also be no police state -- no tyranny -- no routine
violations of our rights without our complicity and collusion -- without our turning a blind
eye, shrugging our shoulders, allowing ourselves to be distracted and our civic awareness
diluted.
No matter which candidate wins this election, the citizenry and those who represent us need
to be held accountable to this powerful truth.
An email from the famous hard drive indicates a Chinese state-owned company wanted an
introduction from Rosemont Seneca Hunter Biden, from ABC News Nightline one year ago (
Source )
Back in March, I wrote a
column in these pages about the Chinese business entanglements of major media companies in
the U.S. By far the most seriously entangled is Comcast, the owner of NBCUniversal, parent
company of NBC and MSNBC, which is in the process of opening a Universal Studios theme park in
Beijing.
Portions of Hunter Biden's hard drive have now been shared with TAC. On the drive is an
email from president of Rosemont Seneca Eric Schwerin, a company co-founded by Hunter and John
Kerry's stepson, saying that Chinese state-owned enterprise CITIC was hoping they would make
introductions with Universal employees and propose the Beijing theme park.
"They'd like an introduction to Universal (Comcast) as they'd like to open a Universal
Studios China theme park outside of Beijing," Schwerin writes. "As I said, that one should be
easy via Melissa Mayfield/David Cohen [two Comcast executives]."
"She said they'd like to pay us for our help on these -- I told her we'd discuss whether we
could do that -- but were sure we could figure something out even if it was success fee based
on the US side but that I would talk to you," Schwerin added.
To what extent this was followed up on is at this point unclear. However, what it indicates
is that a company founded by two Democratic political scions was willing to facilitate a deal
for their friendliest media network, a network that has been unrelentingly hostile to Trump and
more or less completely ignored recent Hunter Biden disclosures. If Hunter helped facilitate a
sweet deal like this, it's only fair that they scratch his back too.
00:13 / 00:59 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Arthur Bloom is
editor of The American Conservative online. He was previously deputy editor of the Daily Caller
and a columnist for the Catholic Herald. He holds masters degrees in urban planning and
American studies from the University of Kansas. His work has appeared in The Washington Post,
The Washington Times, The Spectator (UK), The Guardian, Quillette, The American Spectator ,
Modern Age, and Tiny Mix Tapes.
It makes me nauseous just thinking about who might be chosen for a Biden
administration.
There will be no hope for reform within the Democratic Party, ever, with a 2020 win.
A win will be the formal announcement of the death of "the left" as the ideology that has
traditionally represented the interests of the people. The credibility of "the left" has been
eroding with each regime change war the U.S. has been initiating and participating in, with
NATO, since the war on Yugoslavia, but particularly in the Middle East and Libya. There has
not been a reckoning. Moral transgressions and cowardice, greed and inertia have in fact been
rewarded, and institutionalised. Eichman's plea a badge of honour and the whistleblower blown
away. The neocons, those influential Jewish, X-Trotskyite political chameleons pushed those
wars, and soft sold them through their many corporate media connections to produce "left
wing" journalism which manipulated concern for cruel dictators, for persecuted ethnic
minorities, refugees, weapons of mass destruction (the latest toxic version is chemical
weapons) and the unavailability of certain kinds of human rights, in nations which were
experiencing wars of "bomb them back to the stone age" aggression and psychopathic proxy
terror arranged by these very same neocons.
"The left" signalled their virtue by believing the war propaganda, and have not sufficiently
grasped the gravity of the sham perpetrated on their minds by this array of war criminals.
The derangement by Donald syndrome has also proven to be a most emphatic signal of virtue
with "the left", a commandment of wokeness. It is also most apparent that the deplorables,
aka the rednecks, can never be included in a census of the left- oh that is just way beyond
the pale! Very hard to imagine a large group of people who are so denigrated, and not just
within the US. Even the bourgeois left has become elitist, and the elitist as in Marxist left
has paradoxically no time for people, let alone the common ones. Vk has left us in no
doubt.
Glen Greenwald is at his peak in his Tucker Carlson interview, talking of infiltration of
"the left" by the agencies. This is compelling journalism because these truths are dangerous.
If there is a deep state, then it is the Dems, they've got it covered and the Atlanticists
are their allies. It fits in with Giraldi's latest prognostications, and what would be a
counterrevolution and not a revolution should "the left" decide to make the push. By left he
means Dems and their corporate sponsored affiliates, partisan elements of the spy agencies
and big tech. (I think of Mark2 and his misspelt slogans straight from the Gene Sharpe
handbook and wonder if earnest Mark2 is a typical lefty cadre, and muse over his enthusiasm
for the gutless Jeremy Corbyn, whom I'm sure is a very nice chap personally, but look at the
Labour Party now. Mark2, have you heard of the two forms of fascism, fascism and anti
fascism?). Jimmy Dore continues to be heroic when faced with unpleasant truths. Keep being
mad Jimmy, and just don't stand for it anymore!
Some of us are grateful for these individuals (and thanks to b for his meta commentary)
because they are publically enacting a kind of meaculpa, and they have premonitions and we
are being warned. There is grace in that. There still are still some good people who can
speak publically.
I used to be left politically, but got disillusioned some time ago. Not knowing what
progressivism is leading to, and not trusting its practitioners, I find conservatism to be
the more reasonable and tolerant position for these times.
The Italian archbishop best known for confronting Pope Francis over the Vatican's willful
blindness to priests who abuse boys has written a letter in which he lashes out at the
"global elite", prompting some to accuse him of sympathizing with the "QAnon" movement of
conspiracy theorists.
The letter, penned by Archibishop Carlo Maria Vigano, formerly the Vatican's ambassador to
the US, attacks a shadowy "global elite", that is plotting a "Great Reset" intended to
undermine "God and humanity".
This same group, the archbishop argued, is also responsible for the lockdowns that have
restricted movement and freedom around the globe, eliciting protests in many European
capitals.
"The fate of the whole world is being threatened by a global conspiracy against God and
humanity," Viganò wrote in the letter, which comes just days before the US election,
which the archbishop wrote was of "epochal importance."
"No one, up until last February," Viganò writes, "would ever have thought that, in
all of our cities, citizens would be arrested simply for wanting to walk down the street, to
breathe, to want to keep their business open, to want to go to church on Sunday. Yet now it
is happening all over the world, even in picture-postcard Italy that many Americans consider
to be a small enchanted country, with its ancient monuments, its churches, its charming
cities, its characteristic villages." Viganò adds: "And while the politicians are
barricaded inside their palaces promulgating decrees like Persian satraps, businesses are
failing, shops are closing, and people are prevented from living, traveling, working, and
praying."
Working to protect the world from this group of elites seeking to recast society in a
secular, totalitarian model, Viganò portrays President Trump as "the final garrison
against the world dictatorship". Viganò cast Trump's opponent, Vice President Joe
Biden, as "a person who is manipulated by the deep state."
Analysts who monitor "QAnon" conspiracy theories and their spread online warned the
mainstream press that the letter had been widely discussed on various QAnon message boards,
and had been disseminated in languages including Portuguese, Spanish, French, German and
Italian, according to
Yahoo News.
Over the summer, Trump tweeted an earlier letter penned by the archbishop, and encouraged
his supporters to read it.
In the past, Viagnò has accused Pope Francis of sweeping the child abuse crisis
under the rug, and moving to protect homosexual priests, part of a "homosexual current"
flowing through the Vatican.
Read the full letter below:
* * *
DONALD J. TRUMP
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Solemnity of Christ the King
Mr. President,
Allow me to address you at this hour in which the fate of the whole world is being
threatened by a global conspiracy against God and humanity. I write to you as an Archbishop,
as a Successor of the Apostles, as the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of
America. I am writing to you in the midst of the silence of both civil and religious
authorities. May you accept these words of mine as the "voice of one crying out in the
desert" (Jn 1:23).
As I said when I wrote my letter to you in June, this historical moment sees the forces of
Evil (read neoliberalism) aligned in a battle without quarter against the forces of Good;
forces of Evil that appear powerful and organized as they oppose the children of Light, who
are disoriented and disorganized, abandoned by their temporal and spiritual leaders .
Daily we sense the attacks multiplying of those who want to destroy the very basis of
society: the natural family, respect for human life, love of country, freedom of education
and business. We see heads of nations and religious leaders pandering to this suicide of
Western culture and its Christian soul, while the fundamental rights of citizens and
believers are denied in the name of a health emergency that is revealing itself more and more
fully as instrumental to the establishment of an inhuman faceless tyranny.
A global plan called the Great Reset is underway. Its architect is a global élite
that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically
limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations. In several nations this plan has
already been approved and financed; in others it is still in an early stage. Behind the world
leaders who are the accomplices and executors of this infernal project, there are
unscrupulous characters who finance the World Economic Forum and Event 201, promoting their
agenda.
The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the
imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal
income and cancelling individual debt. The price of these concessions from the International
Monetary Fund will be the renunciation of private property and adherence to a program of
vaccination against Covid-19 and Covid-21 promoted by Bill Gates with the collaboration of
the main pharmaceutical groups. Beyond the enormous economic interests that motivate the
promoters of the Great Reset, the imposition of the vaccination will be accompanied by the
requirement of a health passport and a digital ID, with the consequent contact tracing of the
population of the entire world. Those who do not accept these measures will be confined in
detention camps or placed under house arrest, and all their assets will be confiscated.
Mr. President, I imagine that you are already aware that in some countries the Great Reset
will be activated between the end of this year and the first trimester of 2021. For this
purpose, further lockdowns are planned, which will be officially justified by a supposed
second and third wave of the pandemic. You are well aware of the means that have been
deployed to sow panic and legitimize draconian limitations on individual liberties, artfully
provoking a world-wide economic crisis. In the intentions of its architects, this crisis will
serve to make the recourse of nations to the Great Reset irreversible, thereby giving the
final blow to a world whose existence and very memory they want to completely cancel. But
this world, Mr. President, includes people, affections, institutions, faith, culture,
traditions, and ideals: people and values that do not act like automatons, who do not obey
like machines, because they are endowed with a soul and a heart, because they are tied
together by a spiritual bond that draws its strength from above, from that God that our
adversaries want to challenge, just as Lucifer did at the beginning of time with his "non
serviam."
Many people – as we well know – are annoyed by this reference to the clash
between Good and Evil and the use of "apocalyptic" overtones, which according to them
exasperates spirits and sharpens divisions. It is not surprising that the enemy is angered at
being discovered just when he believes he has reached the citadel he seeks to conquer
undisturbed. What is surprising, however, is that there is no one to sound the alarm. The
reaction of the deep state to those who denounce its plan is broken and incoherent, but
understandable. Just when the complicity of the mainstream media had succeeded in making the
transition to the New World Order almost painless and unnoticed, all sorts of deceptions,
scandals and crimes are coming to light.
Until a few months ago, it was easy to smear as "conspiracy theorists" those who denounced
these terrible plans, which we now see being carried out down to the smallest detail. No one,
up until last February, would ever have thought that, in all of our cities, citizens would be
arrested simply for wanting to walk down the street, to breathe, to want to keep their
business open, to want to go to church on Sunday. Yet now it is happening all over the world,
even in picture-postcard Italy that many Americans consider to be a small enchanted country,
with its ancient monuments, its churches, its charming cities, its characteristic villages.
And while the politicians are barricaded inside their palaces promulgating decrees like
Persian satraps, businesses are failing, shops are closing, and people are prevented from
living, traveling, working, and praying. The disastrous psychological consequences of this
operation are already being seen, beginning with the suicides of desperate entrepreneurs and
of our children, segregated from friends and classmates, told to follow their classes while
sitting at home alone in front of a computer.
In Sacred Scripture, Saint Paul speaks to us of "the one who opposes" the manifestation of
the mystery of iniquity, the kathèkon (2 Thess 2:6-7). In the religious sphere, this
obstacle to evil is the Church, and in particular the papacy; in the political sphere, it is
those who impede the establishment of the New World Order.
As is now clear, the one who occupies the Chair of Peter has betrayed his role from the
very beginning in order to defend and promote the globalist ideology, supporting the agenda
of the deep church, who chose him from its ranks.
Mr. President, you have clearly stated that you want to defend the nation – One
Nation under God, fundamental liberties, and non-negotiable values that are denied and fought
against today. It is you, dear President, who are "the one who opposes" the deep state, the
final assault of the children of darkness.
For this reason, it is necessary that all people of good will be persuaded of the epochal
importance of the imminent election: not so much for the sake of this or that political
program, but because of the general inspiration of your action that best embodies – in
this particular historical context – that world, our world, which they want to cancel
by means of the lockdown. Your adversary is also our adversary: it is the Enemy of the human
race, He who is "a murderer from the beginning" (Jn 8:44).
Around you are gathered with faith and courage those who consider you the final garrison
against the world dictatorship. The alternative is to vote for a person who is manipulated by
the deep state, gravely compromised by scandals and corruption, who will do to the United
States what Jorge Mario Bergoglio is doing to the Church, Prime Minister Conte to Italy,
President Macron to France, Prime Minster Sanchez to Spain, and so on. The blackmailable
nature of Joe Biden – just like that of the prelates of the Vatican's "magic circle"
– will expose him to be used unscrupulously, allowing illegitimate powers to interfere
in both domestic politics as well as international balances. It is obvious that those who
manipulate him already have someone worse than him ready, with whom they will replace him as
soon as the opportunity arises.
And yet, in the midst of this bleak picture, this apparently unstoppable advance of the
"Invisible Enemy," an element of hope emerges. The adversary does not know how to love, and
it does not understand that it is not enough to assure a universal income or to cancel
mortgages in order to subjugate the masses and convince them to be branded like cattle.
This people, which for too long has endured the abuses of a hateful and tyrannical power,
is rediscovering that it has a soul; it is understanding that it is not willing to exchange
its freedom for the homogenization and cancellation of its identity; it is beginning to
understand the value of familial and social ties, of the bonds of faith and culture that
unite honest people. This Great Reset is destined to fail because those who planned it do not
understand that there are still people ready to take to the streets to defend their rights,
to protect their loved ones, to give a future to their children and grandchildren. The
leveling inhumanity of the globalist project will shatter miserably in the face of the firm
and courageous opposition of the children of Light. The enemy has Satan on its side, He who
only knows how to hate. But on our side, we have the Lord Almighty, the God of armies arrayed
for battle, and the Most Holy Virgin, who will crush the head of the ancient Serpent. "If God
is for us, who can be against us?" (Rom 8:31).
Mr. President, you are well aware that, in this crucial hour, the United States of America
is considered the defending wall against which the war declared by the advocates of globalism
has been unleashed. Place your trust in the Lord, strengthened by the words of the Apostle
Paul: "I can do all things in Him who strengthens me" (Phil 4:13). To be an instrument of
Divine Providence is a great responsibility, for which you will certainly receive all the
graces of state that you need, since they are being fervently implored for you by the many
people who support you with their prayers.
With this heavenly hope and the assurance of my prayer for you, for the First Lady, and
for your collaborators, with all my heart I send you my blessing.
God bless the United States of America!
+ Carlo Maria Viganò
Tit. Archbishop of Ulpiana
Former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America
holgerdanske , 33 minutes ago
Here is a man who seems to get it spot on!
Richard Chesler , 3 minutes ago
What's his ZH alias?
Sparehead , 29 minutes ago
I'd lost all hope for the Catholic church, but this guy is stepping up.
I was just telling my brother that it was likely the best thing that ever happened to me
when my parents decided to move me from Catholic school to public school, and that I never
was an alter boy when in Catholic school. Who knew the priests were diddling the alter boys
at the cyclic rate?
Slaytheist , 32 minutes ago
I left the church long ago, for the obvious reasons. If Carlo Maria Viganò was
Pope, and the kid touchers burnt at the stake, I'd consider going back.
sixsigma cygnusatratus , 29 minutes ago
Leftism is an inverse form of theocracy. Destroying the Church and replacing it with
government is also part of the plan of globalism.
Nation States and Christianity represent a threat to globalists and leftists.
Cabreado , 36 minutes ago
I appreciate the Archbishop's efforts, but...
Trump can't "save" it; he can only throw a wrench in the velocity.
(plenty worthy of a vote, I'd add)
Saving anything -- that's on the People.
That's per Design.
Again Ferdinand Pecora harking back to the 1930's as discussed in the past weeks
commentaries:-
Wilmarth's writing is so insightful and profound in its analysis of the similarities
between the banks of the late 1920s and today that it feels like the ghost of Ferdinand
Pecora might have been whispering in Wilmarth's ear. Pecora was a former prosecutor from
New York who was chosen to preside over much of the early 1930s Senate Banking hearings and
investigations of the corrupt Wall Street structure that led to the 1929 crash and Great
Depression.
Three banking names that played significant roles in the crash of 1929 and the
ensuing Great Depression were National City Bank, JP Morgan, and Chase National Bank.
National City Bank was the precursor to today's Citigroup, the bank that would have
collapsed in 2008 except for the largest taxpayer and Federal Reserve bailout in global
banking history. JPMorgan and Chase combined in 2000 to create today's JPMorgan
Chase.
"... Recently, the essayist George Scialabba described neoliberalism as "the extension of market dominance to all spheres of social life, fostered and enforced by the state," a rather nefarious-sounding proposition, including "investor rights agreements masquerading as 'free trade' and constraining the rights of governments to protect their own workers, environments, and currencies." ..."
"... Washington Monthly ..."
"... "neoliberal" quickly took on the heartless, Hooverian odor that "conservative" already had. ..."
"... checklist of neoliberal principles, which includes "the rule of the market," "cutting expenditures for social services," "deregulation," "privatization, and "eliminating the concept of 'the public good' or 'community.'" ..."
"... Between neoconservative and neoliberal, then, the neo prefix means not "new" but "disingenuous." ..."
"... The "neo" prefix now also carries a whiff of racist, in that both neoliberals and neoconservatives dissent from the liberal consensus on race issues, with neither in line with the idea that whites are stained by "privilege." ..."
... Today the word is generally used as a critique from the left to refer to capitalism run
amok. Recently, the essayist George Scialabba described
neoliberalism as "the extension of market dominance to all spheres of social life, fostered and
enforced by the state," a rather nefarious-sounding proposition, including "investor rights
agreements masquerading as 'free trade' and constraining the rights of governments to protect
their own workers, environments, and currencies."
... In the early '80s, Charles Peters, the editor of the Washington Monthly ,
helped usher in the new flavor of the word, as well as its reception from the left, with his
aggressive
"A Neo-Liberal's Manifesto." Those New Republic writers also brandished their
self-appellation as neoliberals , in contrast to the mockingly termed
paleoliberals . It furthered the sense of neoliberals as conservatives in sheep's
clothing that they also opposed the basic liberal position on race issues -- Bill Clinton's
welfare-reform policy, for example, was an outgrowth of neoliberal positions established in the
1980s, heartily espoused by, for example, TheNew Republic . Overtones, then,
took effect -- for liberals, "neoliberal" quickly took on the heartless, Hooverian odor
that "conservative" already had.
Since the Great Recession put the free market in an especially bad light, the new sense of
neoliberal as a stain has settled in for good. Those familiar with the term through
the writings of Lippmann, Hayek, or Friedman, once treated as "respectable" by many liberals,
might now be confused by tart descriptions of neoliberalism such as the immigration activists
Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia's flinty, contemptuous checklist of neoliberal
principles, which
includes "the rule of the market," "cutting expenditures for social services,"
"deregulation," "privatization, and "eliminating the concept of 'the public good' or
'community.'"
...Today, neoliberal is used to refer to someone who bills themselves as a liberal but
promotes ideas that actually inhibit individuals' well-being. In the 1930s, the neo- in
neoliberal meant "new." But with this new meaning, the neo- prefix takes on a more specific
connotation: "fake."
... ... ...
Between neoconservative and neoliberal, then, the neo prefix means not "new" but
"disingenuous." The neocon cloaks right-wing barbarism to make it seem less threatening;
the neoliberal poses as a liberal while actually being a right-winger. The "neo" prefix now
also carries a whiff of racist, in that both neoliberals and neoconservatives dissent from the
liberal consensus on race issues, with neither in line with the idea that whites are stained by
"privilege." From "new" to a moralist sneer -- this is how meanings evolve. The original
ideological positions survive, and impose their meanings on the words created to move beyond
them.
JOHN
MCWHORTERis a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He teaches linguistics at Columbia
University, hosts the podcast Lexicon Valley ,
and is the author, most recently, of Words on the Move
.
I will go back to an approach that served me well with regard to the Iraq WMD story. I have
no way of evaluating Yan's claims, but there are a fair number of people and organizations that
do have the resources to evaluate. I rejected WMD claims in 2003 simply because none of the
other players with relevant competence acted in ways that indicated serious concern. What is
Yan Li-meng's evidence that others do not have? This issue of origin has to have been pursued
by at least a couple dozen organizations with the necessary competence. None of those has made
any such claims. That doesn't mean that the claims are false. But if the claims are true, then
there must be very strong motives for keeping silent. So what would be the common interest
between, say, the intelligence agencies of Germany and those of India?
Without such evidence this turns into a she-said-he-said story. Now that does not mean that
it is wrong. Suppression and intimidation would not be out of character for the Chinese
government. But again the world is loaded with very paranoid people who are capable of
evaluating that. And who are pretty much immune to Chinese intimidation. They don't have to
face off against the Chinese state. There are plenty of more roundabout ways to get the word
out if you want to do so and have government-level resources to put into the effort.
The obvious alternative to publication of the logic for detecting human agency is to engage
in simple human retaliation. Are the Chinese the only ones capable of such producing such a
catastrophe? Pretty unlikely. Would such a counterstroke catch the Chinese by surprise? Again
unlikely if they are aware of having stepped over the line. The measures they are taking
against virus outbreaks are more extreme than what western countries have imposed, but not
(yet) indicating panic. If somebody let some 1918 swine flu loose in Shanghai, would their
measures be able to counter it? (Five times as contagious as what we seeing in covid-19.)
Red State raises additional skepticism about this "scientist's interview", as well as the
oddities of the very original days of reporting about the Chinese t "flu" coming out of
China. Remembering also one of the very first ways we even started hearing about this "new
Chinese virus" in the US were reports about the Great Toilet Paper panic, even though people
here did not know why they were supposed to be hoarding it. https://www.redstate.com/michael_thau/2020/09/17/920958/
Best I could trace was to an earlier Australian toilet paper panic they claimed was hawked
by Yahoo News in Australia, and then spread via social media to the US. And our Great Toilet
Paper Hoax began in earnest here too. China was allegedly the source for all Australian TP,
so it was claimed with so many people sick in China with this "flu" there would be no more
toilet paper Down Under for their down unders.
But the US did not rely on China for TP, so the TP panic was not warrented to be set in
motion here. But it did capture attention and did trigger panic before we even knew what to
be afraid of. Greasing the skids in some manipulative way could be one jaundiced
conclusion.
Hope someone with better skills can really trace the origins of the Great Toilet Paper
Hoax, because it did wipe us out in the US. No sheet. Was that the covid panic transmission
route; and not really on a flight from Wuhan to Seattle?
No - but she may be another in a long line of useful idiots.
"Independent fact checkers?" 25 year old Humanities and Social Sciences grads working
for Facebook? Independent of what? Independent of their mommies and daddies at long
last?
Countervailing research goes light-years beyond "Independent fact checkers?".
Italicized/bold text was excerpted from nature.com a report titled:
The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2
SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans; SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and
SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe disease, whereas HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E are associated with
mild symptoms6. Here we review what can be deduced about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from
comparative analysis of genomic data. We offer a perspective on the notable features of the
SARS-CoV-2 genome and discuss scenarios by which they could have arisen. Our analyses clearly
show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated
virus.
The genomic features described here may explain in part the infectiousness and
transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. Although the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not
a purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other
theories of its origin described here. However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2
features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses
in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is
plausible.
Italicized/bold text was excerpted from The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and
Hygiene a report titled:
The Origin of COVID-19 and Why It Matters
In 2007, scientists studying coronaviruses warned: "The presence of a large
reservoir of SARS-CoV–like viruses in horseshoe bats is a time bomb. The possibility of
the re-emergence of SARS and other novel viruses should not be ignored."1
Studying animal viruses that have previously spilled over into humans provides clues
about host-switching determinants. A well-understood example is influenza virus emergence
into humans and other mammals.2 Human pandemic and seasonal influenza viruses arise from
enzootic viruses of wild waterfowl and shore birds. From within this natural reservoir, the
1918 pandemic "founder" virus somehow host-switched into humans. We know this from genetic
studies comparing avian viruses, the 1918 virus, and its descendants, which have caused three
subsequent pandemics, as well as annual seasonal influenza in each of the 102 years since
1918. Similarly, other avian influenza viruses have host-switched into horses, dogs, pigs,
seals, and other vertebrates, with as yet unknown pandemic potential.2,10,11 Although some
molecular host-switching events remain unobserved, phylogenetic analyses of influenza viruses
allow us to readily characterize evolution and host-switching as it occurs in
nature.2
It should be clarified that theories about a hypothetical man-made origin of
SARS-CoV-2 have been thoroughly discredited by multiple coronavirus experts.21,28,29
SARS-CoV-2 contains neither the genetic fingerprints of any of the reverse genetics systems
that have been used to engineer coronaviruses nor does it contain genetic sequences that
would have been "forward engineered" from preexisting viruses, including the genetically
closest sarbecoviruses. That is, SARS-CoV-2 is unlike any previously identified coronavirus
from which it could have been engineered. Moreover, the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain,
which has affinity for cells of various mammals, binds to human ACE2 receptors via a novel
mechanism.
Engineering such a virus would have required 1) published or otherwise available
scientific knowledge that did not exist until after COVID-19 recognition; 2) a failure to
follow obvious engineering pathways, resulting in an imperfectly constructed virus; and 3) an
ability to genetically engineer a new virus without leaving fingerprints of the engineering.
Furthermore, the 12 amino acid furin-cleavage site insertion between the SARS-CoV-2 spike
protein's S1 and S2 domains, which some have alleged to be a sign of genetic engineering, is
found in other bat and human coronaviruses in nature, probably arising via naturally
occurring recombination.24
It is also highly unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 was released from a laboratory by
accident because no laboratory had the virus nor did its genetic sequence exist in any
sequence database before its initial GenBank deposition (early January 2020). China's
laboratory safety practices, policies, training, and engineering are equivalent to those of
the United States and other developed countries,32 making viral "escape" extremely unlikely,
and of course impossible without a viral isolate present. SARS-CoV-2 shares genetic
properties with many other sarbecoviruses, lies fully within their genetic cluster, and is
thus a virus that emerged naturally.
Italicized/bold text was excerpted from nature.com a report titled:
Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the
COVID-19 pandemic
There are outstanding evolutionary questions on the recent emergence of human
coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 including the role of reservoir species, the role of recombination and
its time of divergence from animal viruses. We find that the sarbecoviruses -- the viral
subgenus containing SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 -- undergo frequent recombination and exhibit
spatially structured genetic diversity on a regional scale in China. SARS-CoV-2 itself is not
a recombinant of any sarbecoviruses detected to date, and its receptor-binding motif,
important for specificity to human ACE2 receptors, appears to be an ancestral trait shared
with bat viruses and not one acquired recently via recombination. To employ phylogenetic
dating methods, recombinant regions of a 68-genome sarbecovirus alignment were removed with
three independent methods. Bayesian evolutionary rate and divergence date estimates were
shown to be consistent for these three approaches and for two different prior specifications
of evolutionary rates based on HCoV-OC43 and MERS-CoV. Divergence dates between SARS-CoV-2
and the bat sarbecovirus reservoir were estimated as 1948 (95% highest posterior density
(HPD): 1879–1999), 1969 (95% HPD: 1930–2000) and 1982 (95% HPD: 1948–2009),
indicating that the lineage giving rise to SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating unnoticed in bats
for decades.
With horseshoe bats currently the most plausible origin of SARS-CoV-2, it is
important to consider that sarbecoviruses circulate in a variety of horseshoe bat species
with widely overlapping species ranges57. Nevertheless, the viral population is largely
spatially structured according to provinces in the south and southeast on one lineage, and
provinces in the centre, east and northeast on another (Fig. 3). This boundary appears to be
rarely crossed. Two exceptions can be seen in the relatively close relationship of Hong Kong
viruses to those from Zhejiang Province (with two of the latter, CoVZC45 and CoVZXC21,
identified as recombinants) and a recombinant virus from Sichuan for which part of the genome
(region B of SC2018 in Fig. 3) clusters with viruses from provinces in the centre,
east and northeast of China. SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 are also exceptions because they were
sampled from Hubei and Yunnan, respectively.
It is clear from our analysis that viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 have been
circulating in horseshoe bats for many decades. The unsampled diversity descended from the
SARS-CoV-2/RaTG13 common ancestor forms a clade of bat sarbecoviruses with generalist
properties -- with respect to their ability to infect a range of mammalian cells -- that
facilitated its jump to humans and may do so again. Although the human ACE2-compatible RBD
was very likely to have been present in a bat sarbecovirus lineage that ultimately led to
SARS-CoV-2, this RBD sequence has hitherto been found in only a few pangolin viruses.
Furthermore, the other key feature thought to be instrumental in the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to
infect humans -- a polybasic cleavage site insertion in the S protein -- has not yet
been seen in another close bat relative of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
As if on cue Li-Meng Yan appears like manna from heaven aiding/abetting in foisting
forth the current dominant Western government/media narrative that China is bad.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
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Oilman2 says: April 10, 2021 at 11:14 am
Ms No PREMIUM 2 hours ago
odb 2 hours ago
Canada makes it much more difficult to know its real unemployment rate. The official Canadian unemployment rate for February was 6.8 percent, a slight increase from January that Statistics Canada attributes to "more people search[ing] for work." The official measurement in Canada, as in the U.S., European Union and Australia, mirrors the official standard for measuring employment defined by the International Labour Organization -- those not working at all and who are "actively looking for work." (The ILO is an agency of the United Nations.)
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© Provided by The Motley Fool Wireless technology
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'Open Skies' treaty - Foreign Ministry
Putin says American presence in Afghanistan is beneficial to Moscow's interests, rubbishes
claims of 'Russian bounties to Taliban'
Rewriting history: Legacy media shriek Trump is 'bucking tradition'... for doing the same thing
they praised Obama for
FILE PHOTOS. © Reuters / Kevin Lamarque ; Reuters / Christian Hartmann 88 Follow RT on
FILE PHOTO © REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst 15 Follow RT on 
Olde_Brooklyn_Lantern
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Grandfather sentenced to more than 500 years in jail ordered to be released
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Supporters of President Donald Trump rally in Washington DC to protest 
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Bullet2354 Avery
Bierce •
20 hours ago
Wayne Dupree: Why I, as a black man, am voting for Trump, along with a large number of people
who consider themselves Democrats
Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent
books are 
November 4, 2020 © Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
